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Apple News+ Just a really poor app – what is wrong with Apple's devs nowadays?

woolypants said:
OMG, I forgot to mention that.

Ads! And they're not even good quality ads for premium products. It's the awful base ads, that are literally like spam. I'm married but I get targeted by dating ads for "older women". It's horrible and creepy, with the horrible AI slop artwork, too.

1000s of ads telling me what to do with my pension, too. It seems Apple's ad dept knows one thing, which is that I'm middle-aged. I do turn off ad personalisation.

I think I've managed to block ads in News, however, by using an ad-blocking DNS. Some text ads still appear but I think I've got rid of the visual ads.
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You get ads despite paying for the News app through Apple One? That's outrageous.

I share your frustration with Apple's software of late. I won't go into examples, but yes, it can be a pain.
 
Question: a lot of very detailed and well described grievances in this thread. However, even if Apple was willing to act upon it, how would they now?

What is incredible for me is that there is no official channel for sending feedback, or if there is, it's very well hidden.

I mean, when I use an actively developed open source app, I have some reasonable expectation of being listened to by the developers: I just have to file a bug or a feedback on GitHub or whatever source control or bug filing system they use.

When I Google for a problem regarding Apple's software, I often end up in the support website, but besides some rare answers from Apple support or volunteering users (not always correct), it's tumbleweeds...
 
mihighil said:
I feel this way about apple music, the ios and macos apps. How can someone use the apps and thinks…yeah this is fine. What an embarrassment.
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I love the Music app on iOS and iPadOS (don’t use it much at all on Mac) and find it an absolute joy to use. Certainly much easier and nicer to use than the garbage that is the Spotify app, or the absolute monstrosity that is Amazon Music. The only thing that annoys me with Music is the random ordering of genres/categories on the Search page.

Considering I’ve been using Apple Music since day one and how well it knows me, why oh why does it not prioritise genres it knows I like. Hip hop and rap for example should be shunted to the bottom considering I practically never listen to those genres. I browse using those buttons more than using the search function so it’s incredibly frustrating to have to scroll all the way down to find the options I use most.

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I'm probably the wrong person to comment on this because I'd rather silo and consume the news on my own terms, not have the daily doom-cycle pushed to my phone. Its why I find the Google feed on Android so utterly useless.

Not being able to completely block the UK tabloids is a bother though.
 
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Apple_Robert said:
Whether you use the free version or the subbed one, you get ads. You can use NextDNS to remove the ads, although one shouldn't have to do that.
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Not in the least bit!

I recently became a paid Apple Arcade user, and Game Center occasionally throws up a game suggestion "for me."

It's a quick banner that disappears on its own, but it still qualifies as an ad in my book.
 
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woolypants said:
It's definitely the case that any new apps lean towards being very poor.

Even updates to established software.

For example, the new System Settings app in macOS is still very weak compared to what it replaced. When it launched it was missing functionality compared to the older app. It's better now, but it's still a confusing mess, and finding what you're looking for invariably requires use of the search functionality.

Apple applies the iPhone software design principles to EVERYTHING. Including Mac. That just doesn't work but Apple is hammering that square to make it circle no matter what. It's pure ideological dogma, but Apple can't see that. This is why I think Apple badly needs new blood at a senior level. At the moment it's a cabal of late-middle-aged men, and I think they've lost the plot. They missed AI, they jumped into AR/VR maybe a decade before it was ready, and as you say, the only real destination on their product road map is dollar signs.
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Ironic for a company that used to talk about square pegs being forced into round holes.

Now everything is forced into a squircle, problem solved!
 
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Everyone is chasing promotions by launching something new. Apple’s salary is also not appealing, I don’t see a lot of talent going to Apple nowadays.

Apple was exciting to work for before (doesn’t mean it’s a good place to work at). But now their standards are so low and there’s no new exciting products, paired with the relatively “okay” salary, not much people will spend their time to iron out the details in the older Apps
 
CarAnalogy said:
Ironic for a company that used to talk about square pegs being forced into round holes.

Now everything is forced into a squircle, problem solved!
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"Square Pegs" (by The Waitresses) is a great song for Monday morning. Thanks for reminding me of it!

And to make my post on topic: What is the point of switching from a free aggregator like Google if I can't get rid of the ads? It wasn't even better at aggregating or discovering what topics I actually care about. I quit my trial within a few days, and I had been eager to buy into the concept of paying one reasonable sub price for premium news access to a bunch of otherwise-paywalled-sites' "top stories," too. I didn't even get to the point where it was showing me empty boxes of blocked stories, like the original poster also complained about; finding out they do that feels even more ridiculous. Seems obvious you're not getting a personalized feed so much as a stack of what's available, with things filtered out after. That's not really the same thing. Sure, Google is building a big consumer profile on me based on what I look at in my Discover feed, but if I tell it no more articles from a site, it's completely gone the next time I refresh.
 
I’ve also stopped using Apple News. I agree with your critiques, but to me those issues weren’t the largest problem.

In my mind, the whole concept of an endlessly scrolling list of articles is hopelessly outdated. Same with tapping into an article only to find paragraphs of setup to wade through before I get to the pearl of information promised by the headline. Or re-packaged old stuff hidden behind a catchier headline. In the end, Apple News has become an enormous time waster, where you get very little return on your attention. It’s like the news equivalent of doom scrolling, encouraging addiction without delivering what it promises: the news.

I don’t want to spend hours browsing, scrolling, trying to find new and important stuff. My time and attention is important. I want to know the 5-10 most important tidbits of real, actual NEWS, that interests ME. When I tap into an article, I want a brief summary and key details immediately, without searching or scrolling past 5 ads. Then I want to get out and move on to something else as quickly as possible.

This is completely possible given the current state of AI and the Apple News team has completely missed the boat. So now I use Perplexity and I get exactly what I outlined above. I wish Apple would realize how far out of step this product is, and use their own Foundation Model technology to modernize it back into relevance.
 
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JustinKent said:
I’ve also stopped using Apple News. I agree with your critiques, but to me those issues weren’t the largest problem.

In my mind, the whole concept of an endlessly scrolling list of articles is hopelessly outdated. Same with tapping into an article only to find paragraphs of setup to wade through before I get to the pearl of information promised by the headline. Or re-packaged old stuff hidden behind a catchier headline. In the end, Apple News has become an enormous time waster, where you get very little return on your attention. It’s like the news equivalent of doom scrolling, encouraging addiction without delivering what it promises: the news.

I don’t want to spend hours browsing, scrolling, trying to find new and important stuff. My time and attention is important. I want to know the 5-10 most important tidbits of real, actual NEWS, that interests ME. When I tap into an article, I want a brief summary and key details immediately, without searching or scrolling past 5 ads. Then I want to get out and move on to something else as quickly as possible.

This is completely possible given the current state of AI and the Apple News team has completely missed the boat. So now I use Perplexity and I get exactly what I outlined above. I wish Apple would realize how far out of step this product is, and use their own Foundation Model technology to modernize it back into relevance.
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Perplexity gives you a really personalized feed? I'm surprised; maybe I didn't set it up right, but when I had the (free tier) on a device I was just getting very general breaking news type things.
 
Apple_Robert said:
I share your frustration with the app. That is why I stopped subscribing to it, and went back to using 'News Explorer.' It doesn't give me the annoyance the News app did not to mention I don't have to worry about seeing any ads. I control the feeds I see etc.
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Thank you for the infos: just bought it ! So much better
 
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Eric Idle said:
It's not going to get better at all. Apple software is by far, some of the worst software I have ever used. This goes way beyond the news app. All across the board, if the software comes from Apple, it's usually the worst in the industry. Look at what Apple did with Darksky. It's just appalling how poor Apple software is. They simply just don't care.

It's all about the money now. Nothing more.
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They used to have the best software hands down. It’s sad how far they’ve fallen
 
woolypants said:
They aren't Microsoft or Linux, firing 1000 config options at you.
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Oh?

Ok this isn't "1000 config options at you", BUT Pixelmator getting getting Writing Tools, proudly featuring the ability to "proofread, summarize, rewrite, and modify the tone of any text" (in an image editing app??) is all I needed to see.
 
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russell_314 said:
I feel like this is being a little dramatic. I’m not saying some of the Apple software doesn’t need work but you also have to realize Apple is working on a smaller scale than Microsoft or Google.

I totally agree that good old Tim needs to dump a whole bunch of cash into fixing Apple’s operating systems and apps. It’s crazy how a multi trillion dollar company like Apple is so tight on the budget in this area. Of course that’s due to investors. If Apple actually did dump a whole bunch of cash into fixing its problems that means the next shareholder meeting would have bad news. You can’t have bad news with investors. Profits always have to go up. Even the general public would be critical because they would be saying oh my God look at Tim. He’s running the company into the ground by overspending. This causes Apple to be constrained into making very slow, but deliberate moves. They have to pick their battles and push other things off to the side. Why do you think Siri is so bad in 2025. Apples strategy so far has been to pretend to be working on the problem so the issue won’t attract too much attention. I have to say it’s worked so far. A lot of people think Siri is a joke, but it hasn’t received the negative attention it could have received.
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It’s so sad that the consumer is the investor not the user.
 
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I thought the News app was nice when I used it, my complaint is just how it delivers nothing by left-wing news, regardless of how I had my preferences set.
 
woolypants said:
I subscribed to Apple One not least because of Apple News.

And my God, is the app for that a stinker. It's a very modern Apple app, in that it's borderline user-hostile and scratching Apple's itch, rather than the user's.

Hidden sources​

So, you can hide news sources you don't want. I don't care for tabloids here in the UK, like the Sun and Daily Mail, so I hide them. But... Their stories still appear in the news feed! Just greyed out.

View attachment 2538256
That is so incredibly useless and intensely annoying. Why show me this?

You can make News hide these, via one of its few config options. Just tap "Restrict Stories in Today". But doing so means you lose features – you can no longer see Top Stories, Trending Stories, and Featured Stories.
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Why is Apple being so user-hostile here? Restricting headline categories like that is just an arbitrary decision. It has nothing to do with the fact I don't want to see certain news sources.

Accessibility isn't​

I use News on my phone and iPad mini while in bed at night. At that point I've taken out my contact lenses and no longer wear glasses. I have to enlarge the text.

There's no global setting to do this.

I have to adjust this setting individually for every single news source. This is infuriating. Open a news story. Squint. Tap to enlarge text. Repeat, ad nauseam.

Why isn't there just a central setting, like Books, to adjust the font scaling?

Can I change the fonts being used, say to a sans serif font that's easier to read for people with poor eyesight? No. Not even for individual sources, never mind as a global config option.

Configuration? Nope.​

There are almost no configuration options.

I don't care for sports, for example. Some news web sites let you simply hide the sports section. Can Apple News do this? Nope. You're getting sports whether you like it or not. Here's the range of configuration options for the Mac version of the app. Just four of them. OK I know Apple sweats the small stuff. They aren't Microsoft or Linux, firing 1000 config options at you. But this is absurd.
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At the top is the aforementioned option to hide news sources I've deactivated – that also kills much of the News app functionality. I'm pretty sure they made this so obtuse for licensing reasons. The corporations they're signed-up with just didn't like users having the power to hide their content, so Apple created a messy compromise that still showed hidden content.

Below that is what feels like a legal requirement from Apple. Scratching their itch...

Third is sports!

Fourth is a bizarro game centre option. What?! Again, Apple scratching their itch to encourage more use of their ecosystem. That was considered so important that it was developed over, say, a basic config option to increase font sizes globally. Who does Apple care about here?

No history​

EDIT: There is, in fact, a history list of articles you've viewed. It's just hidden away. You have to tap the Following option. Yes, that's right.

There's no way to search the history, perhaps because the list flows in from the cloud as you scroll (so isn't all in memory when you first look at it). You can tap and hold on each entry, though, to get useful options like saving it, or sharing it.

Sometimes I tell my wife about an article having read it the previous day, and she asks me to share it with her. But there's no history within News. I can't find it without manually searching. True, if you go in to the app after a break it will highlight the most recent news story you were reading. But you can't get it to show you all the stories you viewed, say, yesterday.

This is super simple. I mean, a teenager designing a news app as part of their computer science school qualification would have that on their feature list.

Useless tables of content​

If you open one of your subscribed magazines and look at the index/table of contents, it's just headlines. No descriptions. Sometimes you get author names beneath.
View attachment 2538259

For example, let's look at the last article in that screenshot. It's about saving lives from synthetic opioids. OK, I might be interested. Is that about government/political action? Is it about care teams on the ground assisting people? Is it a science article about how somebody's created a new compound that helps? I've no frickin' idea.

Again, I feel as if Apple deliberately leaves out descriptions to encourage consumption. I have to tap through to find out. I engage with the content in any event. Win for Apple! But please, why am I being manipulated like this? I'm the one paying for this service. I'm not the product being sold here. Or am I?

"Today" = days or even weeks old​

I've put this one at the end because it's not as bad as it used to be. But it's still an issue.

When you open News, you see the "Today" list of stories. That's stories from... well, today, right? Nope. Stories in that list can be days or even weeks old. OK, so it might still be be good content. But stories can move fast, and frankly anything over a few days old may well have developed beyond that original write-up.
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EDIT:​

See below for some comments below about the appalling ads we get served, which are basically the same as spam: "Women in your area are looking for men like you etc." Often with horrible AI slop images and copy. Is this really the best Apple can manage?

/EDIT ENDS​

"It'll get better"​

I know what you're going to say. Apple News is a relatively new app. It'll get better over time.

The Apple News app is 10 years old. And it was actually an app that Apple bought in from outside, it's actually even older.

Apple News+ is six years old.

These are not baby apps and services. They should be much better at this point. Imagine if Microsoft had launched Word and taken the same approach. 10 years after launch and it's still a basic text editor.

But this is another sin of modern Apple, as well as launching basic stripped down apps like this.

They launch... and abandon.

Apple's developers are like school kids playing soccer. Soccer should be a strategic game where players keep their position on the pitch, and only deal with the ball when it comes their way. But on the school playing ground, it's basically 10 kids chasing a ball. They all want their heroic moment. They all think they're better than the other players. They all don't want to do the boring work, like maybe position themselves for a pass so they can actually score a goal.

And I think Apple's development culture is like this. Nobody wants the dull thankless work of improving existing apps. They want the hero work of doing the cool new stuff. They're chasing the ball. This is probably how Apple attracts the upcoming talent leaving college.

I'm just disheartened that Apple is so... well, crap at certain things. It could be so much better. All of the above is super simple. It would take a single developer maybe a week or two to implement, never mind a team. But Apple just has zero interest.
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I totally agree -- and it doesn't sync across all my Apple devices! Generally, just like the Weather app and others, Apple has fallen way behind. And don't get me started on Siri as so called Apple "Intelligence". What a joke!
 
Another problem I've had with the News app is that if I leave it open, on my 2021 Macbook Pro, while using other apps, eventually it will lock up, requiring me to force-quit from it if I want to resume using it. No other app I use does this. This behavior has persisted through at least two macOS major revisions.
 
Boeingfan said:
It’s so sad that the consumer is the investor not the user.
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It can be both. If you feel that strongly along with other consumers, then Apple stock is publicly traded. If you want a voice, it’s available.

The sad thing is, you’re likely an investor without a voice. All these people that invest in Blackrock and other funds like this are the reason why this is happening. Take your money out of these funds and directly buy Apple stock with it. Then you have a voice. There are shareholder meetings.
 
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russell_314 said:
It can be both. If you feel that strongly along with other consumers, then Apple stock is publicly traded. If you want a voice, it’s available.

The sad thing is, you’re likely an investor without a voice. All these people that invest in Blackrock and other funds like this are the reason why this is happening. Take your money out of these funds and directly buy Apple stock with it. Then you have a voice. There are shareholder meetings.
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That's a really great point. Sadly, I'm not an investor, anywhere, due to my vapour thin income, but yes the path you present is clearly one to explore.
 
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