What the News app needs...

[the1payday]

Is anyone else really annoyed that the ONLY way to make News learn more about your tastes, is to "heart" an article, and that's it? It's insane...they even took out the option to "dislike" an article. I feel like to help make the learning algorithm better they need to allow you to not only "like" an article, but to tell the app WHY you are "liking" the article. So for example, when you like an article, you should be able to tell it that you are liking it based upon either the article itself, the writer of the article, or the source the article is coming from. Same with disliking. I feel like this allows for more fine tuning. An example would be that you really like the Huffington Post, but you really don't like a specific writer from there. You could tell the News app that and still get articles from that source, but not that writer. Currently, when you like or dislike an article, who the hell really even knows what it's going to do the learning of the app. Just my 2-cents.

 

[gsmornot]

Is anyone else really annoyed that the ONLY way to make News learn more about your tastes, is to "heart" an article, and that's it? It's insane...they even took out the option to "dislike" an article. I feel like to help make the learning algorithm better they need to allow you to not only "like" an article, but to tell the app WHY you are "liking" the article. So for example, when you like an article, you should be able to tell it that you are liking it based upon either the article itself, the writer of the article, or the source the article is coming from. Same with disliking. I feel like this allows for more fine tuning. An example would be that you really like the Huffington Post, but you really don't like a specific writer from there. You could tell the News app that and still get articles from that source, but not that writer. Currently, when you like or dislike an article, who the hell really even knows what it's going to do the learning of the app. Just my 2-cents.

I have been cautious about using the like button. I have liked some articles from sources that I don't always like so I don't hit the button. I think using it would make the app better but it's not ready just yet.

 

[petvas]

The News app has other problems. First it needs to become available worldwide, with real content. Just like Flipboard. It's not that difficult to do that!
As long as it is only available in the US only, I will not be using it. I also do not want to change my regional settings to fool iOS, so that the News.app appears..

 

[garagethrash]

The news app seems to not be targeted at people who already use RSS Readers. It is targeted at people who still manually go to all their favourite sites to read news. It currently fails at being better for either user.

Let me just say that i understand this app. Today more people block ads than ever before, sites are littered with social media buttons, and some can even force malware on the user. Most big sites also don't put full article content in the RSS feeds, as they want people to go to the site, where they have ads...that most people block. This is not sustainable for the sites, and is not pleasant for the users.

News.app is designed to make content providers want to put full article content in their feeds, and make a sustainable outlet for journalists through tasteful, UNBLOCKABLE advertising.

What News.app does well:
- Gorgeous content
- Full article content without having to go to the website
- nice ads
- branding

Everything else is worse than an RSS reader, or even going to sites manually in some ways
- I thought this was supposed to eliminate duplicate stories in the 'for you' section? Yesterday I had it flooded with iOS and OS X software update news from every apple source i follow
- No way to get timely news. In RSS readers i always subscribe to the 'Just In' news feed. Up to the minute news is just not possible in apple news.
- The more I try and train it, the harder it is to use. e.g. the more topics you add, the more the favourites section is an unmanageable mess of hundreds of sources and topics.

Oh i give up, i could go on for days about how horrible this is even for an unconfident, foot in the water concept.

- Battery life dropped 20% on an iPhone 6S Plus from using it for less than an hour, due to all the refreshing, full website background loading, animations etc.
- There is no way to see what sources have new articles in them since you last opened them
- No Mac app. Likely won't be any until OS11/macOS makes it hard to block ads in it.
- "Topics" often really prove that Apple doesn't care about collection of user's personal data and usage. Stories are often in the wrong topic. This is fine that apple is not a data collection company, but don't make a service revolving around Google style computer intelligence.
- Due to last point, i highly doubt liking and disliking articles is going to accurately fine tune my news to stuff I care about.

I hope Apple news is given more attention, as the articles are gorgeous, and the ads are tasteful and in proportion to the content. This app currently is just incredibly bad though. For starters, if you want to push sites into having all content in apple news, use iOS9's SFSafariViewController when opening the full articles so ads are blocked. Also don't preload original websites in the background. It just makes accessing the ugly crap more convenient, while draining the battery.

but to tell the app WHY you are "liking" the article.

I had this EXACT thought actually while using it. It's embarrassing that it's obvious to the users and not the developers.

 

[HansumKingtut]

In IOS 9.3 Beta, News has a 'Dislike' button.