{"id":42122,"date":"2024-02-15T16:08:43","date_gmt":"2024-02-15T21:08:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=42122"},"modified":"2024-04-24T15:14:02","modified_gmt":"2024-04-24T19:14:02","slug":"apple-news-you-cant-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/02\/15\/apple-news-you-cant-use\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple News You Can&rsquo;t Use"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/joe-steel.com\/2024-02-14-Apple-News-You-Cant-Use.html\">Joe Rosensteel<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/duck.haus\/@joesteel\/111932187849060544\">Mastodon<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/joe-steel.com\/2024-02-14-Apple-News-You-Cant-Use.html\">\n<p>Apple News+&rsquo;s problems start with Apple News as an app. The page layout is both cramped, and light on all the relevant details. Headlines get awkwardly cropped, and the first impression of the app is always the front page of a newspaper where an editorial team has selected relevant stories for a mass market from a range of national publications. Severing the pieces from any wider context from those publications, but placing them next to each other to show Apple News is impartial.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>The LA Times in the LA Times app is better than the LA Times in Apple News, and anyone who thinks they&rsquo;re getting the fullness of a publication from their single Apple News+ subscription is absolutely not. That includes things like layouts, special reporting, recipes, etc.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, ads are also part of the Apple News app layout, and the quality of the advertising is lowest common denominator bullshit that might as well be Taboola ads.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Assuming I survive running the gauntlet that is the Apple News app and I want to share an article quickly, and easily with other people, I can&rsquo;t even do that. Apple wants to hijack that relationship and would prefer I send News\/News+ links. For Apple, the important thing is to grow the number of people in the News app, and grow News+ subscribers, but for me the important thing is that someone <em>can read what I sent them to read<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>The bottom line for me is that it seems to offer less control over what I see than Safari RSS did, and the reading experience is far worse than in a Web browser.<\/p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/schwarztech.net\/snippets\/apple-news-you-cant-use\">Eric Schwarz<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/schwarztech.net\/snippets\/apple-news-you-cant-use\">\n<p>Every time that I give the service a try, I always quickly lose interest and then let the trial lapse. [&#8230;] I found it frustrating that blocked sources and topics would still surface: even though &ldquo;Sports&rdquo; is a prominent section, it will show you <em>all<\/em> popular sports, no matter how many times you tell it you&rsquo;re not interested in a particular one. The general tone can be best described as &ldquo;cheap&rdquo;&mdash;it&rsquo;s not a place I <em>enjoyed<\/em> browsing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/10\/26\/apple-services-price-hikes\/\">Apple Services Price Hikes<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/04\/11\/news-is-not-a-normal-mac-app\/\">News Is Not a Normal Mac App<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2023\/01\/27\/the-enshittification-of-all-things\/\">The Enshittification of All Things<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/12\/the-apple-services-experience-is-not-good-enough\/\">The Apple Services Experience Is Not Good Enough<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/10\/funneling-into-apple-news\/\">Funneling Into Apple News+<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"apple-news-you-cant-use-update-2024-03-21\">Update (2024-03-21): <a href=\"https:\/\/joe-steel.com\/2024-02-26-Fixing-Apple-News.html\">Joe Rosensteel<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/joe-steel.com\/2024-02-26-Fixing-Apple-News.html\">\n<p>I would like to detail some things that I think would help to make the News app and News+ service more appealing.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>The editors can weight stories that are of interest to surface in that region, but those weights should be overridden by any blocking, or content filtration, that a user wants to employ.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Instead of voting on individual stories with thumbs that don&rsquo;t seem to mean a goddamn thing, or blocking an entire news outlet, what if we could filter by words, or phrases. You know, like in ye olden days? I can filter email, surely I can filter news, which we&rsquo;ve already established is an inbox.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>I already use iCloud Hide My Email addresses to subscribe to newsletters for some layer of privacy, how nice would it be to have an iCloud email address that ingested newsletters into Apple News?<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Flat out we need to get rid of the round rectangles that are too small to show an entire headline. That can&rsquo;t be a thing.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p id=\"apple-news-you-cant-use-update-2024-04-24\">Update (2024-04-24): <a href=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@gruber\/112289655813618650\">John Gruber<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@gruber\/112289655813618650\">\n<p>While I&rsquo;m singing the praises of Electron apps, I should also praise the memory efficiency of Catalyst apps, especially Apple&rsquo;s own. 1.5 GB for a single-window app.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joe Rosensteel (Mastodon): Apple News+&rsquo;s problems start with Apple News as an app. The page layout is both cramped, and light on all the relevant details. Headlines get awkwardly cropped, and the first impression of the app is always the front page of a newspaper where an editorial team has selected relevant stories for a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2024-02-15T21:08:45Z","apple_news_api_id":"9e304904-3df8-4e71-8308-d8eb89d3151e","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2024-04-24T19:14:05Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAg==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AnjBJBD34TnGDCNjridMVHg","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1223,31,2321,30,2385],"class_list":["post-42122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-apple-news","tag-ios","tag-ios-17","tag-mac","tag-macos-14-sonoma"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42122"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42926,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42122\/revisions\/42926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}