Apple News Reviews

Before we get to the headline of the review, let’s talk about some other highlights of AppleNews . First, as an Apple One Premier subscriber you get the privilege to be served the same ads in the news feed and in the articles themselves as those who do not pay for the service. Not to mention, several content providers still require direct subscriptions to their service. Second, customization options don’t exist beyond “block this content” style options. You would think your thumbs up and down votes influenced what shows up in your feed, but it doesn’t. I still see the same thumbed down articles for days. Further, sections I don’t want to see still show up in my feed. Additionally, there is no option to show I’ve already read an article before. This could further assist in content customization, but it isn’t even available. Third, I find news doesn’t sync between my devices, especially thumbs up/down.

So, let’s talk about that headline. Even when left in the background - and this is with background refresh off - AppleNews completely drains my battery. It accounts for 52% of my battery usage and I have an average screen time usage of an hour and 38 minutes over the past 10 days. For. All. My. Apps.

Finally, for a company that touts their tight integration between hardware and software as well as their seamless experience across devices; I find Apple completely missed the mark here.

I have the paid version of apple news. One of the options is to block publishers you don’t like to read and “like” publishers you do. You would think the point of this is to customize your news feed with articles you would be interested in reading. However it does almost the opposite. It seems apple is intent on pushing their stories regardless of my preferences or directly against my blatant request to block specific channels. Why provide the feature if you are simply going to avoid it. As a company that holds itself as the protector of privacy and rights, this is a sad and obvious example that actions speak louder then words. Case in point, to see how ingrained this was to the algorithm that chooses stories on my main board. I blocked the channel “the Washington post” I also disliked every story they posted for the past 2 weeks. I likewise did the opposite for the daily wire. Liking the channel itself and asking for “request more” on every story they published again for two weeks. What was the result? I still get headline new feed stories with “this article you’ve blocked, would you like to ready it” from the Washington post and still nothing from the daily wire. I get it, maybe you have a clear biased against specific news outlets, but don’t hide behind creating hallow user rights and fake choice options for your readers.

I love my iPhone, iPad, an MAC book-so I had high hopes when I received a free upgrade to Apple + News after upgrading my devices. Sadly I have been very disappointed. While Apple has been innovative with other apps, this one is a very disappointing—and obviously no one cares as the reviews have consistently been poor and yet there is no improvement. For a company of this caliber, this shouldn’t be this hard to fix!
1. AppleNews is sluggish, doesn’t load easily or completely; ads load fast but story content falters frequently with constant spinning/searching for content that is so frustrating
2. When I block content I don’t want, it shows up anyway—so why did you bother to ask me?
3. The content doesn’t really reflect news—it’s more opinion focused—and I find that irritating. I’m an adult and I can certainly make up my own mind—I don’t need to be pushed toward ANY direction with an algorithm just because somebody thought it would be helpful—I don’t want this kind of help as it is NOT helpful
4. I pay for the content so why am I constantly being teased with additional content that requires additional payment? Seriously? I hate clickbate—same with all of the celebrity items—news flash—celebrities are not news!!

I have not paid for a subscription so maybe the experience is different if you do. However, I have found the articles they post to be very left leaning. I lean left myself but I don’t need to be in my echo chamber of righteousness all the time… I like articles that make you think and present both sides. I understand this is rare because of where the content comes from but at least they could present articles from both sides in my feed. I also think there’s a fundamental problem with Apple (or Google) being in the news game. Companies with so much access to our personal data should not be charged with informing us of the world around us. Sadly there are no easy answers here… I’m not the first to say that this is one of the biggest challenges we face today as a society. Anyways, as much as I would prefer to use AppleNews and its beautiful layout (which imho is its greatest strength… it really does LOOK good) I will continue using Google as my primary news feed. It’s free and, at least in my feed, seems to feel more like news than propaganda. OH and the notifications that I never asked for from AppleNews are click bate at its worst, leveraging your fear, anger, and self-righteousness to get you engaged.

Finally caved and signed up for the free trial of News+ and I truly have mixed feelings. Being honest, AppleNews feels very incomplete if you don’t have a News+ subscription because a lot of the “featured” articles require a subscription so you’re constantly plagued with pay walls. Now that I have a subscription it feels more like a complete app but I’m also discovering that a subscription doesn’t unlock all content - for instance, the Washington Post is an additional $5.99/month on its own which just feels very Apple. One in-app purchase is never enough and in-app purchases are a monster that Apple birthed. I wish they would do a better job with videos too - often time for Fox, for example - videos don’t match the story. If they can’t get it together their content should be removed until they can/do. Content curation/display is still an issue too. Outlets you block still show up in featured but it displays a “you chose to block this outlet” box and it’s like yeahhhh so why are you showing me references to it? Mind you that’s valuable space that could be delivering me more curated content that I actually DO care about.

This review is based on the subscription, not free version. For me the real great part is what u actually get. The subscription news I get access to is limited but u do get Wall Street Journal. But you get access to an enormous amount of magazines. Most people would enjoy access to some of these magazines regularly and may already pay for them. you get access to National Geographic, Scientific America, Wired, Popular Science, Forbes, Time and many others. If u don’t care for any of the magazines it’s probably not worth it for u but I’m pretty happy with all the stuff I get to keep up with.

The issues with it are that I don’t really like how it functions and how info it presented. I prefer just using the normal websites over this. And then if I come across a paywall article I can have it open the article in AppleNews instead. Some people say the info in newsfeed is biased to the left. Not really sure cause I still mostly look at my news on the websites unless they improve AppleNews a little more

Before Covid, I loved sitting in bookstores at the cafe and going through magazines for articles, just letting my interest guide me. I’d read as much or as little as the content gripped or bored me. AppleNews gives you so much content for $10 a month. Incredible. Well done apple. The low ratings I don’t understand.

There is one reason why I’m not giving it five stars. I am a political moderate. I enjoy reading both sides of the argument. But AppleNews has an obviously “left” bent. It’s so obvious that it becomes obnoxious. Channels get added to your left bar and you can’t remove them. I read about black history and social justice from “woke” authors. But when it is shoved in your face it just makes you dislike anything the authors might have to say. Just be a newsstand, please. Let me go where I want. Some more conservative magazines would also be awesome. It is overwhelmingly liberal in its content options.

Otherwise great app!

Can’t beat the price of $10 per month for what you get. I enjoy several publications that a digital only subscription would cost me anywhere from $4 to $10 for that single publication. Here I get them all in an easy to navigate and attractive interfaced app. I enjoy apple news audio, although find it a rather glaring omission from the iPad app. The ads that are at the top of articles that push their own subscription even though they are included in Apple News + is understandable, I assume they are taking a large loss in profit being a part in the service and I’ll happily take that trade off. Just bring audio to the iPad and I’ll be quite happy.

I really enjoy all the access to the headlines, different news outlets and magazines. I also like being able to curate my news via the “thumbs up or thumbs down” that is offered. However over the past few days it has been crashing and dumping me out of AppleNews , every few minutes. I have the latest iOS software. Very frustrating to be reading a great article and then lose your place and not be able to find it… I also would like the ability to print out an occasional article. I have tried putting pages / articles through different types of app software, using Safari, etc. and nothing has worked, The normal Print app has not been accessible. I only get a blank or watermarked page printed. It’s important for me to be able to occasionally print articles, instead of ideas & info. just getting lost out there, on the Internet. I feel the subscription should allow me to print. Thanks

I really pride myself on trying to get news and opinions from every political side, which is ostensibly what drew me to apple news, but it’s just one more propaganda machine. After years of using AppleNews it’s very clear that one particular “side” of the political spectrum is constantly rammed down my throat… take a wild guess which one!!!

Furthermore, if I block one of these garbage heap “news” outlets then why do you constantly show blacked out versions of their articles and tell me that I’ve blocked this content, then ask me if I still want to show it? Of course I don’t - that’s the reason I went to the trouble of blocking this news source from my feed. How tacky.

Is there no one who will provide an unbiased, unweighted cross-section of national news for people who just want to be educated on current events without being told how to think? Tone it back on the propaganda apple and just give both sides “equity” in my news feed. And if I block something, don’t continue to shove it in my face.

I used to love Apple News because you didn’t have to slog through ads and struggle to load the actual things you want to read. It was seamless. It still is for probably quite a bit of the Apple news articles but despite paying for Apple news + you can’t seem to turn off being offered articles that require an additional subscription. In addition to that there are ads mixed in to articles that have no problem loading while photos or linked tweets load super slowly or not at all. I sometimes sit there and watch all the spinning circles to see if things will load while noticing the ads are immediately loaded. It’s also not uncommon for articles to talk about a specific photo yet not have that photo in the article at all. I realize some of this may be a formatting thing going from an online article to their app but come on. Apple used to be so good at getting things right and I feel like they are regressing here.

So the Winter Olympics are going on right now, and you would think that there would be a lot of news coming from the events going on. However, ever time I click to see if there are more stories about the Winter Olympics, it comes up saying no stories… I’m also tired of getting my feed filled up with random categories like pets, airlines, and cruises before other actual news and current events… I usually have to scroll past at least 30 stories before I get to a current/relevant news story… the other day, no lie, it took 37 stories for me to get to the politics news feed topic, and even then, it was only 3 stories (where the pets feed was 10 entries long)… and this was on the same day as the RNC “legitimate political discourse” day… Apple News aggregate needs to do way better… modify the algorithm or something, cause y’all are failing

I appreciate the different news outlets avail able in AppleNews . What I hate is the constant crashes that occur without warning. It doesn’t matter if I am scrolling or not, tapping or not: crash, crash, crash! I can be in the middle of an article and it will quit without me even touching the screen. To make matters worse, reopening AppleNews does not take me back to where I was. So I have to try and remember which news feed I was looking at and then scroll, scroll, scroll until I find the article I was viewing and then hope it doesn’t crash again before I finish reading it. Crashes occur at least twice during a news reading session, which is daily. It gets very frustrating. I have the latest iOS, 15.1 as of writing this. C’mon Apple, this Is pretty basic stuff. You’re better than this.

It’s nothing but spam and for-pay articles now THAT ARE FREE ON PUBLISHERS SITES. Used to be one of my favorite things to access when I woke up now every section is 3/4 apple + news articles which you have to pay for to access through the news app but are free content on the original publishers websites. You can’t turn apple news + off so it’s like being force fed spam for things free elsewhere. The whole principle feel slimy and deceitful. One more reason this will be my last iPhone, they’ve turned a breakthrough technology they charge people over $1k for into a tiny, thirsty, screaming Infomercial for things about as ethical as reverse mortgages to seniors. Pathetic. And of course, since this change AppleNews and accessing it has become incredibly glitchy and buggy indicating a lot more tracking software was built into the backend to monetize customers even more. Shame apple, shame.

AppleNews works fine. But as a paid News subscriber, it leaves a lot to be desired.

1. If I block a news source, don’t show it in my feed as “Blocked, see it anyway.’ I clearly don’t want to see it. The main reason I block channels is for poor journalism or misleading headlines (looking at you, USA Today)

2. I’ve used AppleNews for more than a year, and you’d think that if I haven’t clicked on a “Celebrity Scandal” story by now they would stop showing up. This isn’t news, this is clickbait. In general it would be nice to further customize the news feed or at least augment the algorithm.

3. Since I do have a paid subscription, I’d prefer not getting served stories that I can’t access without yet another, outside subscription. Honestly, besides access to a few more articles I’m not sure what the paid subscription gets me.

4. Ads run the world, or at least pay for it. You’d think that as a paid subscriber there would be fewer. I’ve also been looking at the same bad ads for a FinTech company for more than a year. At least make it interesting.

I do like AppleNews and read lots of good stories on it. But for at least paid subscribers allowing better customization and fewer ads would make it worth the monthly $.

I’ve been using another news app that’s not too bad, but I thought I’d see what else might be out there. During my hunt I discovered the Apple News app in my “Seldom Used” folder. Huh. I didn’t remember having it. Moved it out and started busing it. Three days later and it’s got me so pi$$ed off that I’m deleting it. About 90% of the articles I choose to tap on to read come up saying that I need a plus subscription. It doesn’t take long to realize that there’s no news to be found here unless you pay for a subscription. Well folks, don’t make an app available for free unless it at least has some kind of use. Some ads are okay, but the tradeoff has to be a fair one. A free app that serves no purpose except to continuously tell you to subscribe is worthless and leaves a terrible taste. Now I remember why it was in my “Seldom Used” folder. Posting this review and then deleting the Apple News app. Bah, humbug.

I want to love it …. I subscribed … It does not crash for me. I get what I pick for topics. The result is not left or right of my selections anymore than the news on that day. 3 SUGGESTIONS — 1. have my topics SYNC ACROSS MY DEVICES (this is what apple is good at - do it!!). KEY SUGGESTION!!! I want TOPICS Vs magazines!!! 2. Focus more on SEARCHING FIR TOPICS - and saving and syncing this across a users devices. 3. Some sources are abbreviated to get me to also subscribe to them. This is irritating - stop that or kick them out or lower your price. I want to love it !!!

I figured out sync - by adjusting my settings and resetting identifier - Thanks!!

I like the layout, magazine access with news+ and forced dark mode on articles when your system is set to dark mode— something that’s not a default on most news apps. The curation could use some work though. There’s a lot of things I find no interest in like entertainment news stories, and no matter how much I dislike them they are front and center (well maybe a little lower) in the feed. I feel like they curate the news so it’s less inflammatory which is good I suppose, but it also makes it less interesting. AppleNews is a good palette cleanser if nothing else. Lots of feel good stories and in depth pieces. Oh, it also would be great if there were feature parity between the different app versions. Like being able to listen audio stories on my ipad or Mac.

It’s clear that I’m not the only Apple customer who sees through AppleNews. Having paid for the + at 9.99 a month like a sucker and still getting paywall articles pushed to the front, I canceled that waste of money and time. The free version is ridiculous as well. Dangle the headline, don’t put any icon or flag that a subscription is required to read, and waste your users’ time. It is a greedy and disrespectful, and frankly, sketchy practice. When did Apple start hating its customers so much that they thought this was a good idea? If the product owner of AppleNews had any sense, they would provide a means for customers to filter out paywall or subscription articles. People buy into the Apple ecosystem for a reason, and rather than adding any value, reward, or benefit to that, it appears the PO behind AppleNews chose to make the news equivalent of a sidewalk barker. I expected better.

I recently became a digital nomad and deleted my Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Reddit accounts permanently. Reddit was the last to go because that’s where I usually get my news. Social media just hasn’t been fun since 2010 for me.

I thought Apple News could replace Reddit, as I understood it to be the “Netflix of journalism” more or less. Couldn’t deal with how bad AppleNews is built, ended up not completing the three month trial out of frustration!

Every single day without a doubt, every time AppleNews refreshed, the first headline was ALWAYS about COVID. Although you can opt out of certain categories you cannot opt out of the COVID news. Even if you “dislike” and choose to see less, you’ll still be bombarded by COVID articles.

I want to read news on business, entertainment, pop culture, etc., and if some of that has COVID related whatever in it fine, but I do not wish to be bombarded with sensational and often depressing news articles. Not here, not on my free browsing time. I want the main news stories on my feed to be POSITIVE and NONPARTISAN. Literally try it, every single top story, every single day you check it, will be about COVID.

Since you can’t customize it, and you can’t choose what you see, I give AppleNews zero stars.

I really like the layout and quality news articles but the push to join New+ literally made me delete it. I’ll scroll through and read articles that interest me but half seem to need a subscription. I wish they would just remove the New+ articles if I’m not paying for it. I use Google News and find the same quality but I’m not pushed to subscribe to anything. I’d move to Apple News once they give the option to hide the articles I’m not subscribed to.

Crashes in the middle of reading articles, when it re-starts, the news feed is completely different and I can’t find the article I was reading before the crash or it opens on an article I was reading hours ago. I’ve followed every step listed in Apple support. Text messaged support and had a call with support., they could not provide any solutions that I had not already tried. AppleNews just keeps crashing. This was occurring before iOS 15 update and it continued after the update. It started intermittently about two weeks ago and now it happens 2 out of every three times I open AppleNews . iPad mini 5 with 256 GB and 222 GB available. It is not happening on my iPhone 12 Pro Max.

I am in first 30 days of paid subscription but will likely cancel. It is not the content; it is the quality of AppleNews . As I am reading an article it just closes. When you reopen it you go back to the top of the page, not the article you were reading. This pretty much happens every time I use it. I have deleted AppleNews and downloaded it again and it doesn’t help. If it is not fixed soon, I will just cancel the subscription. You would think that if anyone could get an app to work correctly it would be Apple.

The news app has actually been a great app since we got the subscription… up until iOS 15 brought a bug that renders it virtually unusable. Compared to some other news apps (CNN jumps to mind) Apple News has been wonderful up until now. The CNN app for example is really clunky and performance of something as simple as scrolling in that app is horrible. This bug in News needs to be fixed fast or there are going to be a lot more people dropping AppleNews /subscription. Such a shame. It used to be part of my morning ritual.

I pay for Apple One Premier. Why am I seeing so many ads if I pay for a subscription? There should be no ads or at the very least LESS ADS.
AppleNews has gotten better otherwise. I miss a really old iPad app called “The Daily”. News and magazine type content with large photos and interactive. That should be the goal with the news app, or the magazine centric side.
Would love an option to quickly recap the day in major news, sports, etc.

AppleNews itself is overall fairly nice. However, the experience is quite frustrating if you’re not a paying News+ subscriber.

Lots of the articles are blocked behind a paywall (despite being freely available on the web), but the worst part is that they’re so poorly labeled as being behind a paywall that you’ll often find yourself clicking into them thinking you’ll have access. Apple does label them as “News+” but it’s subtle and farther from the article so it’s super non-obvious.

I really like the News app and I use it everyday, but News+ is dumb. Like, so dumb. Apple, I’m not going to pay for your stupid subscription when I can just Google the headline and read it for free in Safari. Why make free content that available elsewhere and scam people to pay a subscription? All the “plus” gimmicks are getting old and starting to make me not want to use Apple curated content for anything.

AppleNews has a stupendous amount of ads covering the articles, the today view, and articles that require an Apple News + subscription. Ads should be supported inside articles to make them free to read, but standing now, it is almost unbearable to see them everywhere through every topic category and page you scroll. I am not interested in subscribing to Apple News + and would like to remove the articles that require a subscription.

Since the latest update, every time I click something I want to read, Apple News closes and I’m back at my Home Screen. When I open Apple News again, it doesn’t take me back to the article I wanted to read. Super annoying!! Why does it keep closing?? I restarted my phone several times and still nothing. Fix please!

With iOS 15, the I have issues with going from an article to the front page. When I select an article, I am able to read it, but when I want to return to the top screen, there is no arrow at the top left as there typically is. For some articles, if I touch the top bar, the article returns the arrow, while others do nothing.

1. News should remember where you left off like Music. While it does offer the “continue reading” banner, I’d like to see a toggle to go back to the story or to the Today tab.

2. News+ Audio’s tab needs to lead to the News+ Audio channel. The main tab is way to sparse. It’s just suggestion, you can really look for anything. It’s pretty poorly implemented currently.

3. While I don’t see this happening, I would LOVE to see News+ subscribers get an add free experience.

What am I paying for with News+? The ability to browse for magazines that I can look at for free when I go to the store or library?

Lots of images in news articles are difficult to see in portrait only mode. Not being able to select them and make them full screen or pinch to zoom makes it impossible to see many details even on a mid size iPhone.

Please allow images in articles to zoom or allow news to be viewed in landscape mode to make images scale up to a larger size for better visibility.

It’s frustrating that some articles will have bright backgrounds even with dark mode enabled. If I’m reading at night I’m better off opening the article on Safari and turning on reading mode.

Why are there still embedded ads when paying for News+? If I’m paying then the ads should be removed.
The ads should also at least be relevant to the article or site/publication that’s being read, since most of the time it isn’t remotely relevant at all. That should not be impacted by resetting the advertising identifier, as I don’t care if it’s curated to me personally just the content that it’s embedded in.

Why is there no option to share articles gated behind News+? The share sheet should be everywhere, regardless of paying for a subscription or not.

I use AppleNews probably more than any other. I love being able to select my preferred topics and channels. During elections I find it incredibly helpful.
I don’t use magazines much in general the news content is great. Once you set your preferences I think it’s amazing