Apple News
WITH APPLE’S LONGSTANDING history of success in digital music distribution, the launch of Apple Music was seen as a fairly big deal. Still, considering the most successful tech company in the world was launching its answer to the future of music consumption, the public and media’s responses were somewhat restrained. It’s perhaps not that surprising then, that excitement for Apple News — the company’s rst foray into the media space set to be embedded in the upcoming iOS 9.1 — was eclipsed by the numerous other announcements Apple made at its annual press conference in June.
But Apple News — which amalgamates news from a list of sources into one personallycustomised, cleanly laid-out space — is de nitely worthy of this month’s Killer app award, not just because it could be gamechanging for the online news landscape, but because Apple may be more quali ed than you think when it comes to digital magazines and newspapers.
RSS readers became prevalent largely because of their practicality, allowing someone to e ectively scan speci c categories of hundreds of di erent websites in just minutes, but even the leading so ware in this space makes the task look more like work than the ‘entertainment’ that news and magazines are supposed to represent. While Apple News is heavily in uenced by other RSS readers, it’s also taken a leaf from nicer looking magazine apps like Flipboard and Zinio by including pictures next to each of the headlines.
e stories are stacked vertically with a 10-to-15 word heading sitting neatly beside a square cover image, and you can scroll over about three stories at once, quickly reading the headlines or tapping through to explore the article in more depth. Tapping through to an article will expand it into a simpli ed format that’s been speci cally designed to be easy to read on an iOS device, though Apple has also put a bit of work into allowing more icons, fonts and links than your average pared-back RSS reader.
When reading an article you have tabs at the bottom of the story providing options to share, like or save the article, but Apple News is still missing the ability to swipe le and right to mark-as-read or share.
ough the Apple News app interface could perhaps be a bit better, it was still in beta at the time of writing and the problems that need addressing can be handled with relatively quick updates. What makes this app really stand out is its ease of use, combined with a good selection of quality news sources and topics you can choose from. Everything from e Guardian to Vice is presented with simple and appealing icons that can be added to your favourites list or each perused in their entirety.
e surprising amount of local Aussie news already on Apple News is likely due to the Cupertino company’s announcement that it will allow advertising blockers to function on Safari in iOS for the rst time — something that is sure to motivate online news publications to pursue other avenues in order to advertise to readers.
ough a couple of ad-blockers have been removed from the App Store for pervasively blocking ads within native apps (like Apple News), many prevail, e ectively allowing Apple to funnel any media businesses that rely on advertising onto its own platforms. Seeing as RSS readers and magazine apps rise and fall on content, Apple News may quite literally become a killer app, killing o all the competition.
APPLE NEWS — WHICH AMALGAMATES NEWS FROM A LIST OF SOURCES INTO ONE PERSONALLY-CUSTOMISED, CLEANLY LAID-OUT SPACE — IS DEFINITELY WORTHY OF THIS MONTH’S KILLER APP AWARD.