Apple reportedly has plans to work with publishers to support viewing subscription content in its Apple News app, according to Reuters which cites two anonymous sources. Currently, the Apple News app does not support authenticating subscriber log-ins. That means content can’t be behind a pay wall and can only be monetized by web advertising when readers follow through to the publisher’s website or by using iAds. Apple’s iAd network is noticeably going through a shuffle at the moment with the company recently announcing the end of its App Network where developers advertise their apps.
More and more mobile devices are being released every year with better and higher quality cameras, allowing nearly anyone to share the news faster than a major news corporation can even fathom. Founded in 2014 by Thiel fellow John Meyer, Fresco puts a focus on getting citizen journalism the credit it deserves. Today Fresco announced an Apple TV version of their Fresco News app, which curates the best content of the day, and delivers facts on international events in a fresh way.
Apple’s rocky iAd advertising platform is about to see some major changes, says Buzzfeed’s John Paczkowski. According to the report, Apple plans to dismantle its iAd sales team and stop its role as a middleman between publishers and customers:
While iAd itself isn’t going anywhere, Apple’s direct involvement in the selling and creation of iAd units is ending. “It’s just not something we’re good at,” one source told BuzzFeed News. And so Apple is leaving the creation, selling, and management of iAds to the folks who do it best: the publishers.
Apple is phasing out its iAd sales force entirely and updating the iAds platform so that publishers can sell through it directly.
The big news, Buzzfeed notes, is publishers that play ball will take home 100% of the ad revenue generated rather than a 70/30 split with Apple.
The app serves a wide variety of content types to keep users interested, including the day’s weather forecasts, breaking news from multiple sources, fashion news from Vogue, and even historical images from Getty.
Facebook is said to be planning to launch its standalone news app with a list of media partners on board sometime next week. That’s according to Financial Times, which reports the app will be called Notify and include content from a list of media partners including CBS, The Washington Post, and Vogue. Reports of Facebook working on a separate mobile app focused on news rather than the social network first surfaced in early August.
The news comes just as Facebook announced today in its earnings report that it’s currently serving an average 1.01 billion daily active users each month… Expand Expanding Close
Apple News, a news reading app introduced in iOS 9 that replaces Newsstand, is only available in the United States for now, and even explicitly blocked in some areas, though the UK may be getting access very soon. However, a new jailbreak tweak enables readers to use the app from anywhere in the world now without waiting or changing regions.
Just a day after Jack Dorsey was named permanent CEO of Twitter, the social network is launching a big new feature in its app called Moments. What started as Project Lightning showcases for a lot of users the best part of Twitter: keeping caught up with in-the-moment news that you care about. The new Moments feature can be found behind the lightning bolt icon through Twitter’s mobile apps and on the web in the US. Expand Expanding Close
Verizon will launch brand new, simpler data plans and kill subsidies as expected from August 13. Today, the company introduced a set of plans which will require customers to pay for their smartphones in monthly installments, or buy them outright, instead of having the cost subsidized.
Apple wants us to believe that its Music streaming service is the best thing to happen to the industry since iTunes was launched. If one report is to be believed, things might not be taking off as well as we might expect from an Apple product.
With a product as young as Apple Music, it can be hard to track how well things are going, especially since there are no paying subscribers yet. But, DashGo, a distributor of indie music has been tracking its Apple Music streams versus Spotify and seen quite a difference in the amount of time spent listening to music between either service. Apple Music streams are 1/25th the volume of streams DashGo sees from Spotify.
I’m not entirely sure why I’ve been rooting for iOS 9’s upcoming Apple News app to succeed. I’ve been a dedicated Reeder user since it debuted in the App Store, quickly dumped alternatives such as Flipboard and Pulse, and don’t need to change my daily news reading routine. But ever since Apple launched Newsstand in 2011, I’ve been waiting for a truly next-generation iOS news reading experience. Apple hasn’t just missed the boat on this; it actually sank the ship it launched, and lost a lot of talented sailors to rival companies that were developing digital book and magazine apps.
Having paid for Newsstand digital magazine subscriptions, I (like many people) was beyond disappointed when Apple abandoned Newsstand and the publishers who supported it. Newsstand was a great first step, and had the potential to become much better. Today, it seems obvious that Apple was hoping to coax Newsstand publishers over to its new app Apple News, but after testing iOS 9, I don’t think News is ready to replace Newsstand. Moreover, unless something major changes over the next few months, I’d be very surprised to see News succeed where Newsstand failed.
Whether it’s Apple or someone else (say, Amazon’s Kindle division), I’d like to see a bold company take the next big step and unify published content — at least traditional newspapers and magazines, and probably also traditional books and Internet-based publications — into a single Reading app with the best features of News, Newsstand, and iBooks. Below, I’ll explain why this would be a great next move for publishers, consumers, and Apple itself…
The third beta release of iOS 9 is the first to include News, the new Apple-developed news aggregating application debuted at WWDC. We’ve already posted a Hands-On Guide to News — and we’re in there! — so here’s a quick guide to adding 9to5Mac and our sister sites to the News app…
Just as Apple is preparing to enter the news curation space with its News app in iOS 9 and Facebook has launched native news content with Instant Articles, Twitter appears to be working on its own news product for its mobile app. Buzzfeed’s Mat Honan reports that Twitter is currently developing a news-focused feature for its app under the name Project Lightning (no, not Apple’s connector) that will make it possible to follow events in your timeline rather than only following Twitter users sharing about the event. A staff of human editors, not unlike Apple’s approach with News, will collect tweets with videos, photos, and relevant information to create these Lightning stories… Expand Expanding Close
Apple hasn’t talked about it publicly, but the company is hiring human editors that will curate content for its upcoming News app and work with publications to quickly surface breaking stories.
When Apple showed off its News app coming to the US, UK, and Australia with iOS 9, it didn’t say much about how the content would be curated beyond publishers submitting their own RSS feeds. At first Apple is just pulling in news from RSS feeds ahead of rolling out publishing tools for creating rich content specifically for the platform, but how will the company present the news to readers? Who will get front-page billing? How will categories and breaking stories be presented? We get a few of those answers in a new job listing from the company seeking human editors for the platform, but there are still questions regarding how Apple will overcome the curation issues it deals with on the App Store for the News platform. Expand Expanding Close
Apple unveiled its brand new iOS 9 “News” app today that will bring a reader experience comparable to magazine-style apps like Flipboard that pull in content from various sources around the web. It’s starting with an initial list of publishers like Vanity Fair, Vogue, GQ, Wired, and others, but here’s how to get your own content in the app. Expand Expanding Close
As reported this morning, Apple officially announced a new News app as part of iOS 9. The app takes the place of Newsstand and allows users to easily view and read the news they care most about. With an interface similar to Flipboard, Apple highlights the rich typography.
Apple also touts how users are prompted to pick specific topics in which they are interested and then the app propagates with content relating to those selected topics. Users can also add specific websites and blogs. Some images are below:
WWDC is right around the corner, and you can definitely expect some interesting changes with iOS 9 and OS X 10.11. This week we discuss some of those changes, along with some new features for the next iPhone. Also, it looks like Jony Ive has moved on from his position as Senior Vice President of Design at Apple. What is he up to now? The Happy Hour podcast is available for download on iTunes and through our dedicated RSS feed…
Mercury News reports that an iPad test model was one of the items stolen in a robbery and kidnapping that took place at a Cupertino house earlier this month. Specific details regarding the device are sparse at this point, although it has not yet been recovered. The victim of the robbery was a 20-year old man who was also kidnapped after responding to an online advertisement from a woman. The victim is thankfully safe following the incident.
HBO’s new standalone streaming service called HBO NOW has officially launched on Apple TV, iPhone, and iPad. HBO NOW allows subscribers to watch the premium network’s movies and TV shows online. The service is similar to Netflix as it’s delivered over a high-speed Internet connection rather than cable or satellite and doesn’t require long-term committments through contracts. Here’s how to get HBO NOW works: Expand Expanding Close
CNN today pushed out an update to its iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch application with a pair of features that some users will find significant: a Today widget for iOS 8’s Notification Center and a sports section. The widget is populated with the latest top stories from CNN, while the sports section sources its content from Bleacher Report, which has a dedicated App Store app (iPhone, iPad). CNN also says this version includes various bug fixes, like every app update that has come before it.
Aside from Microsoft and Apple, other interested buyers include or included Facebook, Google, and Yahoo (anyone missing?). Competing with Apple’s TestFlight acquisition last year, Microsoft even bought the beta distribution service Hockeyapp at the end of last year.
Adding to its list of recent mobile app acquisitions, TechCrunch reports that Microsoft is now eyeing Prismatic, a social recommendation network with apps for both iOS and Android. Prismatic describes itself as a personalized and social news reader. Expand Expanding Close
The popular news reading service Flipboard is becoming more than an app on your iPhone or iPad today as it launches a web version for the first time. Flipboard first launched on the iPad in 2010 and later released a version specifically for the iPhone, and now Mac users can access Flipboard from any browser with today’s launch of the web version. Expand Expanding Close
