Apple News gets extended formatting options for creators, refreshed tutorial

In its ongoing effort to improve Apple News, the company has rolled out a series of changes which extends formatting options for publishers and adds a new ad size for the iPhone and iPod touch, in conjunction with a new tutorial to assist with the new features.

The Apple News Format now includes list item style, including bullets, numbers, letters, roman numerals, and custom characters in HTML formatted lists. Also added on Thursday, medium rectangle advertisement components previously limited to the iPad can now be automatically inserted into Apple News Format articles viewed on the iPhone and the iPod touch.

The new tutorial for Apple News shows users how to create content for the service using JSON.

Changes to Apple News publishing have been gradual throughout 2016, the biggest development being the opening up of its publishing tools for all content producers, and not just a select few, in March.

The largest change for readers was the Apple News redesign in iOS 10, first shown at the 2016 WWDC, emphasizes individual stories and breaks articles into clear sections, including Top Stories, Trending, and topics based on the user's preference. In a new element, the app also creates new topics based on readers' histories.

Featured stories are selected and presented to users, similarly to Editor's Picks in Google News. iOS 10 also introduced subscriptions, allowing users to read entire issues of publications.

17 Comments

anantksundaram 20390 comments · 18 Years

About 7 years ago

I'd love for AI to do a poll of its readers: "who here reads Apple News?" (Serious question).

slurpy 5388 comments · 15 Years

anantksundaram said:

I'd love for AI to do a poll of its readers: "who here reads Apple News?" (Serious question).

Every single day, multiple times a day. It is usually my main, and only, source of news. I think it's very well done, looks great, and works brilliantly once configured to your liking. Of course, I'm sure that with the sarcastic nature of your post, you were assuming responses of "noone, ever".

mkrewson 12 comments · 10 Years

I personally love Apple News, and would love an article on the success of it. My wife and I use it all the time. In my humble opinion, it's a very underrated service.

tofino 697 comments · 17 Years

How about bringing it to the rest of the world?

slurpy said:

anantksundaram said:

I'd love for AI to do a poll of its readers: "who here reads Apple News?" (Serious question).

Every single day, multiple times a day. It is usually my main, and only, source of news. I think it's very well done, looks great, and works brilliantly once configured to your liking. Of course, I'm sure that with the sarcastic nature of your post, you were assuming responses of "noone, ever".

1) It was not meant to be sarcastic in the least. I meant it as a serious request to AI. It did not occur to me until someone suggested it a couple of weeks ago, that it would be really interesting to see what polling of AI readers would reveal on some key questions/issues. Of course it would be unscientific, but interesting nonetheless.

2) I had already counted on you as being an avid reader.