Signs of Apple News magazine subscriptions appear in macOS betas
Malcolm OwenVia Steve Troughton-Smith/Twitter
New evidence Apple is preparing to launch its Apple News magazine service has appeared, with notifications in macOS seemingly indicating the subscription-based service will be available on Mac as well as on the iOS version of the app.
Apple is expected to announce a number of new services at its March 25 "It's show time" event, with Apple News being one of the main highlights anticipated to launch. Digging around in the betas for macOS has revealed some new items relating to the service, effectively confirming the Apple News magazine subscription will be launching towards the end of this month.
Developer Steve Troughton-Smith posted to Twitter a selection of screenshots taken from the latest macOS beta, revealing elements of the macOS version of the subscription. A pair of notifications advise of a "New Issue of Bon Appetit" as well as a grouped "New Issues Available" alert for multiple publications.
Unsurprisingly, it looks like Apple News' magazine service is prepared to launch on macOS too pic.twitter.com/df0oyJXvjF
— Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith) March 12, 2019
Another image shows an error message in the macOS News app advising "This issue is unavailable," most likely prompted by clicking on one of the notifications. A fourth image shows a list of short URLs on the apple.news domain that could be used by the service, with directories available for "magazines," "mymagazines," and "subscription."
Troughton-Smith also advises the magazines for the macOS version of Apple News will be PDF-based, like many iPad magazines, with issues able to be stored offline. A section showing different genres of magazines is also shown by the developer, with most of the code said to be written in Swift.
The March 25 event will reportedly be a star-studded affair, with appearances by people such as J.J. Abrams, Jennifer Garner, and Steve Carrell to commemorate the unveiling of Apple's original video content project, which has seen the investment of at least $1 billion so far into TV shows and movie productions.
One possibility is new hardware, including new iPads, AirPods, the AirPower charging mat, or even a new iPod touch. Rumors have gone back and forth on those though, and some products may have to wait as late as this fall.
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7 Comments
Apple News (the iOS app) has led me to a lot of new sources for solid journalism and interesting feature reading, so I'll be paying attention to what the offering on this is exactly. The macOS version of News, at present, falls short of the iOS versions (particularly in your ability to share articles of interest on social media), so I hope it gets an overhaul as well. I'm very happy to support quality journalism.
You know, I seem to recall an all too brief Apple phase where it aimed to be the best platform to create and view content, regardless of source. Mind you, that was after a near death experience.
Now it’s all about competing with the service providers that provide on your platform. This vertical integration is the sort of MBA weenie thinking that kills company loyalty, at least the satisfied allegiance kind of loyalty. The kind of loyalty these strategies forces on people is more serf-like. You might not like the bastards and their behaviour, but the exits cost once your are in gets very high and you are trapped like living in the Hotel California.
Just say no in the first place, and with a bit of luck it will go the way of Ping.
The point is that if you are a competing service, you end up reducing your effort on Apple platforms as it is harder to justify as Apple leverages its ownserhip of the platform as its key advantage over your products.
For example YouTube 4K and VP9; Netflix, Kindle et al and sign up. You can bet music services don’t invest time and money into Apple platforms as much as other platforms where they don’t compete with the provider of that platform.
i can and will continue to access those other services. I also know they will not give me as good a service in the future because Apple is making it harder for them to make a buck, so their services drift in weight elsewhere.
I would also add this type of expansion leads to the situation Spotify is complaining about. It doesn’t get the same access to hardware and iOS as Apple Music.