Mike Peterson
Apple has made a change to the handling of Smart App Banners that points users to the Apple News app instead of a third-party app when they open a webpage hosted by a News+ publisher.
Specifically, Smart App Banners now prompt users to open stories in the Apple News app, at least for News+ partners currently using the API. As implemented in iOS 13, the Smart App Banner framework allows developers to prompt users to download their third-party apps from the App Store, or to open a corresponding link from Safari.
In the most up-to-date iOS 14 beta, the Smart App Banner API or Safari appears to detect News+ partner web domains, which triggers display of the modified promotional banner. Smart App Banner code on affected pages is unchanged, suggesting that it's a change to the way Safari handles publisher URLs.
As mentioned, the new banner only shows up for publications that participate in Apple News+. Developers may be able to control which banner appears to users — Apple News or App Store download — though that isn't clear at this point.
The banner behavior is in addition to a new feature in iOS 14 and macOS Big Sur that automatically redirects users to the Apple News app when they click on a News+ publisher link. Apple says the feature is designed for user convenience, since an Apple News+ subscription doesn't allow users to bypass publisher website paywalls. Some publishers have called the new direction "shady," however.
Andrew Orr
Amber Neely
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
1 Comment
I'm honestly confused why it's considered "shady". Apple is adding a banner that allows users to see the article in News+, at which point the article's publisher receives a fee from Apple for the user's access to their article. Why would any publisher complain about receiving money? As a user, my complaint is that sometimes I'm reading an article in Apple News+ and a couple of paragraphs into the article there's a line saying that I have to subscribe to the publisher's site for an annual fee in order to finish reading the article. I would call that practice "dishonest" (and I blame Apple for allowing publishers to do that.) Whereas taking me from an external website to a News+ paid subscription service not only feels honest it feels brilliant. It makes me feel like I'm paying for the information I'm consuming.