Apple News gets extended formatting options for creators, refreshed tutorial

AppleInsider

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.

anantksundaram

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

slurpy

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

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

How about bringing it to the rest of the world?

anantksundaram

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.

edited January 2017

jbishop1039

tofino said:

How about bringing it to the rest of the world?

No kidding. I've been waiting for this in Canada since it came out. At least with iOS 10, we have the News widget. Not quite the same, but a start I guess.

notsofast

anantksundaram said:

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

I also use it everyday.  You can easily customize it to have all of your favorites' new articles presented for you by topic or source.  It is also easy to mute or block sources that the algorithm presents that you don't want cluttering up your feed.  I don't know why this article didn't point it out, but last time Apple updated number of users it was close to 100 million unique users a month if I recall correctly.  

I'm still hoping that Apple puts together a subscription model where participating sites would provide ad free news.  Apple limits the number and type of ads that company's can put on their feeds, but if you need to click further on the article it takes you to the respective sites where your ad blocker doesn't work since you came through Apple News.  I've written to Tim Cook and asked them to reconsider and stop stripping out the ad blocker when you try to access a web site from Apple News.  It's inconsistent with their privacy stance to do this.

jjunker03

Use it daily... wish they'd create a dark version for reading at night, similar to other news apps.

apple jockey

Apple News is a jewel and a safe port for the best of the Fourth Estate, in a desert of fake news, acidic rhetoric and outright lying by many. In my thinking, Apple News is perhaps one of Apples most important public services, in recent history. Limiting the worst of the Fifth Estate from poisoning reasonable and fact based reader/user analysis and the fostering of an accurate national dialogue on current social and political events.

notsofast

apple jockey said:

Apple News is a jewel and a safe port for the best of the Fourth Estate, in a desert of fake news, acidic rhetoric and outright lying by many. In my thinking, Apple News is perhaps one of Apples most important public services, in recent history. Limiting the worst of the Fifth Estate from poisoning reasonable and fact based reader/user analysis and the fostering of an accurate national dialogue on current social and political events.

I'm not sure what you are referring to.  Apple News is an aggregator of a million news sources, many terrific, many terrible.  It's up to you to customize your feed by indicating your areas of interest and then to use things like like/dislike, to further refine it.  I get a lot of fake news and other crap still, but Apple gives you the option simply by sliding right to mute specific channels so nothing from them shows up in your feed.  I've used it with both some mainstream sites as well as obscure ones.

strangedays

tofino said:

How about bringing it to the rest of the world?

As with nearly all of these regional issues, the problem is not Apple's ability to do so, but rather the strict licensing rules of the content owners. 

jdgaz

Still read a newspaper every day. Use Apple news at least once a week though.

osmartormenajr

Still waiting (hoping?) for a global roll out...

I find the idea of a news aggregator to be very useful. Today, i get by using Twitter, but it is a mess (and is getting worse...)!

schmrtzzz

Using it every day from day one and loving it. Apparantly it's still not available everywhere? Then here's a tip: go to Settings, then Language & region, choose USA, restart your device and the News-app will magically appear. Enjoy!

_rick_v_

Count me as a daily reader of Apple News.  It's good enough that I've deleted the other news apps from my phone, once it gained the headline 'notifications' like the other news apps.

I would still like to see some small improvements. A "dark mode" (what text on black), as JJunker03 mentioned.  I also wish there was a way to quickly get back to "Top Stories" rather than having to navigate back.

smiffy31

jbishop1039 said:

tofino said:

How about bringing it to the rest of the world?

No kidding. I've been waiting for this in Canada since it came out. At least with iOS 10, we have the News widget. Not quite the same, but a start I guess.

The News widget is part of the News app, so you are probably using it already without apparently knowing it.

eliangonzal

Another half-baked "service" that is withering on the vine because there's not much there in terms of functionality. The "service" is still in beta. There are no hooks from Apple's own Pages app for fast publishing. There is no standalone app on either Mac or iOS. Again, it's just a half-baked "service" with about as much commitment from when it was originally "Newsstand."