In news that will shock nobody, Apple News+ seems to be struggling with both publishers and users just over two months after launching the $9.99 a month subscription service, which brings together over 300 publishers into a bundled all-you-can-read app.
According to Business Insider, Apple News is now looking to go back to the drawing board with Apple News+, with some publishing executives saying that Apple News’ team had asked for retrospective input from them in meetings since the product’s launch.
A ‘confusing’ user experience
Apple has allegedly acknowledged that there is confusion among users about the difference between free articles in Apple News, which has existed as an aggregator since 2015, and the new paid content in Apple News+.
Plus content is also receiving limited promotion, with little fanfare aside from putting some Plus-labelled stories in front of users in the free part of Apple News.
Plus was given away as a free trial for the first month, racking up around 200,000 subscribers, but it’s unclear how many of these have actually translated through to the paid monthly service.
Additionally, the decision to combine magazine and news content appears to be causing issues, with some publishers saying that the app’s magazine-centric layout isn’t suited to news content.
Some users have reported that the mix of PDF magazines and magazine articles is confusing, and that the pinch-and-zoom experience of reading scanned magazine pages makes for a poor reading experience.
Read the rest of this article by Esther Kezia Thorpe on What’s New in Publishing…
