Apple today launched its subscription news service, Apple News+, with 300 magazines, two major newspapers, and several digital publications.
Apple News+ is available today for $9.99 per month; just download the latest version of iOS or macOS, launch the Apple News app, and look for the Apple News+ tab. The first month will be free, and after that, you'll be billed monthly for all-you-can-read access to publications focused on entertainment, fashion, health, lifestyle, traveling, food, tech, and more. The service will also include access to the Los Angeles Times and the Wall Street Journal, plus online-only pubs like theSkimm and TechCrunch.
That $9.99-per-month price (which will presumably be £9.99 in the UK) also includes Family Sharing; each person gets full access to Apple's catalog on their own devices with their own favourites and personal recommendations at no extra charge.
According to Apple, subscribing to all these publications individually would cost you more than $8,000 per year. So paying just $10 per month appears to be a great deal for consumers. What that means for the publications involved is less clear, as Apple will reportedly get 50 percent of the revenue generated by subscriptions to Apple News+. The service is possible thanks to Apple's 2018 acquisition of Texture, which was long known as the "Netflix for magazines."
"We believe in the power of journalism," Apple CEO Tim Cook said during a Monday launch event in Cupertino. "We want to make a valuable contribution to the industry and society as a whole."
According to CNN's Brian Stelter, the Journal component of Apple News+ will only include a "curated collection of general interest news" and could later extend to areas like video, voice, market data and AI. Access to business reporting will still require a full Journal subscription.
Roger Rosner, VP of applications at Apple, stressed that Apple News+ is focused on privacy. Though Apple News+ makes curated recommendations based on your browsing and reading activity, it does so by downloading groups of articles from its servers and using on-device intelligence to make those recommendations.
"We don't know what you read and in addition to that, we don't allow advertisers to track you," Rosner said. "What you read about in Apple News+ will not follow you across the web."
In terms of the reading experience, Wyatt Mitchell, Apple's VP of design for applications, showed off a "live" magazine cover from National Geographic that moved like video footage. Once you find a magazine you want to read, tap on the cover and jump to articles from the table of contents. Or just swipe through to read the full issue.
Apple News+ launches in the US and Canada, where it'll be available for $12.99 per month in English and French with 30 Canadian magazines and The Star newspaper. Later this year, it arrives in Australia and Europe, starting with the UK.