The Good, The Bad, And Where It Goes From Here

As Elon Musk’s X has grown toxic in recent years, news consumers like me have migrated to other destinations around the web — to services ranging from Bluesky to Substack — in order to keep up to speed with current events. I’ve certainly cycled through a number of those apps over the last few years, before ultimately deciding that one of the most reliable alternatives to X (for a news consumer, at least) is Apple News+, thanks to everything from its clean aesthetic to its easily scannable user interface that more or less replicates the X experience. Minus the chaos and drama.

Having said that, the app is certainly not for everyone. In this post, I’m going to explain why I use it and why I think it (mostly) does a good job of providing a news reader experience. Bear in mind, this is coming from someone who’s worked as a professional journalist since before iPhones existed, so my perspective is not only colored by my experience as a writer but also from having tried out a slew of different apps in an effort to find an X replacement.

The Apple News+ basics

For $12.99 a month, Apple News+ subscribers get access to hundreds of magazines and paywalled newspapers, a list that includes The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic, and all of it wrapped up in a package that features Apple’s signature design polish. For what it’s worth, there’s also a lot for news publishers to like, since the app gives them access to Apple’s tens of millions of users. And then there are the human editors who help curate the product, a rare commodity in an era when Google’s algorithms routinely give and take away traffic.

In terms of usage, Apple hasn’t disclosed updated user figures since confirming the app had a combined free and paid usage of 125 million monthly active users in 2020 (the year after the subscription service launched). However, Consumer Intelligence Research Partners estimated back in the fall that the Apple News+ subscription growth rate had increased from 15% to 24% between 2020 and 2024.

For comparison, that’s a rate of growth four times faster than major news sites like The New York Times and The Washington Post saw during that same period.

Now, let’s take a closer look at what Apple News+ gets right, where it still feels lacking, and what the future looks like for the app. I should add, this is also coming from someone who’s used the product pretty much every day since its launch in early 2019.

The positives

As noted above, there’s a lot that Apple News+ gets right. One reason I particularly love the app is its inclusion of The Wall Street Journal for $12.99 a month. Subscribe directly to the WSJ, and you’re looking at a normal yearly price of above $200 after the initial discounts go away.

Apple News+ also gets high marks from me for glanceability — the app makes good use of screen space to place a lot of content in front of you before you even need to scroll. And as you do begin to scroll, the design makes it comfortable to consume (or quickly ignore) plenty of content. The tweet by tweet nature of X always used to trip me up in that regard, meaning it’s easy to get sucked into one post after another there, making the whole time start to feel like a time suck.

And speaking of scrolling —

I prefer Apple News+ to Flipboard for this very reason. The core mechanic of Flipboard, of course, is right there in the name; with Flipboard, users “flip” stories one at a time, like turning the pages of a magazine. By default, that means you’re spending more time in the app getting caught up than you would using something like Apple News+.

Among other things Apple gets right, the app’s human editors routinely surface important stories. Users can also fine-tune what they want to see more or less of.

Where there’s room for improvement

Now, the cons.

I can imagine a scenario where the elegant interface I’ve described might actually overwhelm an Apple News+ user who’s not actively curating and fine-tuning their preferences as they go (by “liking” stories, for example, or adding topics to your list of favorites). That’s because this is Apple we’re talking about. The app tries to walk a fine line between reflecting a user’s interests but also not invading their privacy. Meaning, if you’re not regularly making your preferences known, you’ll see content from time to time that makes you scratch your head and wonder, “What’s this doing here?”

That’s to be expected from Apple, which has built a respect for its users’ privacy into the company’s brand. But still.

Another important limitation to note: Not every partner publication makes all of its content available to Apple News+. Some keep their most popular pieces behind a paywall, and you’ll figure out who does that and for which pieces as you go. The app does have a free tier, but I’ve found that you’ll regularly bump up against paywalls if you use it.

What the future holds for Apple News+

As for the app’s future, what I’d personally like to see more of comes in the realm of personalization.

It would be nice to see more collections curated by the app’s editors, as well as less guesswork involved in what a user might want to see (based on their activity in the app, such as by liking stories). If I’ve shown no interest whatsoever in sports and am following no sports publications, for example, it feels like it should be a given that I don’t want a lot of sports in my feed. Nevertheless, I run into this kind of situation often while using the app.

I’d also like to see the app expand its audio stories, which can be an increasingly useful alternative to news consumers who don’t want to listen to a long-form podcast. To that end, Apple has built a team of narrators and producers who offer daily readings of top feature stories from a small selection of outlets like Time. To expand its reach, I’m sure the app will also lean even more into its non-core news offering (including games, plus live sports scores and its burgeoning food/recipes section).

For now, Apple News+ remains a more than adequate news app for a consumer like me, someone who appreciates clean design and doesn’t want the distracting cruft of social media drama. In short, it feels like an app built for readers, as opposed to advertisers.