Apple Senior Vice President Eddy Cue spoke with CNN’s Brian Stelter and explained how the company’s news algorithm serves up a broader mix of perspectives.
Brian Stelter: Why create a pre-installed iPhone and iPad app specifically for news?
Eddy Cue: We’ve only created the apps that we think everyone uses every day… We really wanted to create a single app that all customers could go to, to read all their news — no matter what they are interested in, no matter what topics, no matter what publications they want to follow — and get that experience that they’re used to with our products, where it looks beautiful, it’s really easy to read and yet it provides all the content available around the world.
Stelter: Do you see this app as a way for upstart news organizations or tiny publishers in small towns to distribute their stories?
Cue: I absolutely believe in that. It was one of our main goals when we were building Apple News. We thought of things from, you know, even church newsletters to a stamp club… A lot of those organizations today still print and mail, which is even more expensive.
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Stelter: There have been reports about the app being blocked in China. What is its status there?
Cue: We’re working on a version for China that hopefully we will be able to introduce soon. We’ve got a great Chinese customer base and we want to deliver as great of an experience in China as we do here in the U.S.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Apple News? Do you use/like it or not?
Apple news is okay, but then I’m not always too concerned with the news much nowadays.
Sent from my iPhone
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I use it and I like having what interests me all in one spot. What doesn’t work is notifications. I get no news alerts from the app like a “breaking news”. When the Paris attacks was going on, nothing from the Apple News app. I have now incorporated the Facebook Notify app to make up for it.
So, it works for me.
The content is good. I don’t think the UI is anywhere near as refined or elegant as Flipboard. And, the News icon is hideous. It must have been designed by a kindergartener.
I’ve tried and tried and hoped to like it but Flipboard is so much better.
The News app is a great discovery app. It provides news stories that I am interested in and introduces me to new websites that I didn’t know existed. I have added a few websites to my daily reading list thanks to the News app.
I agree. It’s the range of reportage that’s helpful to me. There’s always a nice surprise waiting for me and my curiosity.
I use it, you can ad a diverse list of news sources.
I use on the iPad pro and like it. But you want to know what I’d really like?? RSS support in safari again.
Tried it for a week and went right back to Flipboard. The UI is spectacular to look at and dead easy to use. Apple News is all scroll, scroll, scroll.
Next, perhaps he can explain why he still works for Apple, and why he wears those ass-ugly shirts. Putz.
I use the app for news on science. Scientific American gives only the beginning to an article and then will only allow access to the rest of the article if you buy that issue or subscribe. Articles that require payment to read should not be displayed with those that do not. It is a tease and wastes my time. Those magazines that require purchase or subscription should have their own special section. 🖖😀⌚️
Is this app learning things about me? If so, it’s not obvious. I find the mix of articles… unpleasant. One would think that it would pay attention to what I open and gently begin favoring such things. In any case, I’ve abandoned the app.
Does any gave to scroll 100 times to get to most recent news. I always seem to see several day old articles first then spend an annoying amount of time to scroll to most recent. Either I am missing something or this is sloppy UI design by Apple.
Apple News is fun, and I use it, just not for news. It’s more “interesting stuff to read when I’m bored”. If I want actual news, i.e. top stories and the like, I go to Google News. Yeah, it’s Google, but it works.
——RM
What it comes down to for me is that I respect Matt Drudge as an editor more than any other figure in Mass Media. He links to numerous articles from publications listed in Apple News, but him and his team are far better at presenting a compelling mix of stories than Apple’s algorithm/employees will ever be. I also read sites like VDare and ParaPundit that aren’t options.
Also, why the hell does does John Gruber and Daring Fireball get to be an option in Apple News but not MDN? Both aggregate and comment on articles. The problem is that Apple has filtered for safe, corporate “news” sources while preventing the user from consuming the content they want. If I could essentially have an RSS feed of all of my favorite blogs and sites, I would use it, but it’s a total pass for me now.
Apple News is corporate news.
Gave it a try on my iPad. Easy to use, but it is essentially New York-based establishment-approved news and commentary.
If Apple cared about reporting the truth, and helping us avoid the next useless war, they would start a newspaper. But they will not, and maybe they should not. Exposing the rot would hurt their sales.
I have a new hobby. I keep trying to open the News App on my iPad. I’m up to 22 attempts and it still won’t load properly. No matter how good the app might be, if you can’t open it, it’s still crap.
In the UK, subscribe to the Guardian online news app, read it every day, and also check out MDN via the MDN app every day. Am still trying Apple News occasionally, but the other two do most of the job for me.
It’s not a Drudge killer that some people might want. I gotta admit, I was suspicious of that motivation being in there somewhere. 🙂
I don’t understand why Drudge hasn’t translated well to the app yet. Seems a huge miss there.