In learning to use iPad Pro as a new type of device it has started to challenge me to step out of my comfort levels of how I interact with an iOS device. iPad Pro is litterally an iPad with a bigger screen but it just isn’t big for the sake of being big. In this case, the bigger screen means something. It is not unlike when the original iPad was introduced and naysayers were calling it a large screened iPhone. We all know now that using an iPhone and an iPad are much different. iPad Pro is a new level of different.

A longstanding, favorite application of mine is Reeder. It is in my dock and I would bet that it is my most used of any application (including Safari). For anyone unfamiliar with it, Reeder is essentially a news reading application. You can connect it to Feedly, RSS, or other services. I connect to Feedly and it keeps track of what I have read whether on iPhone, iPad, or Mac.

While support for Reeder has always been outstanding (one of the many reasons the app has been a favorite for years) it has never been developed to adopt new Apple releases instantly. Sadly, this meant for the first few days with iPad Pro it was zoomed in and blurry since it had not yet been updated to the larger display. It has since been updated and is fantistic but those first few days that it wasn’t gave me the opportunity to give Apple’s News app another try.

Some have passed off News as a Flipboard clone and it may be on the surface, however, looking deeper into the platform it shows some interesting ideas for the future of the internet. For an obsessive reader and follower of specific websites and people, like me, it might not quite be ready to replace an app like Reeder. But then again, it might be looking to create something entirely different anyway.

 

The Bad

There are some frustrating things when you first open News. If you are familiar to the customization of RSS the default genericness of News on setup is rather off-putting. You can go in and manually add specific RSS feeds later but it isn’t very simple.

Right now you are probably better off not manually adding in RSS feeds because if you manually add a site’s feed in, when you go to read the articles it will show you the article preview but in order to read the whole article you will have to go the actual website. There is no option to use Readability or another similar service.

This is the worst part about the News app in its current state. When you go to the webpage in News it uses iOS’ Safari View Controller wich pulls up a Safari window of the full webpage. With Safari View Controller you don’t get full Safari, negating the ability of having the option to use the Reader button which removes ads and leaves only text, pictures, and video. Inexplicably, New’s version of Safari doesn’t even honor any content blockers that you have installed. This means that almost every article that is not made by a website that specifically supports News must be read on the normal moble web without Reader, Readabiliy, or content blockers. 

*Note: Strangely, in a recent update to Reeder they seem to use the same implimentation of Safari View Controller that News does yet Reeder’s Safari does use content blockers while News’ does not. Perhaps this is a bug within News but for now, unsupporting RSS feeds are much more annoying to read within the News app than almost anwhere else on iOS.

 

The Future – Design

As bad as unsupporting feeds are, content that is prepared specifically for News is incredible. There is a reason you see Wired in News on Apple’s website. It is absolutely maverlous. Without a doubt the best way to read Wired is via iOS’ News app. It is clean and smooth.

When you start exploring different sites that use News like ESPN or CNN different ideas of how to use the platform start showing through. There is an interesting feel to the content in that you can tell that each site has its own style and voice yet they remain grounded to a general News design.

Reading News with only content prepared specifically for News is a bit like reading a magazine. Each article has its own style and artwork each time you flip the page. But News itself has one cohesive, over-arching design that keeps the whole thing consistant. This is where News is fundamentally different from anything else. It is a platform. Every other news reading service or app is just a collector.

 

The Future – Ads

News greatly improves on the dismal state of moble advertising and the future is only looking better. It seems nearly every advertiser on the web is tracking everything they can. Even setting privacy concerns aside, the methods advertisers are using to track you are slowing the internet down.

This year with the release of iOS 9 Apple introduced a way for developers to insert ad blockers into Safari. I won’t get in to the nitty gritty of the ins and outs of it but if you are unfamiliar with it you should read this blog post by Dean Murphy put out a while back that will give you a good idea of what is happening.

Ads inside of News are cleaner and free from tracking software. Equally important, they aren’t running unnecessary extra processes in the background slowing the webpage down from loading. Apple gives content creators the option to sell and display their own ads or they can use the iAd platform to place ads inside their News articles. This may not be a great value for big time publishers but for smaller operations it is a huge resource.

The ability place an ad without having to go locate an advertiser is a huge time saver. Of course the convenience does come at some cost as Apple takes its standard 30% cut of iAd revenue but it is a nice option to have, especially starting out. A company can get started on News and begin using iAd. As they grow they may start to see demand and availablility to sell their own ads at a greater profit. They could begin rolling in those ads as soon as they wanted. There’s really no downside to having the option to use iAds when needed and Apple makes it simple and easy for publishers to use and get started.

 

Focus On What You Do Well

In a recent interview with CNN Eddy Cue said one of the most important inititives of News is giving news organizations “an opportunity to focus on what they do really well, which is the journalism part, and let us handle the technology piece of building the apps and distributing them.” Indeed in the last few years we have seen a shake-up with several different news organizations and magazines. Many of them are disappearing and this is in no small part due to the switch from physical to digital distribution. While the ultimate goal remains the same; to publish and distribute news articles, the manor in which it is done is completely different.

Clearly the News app is out to help relieve developement pressure from News organizations. Perhaps, for larger publications it is not difficult to go out and hire a slew of developers to create and maintain a website and multiple mobile applications but this is no small task for many organizations. Indeed, it is feasible to see a future where there may be a major publication that is distributed exclusively through Apple News.

Years back, when the original iPad first came out there was a news publication called The Daily. Backed by News Corporation (Rupert Murdock), it was the first iPad only news app. I was one of their subscribers and I really believed in it and the ideas behind it. Ultimately though, it was before its time. It failed to gain substantial traction and shutdown a little over a year after it started. It would be interesting to see The Daily show up again but inside of News. Perhaps without having to have all of the overhead of trying to reinvent the wheel with creating their own app, they could have a shot to survive.

 

A Work in Progress

I discussed earlier, adding in specific, custom RSS feeds is possible within News but not really very easy. I’m not sure that this is a problem as much as a feature or a push to get you to read News content that was prepared for News, not just the standard web. That is perhaps the major problem, getting News perpared content into News. In that same interview with CNN Eddy Cue said, “We thought of things from, you know, even church newsletters to a stamp club…” Well, right now it is not very simple for a church newsletter or stamp club to publish content to News (not to meantion, can that be restricted to subscribers or should everyone have the ability to read my church newsletter?).

I tried to sign Chanim up a few weeks ago for Apple News. While the site is young and I didn’t expect an immediate response, it did highlight a few things that are a work in progress. Right now it appears that it is required that you have an RSS feed. This means you have to already have a website that you publish content to. This would exclude just about every stamp club I’ve heard of. Further, Apple News Format (the app you’d use to create content for Apple News is “coming soon.” It would appear that a few select companies have gotten advanced usage of the app such as ESPN, CNN, Wired, and others. Clearly, they have News formatted content that they are publishing.

This is not immediately a huge deal but it does highlight something that seems to be unknown about the platform. The full features of News are only available to a few select publishers currently. This means that what News really is and what it truly will be is still far off. It seems strange to me that Apple would launch it this way without providing news organizations the capability to publish to News correctly when it appears that the whole point of News is to have them publish in the Apple News Format.

Perhaps Apple needs feedback from the larger companies that currently have full access or perhaps the tools weren’t quite ready to provide to everyone. Whatever the reason, Apple News is sneakily in Beta without the Beta tag. The future is bright however. It’s a little app that probably isn’t getting the attention that it deserves right now. It has the potential to change the way that most of us read about the world and stay informed. When it comes right down to it, what could be more Apple?

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