Apple News Plus has been around for four years now and debuted as a subscription service where you could pay a monthly subscription ($9.99 at the time) to access hundreds of newspapers and magazines. In the time that has passed since then, News Plus’ scope and feature set have grown, as Apple continues to look for ways to expand its burgeoning subscription services business.
I remember the launch of the subscription information service very well, since I happened to write a Apple News Plus Review at the time. Apple’s offering certainly delivered on the promise of access to many articles from many different sources, I concluded at the time, but it did so in a rather cluttered way that wasn’t still intuitive to use, especially on the iPhone.
Some time after filing this review, I ended up canceling my Apple News Plus subscription – I just wasn’t launching the app often enough to get the most out of it – and quickly forgot all about the news service of Apple, until the launch of iOS 17.
That’s when Apple added a new feature to its subscription news service: daily crosswords. (The feature is not available in all regions, but in places where it has been launched, you can play crosswords on your iPhone, iPad, or Mac once you upgrade to the latest versions of their respective operating systems.) I was tasked with taking the crosswords are available for a test drive – you can read my guide at how to find crosswords in the iOS 17 News app – so I dusted off my old News Plus subscription and dove into the service.
Revisiting Apple News Plus four years later, I found that a lot had changed about Apple’s subscription service, not the least of which was its monthly pricing. (You pay $12.99 a month these days, which is $3 more than I paid back then.) And some of these changes have made the news service more attractive, although some of my Old complaints about Apple News Plus remain.
Here’s what I learned from revisiting Apple News Plus after all these years.
What’s changed with Apple News Plus
The basic principle of Apple News Plus remains the same: click the More tab in the mobile app or go to the More section in the Mac version, and you’ll find a selection of curated stories taken from Topics and Sources that you expressed. an interest via the articles you have read or the topics you follow. As of this writing, for example, Apple News Plus’ top story for me is a Sports Illustrated article about the NFL’s sideline personnel, because the app correctly figured out that I was reading a lot articles on sports.
As before, the News Plus section of the News app offers collections of magazines and newspapers that you can follow. And as before, finding specific titles among the hundreds offered takes time due to the lack of a dedicated search bar. (You can sort by name or scroll through a list alphabetically.)
But Apple has added a lot to News Plus over the years, most recently bringing crosswords into the mix. Right now you get two puzzles every day: one is a full crossword and the other is a quicker to play mini puzzle. The puzzles are well suited to the mobile format, even on the smaller iPhone screen. You can play it whenever you have a free moment, easily returning to ongoing puzzles. It’s a nice addition to the News Plus mix, but probably not enough on its own to justify this subscription.
Another new feature since I last used the News Plus service is audio stories. Think of them as books on tape, but for news articles or mini podcasts if you prefer. Audio Stories have their own dedicated tab in the News app on iPhone, and they largely feature stories from the various News Plus publications read aloud to you. There are also podcasts produced by Apple, such as Apple News Today (this is an audio summary of today’s news), which are part of the audio section and linked to the Podcasts app on your iPhone.
Like crosswords, audio stories are a nice addition to the News Plus service, although they’re not necessarily worth the price of admission on their own. If you’re looking for easy-to-digest news summaries or audio content to fill your commute, workout, or household chores, having someone read articles to you without having to keep your eyes glued to the screen is a great way to multitask.
In iOS 16Apple added a dedicated sports tab to the News app that works best if you choose a few favorite teams via the My Sports feature. By doing so, your sports tab will be filled with stories, scores, and highlights that match your interests. Right now, for example, my feed is full of stories about Megan Rapinoe’s final soccer game and Emma Hayes taking charge of the U.S. women’s national team, while several soccer teams are in the My teams I’ve done.
My Sports is not linked to a News Plus subscription, so you can enjoy it for free. However, some News Plus stories are included in My Sports feeds, so you’ll need that monthly subscription to click through and read them.
What Apple News Plus still needs to work on
These additions certainly sweetened the pot for Apple News Plus, and I appreciated them during my reunion with the subscription service. But I’m not sure they’ll be enough to convince me to renew my subscription at the end of the month. And that’s because the problems I initially encountered with Apple News Plus persist four years later.
Basically, it’s just too hard to find things on Apple News Plus.
I mentioned above finding specific posts, which remains an exercise in scrolling whereas a simple search bar would take much of the searching and sorting out of the process. But that’s only part of the problem.
When I browse the News app, whether it’s the free section or News Plus, I don’t feel like I have a complete view of the news. Indeed, News can give you a say in the topics and posts you follow, but how they are presented on the app is entirely out of your control.
The Today tab in News will contain a few top stories, followed by a local news story. From there, it’s a mix of stories presented by topic and trends, with the News app offering curated stories on a hodgepodge of topics. The News Plus tab seems even more random, with the main view showing “top picks” which may be interesting but have little relevance if you’re trying to learn about specific breaking news.
This is not how I like to consume my news. If you put a newspaper in front of me, I will go through it section by section: sports first, because I have no interior life, but then the big news, the local headlines and finally the entertainment and entertainment pages. ‘humor. Apple News takes a more organized approach, which is great if you view your news as an extension of a social media feed, but not so great for feeling well-informed on the issues of the day.
It doesn’t help that the iPhone isn’t compatible with Apple News format. It’s largely continuous vertical scrolling, and depending on how the stories are presented, headlines may be cut off. I don’t use an iPad, but I borrowed my wife’s—we can share my Apple News Plus subscription through Family Sharing—and things look much better on the tablet.
Apple News Plus Insights
I like the content additions that Apple has made to its News Plus service over the years, and the ability to share your subscription with up to five family members is a good way to extract some value from those monthly fee of $12.99. But ultimately, the look of the app on iPhone is just too cluttered for my liking and the discovery process is too scattered for me to feel like I’m getting my money’s worth.
So despite some notable improvements to the News Plus subscription service since I last tried it, it’s still not for me. If you like the curation-driven approach to news, you might feel differently, but I’m just not getting the information I need every time I launch this app.
