Tag Archives: Reading

A few thoughts on Apple News and RSS apps

I’ve been using RSS apps since the early(ish) days of it’s existence. I think it was 2002 or 2003 that it became a habit for me. I’ve had at least one RSS app on my Mac and then iPad ever since. For years that app was NetNewsWire. I’d occasionally try others but that was the gold standard. As I recall there was a time when it became a bit stagnate and then was sold. During that time other apps popped up, namely Reeder which became my RSS app of choice. Then along came the iPad and a flurry of RSS apps along with it. I tried several but when Reeder became available for iPad I settled on that. For many Reeder took the place of NetNewsWire as the new standard.

Reeder 4 on the iPad. There’s a lot of wasted space there.

What’s the point of RSS? Well, it makes subscribing and skimming a large number of publications easy. Scrolling through headlines with article summaries becomes very easy. Rather than load an entire site I can refresh 30 or 40 and then skim through them all at once. I can do this by topic area or with all of them mixed up. In my case I’ve got groups (folders) by categories such as news, Apple, tech, environment, etc. On slower internet in rural areas it’s a fantastic help.

This is the Apple News page in all it’s glory. Nice images, headlines and pleasant to browse

A couple years ago Apple released their iPad and iPhone take on a news reader called Apple News. They’d dabbled for many years with RSS built into Safari and even the mail app at one point had RSS built in. But with Apple News they built a dedicated app they really worked pretty well. While RSS and Reeder remained my primary tool I found myself gradually using Apple’s app more and more. I really enjoyed the design of the app which presented the news as a full page of news thumbnails each with an image (usually) and the headline broken up into sections and source publications that I could follow or unfollow with the ability to like or dislike stories as well as save them for future reading. Apple throws in sections and stories from other sources to provide variety and the reader has the option to dislike stories or block sources as needed. In theory this is training which is supposed to improve what Apple provides.

That’s a lot of wasted space for what is, essentially, an ad for Apple’s News+ service. I can’t hide it.

What I find most enjoyable with Apple News is the full screen layout of stories, the mix of stories and the reading experience of a story. But there’s a downside (there’s always a downside) and it is three things.

  1. Ads
  2. Apple+ is Apple’s new News and magazine service and the stories are mixed into my feed. Sometimes a new magazine will take up nearly half a page. If I were a subscriber I’d be okay with that but I’m not and I have no option to turn it off.
  3. When sharing Apple News articles the link is a proprietary Apple News format. Fine for sharing to Apple users but I often share to a Slack group that has several folks who don’t use Apple. I’ve got a fix in the form of a Shortcut that converts but I should not have had to do that.
  4. The training is not all that great. I often see stories I do not want to see and it seems no amount of training with dislikes helps. Even worse, when I block a source it often persists for a day or two rather than disappearing immediately. No, no, no, I don’t want to see stories about the British royal family, not interested in sports either!
  5. Last, some stories in Apple News have ads and some stories, if viewed on a web site would have comments I’m interested in seeing. So, while the reading experience is often great, it can also be a bit cluttered and often requires that I load the story in Safari.

But all in RSS land is not perfect. Reeder, was recently updated to support the new iPads and added a few new features. Nothing game changing but still a solid app. Funny though, I had switched to another RSS app, Newsify, which had added support for the new iPads and have come to like it’s interface as much as Reeder’s. It’s not perfect but it works. I spent the past couple days bouncing back and forth between them and found that each had features that I wished the other had. Neither felt complete.

Newsify is properly using the space of my iPad to display a variety of articles with images

After some experimentation I’ve found a solution that, I think, brings the best of all three. My main annoyance with Reeder was its huge waste of space when browsing stories. It only takes advantage of a small column on the left for browsing through articles. The primary part of the app is empty. After months with Apple News this was bothering me immediately. In the time I’d been using Newsify I came to enjoy the fact that while the number of articles displayed was about the same they stretched across the screen and more information was provided about each. Still not as nice as Apple News but at least the screen was being used! But there’s a fix that I discovered yesterday while poking around settings in Newsify: It can be displayed using “Newspaper View”. Perfect. Now I had something that looked nearly identical to Apple News!

Apple News on the left, Newsify on the right. To my eyes both are very pleasing to browse.

So, now I’ve got the article browsing I want without Apple’s ads and no Apple News+ articles I can’t read. What about the reading experience? Close. Unfortunately you’ll note that in Newsify this article does not display the full text but has a “more…” link to click through.

Viewing an article. Almost there but Newsify does not display the full article. Notice the “more…” link

Of course that takes me to the full page on the website which is chock-full of ads. But Newsify has a setting which will load the page in the built in Safari View and switch it over to “Reader mode” which is, of course, the perfect uncluttered display comparable to Apple News. I just tap the article title and I’m ready to read in a few seconds. Side benefit, if it’s an article I want to view comments for I can turn off the Reader mode and they’re already to go.

Apple News on the left, Newsify on the right in “Reader mode”. Perfect.

Newsify does have a premium subscription which includes a full text display for these kinds of articles but either way I have to tap just once to get a result with is nearly identical.

So, with Newsify and a few tweaks to a few settings I’m getting as close to an ideal (for me) RSS reading experience on the iPad.

Apple News, Google News, RSS

I’ve used RSS since the early days. I forget the exact year but I think I started using around 2002 which was also around the time that I started blogging. Been awhile. Anyway, I’ve had an RSS reader on every computer I’ve owned for at least the previous 15 years. On iPad (and previously on my Mac) that’s mostly been Reeder. I’ve tried several others but Reeder remains my favorite.

But I’m also open to trying new things. When Apple introduced Apple News I tried it. Not the best experience but I kept at it. It was no replacement for Reeder and RSS but I used it as a supplement. No doubt, it’s gotten better and I’ve used it more and more but RSS still remains the foundation for all my internet reading. With the release of Google News I thought I’d try it though I’m not big on using Google. I have gmail which is now relegated to my junk account and iCloud is my primary, preferred account. Google is not my default or usual search engine. My plan with Google News is just to use it to compare to Apple News and after a few days use I can confirm I’ll be sticking to Apple News. Google News is okay but it’s not great.

What I like about it is the quickness with which content reflects my likes or dislike. I can tap the widget at the bottom right of any story summary on the main page and give it a thumbs up or down. If I thumbs down it it goes away instantly. Of course this is long term training and I’ve only used it a few days so can’t comment on that. But I like that it goes away. Compare this to Apple News. This weekend, like everyone else, I was inundated with royal wedding news. Not the least bit interested. On Google News I could thumbs down it and it was gone. With Apple News I could dislike it but it remained in place. Even worse, after disliking 40+ such royal wedding stories they continued to reappear with my little dislike icon highlighted. So, not only do they not go away but they remain over the course of a couple days. Ugh. That’s a terrible user experience.

I also noticed Google News is heavily weighted towards entertainment news which isn’t something I’m interested in. I’d rather see a an emphasis given to science. By default the headlines section offered almost no science. Will see if it can be trained though I don’t plan on keeping it around. I’m just curious. My assumption is that because I don’t use Google for search the app doesn’t know what I like. I’ve followed a few topics and will see how that affects what’s presented to me.

Another contrast worth noting is visual design. In the first section, “For You” I prefer Apple News to Google News. Of course it’s been around and has had some time to evolve and change so it seems more refined. Google News has a nice, simple design but the main feed is so bare as to seem unfinished. Apple has achieved a balance of well presented information that is well organized without being too cluttered.

A downside to Apple News is refresh time. When I load Google News it is fairly quick to refresh. Apple News seems to take quite a bit longer. I’m in a rural area on satellite internet. I often run out of data half way through a month which drops me down to about 2 Mbps for normal usage. That’s not too bad but I really notice it with Apple News. I’ve also noticed with Apple News a repeat of stories days old. Why show me a story that was in my feed 2 or 3 or 4 days ago?

Overall, the feel that I get with Apple News is that it is generic. I can customize in that I can choose topics and sources but the For You section really feels like it has no intelligent foundation. As mentioned above, the stories I’ve disliked continue to show up. Stories similar to stories I’ve disliked continue to show up. The Spotlight section often seems useless as it presents topics I’m not interested in. If Apple is going to emphasize Apple News and if it has human curators, might not the Spotlight section present more intelligently? For those that like sports, they get more sports in Spotlight. For those that prefer science, more science. I rarely use it now because every time I look it’s presenting me with stories I’m not the least bit interested in. In short Apple News doesn’t really know my interests even though I’ve spent time liking/disliking stories, topics and channels.

Search is much better on Google News as one might expect. It’s at the top of the screen of every section of the app and it works great to present recent news on the various searches I’ve tried. For example, a search for Gaia Telescope presents a series of recent stories from diverse sources. It’s excellent. The same search in Apple News? Nothing. Literally, nothing. I realize Google has the upper hand here given the nature of it’s business but if Apple News is going to be useful it must be better and getting me useful search results.

Lastly, sharing. Again, Google News is better. If I choose to share a story I simply get a proper web link to the original story on the original site. If I try to share from Apple News I get an Apple News link. When I’ve shared from there in the past non-Apple users get errors. So, I have to take the extra step of first sharing the article to Safari then sharing from Safari. That’s lame.

When I started this post my feeling was that Apple News is my preferred app. I want it to be my preferred app. I’m all in on Apple in part because I appreciate the focus on privacy. I want Apple’s machine learning to improve for the whole Apple platform. As I’ve written the post I keep asking myself why not use Google News? In almost every way aside from visual design it is better. If I use Google then I just have the feeling that not only am I leaking my data to Google but I am not informing Apple. I want Apple to know more about what I need and want when I use my iPhone and iPad. But after years of using Apple News I don’t get the sense that it knows my interests any better. It presents me with the same generic content everyone else gets and it’s search results are so weak as to be useless.

For now I’ll continue to test Google News along side of Apple News. A few days ago I would not have considered switching but I’m at least open to that idea now.