Adaptive Media Assessment — Part 4
Apple News
With tools such as News Preview and Publisher still in beta, we can expect more changes in the near future.
Apple News was released as part of iOS 9 in 2015, but was redesigned for the release of iOS 10 in 2016. Originally open to larger publishing organizations such as CNN, Fox, and ESPN, the app was meant to be a “gathering” place where people can read articles from all of their favorite publications, in one place. Since the iOS 10 release, the app has continued to evolve and was opened to independent publishers in July 2016. While the app has been around for a couple of years, it is still considered to be “new.” Apple News does a lot of things well, and in many cases, better than other platforms, but there are elements of the app on both the publisher and consumer sides that can be enhanced. With tools such as News Preview and Publisher still in beta, we can expect more changes in the near future.
Authoring
While Apple News is new to iOS, the ability for anyone to publish content is even more recent. With this availability, comes the need for tools that allow anyone, with any skill set, to publish content. Currently, Apple News offers front-end authoring for publishers, but the functionality is limited compared to the capabilities of publishers who create articles using their own markup. For example, a person coding their Apple News article using JSON, HTML, and RSS Feeds has the ability to add animations, parallax effects, and a variety of media to their articles such as videos and audio, while the front-end system limits you to overall styling options, a cover image, and text. With this being said, not only do differences in design capabilities lend Apple News to favoring larger publications, but the current need for coding skills to access extra features or design elements favors organizations with resources that the average person doesn’t have. For this reason, I think that the longer Apple restricts these authoring tools, the more the app will move from being open to all publishers to being corporation-centered. It is important to note however that Apple New Publisher is still in beta, and has been open to anyone for less than a year, so hopefully we will begin to see additional feature on their front end, to accommodate independent publications.
Sharing
Because Apple News is only on mobile and tablet devices, they have the advantage of being able to pull sharing capabilities from the device itself. Consistent with other platforms, the number of options is limited, but offers a focused, yet relevant experience for iOS users. I was initially concerned with how well the Apple News sharing mechanisms would integrate with Android and desktop platforms, because the URL that is shared is specific to Apple news. However, it was a pleasant surprise to find that while it is an Apple News url, and opens the article within the app when tapped on an iOS device, they provide an alternate method of seeing the content by redirecting the URL to a publisher’s website, outside of the iOS system. This is something that other platforms could aspire to, because it gives consumers the ability to share content, but does not limit the potential audience to specific devices or operating systems, and makes the content available to everyone. However, as independent publishers become more accessible on Apple News, it will be interesting to see how the same sharing mechanisms cooperate if, for example, a publisher does not have their own web hosting such as Fox News.
Favorites
Apple News is a lot like Flipboard in the sense that a person can filter the content they are receiving by following topics and/or publications. However, the iOS app could better implement what a person is following, specifically on the home screen, otherwise known as the “For You” section. While the content is consistent across devices, in my experience, it is almost too consistent because I have seen no indication that the articles on the home screen are customized based on publications or topics you are interested in. Instead, it is categorized using typical topics you find in any newspapers such as Politics, Top Stories, etc. While this choice in information design reflects a typical news experience, it would be more beneficial for Apple News to use the information they are given about who or what a person is following to customize a splash page, rather than require that they navigate to the “Favorites” screen, and browse their favorites individually.
Advertising
Advertising is necessary for publications to bring in revenue, and on platforms such as Google AMP, developers and marketing specialists tend to make them as flashy and intrusive as possible, which is frustrating when you are a consumer trying to focus on content you are actually there for. For this reason, Apple News’ implementation of advertisements are brilliant. They did not remove them for obvious reasons, but they have redesigned the ads to be unobtrusive by removing unnecessary colors, animations, and distractions, and replaced them with inline ads that still draw attention to themselves and include important information, but are small and easy to pass when you are not interested. While I love the design, and think it prioritizes the needs of Apple News readers, I would be interested to see how much of a response companies get to these ads. If it still seems to be work, Apple may have just found a “best of both worlds” solution that meets the needs of consumers, while meeting and helping publications accomplish their business needs, and earn revenue to cover the extra development time of implementing Apple News articles.
“Apple may have just found a “best of both worlds” solution that meets the needs of consumers, while meeting and helping publications accomplish their business needs…”
Conclusion
As a whole, Apple News seems to be the leading platform is meeting business needs with a consumer-friendly reading experience. With this being said, the platform has room for improvement by better implementing a person’s “favorite” publications and enhancing publishing tools to accompany the availability of being available to everyone, but from the looks of it, they are planning to exactly that. As New Publisher continues to be developed, it will be interesting to see how content evolves, and how independant publishers will survive or be found within Apple News, or if it will continue to be a corporation-centered platform, with the occasional independent author thrown into the mix.
