Apple replaces digital tragedy Newsstand with Apple News in its latest iOS 9. Apple News is certainly better than Newsstand, but Flipboard CEO Mike McCue is confident that it will not topple Flipboard.
Apple News is a new way to read news in iOS devices. With the app, users can browse, share, and download journalism content for offline reading. Users can add preferred publishers to their favorites and subscribe to news providers they enjoy. It combines form and function - Apple News is designed to be aesthetically pleasing and easy to use.
Wired reported that Apple News studies user preferences and interest to make a guess of what the user would like to read about, and presents these options. Apple Vice President of Product Management and Marketing Susan Prescott described Apple News as "smart". She says, "The more I read, the better it gets at showing me stories I'm interested in."
Apple News features news provided by select partners like The New York Times, BuzzFeed, Wired, and ESPN. It is expected to have 50 partner-publishers at launch. News publishers are given options to customize editorial layouts to fit their company brand as well as add images and videos.
According to Gizmodo, Apple News is far better than Newsstand which was a "digital disaster". However, there are some noticeable problems upon using the app. For example, the content layouts of partner sites do not look good. The design of Apple News is considered far from the UI design for mobile offered by similar apps like Flipboard and Feedly.
What does Flipboard have to say on Apple News' entrance? Fortune reported that Flipboard CEO Mike McCue said that they are not afraid of Apple News, challenging them to "bring it on". McCue explained that Apple mainly deals with hardware, more on building physical products and not services. However, he does acknowledge Apple as a major rival.
"There's no question Apple has a unique advantage, in that they run iOS," McCue told Fortune. "But remember their focus is to build and sell hardware, and everything serves that purpose. They are not an advertising company, and it's very very hard to build an ecosystem geared around advertising and subscriptions unless you are totally focused on that - their interest is in selling more devices."
McCue further added that Flipboard will focus, and will stay focused, on its users and publishers. One of Flipboard's advantages is its ability to provide an advertising platform for publishers unlike the Apple News which could use the ad-blocking function integrated in the iOS 9.
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