Apple’s ecosystem is growing. In addition to his gaming subscription Apple Arcade and the streaming service Apple TV+, the new Apple News+ service, which distributes magazines and newspapers in digital form, was recently presented at the keynote event. Currently, subscribers have access to 300 magazines as well as articles from renowned newspapers and news sites such as the Wall Street Journal or the Los Angeles Times and the Canadian The Star.
Other industry giants such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, on the other hand, have rejected Apple because they prefer to offer their own digital subscriptions.
The paid content can be subscribed to as a flat rate for 9.99 dollars per month. So far the service is only available in the USA and Canada, in autumn Great Britain will follow. There is no date yet for the launch in Germany.
Apple News+ is integrated into the normal News app. An Apple device is required for access. Since the content can also be accessed with the iPhone, the layout of some magazines is adapted accordingly for better readability on the small smartphone display. The first subscribers report that the reading experience on an iPad is already very similar to that of a normal newspaper.
Bugs and vulnerabilities
The launch in Canada and the US on Monday was overshadowed by a series of disruptive crashes reported by many users on both the iPhone, iPad and Mac. Responsible for this is alleged to have been content files delivered incorrectly. Apple was able to fix the problem on the server side without updating the app.
Also, Steve Troughton-Smith, an expert on Apple operating systems, discovered that the content is barely protected. The file format used does not contain DRM. By a detour it was possible to extract content from the cache of the news app without an active subscription. An easily accessible manifest file, which contains download links to all articles, makes downloading even easier.
