back to article Publishers signed up to Apple's premium News may be less than 'appy to discover the iGiant snatching readers

If you click on a link to an article in Safari, you may find Apple's News app pops up and opens the page rather than the browser. This occurs only for Safari users who happen to be Apple News+ subscribers and have not disabled this option, which appears to be the default in the subscription service's settings, and if the link …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    Walls

    If you want the garden you have to accept the walls.

    I wouldn't be surprised if the obscure option to allow a garden gate goes away eventually as Microsoft and Google have found with their gaming platforms.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Walls

      If you want the garden you have to accept the walls.

      No. One of the original reasons you'd use iOS or MacOS was because it would at least interface with Open Standards so had choices and could use a back end that was Open Standards compliant (aka nothing made by Microsoft other than by accident).

      Combine Apple's haunting of fruity non-apple-alike trademarks with this, add the serious erosion of usability in iOS due to Microsoft-alike featuritus and it removes a lot of arguments to remain with Apple.

      Apple going the way of Microsoft is following a route to failure.

      1. tcmonkey
        Windows

        Re: Walls

        Eh? Shirley you don't mean the same iOS that has always prevented you from even so much as -running- a browser that doesn't use Safari under the hood, still doesn't have a proper file manager and only just recently allowed content blocking in the browser it does have?

        iOS has never been open, and I say that as a user!

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Walls

          open <> Open Standards ..

          Try getting Outlook to talk carddav and caldav, and you'll see what I mean. As for browsers, I have seen Brave and Firefox on iOS, and I doubt they're the only ones.

          That iOS isn't open, well, duh. That wasn't the point. Also, it now DOES have file management (it had it before as apps, but there's now a file manager as part of the standard build), which suggests you haven't been near iOS for a while.

          1. James 139

            Re: Walls

            As for browsers, I have seen Brave and Firefox on iOS, and I doubt they're the only ones.

            And both of those use WebKit, because Apple require it.

          2. doublelayer Silver badge

            Re: Walls

            "Try getting Outlook to talk carddav and caldav, and you'll see what I mean."

            I think you'll find that, if Outlook won't do it, Thunderbird might, or one of various other programs. Openness doesn't always mean that the included tools do everything, but instead that if they don't, you can replace them with something that does. On Windows, you can. On Mac OS, you can. On IOS, you can't.

            "As for browsers, I have seen Brave and Firefox on iOS, and I doubt they're the only ones."

            They're not. There's also Chrome and the Duck Duck Go browser and Edge mobile and they all run the same engine so it's still not open. But you knew that already, saying this:

            "That iOS isn't open, well, duh. That wasn't the point."

            Maybe all of us are pretty stupid then, because that's what I thought your point was. You* started by saying "One of the original reasons you'd use iOS or MacOS was because it would at least interface with Open Standards so had choices and could use a back end that was Open Standards compliant (aka nothing made by Microsoft other than by accident)." Openness seemed to be somewhat important there, at least the openness of choice, which is what all of us were talking about. If your argument isn't about that, could you explain what you are talking about and why you used the term "open" twice during that argument?

            "Also, it now DOES have file management (it had it before as apps, but there's now a file manager as part of the standard build), which suggests you haven't been near iOS for a while."

            It didn't before and it only sort of does now. Apps that did file manager things before were doing that within their own sandboxes. Moving files into and out of apps was painful to the extent that you basically needed Dropbox to do it as they were the only service that had good integration into most apps. What is the situation now? Well, it's much better. Why? Because Apple made iCloud Drive, which is basically Dropbox. It got integrated into more apps, but not all of them. I can't use that file browser to retrieve my document from any app, only apps that support it. Going into it now (latest IOS 13), there are several apps that store files but I can't read them; I can only get those by using the mechanism built into the app, which in some cases means iTunes file sharing and in other cases means weird web server thing. There's also one app that stores files, I can read them, and I can't find anything because the app has stored each one individually using directories with random hex string IDs (presumably the developer just connected their file system to the IOS one without giving me the database the app uses to associate files with these strings). It's also tricky to open a file in another app. Sometimes, I have to use an internal app button to do it. Sometimes, I have to use the file manager to send the file to the app. This is the difference between a file system and an open one. With an open file system, I'd be able to know exactly where the file is, and the apps would as well.

            MacOS is open, at least for now. It has been since NeXT days (a little ironically), and it's one of the things that drew me to it. Despite the fact that IOS has a lot of the same code running its lower levels, the fact that I can't run or change those means IOS is not open. I'm using open here to mean openness of choice, standards, etc.

            *You: Technically, there are two posts by an anonymous poster. Based on the similarity in points and that they are in the same thread, I assume them to be the same person.

          3. tcmonkey
            Mushroom

            Re: Walls

            Congratulations on missing every point that I made.

            Yes, you can run other "browsers", but they're all the same engine under the hood, so if you want to render a site in something other than a Webkit browser you're SOL. I said as much in my original response to you. This also means no browser plugins. All of this is stuff that Android has had since literally day 1.

            I say that the file manager provided isn't a proper file manager because it does not really allow you to perform traditional tasks. Sure, you can copy files around, but you want to pick a file and open it with a given application? Nup. Want a file to be visible to an application with it being it its sandbox? Nup. Want to view content loaded to a device, such as images or sound files? Nup. Want to send a file to a non-Apple device, using what might be considered an Open Standard? Nup. As a file manager it is spectacularly useless.

            As doublelayer says above - "Openness doesn't always mean that the included tools do everything, but instead that if they don't, you can replace them with something that does. On Windows, you can. On Mac OS, you can. On IOS, you can't." - he's exactly right, and on this iOS has all the options of a brick.

            Again, I say all this as a user. I have an iPhone X in my pocket _right now_. These limitations are not especially bothersome to me, but to say they don't exist is simply untrue.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Walls

        One of the original reasons you'd use iOS or MacOS was because it would at least interface with Open Standards so had choices and could use a back end that was Open Standards compliant

        ROTFPMSL.

        Apple has never paid more than lip service to open standards, right back from the days when Macs would only work with "Apple SCSI" drives, not standards-compliant SCSI drives.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Walls

          The important things are.

          Email: POP/IMAP/SMTP over SSL and STARTTLS. Also does Exchange and Gmail, but you can run it from a standard Linux box.

          Contacts: carddav

          Calendar: caldav, both calendar and subscription facilities

          (try to coax Outlook into supporting either - not going to happen without 3rd party plugins).

          Not so standard: notes/reminders. It works, but iServices get to play with extra bits.

          By the way, the same is true for MacOS.

    2. renke

      Re: Walls

      > If you want the garden you have to accept the walls.

      Nah. I think Apple (and all the other big inet companies for that matter) are more into Hahas (or even Hohos). It only gives the impression of openness.

      1. Gerhard den Hollander

        Re: Walls

        Have an upvote for managing to include BS Johnson

  2. NetBlackOps

    Rules for thee, but not for me, eh Apple? In the midst of an anti-trust investigation, no less. Should be interesting with the NYT as the perfect example.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Shits All Over Google

    At least when on the Google News site, I'm taken to, say, news.com.au when I click on a relevant headline. And for some screwed up reason I'm not yet able to grasp, Google News will soon have to pay sites like news.com.au for providing a link to news.com.au ??? WTF? It appears to me that Google News is doing these websites a favour...

    Occasionally I'm faced with a paywalled news site (afr.com); I wonder what the percentage of clicks were converted into paid subscriptions??

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Shits All Over Google

      Why post AC to cheerlead for Google? Not because you're ashamed......

      "It appears to me that Google News is doing these websites a favour..."

      Yeah, that's how business works youngster. Nice big companies do favours for little ones, just to help them grow into competitors.

      To quote Peggy Bundy talking to an astronaut, "Spend some time on planet Earth lady!".

    2. rg287

      Re: Shits All Over Google

      And for some screwed up reason I'm not yet able to grasp, Google News will soon have to pay sites like news.com.au for providing a link to news.com.au ???

      No. Google will have to pay sites presenting their content to users within Google, instead of forwarding them to the site where the content creator runs ads and can make some money.

      It turns out that if you give the user a big enough snippet of the article, they don't usually bother clicking through to read the rest of it - even if you provide a link.

      But you knew that already.

  4. RyokuMas
    Joke

    Going rogue...

    "... which appears to be the default in the subscription service's settings..."

    Coded by some rogue lone developer, no doubt...

  5. Potemkine! Silver badge
    Big Brother

    "Everything within Apple, nothing outside Apple, nothing against Apple"

    Do you remember the time when Apple was advertising as being the anti-Big Brother?

    1. RM Myers
      Unhappy

      Re: "Everything within Apple, nothing outside Apple, nothing against Apple"

      And you believed them?

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Potemkine! Silver badge

        Re: "Everything within Apple, nothing outside Apple, nothing against Apple"

        Does anyone believe in ads? ^^

  6. RM Myers
    Thumb Down

    The Apple New App

    is crap. It wants to jump back to the beginning of articles when you are half way through them. But at least the article list is consistent, it also keeps jumping back to the top. There is no way I'm going to pay for the New+ app (no matter how many ads for it IOS bombards me with).

    1. AMBxx Silver badge
      Facepalm

      Re: The Apple New App

      It's sweet that you think you have a choice!

      1. Richard Jones 1
        WTF?

        Re: The Apple New App

        Do not use apple? Is that not the real choice after all?

        1. RM Myers
          Unhappy

          Re: The Apple New App

          After getting just 1+ year of updates for my Samsung Galaxy, I swore off Android. Since Windows Phone, Blackberry OS, and almost every other smart phone OS has bit the dust, I ended up with Apple. The hardware is great, the software is very inconsistent. Things like face recognition are very good, other things like the News app, OS updates, recent phone call list, etc. have bugs that drive me crazy. Particularly disappointing considering the price and Apple's financial resources.

          1. AMBxx Silver badge

            Re: The Apple New App

            Looks like your 12 months or so ahead of me. Now on my 2nd Android, still missing Windows Phone, feeling that Apple is the inevitable next step.

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