The CEO and co-founder of Flipboard has some harsh words for Apple’s rival Apple News aggregation app.
Speaking at the Code Media conference, Mike McCue said that Apple News is “a product … living in the past,” and is lacking behind Flipboard in some very important ways.
Specifically, McCue singled out Apple News’ lack of social sharing capability and the lack of curation, instead relying on algorithms to single out the stories that are selected.
He also took subtle aim at the fact that Apple News makes readers view articles in-app, rather than redirecting users’ to a publisher’s own website as Flipboard does. “We’re not trying to create a closed ecosystem … and that’s a big deal for publishers,” he said. Apple News, he opined, represents yet “another format that publishers have to adopt.”
Despite this, McCue acknowledged that Apple represents, “a partner and a competitor at the same time.”
Flipboard vs. Apple News
Apple introduced its Flipboard-style Apple News app in 2015 as a replacement for its Newsstand app for iOS.
Since then, Flipboard has continually evolved in its attempts to stay ahead of what Apple is doing with its news aggregation service. A major 2017 update included the introduction of Smart Magazines, a feature that lets you put the best stories from your favorite sources in one place. Given that Flipboard now features an astonishing 34,000 different topics and more than 30 million magazines, it’s a way to make the content a bit more manageable to users.
Flipboard is reportedly used by around 100 million users, compared to Apple News’ 70 million. You can download Flipboard for free here.
Do you use either service? If so, which do you rate more highly? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: Recode
