Apple TV+ and the top pro soccer league in the United States, Major League Soccer (MLS), said Wednesday the MLS Season Pass subscription service showing all matches with no blackouts launches February 1, 2023.
The launch, which includes features on multiple Apple services, kicks off a 10-year partnership between Apple and MLS.
An amusing audio teaser from Apple News on Monday introduced the limited podcast After the Whistle, in which Coach Beard from the Apple TV+ hit Ted Lasso — aka actor Brendan Hunt — and veteran English sportscaster Rebecca Lowe will explain everything about the world’s biggest sporting event, the World Cup, as it happens.
As you may know, the World Cup is a massive football tournament (to use the world’s sensible term for soccer). It kicks off Sunday in Qatar and will be broadcast globally. Apple News boots up the podcast on Thursday in anticipation of it.
New in iOS 16 is the ability to follow your favorite sporting pastime with My Sports. It allows you to get the latest scores, read coverage from newspapers and magazines, see scheduled games and watch highlights.
It works across multiple apps, including Apple News, Apple TV and others. You can follow teams from the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, NWSL, WNBA and MLS. It also includes college football and basketball. Here’s how to set it up.
Eddy Cue, Apple’s SVP of Services, is reportedly looking to restructure the company’s offerings to make a more significant push in streaming and advertising.
Apple’s services business has been growing rapidly over the last few years. It currently boasts more than 825 million paid subscribers.
Apple revealed who will call the games, and what production enhancements to expect, for its upcoming sports show, Friday Night Baseball. The new broadcast hits the field with a doubleheader Friday on Apple TV+.
Apple News’ local coverage feature this week expanded its reach to Canada. Users in Montreal and Toronto can now enjoy local news from a number of different sources, including CTV News and Toronto Star.
Local coverage was first added to Apple News in July 2020, but growth has been slow since then. Although it has made its way to additional U.S. cities since it debuted, this is the first time the feature has landed in another country.
A three-month free trial of Apple News+ is now available to those who sign up through Cyber Monday. The promotion is much more generous than the one-month trial typically offered by Apple, but it’s only available to new users.
Once the trial has ended, subscriptions auto-renew at $9.99 per month.
Apple News will now offer its “local news experience” in three additional U.S. cities: Charlotte, N.C., Miami and Washington, D.C. The service’s editors curate local news, selecting coverage of topics important to communities, Apple said.
Apple will ask iPhone and iPad users for their permission to show personalized ads within its own apps in iOS and iPadOS 15.
A new popup appears when opening the App Store for the first time after installing one of Apple’s latest betas. It says personalized ads “help you discover apps, products and services that are relevant to you.”
A new Apple News Partner Program allows subscription news publications to provide their content to the Apple News app while paying a lower than usual share of the revenue coming from customers. Companies that choose to participate will have to give Apple 15% of subscription fees in the first year — half the usual amount.
This move is apparently in response to complaints from big publications about Apple’s cut.
Apple will highlight the contributions of women to society in many ways during Women’s History Month, including suggesting relevant outstanding books, podcasts and apps. It also plans virtual Today at Apple sessions led by female creators.
Plus, there’ll be an International Women’s Day Apple Watch Activity Challenge for March 8, and there’ll be other ways of observing this day.
With a new president installed, this has been a big week for the United States — and, to paraphrase Billy Madison, news app are reaping all the benefits.
According to a new report by top app analytics platform Sensor Tower, news apps in the App Store received a nice Inauguration Day bump. Three of the big winners were CNN‘s news app, aggregator News Break, and Newsmax. They respectively jumped 530, 13, and 43 spots in the App Store rankings.
Barack Obama, the last Democratic POTUS, was reportedly a big Apple fan. And his successor, President-elect Joe Biden, is supposedly an Apple guy as well — more specifically Apple News.
Evan Osnos, CNN’s newest contributor and author of Joe Biden: The Life, The Run, and What Matters Now, says Biden “relies on Apple News to help him get headlines from … reputable media sources.”
Apple is now offering new Apple News+ subscribers an extended three-month trial. The deal is available from today through Monday, November 30, in all four countries currently supported by Apple News+.
Several major news outlets are throwing their hats into the ring with Epic Games and others in pushing back against Apple’s App Store commission.
According to the Wall Street Journal, a trade body that represents the New York Times, Washington Post, WSJ and other publishers has sent a letter to Tim Cook asking for better terms for digital subscriptions sold through the App Store.
In the wake of The New York Times quitting Apple News, the head of News Corp. says that The Wall Street Journal isn’t leaving the news service that’s built into iOS and macOS.
Oprah Winfrey will be Apple News’ first ever “guest editor,” Apple said Tuesday. The role shows Apple deepening its relationship with the iconic TV host and entrepreneur.
Apple News Today, the breezy new podcast showcasing the day’s top news stories, sounds perfectly peppy and polished. Maybe too perfectly polished, in fact — you won’t find a single rough edge on this slickly produced daily news report, which Apple unleashed last week with iOS 13.6. You will endure no energized, partisan rants, either. These straight-down-the-middle reports won’t get your blood boiling while you make your morning coffee or tea. If you’re tired of partisanship, this is the antidote.
What you will find in the weekday audio show is steady promotion of the Apple News app, and of Apple News+, the company’s reportedly struggling subscription news service. This upbeat and earnest free daily news briefing basically functions as a Trojan horse for getting in the ears of potential Apple News+ subscribers.
Mac users can grab macOS Catalina 10.15.6 starting Wednesday. This update adds local coverage to Apple News in select areas. And this new version kills a few bugs, too.
New York Times articles stopped appearing in the Apple News app on Monday. The newspaper ended its partnership with Apple because the Times wants a more direct connection between itself and its customers.
This is not just about the Apple News+ subscription service. Content from this source no longer appears in the free version either.
Google will pay publishers so it can create “a new news experience launching later this year,” the company said Thursday. While the announcement is vague, Google seems to be putting together a rival for Apple News+, a subscription news-aggregation service for Mac, iPhone and iPad.
Stories picked by Apple News’ human editors are far more likely to represent a diverse range of outlets — and be more serious and less focused on celebrities and entertainment — than its algorithmically curated alternative, researchers claim.
Jack Bandy and Nicholas Diakopoulos from Northwestern University analyzed thousands of Apple’s “Top Stories” and “Trending” articles over a 10-month period. They discovered that the latter, which are determined algorithmically, show stories from significantly fewer outlets, predominantly CNN or Fox News. Articles from BuzzFeed and People also figured heavily in the mix — with an emphasis on light news.
It’s now easier to keep track of the latest COVID-19 developments with Apple News. The service on Wednesday added a new coronavirus special coverage section dedicated to providing readers with updates on the outbreak.
Ever since its launch, people have mostly been dismissive about Apple News on iPhone, iPad and Mac. One big reason is the way it interacts with links on the web, boxing users into the News app instead of letting them visit the open web.
For me, that’s actually a pretty desirable thing, because I really like the News app. It’s much cleaner-looking than many ad-bloated websites, and far less emotional and combative than getting your news on social media.
But making the News app show you the things you care about, with less clutter and noise, requires one simple trick.
“Hey Siri, who won the New Hampshire Democratic presidential primary?”
Starting today, Apple’s digital assistant is able to answer that and other election questions as part of Apple News’ 2020 election coverage.