Apple is rumored to be working on an Apple News subscription service that would provide access to magazines and paywalled news content for a monthly fee, and hints of that new subscription service have been spotted in macOS Mojave 10.14.4.
Developer Steve Troughton-Smith this morning shared some screenshots of the new subscription service pulled from the latest macOS 10.14.4 beta.
The screenshots show notifications from the Apple News subscription service, which will alert subscribers when new issues of their favorite magazines are available. Similar subscription information has also already been seen in iOS 12.2, with the subscription service called "Apple News Magazines."
Apple's magazine subscription service is based on Texture, the digital magazine app that it purchased in 2018. Texture, which is still available via the App Store, provides access to over 200 popular magazines like People, The New Yorker, Time, National Geographic, Shape, Newsweek, and more, all for a $9.99 per month fee.
Unsurprisingly, it looks like Apple News' magazine service is prepared to launch on macOS too pic.twitter.com/df0oyJXvjF — Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith) March 12, 2019
It's likely Apple's built-in Apple News magazine subscription service will be priced similarly, with customers able to sign up in the Apple News app and pay through standard iTunes billing.
Apple is also working on incorporating news subscription options into Apple News, however, so pricing and full details on how the service works remain unclear. Apple is likely planning to offer paywalled news and magazine access for one monthly fee, though some news sites are not on board.
There's a bunch you can discern about Apple News' magazines from what's in the OS betas: for example, the magazines are PDF-based (like most iPad magazines), and issues can be stored offline. The magazine genres are listed as pictured. Most of its code is written in Swift pic.twitter.com/Uc1gN0qygu — Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith) March 12, 2019
According to rumors, while magazine publishers have agreed to Apple's subscription plans, the Cupertino company has been clashing with news publishers over the planned revenue split. Apple wants to collect 50 percent of the subscription revenue from its Apple News service, which is unappealing to paywalled sites that already collect more money from their standalone subscription options.
We'll learn more about Apple's subscription plans for its news service on March 25, which is when Apple is holding an event to unveil both the news subscription service and its upcoming streaming TV service.
Top Rated Comments
An entire generation has grown up expecting written content to be free but there are actual people working on it, investigating, researching, writing and editing to bring this content to us and they should be paid.
The ad model doesn't work and as a result publishing has been broken since the internet took over print. People aren't going to subscribe to dozens of magazines and newspapers individually, but Apple Music has shown us that they will pay one subscription to have access to all of it with content producers being paid per use.
You used to go to the newsstand to buy the newspapers. Newspapers were never free.
Neither they are today, but are funded by ads. Ad industry mines data like crazy, therefore, I am ready to pay for newspapers, if that mean ad industry will lose one big customer.
All this does is add a place to get the premium pay for news sites in one place. And of course magazines from their texture acquisition. You're reading way to much in to this.
Can you please make this service available to non-US costumers?
Best wishes,
Europe