Apple's "It's Show Time" media event discussion thread

[tomsem]

News+ is as much about ‘news’ as you care to make it.

As with any all you can eat subscription service (Netflix, Spotify, etc.) there will be plenty of content which is of no interest, and content that is not included. But by the same token it is a platform for discovering things that you would not otherwise find, and bundling can save money and be more convenient than managing separate subscriptions.

There are risks to self-curation: you may miss out on things that you would value, enjoy, or which are otherwise ‘good for you to know’ even if you don’t necessarily enjoy what you learn.

I’m enjoying it more than Texture so far - because it is more news-oriented, and customizable, and consolidates reading that used to take place in browser and various apps. And I’ll be able to cancel a couple of existing subscriptions.

[hollowpoint]

Your last comment for me would be the one thing that could make it appealing. If they included a handful of the pricey things I read--like NYT and the Economist--and maybe a couple of the specialized items, I'd probably do it for the cost savings and convenience as you did. Unfortunately they have none of those.

Originally Posted by tomsem

There are risks to self-curation: you may miss out on things that you would value, enjoy, or which are otherwise ‘good for you to know’ even if you don’t necessarily enjoy what you learn.

Yes there are risks, I'd say all curation has risks. It's like writing history, it's inherently selective not comprehensive. One risk is creating your own echo chamber. Only selecting sources that agree with you, and never reading anything that challenges you to think and consider other points of view, or that helps build empathy and understanding toward people that hold different views.

Two thoughts on that. One, I'd hope that people would be objective enough to include a cross-section of sources in your reading. I do, and I know many do. But if someone is unwilling to consider alternate points of view that are already freely available online, I'm not certain subscribing to a service will change their mind. Because they can still curate within the curation, again creating a private echo chamber. Second, if I did want to pay someone to create a balanced, cross-sectional curation of reading material for me, it definitely wouldn't be one of the big US tech companies. All of them are of a single narrow and monolithic political perspective, and this definitely affects their curation.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by tomsem

News+ is as much about ‘news’ as you care to make it.

Only if they add a boat load more newspapers. Magazines are typically published quite a while after news takes place and cannot be considered news that far after the fact. Plus many of the magazines will not even be news article oriented. As far as I’m concerned, News+ is little more than a magazine viewer with a handful of newspapers thrown in.

[OtinG]

The News+ free trial is over now. I only used it a handful of times in the first week of the trial then quickly cancelled the auto renew. I didn't check it out after the first week as it wasn't a service that interested me. I occasionally still look at the old News service. I wonder if it will disappear once the News+ service gets ramped up, or whether they will keep it. News actually covers news, whereas News+ is more about magazines than anything else. I still think they should have named it "Newsstand" or something similar, rather than "News+".

[leebase]

I canceled it as well. Just too many other sources of content that already have my attention