Apple Special Event Livestream [video] | Hacker News Reader

Apple Special Event Livestream [video]

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82 pointsslater118 comments

One highlight is that there's a heavy emphasis on private recommendations inside the news app, including magazines (the app downloads a set of articles and manages recommendations on-device). There was a slide "Apple doesn't know what you read." Apple is doubling down on not giving data to advertisers.

Because they are charging a monthly fee to access it and don't need to sell your data as a business model.

Not having to deal with advertisers has always been a gain of paying for online services via subscription. Although some try to mix the two.

Charging for magazine subscriptions hasn’t stopped publishers from selling your information to advertisers before.

Advertisements in News+ are included like they are in print magazines, mainly.

Yes, but magazines publishers will sell your name, address, demographic information to advertisers.

They don't have access to that information through Apple News whatsoever.

> Because they are charging a monthly fee to access it

Only for the magazines, not the news.

Just because you pay for a service doesn't mean that you still aren't partially the product you're paying for.

There is nothing stopping companies from selling your data despite you paying for it.

Do they have a way of getting recommendations to carry over across different devices?

I assume it works like Pocket personalized recommendations in Firefox. 1/ The reading history is stored on-device, 2/ encrypted on-device, and then 3/ kept in sync with other authenticated devices that are able to decrypt the reading history (which is stored on the server but not readable by the server because it's encrypted).

Nothing similar about private personalization was definitively mentioned for the recommendations inside the AppleTV app, however. From what I can tell Apple will be collecting viewing information, not only for content on iTunes but now, content viewed via cable subscriptions and streaming subscriptions like Hulu and Prime Video. The value proposition of this new app is "all of your content in one place, regardless of subscription." The only commitment from Apple was that they wouldn't share personal information with anyone (not that Apple won't have access to this information).

It's no wonder there wasn't a partnership that worked with Netflix here since Netflix uses information about viewing to guide licensing deals and inform what the studio should produce.

Apple News is available right now, but Apple TV+ doesn't launch until the fall. I'm unsure what the existing TV app does as far as privacy (and a quick search isn't turning up much), but I imagine as the launch of Apple TV+ nears we'll hear more about the privacy aspect of things.

I am indeed curious what the current TV app shares on an Apple TV, though.

If this is true Apple's not going to be able to offer you valuable insight or recommendations based on your unique reading habits. It also means losing your device is saying goodbye to your data. You can't get insight without giving data.

Not sure if they do this, but recommendations can be encrypted on your device and stored on their servers. They can't read it, but if you lost your device, they are still available.

> Apple News is used to read 5 billion articles a month and is the number one news app...unbelievable! (paraphrasing)

Not really surprising at all, given that iOS pushes Apple News articles onto the lock screen/notification center. I find it annoying and turned it off, but I have noticed that many family members didn't know what it was exactly or how to get rid of it (though they wanted to).

It really is a much better product than Google's offering though. I don't know what Google was thinking about when the killed the Google News app.

they were likely thinking, it doesnt generate enough revenue?

The irk, is it's still in my launcher, and on Chrome home screen on my android device. But it's a pain to get in a browser on the desktop.

Sure, it's not a bad app. It's just a little odd to feign surprise that it's the most popular news app, given how it's featured in iOS.

I do like the accessibility aspect of the app — it is the only big tech company app that allows the user to change the text size on iOS. It is crazy that this very basic usability/accessibility feature sets it apart from offerings by Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, but Apple News is the only one that does this. [1]

One thing I don't like about Apple News is the way they do link sharing, which for some reason is stickier than other link shorteners.

1: https://medium.com/@BeeLineReader/the-importance-of-text-acc...

Agreed. The link sharing is lame. I also wish there was a Windows app (or better yet, browser support).

Do you know exactly what is different that makes it work this way? All I know is it doesn't work with the news reader app my startup makes. [1] Pocket seems to have figured out how to sidestep the annoyingness, but I don't know how.

1: http://www.beelinereader.com

Was this a change in iOS 12? I didn’t get them for a long time and then suddenly it decides I need a push notification about Lady Gaga or something.

I don’t even have push alerts turned on for email, bullshit news notifications can fuck right off.

In the time it took you to write this you could've switched the notifications off.

Settings -> Notifications -> News.

I did that immediately after it started. You can do it from right in the notification now, no need to go through Settings.

The most important question is not which subscription offerings or bundles Apple will announce today, or if the content will be any good, but if they will be mainly available on Apple's hardware or provided on other platforms.

Apple Music is available on iOS, Mac, Android and Windows (including in Window's App Store) but that's partly due to the legacy of iTunes and acquisition of Beats (which already had an Android app). There has been encouraging signs in the past year as iTunes content has been made available on more non-Apple platforms.

So I'll be watching closely during this for the availability of the Apple News service. When Apple acquired Texture they kept the Android app alive but immediately shut down the Windows 10 app. What will Apple do next with this service?

Their recent TV announcements are another big platform worth mentioning. Apple TV app is coming to TVs from Samsung, LG, Sony, and Visio, along with Roku and FireTV devices.

It makes sense to have their subscription services available to as many people as possible. One of the reasons to push everything video related into the TV app is to be compatible with all the new smart TVs and boxes I suppose.

News and Music could have web versions quite easily, there are third party clients for Music already.

It's really annoying that neither Apple or Google let you completely block Fox News. Both offer options that on the surface seem to block it. However, with Apple News I blocked Fox and the page reloaded to "Trending Stories," and the first thing was Fox News clickbait. Google News seems to block it, but when you click through to any "Full Coverage" links, Fox News is back polluting the feed.

I’m no fan of Fox News but I like the fact that they don’t make it easy to be in a filter bubble.

I have to spend irreplaceable moments of my life explaining to my own family that vaccines won't cause autism. I'm well outside the filter bubble. Fox News is like sewage, in that yes, I'm aware of its existence, but no, I don't want it mixed in with things I consume daily.

The little I’ve watched Fox News, while the opinion pieces are one sides and dishonest and they do choose what not to cover and what to emphasize, I haven’t seen any indications that they cover outright conspiracy theories.

Out of the conservative news sites though, I do find that RedState and the Hill to be more honest.

The certainly fanned the flames of Seth Rich conspiracy theories: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Seth_Rich#Fox_News_r...

I loved the promise of Apple News, but in my experience it’s been pretty bad. As much as I try to curate it, it’s full of clickbait and topics I’m not interested in (really, Kylie Jenner posted a photo of her butt on Instagram and we need a news headline about it?).

The morning/evening digests seem to be higher quality (may be hand curated) but doesn’t seem personalized.

Interesting. I’ve added a couple of crap news sites to a Pihole - it shows the headline but is blocked if you tap it. Blocking sites is a required feature, wonder why it isn’t their already?

Apple allows you to completely block things with a whitelist model instead of a blacklist model.

    Settings -> News -> Restrict Stories in Today

These changes apply to the feed that shows up on the Siri watch face as well, and are a good way to force small local outlets onto my watch.

Enjoy.

Paraphrasing comments from Tim Cook regarding Apple News:

> "Apple News is now the world's most popular news app ... Our editors pick the best source..."

That's both amazing (the rise to prominence) and scary (the inherent centralized power).

i didn't even remember apple news was an app. For me it's just a list of links to regular news websites from the widget iOS page... I wonder if they count that as well in the "most popular app".

I saw that, but given iOS worldwide market share, I find it very hard to believe.

Android does not have a single, built-in news app.

Google news comes to mind.

Plus 22.85% doesn't make it the leader, even if we go along with Android not having a single source of news.

https://www.macworld.co.uk/feature/iphone/iphone-vs-android-...

> That's both amazing (the rise to prominence) and scary (the inherent centralized power).

I don't know a single person that uses a "news app", so I'll take this feat with a grain of salt.

Yes because your anecdotal experience is statistically relevant....

I wasn't speaking for all the world. I said I'll take it with a grain of salt. Reading the news in general has obviously taken a huge hit in popularity and doing so via a special app (outside of the community driven ones like Reddit) is an even smaller part of the way people consume this media.

It's obvious from peoples' experience with Apple News in these comments that a lot of content consumed from there is actually involuntary from widgets, etc.. What I took away from that quote is in line with that; this isn't really much of a feat when dug deeper into.

Does anyone think Apple News is more popular than social media apps like Facebook or Twitter? Because well more than half of all Americans get news from social media.

I think Apple is being a bit cute here about how they define what constitutes a "news app." If then mean a mobile app that aggregates news stories and does nothing else, then sure, I believe their claim. I don't see why that matters, though.

tl;dw; apple news+ (news subscription app for $9.99 / month) apple card (credit card by apple backed by master card/goldman sachs) apple arcade (gaming subscription with 100+ exclusive games, pricing TBD) apple tv channels (all in streaming app having channels like hbo and starz, priced individually per channel) apple tv+ (service that will carry Apple produced content)

A physical credit card with no credit card number, cvv code, expiration date, or signature? This is such a simple security idea that I’m surprised more companies don’t do it.

The only reason they can do it is because they can display all that information on Apple devices in a presumably secure enough way, which other companies obviously can't.

New York Times published a rare behind-the-scenes look at Apple News last October. It's was pretty interesting. In a world where every company is trying to create algorithms to automate everything, Apple is taking a more human approach.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/25/technology/apple-news-hum...

On the flip side, NYT opted against joining Apple News, presumably on the 50% cut that Apple is taking[0].

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/20/technology/apple-news-wal...

It's been 10 years since I worked on live streaming for sports. Lets see if it's finally happening. My guess is... meh.

I've been using NHL.tv and MLB.tv for at least the last half-decade to watch ice hockey and baseball, respectively. I've been looking at F1 TV for this season, but haven't jumped in yet as there isn't an app for $STREAMING_BOX (you have to send video from another device to get it onto your TV).

It's less a question of technology and more a question of business at this point.

There is still technology issues with streaming. Take DAZN for example. They are the provider of NFL streams and they started with a ton of issues with quality of streams, to the point where it was unwatchable. They actually refunded everyone a month's worth of service ($20) because it was so bad.

The NFL is also their own provider of streams. GamePass works great, all games live. It’s just not available in the states for business reasons.

They had similar problems with their football (as in soccer) streams in europe at the beginning. However to be fair they improved a lot since then and it's pretty stable now. One has to consider that it's live and while I'm sure Netflix or other big players would do a better job, being able to buffer makes this much easier.

I think DAZN is an awesome package with lots of relevant content for a football (soccer) enthusiast like me at a very fair price.

Yes, those use the CoreMedia rtsp streaming that I did a little bit of work on. Or at least they did when I was there.

Naive question, from me: Why isnt there a "streaming hub"

Where anyone can pub-sub model streaming through "allstreams.com" and users just publish to it, and subscribe from it based on the content they want.

Subs pay some amountto subscribe to topics of interest and pubs pay premium to be "featured in their category"

Imagine "reddit for streaming"

and each /s/substream can have uses subscribe and comment and thread-topic beneath the stream....

with meta, mega, mash streams available as an option...

Build your own stream channel watching library....

#tag them so you can have #gaming streams lumped.

#nfl, #nhl or #Raiders for all things Raiders, as an example...

#news or #conservativenews

etc... you get the idea...

I'm an F1 TV subscriber. The F1 TV website has a pretty poor UI. No spacebar to pause. No distinct bookmarkable URL for past seasons. Sporadic full race archives - from 93 to 2001, there are only about 3 full races per season, the rest are highlight coverage. When live watching a race switching to one of the in car cameras results in the whole app reloading. The streaming quality of the Australian GP was pretty good, no buffering or image quality issues.

That said, the coverage is more reliable than ESPN's. When F1 moved to ESPN from NBCSN for the past year, I think it was a huge slap in the face to US F1 fans. NBCSN really cared about the coverage, they had their own team and they promoted the coverage. ESPN seems to run F1 like an infomercial, they just rebroadcast the british coverage. ESPN frequently doesn't broadcast qualifying or worse will broadcast practice and not qualifying.

Until TV stops paying for a monopoly on sports (via blackouts of local games) the fans will continue to consume subpar services. I would pay hand over fist for an NBA streaming app that gave me every game at good quality. Instead I use the Hulu Live TV package and occasionally watch pirate streams (because the Hulu UI for recording a game interferes with watching it live - I've been stuck in loops of watching 5 minute commercial blocks endlessly because they didn't invest enough into QA).

EDIT: I use the Apple TV hulu app which probably gets less development resources/QA then other platforms.

The nice thing about the ATV Hulu app is that you can log in to Hulu at a system level, and then individual channel apps can use that system-level login. If I wanted to watch+record, I'd watch live via the channel's app, and then watch the recording via Hulu. As you said, though, catching up to a live event was an awful UX.

FWIW, I've been trying PS Vue this month, and they handle that case far better than Hulu.

Yup, I have used the NFL one. I don't care that it's not live because I don't want to spend my daytime hours watching football, but I'm happy to watch my out-of-market team after-the-fact while I eat dinner. Particularly on 60 minute replay.

I'm really interested in F1 TV, but I suspect they'll never offer the features I want:

* Play via AndroidTV or AppleTV

* Live OR replay

* 2nd-screen sync for tablet or computer so I can watch telemetry and data and driver views.

It's definitely a non-starter to have to cast from my laptop to my TV, and only have a single-screen experience. I really want the main broadcast on my TV and only choose to have the telemetry or driver views as a second screen.

F1 TV has said they'll do apps for streaming boxes, but haven't given a timetable as of yet, the same for in-session catchup.

2nd-screen sync sounds cool, but I also feel like getting the sync right will be very difficult.

All of the OTT services have sports packages similar to what you'd get from a cable company.

If Apple News is accessible by a browser, I might sign up. (If there's any service that's perfect for HTML5 and CSS, it's news and magazines.) But if Apple ignores the web and requires an app so they can show me an animated magazine cover, I'll go on ignoring Apple News.

> If there's any service that's perfect for HTML5 and CSS, it's news and magazines.

There were rumors that the magazines in Apple News would be PDF-based. Fingers crossed this is not the case, for so many reasons....

Which reasons?

PDFs don't reflow, for starters - have you ever tried reading a PDF of a book on your phone? It's a miserable experience.

In addition to reflow, described elsewhere, imagine having to design PDfs in a zillion sizes so it looks good on everything from an iPhone SE up to an iPad Pro (or iMac, for that matter).

They're not PDF-based. They take in a JSON spec of their own design and the output seems to be a custom HTML-like view. It auto-reflows [to the chagrin of some art directors and designers].

They seem to have prioritized readability and accessibility by limiting composition.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_news/apple_n...

edit: Some back issues are PDFs. Future issues won't be.

Is this the same for magazines? If true, this would be great. I can understand how magazine folks would want to be able to have more control over layout and such, and would therefore prefer PDF.

Yep it’s the same across the board.

The main differences involve how you utilize the available components and parameters—like web I guess but with greater restrictions that put the reader first (IMO).

You’ve nailed the view of art teams, but they’re generally welcoming in my experience. The challenge is in preventing doubling up their workloads.

Edit again!: I can’t speak for every magazine and what Apple might be permitting now. But most are providing at least a simple reader-style view.

You're likely in the minority on this view though.

agreed, that's be nice.

I was initially skeptical of Apple diversifying into services, but wow they might have just created the next generation bank (I'm sure they'll become a bank at some point). Their rewards scheme is simple and intuitive. Their privacy features are amazing. They're solving the incomprehensible receipt problem with more intuitive receipts that tags locations on your device and then generate intuitive spending summaries.

The privacy features are even better. No one gets to mine your data, which is incredible! And wow their new card just looks gorgeous and it might be the most secure card ever. It is chip only so that means no more easy skimming and there's no need to change/cancel card numbers when your purse goes missing.

This is the way of the future. Wow.

I like the idea too. But a bank card that doesn't work unless you own a device that runs IOS is a non-starter.

Not for 900 million people who do own an IOS device

Keep in mind apple pay is not available world wide yet

My only real disappointment is that they didn't announce pricing for anything besides Apple News+. I was hoping to see some type of bundled pricing that included more iCloud storage.

Hopefully, with the games subscription, they will see the need for an updated iPod Touch for kids and maybe even one with an iPhone 7/8 size screen. Even if it is only slightly cheaper than the $329 iPad.

An iPod Touch plus a Disney+ subscription, plus a games subscription would be the perfect thing for kids ("cue the outrage about using "electronic babysitters")

>Family Sharing for Apple News+ with no extra cost

I thought that is wrong. While it is good value, a whole family reading it and cost the same? I am very worried about publisher not getting what they need for quality content.

That is your daughter reading on Gossip Magazine, Dad reading Financial Times, and Mum Reading Fashion or something. It would have been better if it was something like $24.99.

So do you buy extra newspapers for your children too and toss yours in the shredder when you’re done with them, so no one else accidentally shares them?

So your children read Financial News and your mum reads Golf Magazine or your Dad reads Woman 's Fashion magazine?

How many of those can be shared? In terms of Interest.

Even a $19.99 would have made it a great deal for many.

I'll wait for the write ups but I'm excited to see what Apple's pivot to services entails. I don't own a iPhone but definitely have been envious of some of the services that are included with the Apple ecosystem. Apple's reputation as a luxury tech company can definitely help them turn into a services giant imo.

It isn’t a pivot to services. They create their own services so they have leverage. Now instead of being forced into bad agreements they can set the terms.

Ultimately access to these services is limited enough that they’ll never become a monopoly so in my opinion they are a great addition to the landscape.

First time that I can watch this in chrome!

Interesting that there's 2% rewards on Apple Pay purchases and 1% when you use the physical card. What happens if you use it to make a purchase online? Presumably that's 1%? It's not Apple Pay, after all (in almost all cases).

I can purchase online using Apple Pay. I'm assuming it requires using MacOS and the seller has to enable it on their end too.

Only the purchaser enabling it and you using Safari.

Fee structure is likely better for Apple when not using the standard visa/mc rail.

"There's never been an offer like this before"

Uh, yes there was. It was called Texture.

Texture didn't have newspapers did it?

"What you read in Apple News wont follow you on the web"

...but they said he was searching about Costa Rica and the news app recommended a magazine article about that.

So, it's the inverse? What you do on the web will follow you into Apple News?

It's being done on your device and not on the web by an external service

Apple Arcade:

One subscription price for games with no in app purchases? That will sell a millions of iPads and hopefully new iPod Touches for kids. But no pricing information???

I bet they are waiting for Google telling some more about pricing on their Stadia service. Apple Arcade has to be cheaper.

This event is an anti-trust Pinata, Apple Card is probably the most amazing product introduced during the event.

There's nothing particularly amazing about Apple Card. The "rewards" aren't special and your money is locked the Apple ecosystem unless you also link a bank account (and then wait 1-3 days per external transfer).

I'll be impressed in a few years after they gain enough traction to release their own payment network that totally sidesteps credit cards.

The rewards are special because they aren’t obtuse. You can use the rewards to pay on your credit card and you can use the physical credit cards anywhere.

What is this supposed to be about?

apple's new streaming video and news services and maybe other stuff.

Apple News+: $9.99/mo with family sharing included for free. First month free.

Hmm... I wonder if my NVidia Shield TV will get Apple TV app.

When did these start working on browsers other than Safari?

The AppleTV app on Roku. I have two AppleTV 4K devices but I also have three Roku TVs. I’m interested in trying it on them.

$9.99 for full access news? Too good to be true. If everything I want is there, I will be their customer forever.

If everything you want is the LA Times and the Wall Street Journal (not counting the 300 magazines as "news") you're covered :-)

I must be missing something. Why would I want to pay for news? Before I used to get my news from FF newsfeed. Then they discontinued it, and I realized I don't miss it. Honestly, I'd rather look at HN frontpage whenever I have a free minute.

I’m sure you also haven’t owned a TV in 10 years and wonder why people still watch TV....

Yes most people would rather get their news from HN.

It is a little baffling why people tolerate tv and the 10 mins of adverts per hour. I used to, and I don’t get that either.

They are talking about hundreds of magazines included. Not just news like newspapers. Most of those print magazines would be so nice to have nearly free and more entertaining.

I often see links on the HN front page that require payment.

This is rock bottom, Apple has become a loanshark. There's no innovation left.

How so?

It's just the trend I've observed that companies want to lend people money even though they are not banks or creditcard companies because it's the easiest why to make money without adding value.

So what I'm saying is that it's not a good sign that Apple is trying to become a bank instead of making decent hardware/software.

I’m not sure that Apple is making money off of the credit card besides the usual merchant fees it gets from using Apple Pay. It seems like it is just another branded card run by Goldman Sachs.

lending money helps people unlock activity they want to do today, but can only afford tomorrow. E.g. live in a house, or have a car to commute.

Even short-term loans can provide very helpful liquidity to folks facing a cash crunch.

Why is that not adding value?

Any hardware updates? I hope there’s new iPhone se.

iPod touch refresh is rumored but I'm doubtful.

The spate of hardware refreshes last week makes this unlikely. Perhaps the Apple TV could be updated, but not the core hardware (phones/tablets/computers/watches).

Pretty much every sign points to zero hardware updates.

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