APRIL 2020 MACWORLD 43best thing about it is that it’s a relatively
cheap way to read The Wall Street Journal
and The New Yorker. With services, Apple
News+ suggested last spring, Apple was
biting off more than the famous hardware
maker could chew.
Today, Apple’s trouble with its paid
news service looks like an anomaly. Apple
TV+ may not yet be as “sexy” as services
like HBO or the brand-new Disney+, but all
the same, it’d be a stretch to call any of its
launch-week shows (go.macworld.com/
duds) “duds.” (In fact, I’m surprised to find
myself looking slightly more forward to
new episodes of See (go.macworld.com/
seer) than to those for Disney+’s
phenomenal Star Wars epic The
Mandalorian [go.macworld.com/mand].)
Apple Arcade is an
unqualified
success, at least
judging from the
number of people
chatting about it on
social media. For
almost every
Friday since
launch, Apple has
cranked out one or
more fantastic
games that often
release alongside
console
counterparts and
play well on every screened device in the
Apple ecosystem. Aside from some
grumbling that Apple Arcade is only
available on Apple devices, I’ve seen
virtually no outright hate for the service.
And then, of course, we have years-old
Apple Music, which now boasts over 60
million subscribers and faces lawsuits from
rival Spotify aimed at keeping its rapid
expansion in check. Along with iTunes, it
served as early proof that Apple could
dominate in an arena that wasn’t strictly
related to hardware.
Without exception, Apple Music, Apple
TV+, and Apple Arcade are all now firmly
part of The Conversation. But Apple
News+? Hardly. Indeed, the most damning
thing about it is that no one seemsNone of Apple TV+’s launch shows, including See, could be called duds.