better connected visually with magazine lovers.
Before declaring News Plus a bust just yet, I tried it out on
macOS. After all, everything I do on my iPhone should sync via
iCloud. Apparently, this is not yet the case with News Plus, as
Rolling Stone was not only absent from my downloads, but it
didn’t even show up under My Magazines. When I searched
for the new issue of Rolling Stone, the results were mixed
with regular news and web searches, making selecting the
right edition a multi-click process. As for the Retro Gamer PDF
reading experience, it was a little better due to my Mac’s larger
display. But it was still an unsatisfying experience that made
me long for an old-fashioned print copy of the magazine. At
least then I could earmark pages, circle and highlight phrases,
tear out pages for future reference, and read in direct sunlight
without requiring an expensive iOS device.
Just to be sure I wasn’t being too hard on News Plus,
I opted to leave it be for a while and sampled a few more
publications the following day. Popular titles like Time were
optimized, had Live covers, and featured easy-to-read layouts
on both iOS and macOS. Other specialty interest magazines
reverted to the disappointing PDF versions. After feeling
the effects of carpal tunnel setting in with all the pinching
and zooming I was doing to read these titles, I was fatigued
enough to not even wait for the remainder of my free month
to expire. I cancelled my subscription. While the PDF prob-
lems were the fi nal straw for me, they weren’t the only rea-
son I opted to cancel. I was legitimately interested in several
publications available in the mix, but I wouldn’t normally
spend money to subscribe to their print counterparts. Indeed,
various members of my friends and family are barraged by
free subscription offers to several of the titles in the catalog.
The real-world magazines I might actually consider subscrib-
ing to (such as UK-based Tabletop Gaming) are not available
as of yet. But perhaps the biggest reason why News Plus
failed to maintain my enthusiasm is for the same reason tradi-
tional magazines are struggling. They just don’t feel relevant in
an always-on, nanosecond-publishing-cycle world. Beyond the
more polished journalistic prose, I didn’t perceive much addi-
tional value reading the Rolling Stone article “Springsteen’s
Secret Infl uences” that I hadn’t already read many times for
free on various music industry websites.
Perhaps Apple has the marketing muscle to revert the news
and magazine industry to a time when content was tightly
controlled by its supply chain. After all, Apple is a supply
chain master. The company also has the programmer bench
strength to easily add basic reading tools and enhance the
reading experience for PDFs of legacy magazines. But for
now, I have so many alternative sources of news in my life,
from podcasts and video streams to RSS feeds and
professional-grade blogs, that the glossy brand magazines
featured in News Plus fail to collectively match the $10
monthly price of admission.Mike Riley, a professional software developer and emerging information technologist,
is the author of Programming Your Home, published by Pragmatic Bookshelf. Mike is
also a contributing editor and author of hundreds of technical articles and reviews for
a number of popular technology publications. For more information, contact Mike via
email at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @mriley.(Continued from page 27)