Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#1

Post by newscracker » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

Apple News No Longer Supports RSS
mjtsai.com

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#2

Post by newscracker » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 5:39 PM UTC

Apple News was already flakey and unreliable in the sources (websites) it would allow to be added. With its highly limited geographical availability (years after launching) and its problematic focus on News+, I switched back to a plain RSS Reader to follow specific sites.

Apple News seems like a niche product with hardly any technical effort put into it. In comparison, Google News, with its ads, generally looks like a more comprehensive choice for news. Not to mention it’s also “free” (of course, it never allowed, AFAIK, adding RSS feeds from any site).

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#3

Post by iscrewyou » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 5:52 PM UTC

newscracker wrote: post #2

Apple News was already flakey and unreliable in the sources (websites) it would allow to be added. With its highly limited geographical availability (years after launching) and its problematic focus on News+, I switched back to a plain RSS Reader to follow specific sites. Apple News seems like a niche product with hardly any technical effort put into it. In comparison, Google News, with its ads, generally looks like…

Which RSS reader do you use?

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#4

Post by modmans2nd » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 5:54 PM UTC

Flipboard is better than any news app I’ve used

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#5

Post by mhb » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 5:55 PM UTC

iscrewyou wrote: post #3

newscracker wrote: post #2

Apple News was already flakey and unreliable in the sources (websites) it would allow to be added. With its highly limited geographical availability (years after launching) and its problematic focus on News+, I switched back to a plain RSS Reader to follow specific sites. Apple News seems like a niche product with hardly any technical effort put into it. In comparison, Google News, with its ads, generally looks like…

Which RSS reader do you use?

Not the OP, but https://bazqux.com/ is very nice.

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#6

Post by asymmetric » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 5:59 PM UTC

mhb wrote: post #5

iscrewyou wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which RSS reader do you use?

Not the OP, but https://bazqux.com/ is very nice.

Is there a self-hosted RSS reader that does feed de-summarization, like BazQux seems to do?

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#7

Post by simonw » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 6:03 PM UTC

The weirdest thing about this is that Apple News still hijacks links to Atom/RSS feeds - so if you click on one of those links in Mobile Safari you'll be bounced to the News app, which will then display an error.

Here's a video I recorded of this behaviour: https://twitter.com/simonw/status/1210622908143415297

I think I'd rather they displayed a dump of ugly XML in the browser, just so I could copy and paste the URL into a feed reading app (I quite like Reeder for iOS and OSX these days).

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#8

Post by pmoriarty » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 6:04 PM UTC

iscrewyou wrote: post #3

newscracker wrote: post #2

Apple News was already flakey and unreliable in the sources (websites) it would allow to be added. With its highly limited geographical availability (years after launching) and its problematic focus on News+, I switched back to a plain RSS Reader to follow specific sites. Apple News seems like a niche product with hardly any technical effort put into it. In comparison, Google News, with its ads, generally looks like…

Which RSS reader do you use?

I use a terminal RSS reader called newsboat[1][2], which is an actively developed fork of newsbeuter.

It's pretty feature rich, fast, keyboard-oriented (supporting vi movement keys), and works great in the terminal.

Another great thing about it is that it runs completely on my own machine, so I don't have to give away information about my reading preferences to any third party, as would be the case for any hosted RSS service.

I love RSS because it gives me lean, fast, ad-free, bloat-free information. I hope it never dies.

[1] - https://newsboat.org/

[2] - https://github.com/newsboat/newsboat

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#9

Post by firloop » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 6:04 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #7

The weirdest thing about this is that Apple News still hijacks links to Atom/RSS feeds - so if you click on one of those links in Mobile Safari you'll be bounced to the News app, which will then display an error. Here's a video I recorded of this behaviour: https://twitter.com/simonw/status/1210622908143415297 I think I'd rather they displayed a dump of ugly XML in the browser, just so I could copy and paste the URL…

For the link hijacking, it's worth noting that Apple News only exists/is pre-installed in a handful of markets and is uninstallable. But yeah, baffling.

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#10

Post by mey » Fri, Dec 27, 2019, 6:05 PM UTC

iscrewyou wrote: post #3

newscracker wrote: post #2

Apple News was already flakey and unreliable in the sources (websites) it would allow to be added. With its highly limited geographical availability (years after launching) and its problematic focus on News+, I switched back to a plain RSS Reader to follow specific sites. Apple News seems like a niche product with hardly any technical effort put into it. In comparison, Google News, with its ads, generally looks like…

Which RSS reader do you use?

Newsblur