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Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

mjtsai.com

121–130 of 271 posts

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#121
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…

Apple's hijacking of links, addresses, etc, is possibly their top abuse of power. The other possible top abuse is the way they block you in your group messages if you switch from iPhone to Android.

Impeach Apple /s

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#122

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?

https://github.com/wking/rss2email

Just sends the latest articles to an IMAP folder. I can use any device that syncs to my email (currently using the built in ActiveSync client on Android), and can access it from webmail, and via Thunderbird on Linux.

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#124
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Unless you check "don't ask again" it will always ask...

Because a single accidental click causes a permanent change. It’s fine to have a settings page that lets you manage pop ups, but a pop up should always be extremely limited in scope.

Its not a permanent change? You just go into the apps settings and remove the intent.

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#126
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MacOS doesn't even hijack what you want it to hijack. I have to set every .sh I make to open in text edit manually, and I still sometimes get prompts to search the app store for an app to deal with these spooky .sh files even with textedit listed as default on the right click menu.

Note that macOS has two different kinds of default application associations. The first one, the one that you might expect to apply to all files of the same kind, but which actually applies only to the specific file you are doing this for, is under “Open With” in the context menu that comes up when you right click the file (two finger touch by default on MacBook laptops). When you choose Open With > Other and check th…

As someone who grew up on Windows when I initially started working on a Mac daily this drove me absolutely nuts. It could be worded much better.

The way Finder sets the default view is equally unintuitive

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that macOS has two different kinds of default application associations. The first one, the one that you might expect to apply to all files of the same kind, but which actually applies only to the specific file you are doing this for, is under “Open With” in the context menu that comes up when you right click the file (two finger touch by default on MacBook laptops). When you choose Open With > Other and check th…

As someone who grew up on Windows when I initially started working on a Mac daily this drove me absolutely nuts. It could be worded much better. The way Finder sets the default view is equally unintuitive

Being able to associate a particular file with application instead of all files of the given type might be handy feature.

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#128
post #82

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…

It hasn’t been around too long. In a few years it’ll probably be pretty competent at what it does. I don’t use it but that was certainly the trend with Apple Maps which was pretty crummy when it first came out.

Remember iTunes/Music? I have little hope that it’ll get better.

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#130
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally agree that this is weird play, and I don't like OS vendors doing it. I'll add that while I personally prefer Android to iOS, Google implements similar behavior; clicking on a YouTube link launches the app by default, without asking the user. It's super annoying -- a web browser should never launch another app without at least consulting the user, but really, it probably shouldn't happen at all without the u…

It asks first time - do you want to open it and should it remember your choice. Later you can set default in android settings or remove the yt app default setting. It's buried in there somewhere.

I had an old Galaxy S6 Active sitting around, so I just did a factory reset and didn't sign into any accounts. I opened Chrome and searched for "keyboard cat" using the URL bar. I tapped on the first result, and it opened the YouTube app without any user prompt from Chrome. This is on Android 6.0.1, and I'll give you that this could theoretically be a Samsung specific modification, but that doesn't seem like the simplest assumption. My best attempt at science (without wiping my main device) says you're wrong. That's how most apps work, but they make a special exception for YouTube cuz they own it.

Edit: I'll add that this would be particularly annoying if I were actually trying to watch a video because the YouTube app is so outdated that it prompts you to download an update with no option to just watch the video, and pressing the update button brings you to the Play Store app... which requires a Google sign in. So what should have been a simple link to a video instead funnels the user through two apps where they are asked to sign in with a Google account (or create one if they haven't) and download an update... all without even offering to open the link in their browser. That's pretty embarrassing UX.

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