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Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

mjtsai.com

191–200 of 271 posts

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#192
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.

I'm not even sure their engineers understand how annoying it is. They've implemented links in such a horrible way, and it's gotten worse with time (for example, there is a feature where if you open a link and have the right associated app installed, it will open the link in the app. There used to be a way to force the link to open in Safari in case you didn't want to open the app; it'd show up in the top right. The feature is gone now and it's hidden in a very strange place that is unintuitive to find and difficult to perform–you need to long press on the link and open it from there, but this invariably happens after you've opened the link, it opens the app, and you go back to Safari to now open it there.)

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#194
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.

> The other possible top abuse is the way they block you in your group messages if you switch from iPhone to Android.

Just dealt with this with a sibling who switched to android. How is this legal? It’s quite ridiculous.

I wish everyone in the US just used WhatsApp or another third party app like it seems they do in every other country. Instead, not having an iPhone makes you a pariah because of the green messages.

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#195

More people spend time worrying about the decline of RSS than the amount of people actually using RSS.

Because the decline of RSS stops people using RSS. I still think RSS is the best way for news and blogs. I don't want go to each website regularly to check for any update.

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The other possible top abuse is the way they block you in your group messages if you switch from iPhone to Android. Just dealt with this with a sibling who switched to android. How is this legal? It’s quite ridiculous. I wish everyone in the US just used WhatsApp or another third party app like it seems they do in every other country. Instead, not having an iPhone makes you a pariah because of the green messages.

> How is this legal? It’s quite ridiculous.

Why would this be illegal?

Consider this scenario: you have an iMessage group chat of 3 people, and one of the three people has a plan like PayGo[1] and an extremely limited monthly SMS quota. What happens when one of the other two participants suddenly counts against that quota?

There are options, of course, but for consumers as a whole those options are hostile and inelegant - are you gonna pop up a warning saying that messaging these people might now cost you money?

I guess you could make an argument for turning iMessage off by default, but that also seems like a net negative for consumers as you're back to giving phone companies the opportunity to charge exorbitant rates for things like MMS. Then you'd just push everyone to yet another third-party messenger that could be acquired, aggressively monetized, or shut down at any time.

1. https://www.ultramobile.com/paygo/

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#198
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well WhatsApp is free and iMessage has a multiple hundred dollar price tag attached. Apple consciously doesn't make the APIs for iMessage available.

By that logic WhatsApp isn't free. I have to spend hundreds of dollars upfront to buy a phone, and worse, hundreds of dollars each year to maintain a phone line to use WhatsApp. WhatsApp doesn't provide an API so I could use it on my existing laptop over WiFi for free (the WhatsApp web requires it to be setup on a phone first).

> ...WhatsApp isn't free. I have to spend hundreds of dollars upfront to buy a phone...

WhatsApp works reliably on a staggeringly broad list of devices. You can get a supported phone for, like, $20 and stick a $5-per-month prepaid SIM in it (many of these plans in low-income countries specifically come with WhatsApp allowances) and be connected.

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not even sure their engineers understand how annoying it is. They've implemented links in such a horrible way, and it's gotten worse with time (for example, there is a feature where if you open a link and have the right associated app installed, it will open the link in the app. There used to be a way to force the link to open in Safari in case you didn't want to open the app; it'd show up in the top right. The f…

I've noticed this starting to happen also. Click a YouTube video and it wants to open in the YouTube app which gives me only two options: Update or Quit. Or opens Instagram which then forgets the profile/image I was actually trying to view.

Re: Apple News No Longer Supports RSS

#200
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which is the ONLY way you can send SMS on iOS There are plenty of SMS-API-provider-backed "texting apps" on iOS. There are also softphone apps that provide SMS service. I think you specifically mean "the only way you can send SMS messages from the DID number that your carrier maps to your phone's MMC IMEI registration .

This is unnecessarily pedantic. It's rather obvious in context that "sending an SMS" means sending an SMS from your phone (you know, the thing SMS was invented for) rather than using a third-party web service to send an SMS on your behalf.

I appreciated the clarification.
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