Apple News v medium.com
Which is the better service?
Medium — The Good
I like medium.com. I was a member for a long time. I believe I got a lot of value from my subscription. We’ve all heard the term ‘echo chamber’, where everything we read only reinforces the views and opinions we already hold. Well, for me, the medium algorithm of recommending stories didn’t turn my reading into an echo chamber. It constantly offered me interesting, sometimes challenging and different articles for consumption. One of the biggest things to respect about medium.com is the profit sharing scheme. A portion of your £5 a month sub is split across the people who wrote the articles you’ve read that month, rewarding their good writing.
Medium — The Bad
However, over time, it began to lose its shine. I believe ultimately, the profit sharing scheme is the downfall of the site. Everyone is trying to cash in by churning out the articles. Even though I avoid clicking on them like the plague, my recommended articles started filling up with click-bait titles.
How I make 2 million dollars a month for 2 hours work a day
You need to hear about this one crazy life hack that will shock
Python is dead, we all need to move on
My bounce rate started going way down, clicking into a story with an interesting title, but bailing when the story appeared to be written by non-native English speakers, littered with spelling and grammatical errors. But the tipping point for me came after reading a number of popular stories (with thousands of claps) about COVID-19 where the “facts” stated in the story where either twisted, or just straight up wrong.
It appears the greatest thing about medium.com is it’s written by a wide and diverse group of enthusiastic, amateur writers who share differing opinions on a range of topics. This is also the worst thing about medium.com, the level of quality is also wide ranging, as well as the fact checking with a growing percentage of stories that just want those clicks.
Apple One Subscription
In December Apple launched it’s fitness+ service in the UK and myself and a group of friends decided to club together and buy the Apple One subscription service. This is the premium Apple Subscription that includes Apple News, Apple Music, Apple TV, Apple Arcade, Apple Fitness and 2TB iCloud storage. These services can be shared with up to 5 adults. The adults don’t have to live in the same household or have the same surname or any other restrictions. Also, importantly, these 5 adults have their own subscriptions — so your music recommendations are based purely on what you listen to, and not what your friend Goth Steve has been listening to.
I used the following equation to work out how much we were each paying for Apple News:
It comes out to £1.27 a month per person for the service, however, in my case it’s not as good as that since my wife is one of the 5 and she doesn’t contribute to the costs! When justifying the cost of the Apple One subscription, I said I could cancel my medium membership and move over to Apple News, which I did.
Apple News — The Good
Apple news is a mix of free and premium news stories along with over 300 magazines. The value for money of this service is insane, at £9.99 it’s fair, but at a fraction over £1 a month, it’s off the chain. I have a subscription to Empire magazine at the moment which costs more than £1 a month and since this is part of the Apple News subscription already, I won’t be renewing the magazine sub.
The first thing I noticed moving from medium.com to Apple News was the quality of the writing. I mean no offence to the thousands of people contributing to the medium community. But they don’t have Editors who proof read, trim down and improve their articles, they don’t have artists and designers who make custom illustrations for their stories, they aren’t able to spend huge amounts of money investigating and spending months on their articles. The difference between amateur writing and professional is huge. Everyone has limited time, especially in lockdown. Working from home seems like working all the time. I want to spend my free time reading the highest quality material I can find.
Similar to medium.com, Apple News offers a huge variety in it’s selection of publications. I have been reading articles about parenting, cycling, films, wildlife, cookery, DIY as well as enjoying stories from The Times newspaper.
Apple News — The Bad
Disappointingly a lot of the magazines (maybe half) are just digital versions, essentially posh pdf’s that you are required to swipe through and find something interesting to read, like in a real life magazine. This doesn’t work well on a phone screen. Some of the publications have split out all the articles and these are added to the apple news algorithm, meaning you can just read the ones that sound interesting to you.
As wide as the variety offered by Apple News is, it cannot compare to the niche stories found on medium. Medium is full of articles/tutorials on specific programming languages, and comment about the programming world and community. These kind of stories are absent in Apple News, which is possibly the biggest negative in my move from one service to the other.
Conclusion
Overall, I’m happy with the move. Both the content and quality have been an improvement. However, the range of subject matter has reduced and the number of voices and opinions has also reduced. I believe their is room for both services in my life and I do not rule out a return to a paid subscription with medium.com.
My conclusion on the Apple One subscription is a little more definitive. If you know a few people with an iPhone, it’s an absolute no-brainer to all join an apple family and share the cost of the subscription. I mean, an absolute no-brainer. It’s no wonder that Apple has all of the money, since they make products and services that people genuinely want.
