Over lunch, I was discussing computers and rehashing the whole Intel v/s AMD debate, which is pointless in this day and age. The desktop computer has been replaced by the smartphone. This little device that you carry around with you, is faster at almost everything and it is mobile! I am an avid reader of news and so the iPhone has been my default reading device for some time. In the beginning Apple created Apple News as a quick news reader app and it was great. It was not an exhaustive collection of news stories, just the main ones and some interesting topics thrown in. I could read Apple News for an hour a day and learn quite a bit. Today, the iPhone is running iOS 15 and Apple has a subscription service for Apple News, which I do not subscribe to.
In all honesty, I do not see any value in the Apple News app or its service. Most of the stories in Apple News are now click-bait and there is not much actual news at all. This is partially due to the news business itself, where magazines and newspaper publishers have cut staff or went out of business all together. Occasionally I see some interesting stories in Apple News, but these are rare these days. Coverage of the COVID pandemic is horrible, though still better than television news which tends to gravitate to a biased summary of the topic regardless of channel.
My news reading now comes from the following sources:
New York Times Subscription
For a long time I resisted paying for news, but after everything that has happened in the world, there really is no alternative. The NYTimes digital subscription is very affordable and the app works well across all my Apple devices. The NYTimes writing is the best out there and they are the number one source of network news anyway, so why not just get the news from the actual source. Occasionally they cover subjects from a New York City slant, but overall they deliver a good product. It use to be the Washington Post had long in-depth stories about a person living in Iowa or Nebraska, and they still do this at times, but the Washington Post is not as good as it use to be a few years ago. If you are a news junkie like me, the NYTimes is as essential as your morning coffee; you can try doing without it, but you are going to hate yourself for it. After the NYTimes, you can fill-in the blanks with the Washington Post, WallStreet Journal, and political news sites like Politico.
Tech News
There are arguably a lot of tech news sites, but overall I don’t have all the time in the world to review all the tech sites. For a quick summary of what is going on I go to Techmeme and review the summaries. If anything interest me, I will click on it and read up on it further. The other site that many people don’t know about outside of the tech and startup circles is Hacker News. Similar to Techmeme, I read the top 100 links, and also click on new to see anything posted lately. To me Hacker News is interesting for the comments and for top stories, the feedback lets me know what technical people think and what is going on in the consciousness of people. For more in depth coverage I will go to Arstechnica and AnandTech, then there is MacRumors for all things Apple related.