At yesterday’s Apple Event, Apple announced its first new service – Apple News+. As soon as the update was installed on my phone, I subscribed for the free month of service to see what it was all about, if it lived up to the promise, and if it was something I could keep past the free month it was offered.

The Promise

When Apple announced Apple News+ yesterday, it promised a rich magazine reading experience with a handful of popular newspapers thrown in as well. The service would have animations and videos which a magazine can’t offer. It would also include a curated list of personalized content that doesn’t track you.

The Positives of Apple News+

So far in my day of testing, there seems to be an abundance of content; as long as you want magazines. If you still like to read through magazines, look at the pictures, etc you’ll love this service.

If you have moved on from magazines and enjoy the richness of the web, this probably isn’t the service for you.

But there is a lot of content, and I’m sure that the more you use the service, and the more people that get the service, the better it will become.

I also know that many people would gladly pay $9.99 a month just to not be tracked by advertisers.

The $9.99 can also be spread out by your Family Sharing plan. Unlikes Apple Music, you don’t have to pay more for the people in your family to use the service. I really like that about this service (and all the other services that claimed they would be offering it as well).

Some of the content has been optimized for the Apple News app, but not much of it yet. The optimized content is pretty neat, but I don’t think it’s enough to really warrant anything just yet.

For example, I found this cover of WIRED magazine that uses what I think is parallax to move the cow on the cover. It’s cool, but it doesn’t really bring in readers I don’t think.

Another bonus is that the service will automatically download copies of magazines to your device so once you jump on an airplane or run out of a coverage area, you’ll have something to read. I haven’t tested this yet, and I don’t know how it picks what to download.

The Bad

So while there is a lot of content, as I mentioned if you aren’t a magazine reader, I’m not sure you’ll find much value here.

I’ve scanned through the selections but I don’t really see anything that’s jumping out to me like I HAVE to read. With all that content, I’d assume it is hard to filter through everything. That’s where the service is supposed to come in and recommend stuff for you.

So far, the standard News page (the one you don’t pay for) is recommending me plenty of the same articles it was recommending me before the service launched. In fact, I’m not sure that it has recommended me anything that has actually be in the service yet, and there’s no real way to tell.

If you were to select a magazine in the News+ section and select an article, it looks like a standard Apple News article. There’s nothing new about it. There’s not really anything that stands out.

Initial Verdict on Apple News+

So far, I don’t think I would recommend the service to anyone except a magazine lover.

If you love leafing through a magazine, or if you had a lot of magazine subscriptions, putting them all in one place like this for one price is great. As more news companies sign on, and more content is created, I think the service will grow.

If you like to get news and updates from websites, but don’t like to be tracked, the service might work for you, but I’d see how far you can get without paying for it honestly. If the standard app works for you, no reason to subscribe now.

Still, these are the early days. I’ll stick with my free trail for the month and see if it gets any better. If the articles become something I can’t get anywhere else, I’ll stick with it. If I mainly get things from the standard news app, I’ll drop the subscription.

What do you think of the News+ service so far? Do you plan to subscribe or pass up on it for now?

Keep your browsers pointed to JSwordSmith to see if anything changes with Apple News+