Apple News Australian launch after iOS 9.1 update

Australians can now access content in Apple News in what is a bittersweet innovation for the news publishing industry.

Apple News, which replaced Apple Newsstand. is now available to Australian users.

Australians can now access content in Apple News in what is a bittersweet innovation for the news publishing industry.

The app provides a one-stop shop for users to freely view content submitted by news providers and some of the biggest news gatherers on the planet are making a portion of content available.

Apple News, which replaced Apple Newsstand. is now available to Australian and UK users who upgrade to Apple’s latest iOS version 9.1, which can be downloaded now. Apple Australia said that if users who upgrade to 9.1 cannot see the new app, they should reboot their device.

While it offers a convenient way for users to peruse news content, Apple News potentially conflicts with the paywall model used by news organisations that offer their content to paid subscribers.

Therefore users of Apple News are unlikely to access content that news organisations reserve for subscribers. Some news organisations might share only limited content through the service.

However the biggest issue for news providers with Apple News is its advertising revenue model. In Apple News, news organisations can earn 100 per cent of the revenue from ads they sell, and 70 per cent of those sold by Apple.

While that might sound reasonable, it introduces the notion of Apple leveraging advertising revenue in an area where news organisations traditionally have. So the media will watch the development of the model carefully.

Can an iPhone or iPad access all relevant news from the app? It depends on how much content those organisations share with Apple.

However in June Apple said it was hiring journalists to curate its news feeds and, according to company job listings at the time, “help identify and deliver the best in breaking national, global, and local news”. It said news would be curated by humans rather than selected, at least entirely, by algorithms.

A look at Apple News shows that many Australian organisations are providing some content to the service. They include selected content from The Australian’s Life section, Daily Telegraph, Sydney Morning Herald, Herald Sun, The Age, The Australian Women’s Weekly, ABC, SBS, and The Guardian.

Overseas organisations include The New York Times, The Economist, The Huffington Post, The Independent, The Express, and The Globe and Mail also are participating.

Apple’s iOS 9.1 isn’t just about bringing Apple News to Australia and the UK.

IS 9.1 also addresses a problem for the unwary using Apple’s live photos feature. Users who snap photos with the iPhone would find their live photo video snaps included shots of the ground because they had put the camera down before the live photo video stopped recording.

Live photos now uses the iPhone sensors to work out when a user raises or lowers their handset so that live photos will not record those movements.