Apple News App

This week we’re talking iOS 9 beta 3. What’s new? Why should you care? We’ll go over all of the new and upcoming features in iOS 9 as well as a new public beta program for iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan. Along with that, we discuss Apple’s new watchOS 2 downgrade protocol and some great news for iOS device owners in the UK. The Happy Hour podcast is available for download on iTunes and through our dedicated RSS feed.

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Every year, a handful of clued-in pundits start floating “wouldn’t it be nice” Apple OS ideas just before the features actually show up in Apple’s products. Right before iOS 7 debuted a flattened design, at a point when few people even knew what skeuomorphism was, pundits began to ask, “boy, doesn’t skeuomorphism stink?” Then ahead of iOS 9, when people might have wondered what new marquee features were coming to Apple’s operating systems, pundits said, “hey, wouldn’t it be nice if Apple focused on iOS and OS X stability this year?” Recently, a new topic came up just before Apple debuted the beta version of News for iOS 9: “Web advertising really sucks — wouldn’t it be great if that all went away?”

Advertising is an easy target: it’s an eyesore, slows down web pages, and — in the wrong hands — compromises your privacy. But whether you accept it or hate it, advertising is also the reason you don’t have to pay for your news. As Ben Lovejoy noted last month, “without ad revenue, 9to5Mac wouldn’t exist; it’s that simple.” And he’s right: surveys suggest that the vast majority of people do not want to pay for the news they consume, and the few who do can’t pay enough to keep their favorite publications afloat for the long term. Ads keep publications alive.

Thanks to the introduction of ad-blocking technology in iOS 9, some people think Apple wants to help users get rid of ads. But that’s not Apple’s goal. Yesterday’s debut of Apple News shows that it’s actually angling to replace the ads you know, build upon them, and take a cut of their revenue…

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Apple earlier today pushed iOS 9 beta 3 to developers, and this build includes the company’s new News app. The app was unveiled back at WWDC last month, but was not included in the first two beta builds of iOS 9. News is designed with a Flipboard-like magazine interface with large images and minimalistic appearance.

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