Apple iOS 9 - news reader and ad blocker

Positives for the user reading experience.

Possibly negatives for publishers if they choose to remain stuck in the past.

http://mediagazer.com/150916/p8#a150916p8

http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/373305/apples-news-which-launches-today-is-the-latest-in-a-trend-toward-distributed-content/

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/09/vf-apple-news-ios-9

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/09/you-can-now-read-new-york-on-apple-news.html

http://www.wired.com/2015/09/apple-finally-kills-newsstand-make-way-apple-news/

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2015/09/17/ios-9s-main-attraction-adblocking/

http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/17/9338963/welcome-to-hell-apple-vs-google-vs-facebook-and-the-slow-death-of-the-web

create crappy, bloated websites, and users revolt.

and don't blame innovation that originates at Google, Facebook, Apple, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Instagram, etc. and satisfies information consumers.

iOS 9 came out yesterday (in fits and starts) and with it, support for content blockers in iOS 9. There is already a little cottage industry of ad blockers available, and you should definitely try one or two — they will radically improve your mobile web experience, because they will... block huge chunks of the web from loading.

Yes, because the blame for a miserable mobile web experience does not belong to phones and browsers like a dimwitted Verge.com writer proclaimed back in the summer.

The blame for a dreadful web experience on any device belongs to the web site owners.

Tons of useless JavaScript, numerous large images, and dozens of trackers and other goop all conspire to bog down a user's web experience.

That's why I improve my web reading experience by disabling JavaScript and/or by using the NoScript and Ghostery browser plugins.

I could read the article by using the Readability browser plugin on Chrome.

Safari has a simple-reader option.

I could use the Links browser too.

I could use Curl or my own web script to access and clean up a web page.

Provided the content is not behind a paywall.

I would pay a significant annual subscription fee to the Toledo Blade if they served article pages to paying customers in a format similar to this:
http://testcode.soupmode.com/article/post8.html

[Apple] offers publishers salvation in the form of Apple News, inside of which Apple will happily display (unblockable!) ads, and even sell them on publishers' behalf for just a 30 percent cut.

Oh, and if you're not happy with Apple News, you can always turn to Facebook's Instant Articles, which will also track the shit out of you and serve unblockable ads inside of the Facebook app, but from Apple's perspective it's a win as long as the money's not going to Google.

Therefore, stick with plain old web browsers, such as Safari, Chrome, or Opera on the iPhone.

But that means slow-loading content from piggy websites.

Maybe people will use Apple News, Instant Articles, or Snapchat's media service because those apps will load content much faster and display it much better than the publishers' websites, and then the users won't mind the ads.

So it's Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook, all with their own revenue platforms. Google has the web, Facebook has its app, and Apple has the iPhone. This is the newest and biggest war in tech going today.

And the collateral damage of that war — of Apple going after Google's revenue platform — is going to include the web, and in particular any small publisher on the web that can't invest in proprietary platform distribution, native advertising, and the type of media wining-and-dining it takes to secure favorable distribution deals on proprietary platforms. It is going to be a bloodbath of independent media.

I don't know about that last statement. It's way too early to make a claim like that. Let's check back in one to two years, eh?

Taking money and attention away from the web means that web innovation will slow to a crawl.

Mmm, is that bad? I occasionally encounter web pages that have been created with minimal HTML, and they load fast and display fine on any device. On mobile, I have to hold the phone in landscape mode and tap the screen to fill the screen with content, making the font size larger and easier to read, but at least that option is available.

It stuns me how often I encounter a newly designed website that uses response web design techniques, yet the site uses an uncomfortable, tiny font size when the site is loaded on a phone. And the site is restricted to portrait mode display only, so I cannot switch to landscape mode to increase the font size.

For a better reading experience, many content sites need to got back to creating web pages with a minimal 1995 look, instead of using the wealth of web technologies that exist in 2015.

Maybe web innovation needs to slow because it seems that web site owners use every new gadget for the sake of using it, instead of using the technology to solve a problem or to make the user experience better.

If JavaScript is required to display a single web page of article content that contains mostly text, then that site has jumped the shark, and it should be read only on another platform.

Casey Johnston wrote a great piece for The Awl about ad blockers, in which The Awl's publisher noted that "seventy-five to eighty-five percent" of the site's ads could be blocked. What happens to a small company when you take away 75 to 85 percent of its revenue opportunities in the name of user experience? Who's going to make all that content we love so much, and what will it look like if it only makes money on proprietary platforms?

Is it possible to display ads within an article page in an empathetic manner? Do the ads need to be annoying, abusive, and intrusive? Do the ads need to autoplay audio and video? Do the ads need to peg the CPU on older desktop and laptop computers?

It's nearly required today that we run the latest and greatest desktop and laptop machines in order to have enough RAM and CPU horsepower to display a one article web page.

I'm not playing a video game. I'm not crunching weather data to make a forecast.

I just want to display a web page that can be easily read on a desktop, laptop, tablet, and phone.

#media #design #rss #mobile #advertising