Apple Offering an Extended Apple News+ Trial for Black Friday

Apple News Black Friday 2020 Promotion Credit: Apple
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If you haven’t yet signed up for Apple’s subscription News+ service, the company is offering an extended trial period for new subscribers from now until Cyber Monday.

Although new users normally get a one-month trial when signing up for Apple News+, which normally costs $9.99/month, if you sign up before Monday you’ll be able to take advantage of a a three-month trial period before billing starts.

While the service will automatically renew at the standard $9.99 monthly price once your trial period ends, there’s no obligation, and as long as you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the trial you won’t be charged anything. So it’s a great way to check out Apple News+ and see what all of the fuss is about, even if you don’t plan to ever pay for it — although obviously Apple is hoping you will.

Apple News+, available in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the U.K., offers access to about 200-300 magazine titles and paywalled content from a handful of major newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Toronto Star, and The Globe and Mail, along with a handful of more regional papers, including the French-language Le Devoir for residents of Quebec, Canada, along with The Charlotte Observer, the Idaho Statesman, The Kansas City Star, the Miami Herald, The News & Observer, and South Carolina’s The State.

The move is an obvious attempt by Apple to drum up interest in its premium news service, which doesn’t seem to have gotten the kind of uptake that Apple had hoped for since it launched a year and a half ago, following Apple’s acquisition of Texture. While Apple News+ reportedly attracted 200,000 subscribers in the first 48 hours, it’s reportedly seen very little increase since then, and in stark contrast to Apple Music, which hit 10 million subscribers only a few months after its summer 2015 launch, and now boasts over 60 million, most analysts and industry insiders suggest that Apple News+ hasn’t even broken past the one million subscriber mark.

Apple offered a similar three-month promotion last year, and even partnered with Best Buy over the summer to offer up to four months free, along with a six-month complimentary subscription for Verizon customers, very obviously in the hopes of wooing more subscribers into the fold.

Apple also added several News+ features in iOS 13.6, including Audio Stories to allow users to get highlights on the latest news and other special areas of interest, even via CarPlay, along with more curated local news in several U.S. cities.

At this point, however, Apple also offers Apple News+ as part of its Apple One Premier bundle, where it’s basically giving it away for free to those who already subscribe to other services like Apple Music, Apple Arcade, and iCloud Storage, and when you factor in Apple TV+ and Apple’s upcoming Fitness+ service, it’s almost like Apple is paying you to take Apple News+ whether you plan to use it or not; since Apple One Premier offers a staggering $25 in savings, you’re already saving $15 even without Apple News+ in the bundle.

Still, if you’re not yet sold on Apple One and just want to take Apple News+ for a spin, this Black Friday deal provides a great opportunity to do so.

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