With Apple sending out an invite for its March 25 ”It’s Show Time’ event, it is all but confirmed that the company’s premium magazine subscription service is going to be launched soon. Ahead of Apple’s event though, developer Steve Troughton-Smith has shared some screenshots and snippets of code found in macOS 10.14.4 beta referring to Apple’s News subscription service.

From the code snippets found in the latest beta of macOS 10.14.4, Steve says that magazines offered in the Apple News app will be PDF-based and they can be stored locally for offline reading. A screenshot in one of the tweet also shows how users will be notified when there’s a new issue for one of the magazines they like to read. Seemingly, Apple will be calling the service Apple News Magazines.

Unsurprisingly, it looks like Apple News’ magazine service is prepared to launch on macOS too pic.twitter.com/df0oyJXvjF

— Steve Troughton-Smith (@stroughtonsmith) March 12, 2019

Apple’s magazine subscription service will be similar to Texture, a company which it acquired last year. Despite Apple’s acquisition, Texture continues to be available in the App Store and offer a magazine subscription service for $9.99/month. It remains to be seen if Texture will be removed from the App Store or it will continue to coexist alongside Apple’s own News subscription service once the latter is launched.

A report had detailed that Apple is asking publishers 50 percent of the total revenue generated from its news subscription platform. Despite this insane demand, many publications have signed up for the service hoping that Apple’s reach will mean that more subscribers get onboard the platform and the final payout is bigger in spite of the Cupertino company itself taking a 50 percent cut. Apple is also expected to heavily promote its news subscription service which should translate into millions of users signing up for it.

Our Take

Apple seems to be focusing heavily on its Services business this year. With iPhone sales slowing down, the company is improving its existing services and launching new ones to take advantage of its existing user base and generate even more revenue. Alongside its premium news subscription service, Apple will also announce its TV streaming platform at the event which will launch to the public later this year.

Like this post? Share it!

Subscribe to iPhoneHacks Daily Newsletter

Sign up for our iPhoneHacks Daily newsletter to get the top Apple news stories delivered to your inbox.