9to5Mac is brought to you by Incogni: Protect your personal info from prying eyes. With Incogni, you can scrub your deeply sensitive information from data brokers across the web, including people search sites. Incogni limits your phone number, address, email, SSN, and more from circulating. Fight back against unwanted data brokers with a 30-day money back guarantee.
In iOS and iPadOS 18.4, Apple hit us with a little bit of a surprise feature: a new Food section in the Apple News app. While it’s only available for Apple News+ subscribers, it’s an extremely welcome addition. We’ll be delving into that here.
New recipes feature
In many ways, the new Apple News+ Food section solves a problem that a lot of people may have not realized they had. If you often cook at home, and have ever tried to find recipes online, you’d know that many websites are filled with spammy ads, distractions, and more. Often times, there’ll be so many weirdly placed ads that it’s hard to perfectly follow the recipe you’re reading.
On top of that, a number of sites will require you to provide your email and potentially sign up for a mailing list before you can even see a full recipe. It isn’t super ideal if you just want to quickly prepare a meal.
The new Food section in Apple News+ cuts all the clutter. No ads, distractions, and no email list requirements – all in an extremely clear cut interface that puts everything you need to know up front. It hosts over 70,000 recipes, so there’ll be plenty of options for everyone.
Apple News+ value
While Apple News+ does cost $12.99/month, you do get a lot out of it. First and foremost, you get unlimited access to over 400 leading newspapers and magazines, all for one monthly subscription – saving you a ton overall. On top of that, Apple recently bolstered its News+ Puzzles catalog. You can play Crossword, Crossword Mini, Quartiles, and now Sudoku as well.
The monthly $12.99 subscription may be a bit pricey if you’re not super deep into reading news. However, Apple One Premier makes it a pretty great value. For $37.95/month, you gain access to 2TB of iCloud+ and all of Apple’s services. On top of that, you can share them all with your family for no additional cost.
These subscriptions would normally cost $66.94/month when purchased separately. If you were only paying for Apple Music Family, 2TB of iCloud+, and Apple TV+, you’d be coming within a dollar of the price of Apple One Premier, while only having half of the services.
Discrete win for privacy
Privacy is at the forefront of all of Apple’s products, and Apple News+ is no exception. When using Apple News+, Apple creates a special Apple News identifier, ensuring that everything you read on Apple News isn’t linked to other services. All suggestions are curated locally on your device.
And, as mentioned earlier, with the included recipes with Apple News+, you can save yourself the trouble of handing out your email to varying websites on the internet that’ll require it. You also save yourself from a lot of third-party trackers across the web.
When Apple unveiled Apple News+ at its March 2019 services event, I thought it was the most out-of-place announcement. However, the service has quickly grown into being one of my favorites. If you’re an Apple One Premier subscriber, the somewhat-high cost isn’t even a barrier to taking advantage of this great service.
9to5Mac is brought to you by Incogni: Protect your personal info from prying eyes. With Incogni, you can scrub your deeply sensitive information from data brokers across the web, including people search sites. Incogni limits your phone number, address, email, SSN, and more from circulating. Fight back against unwanted data brokers with a 30-day money back guarantee.
My favorite Apple accessory recommendations:
Follow Michael: X/Twitter, Bluesky, Instagram
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
