Apple's brand new News+ subscription service appears to have run into problems as soon as it was released.
News+ is a subscription service within Apple News that allows people to sign up for $9.99 and get unlimited access to 300 magazines and newspapers including the Wall Street Journal. But the new app – which arrived in an update yesterday, after the launch event – appears to have caused some of the devices that run it to crash.
Numerous users reported problems, specifically with the versions of the app on iPhone XS Max and on Mac. Opening the app would see it break almost straight away, and then shut down again, affected users said.
The problems have now been fixed, reports suggest, and rebooting the problem devices should allow them to get back onto the app.
It seems to have been the result of wrong data that was being sent to the devices from Apple's servers, meaning that an update could be sent from the company's end that did not require the devices themselves to be updated.
When the News+ service arrived, it did require a full update, which came with iOS 12.2. As well as bringing News+ to compatible devices, the update also added security updates, visual changes and a number of minor new features.
Other technical issues were discovered within the News+ app when it was released, including problems with the ways that magazines are protected.
Developer Steve Troughton-Smith found that it was possible to find the pages within the magazines themselves, allowing people to download the magazines in full whether or not they had actually paid for them.
Apple released News+ in the US and Canada straight after the announcement event. It said that versions would come to the UK and Australia later this year, and did not say whether it would spread further around the world.
