Apple Bought Texture, Now They’re Killing It

Magazine kiosk Texture ends on May 28th

What’s unfortunate is that Texture was a good app and a service worth using if you like to read or browse through a large number of magazines. The cost was around $10 per month. How many magazines can you buy for that? Two, if you’re in an airport kiosk!

Apple is replacing Texture with Apple News+

Same price, but there’s a problem: the app is iOS and MacOS only, and on MacOS, it’s only the latest OS version, which my computers can’t get, because they’re from 2011.

On the one hand, I like the concept of Texture (I haven’t seen News yet, but I already don’t like the idea of new s being any part of a magazine library). But this is a model that is pretty much the only hope for magazine publishing. Maybe that’s why Apple is taking 50% of the subscription fee for their commission. The math probably does work for both sides, though.

Now it’s up to Google or Amazon

Someone needs to step up in the non-Apple world to get Android tablets a magazine app similar to Texture. Texture was one of two uses for our first-generation Nexus 7" tablets. The other is MX Player for video and audio.