The first beta of iOS 12.2 includes a landing page and other assets for the much-expected “Apple News Magazines” subscription service. The assets were first noticed by 9to5Mac.
Today, we’ve been able to activate the landing page for this new service on Apple News running on iOS 12.2. It looks like the subscription service will be called “Apple News Magazines” and it will be associated to the user’s iTunes Store account, just like Apple Music. There are many mentions of “bundle subscription” in this beta, which makes us believe this can be a part of Apple’s plan to release an all-in-one media subscription which will include Apple Music, TV shows and magazines.
It’s unclear when this will become available to the public, but with the internal testing happening now and the other rumored new products and services, it’s possible that we’ll see an event in March which would include the announcement of the new TV shows service, Apple News Magazines and this all-in-one bundle subscription.
The page refers to an “Apple News Magazines Internal Seed,” available to “Apple internal” users for a short time. “Your iTunes Store account won’t be charged,” promises the text.
Rumors have indicated the new subscription service could launch this spring, and that timing could jibe with the likely release date of iOS 12.2.
We’ll keep our eyes and ears open, and let you know if we hear anything else about the new service.