While at first, I was rather hesitant to bother with Apple News, I’ve got to admit it’s pretty nice.

On first launch, my impression was it looks a lot like Microsoft’s news app when I had tried it some years back. After trying to use it and populate it with topics, it feels more like Apple News combines the things I like most about the Google News and Flipboard apps.

I’ve generally come to prefer Google News’s emphasis on its own page view rather than being subjected to countless, often craptacular and annoying web designs just for the sake of reading an article. Both Google’s and Apple’s apps offer that. But Apple’s also will throw you upstream after a continue reading, so there is that.

Flipboard on the other hand, I’ve usually enjoyed because it is smart enough to recommend a broader content base than my topics of interest, and refloat articles into view once in a while, making it easier than scrolling backwards if you change your mind. The way Apple News bundles sections together kinda achieves that too.

And then there’s the fact an iPad has such performance that you don’t have to groan at the performance of page loads. Which has been especially a plague upon Flipboard for Android over the years, IMHO.