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Even as just an app store user I find the ads for competitors extremely obnoxious. Search "Overcast" -> top ad is some crappy competitor (not even a good real

Even as just an app store user I find the ads for competitors extremely obnoxious. Search "Overcast" -> top ad is some crappy competitor (not even a good real competitor, but usually some sort of near-scam). It makes me think less of the competitor and Apple every time I see it, it also seems completely unnecessary. I obviously want the app I searched for. It seems like a feature entirely designed to trick old people. The other suggestions are also really good, I'd love to be able to pay for big updates (though I personally don't really mind subscriptions for apps I regularly use). I'm also not sure the web apps are really competition, when something isn't native I tend to think it sucks and choose something else if possible.

kortilla 6y ago
> I'm also not sure the web apps are really competition, when something isn't native I tend to think it sucks and choose something else if possible. Coming from the android world there is a very high bar for a native app for me. I tend to assume the app is garbage if it could have been done just as easily as a web app.
- fossuser 6y ago
  I find this surprising and it makes me wonder if native android apps are just bad? The difference between a native iOS app and a fake app that's really just a wrapped web page is obvious. Native apps are a lot faster. It's possible there is some selection bias here and you only notice the web apps when they're bad, but I really don't think this is the case. Native apps just seem categorically better. If Facebook pouring immense resources into it couldn't get web based mobile applications to be good, it's probably because the technology just can't compete with native.
  - thrwaway69 6y ago
    More money doesn't mean good web app though. Most big websites ironically google's doesn't follow their own accessibility, speed, UX, UI, inclusiveness etc guidelines they recommend for getting into search results. They are also the biggest abuser of UA agent while chromium team is trying to get rid of it. There are so many things they get wrong that they preach or push themselves. Also, there are technical limitations especially around tracking lol. Web apps can't run processes in the background or access your files without your consent everytime.
  - jollins 6y ago
    Facebook was pouring resources into their HTML5 mobile apps ten years ago. I’m not saying web apps on mobile feel native now by any means, but I don’t think that’s a good example of a big company trying and failing anymore.
    - sutterbomb 6y ago
      But what makes you think html+js+css performance have improved enough over native in the subsequent years where this isn’t relevant?
      - jollins 6y ago
        The Facebook html5 example predates react-native and all the other under-the-hood features and apps powered-by-JS that people don’t notice now.
  - TeMPOraL 6y ago
    Native > web in general, but most Android apps are freemium garbage designed either to get you spend money on IAP, or as a vector for getting you to run a bunch of advertising SDKs, which promptly proceed to exfiltrate everything they can about you. This shifts the balance, because finding a non-crappy app on the appstore is so difficult that it's much safer to go with the web app.
qppo 6y ago
This bothers me on all search. Search for <model> <year> of any product on google, 50/50 shot its a different company's item in the first (few) places. Search bribes are user hostile but developer necessary it seems.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  Yes, but Google is an advertising company, Apple didn’t use to be.
intopieces 6y ago
Apple should wind down their ads system (iAd) entirely. Advertisements are antithetical to what Apple stands for - privacy, premium experience, doing the right thing for users. They should lower their cut to 10% (not to 20, as the article states) and start offering curated experience bundles like they do with AppleTV.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  iAd is dead. These are search ads.
- fossuser 6y ago
  Yeah I agree (at least on the ads piece, not sure about the rest of your comment) - I think the ads are an unnecessary dilution of their brand. They can help developers with ad discovery in a bunch of different and better ways that are less hostile for devs and users.
  - thunderrabbit 6y ago
    *app discovery Thank you for the funny typo "ad discovery" "We curate the finest ads for your consumer experience.."
    - fossuser 6y ago
      Ah yes - my bad, too late to edit :) Ad discovery is more Facebook and Google’s business.
- pvg 6y ago
  iAd was shut down years ago. Tracking ads might not align with some of the values Apple espouses but it seems a bit of a stretch to say a company famous for its ads (and often lowbrow-dismissed as 'just marketing' entirely) and advertising are 'antithetical'.
  - intopieces 6y ago
    I'd say ads inside apps is antithetical to Apple's brand. Does anyone like those?
sixothree 6y ago
I'm sick of this. I'm so, so sick of this. I swear every time this happens, I think "oh, there is no app by that name" and then I have to double check make sure I really used the right search term and that the result is actually a first party app. If I were searching for a genre such as "podcast" or "camera" app, I understand seeing paid ads. But when I search for a specific name, I see absolutely no reason whatsoever there should be an ad above my results. There has to be a better way.
- californical 6y ago
  Although this gets tricky -- will everyone just start naming their app "Podcast player" and "Podcast 1" so that their app name is optimized to match a search term exactly? Maybe this already happens, but I can see it being hard to distinguish if the person is looking up a specific app called "podcast player" or a generic term
  - leonidasv 6y ago
    You're assuming that just looking for the title is everything a search engine does when it's not. It's easy to create and train a model to distinguish between brands and generic words by counting how many times a single word appears over app descriptions, for example - there are countless ways to do this. This, in turn, can neutralize the effect of naming your app after a generic word when it comes to search ranking.
    - im3w1l 6y ago
      How do you know it's not competitors putting the product in their descriptions enough times that it will count as generic so they can rank above? I mean you can solve that too I'm sure, but it starts becoming more complicated than sixothree originally suggested.
  - lostlogin 6y ago
    > will everyone just start naming their app "Podcast player" and "Podcast 1" This would be quite funny. I still see businesses called things like AAA automotive and similar which date back to optimising their telephone book listing order. Was this early SEO?
Apocryphon 6y ago
Exact search results are getting bumped by paid ads https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23483101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23483101
rexf 6y ago
App Store search results aren't very good. Instead of trying to improve the interface or results, they added app search Ads to monetize their poor search functionality. Also, the App Store has prominent ads for their in-house services (Apple Arcade apps).
- saagarjha 6y ago
  The entire OS has ads for their services :/
akira2501 6y ago
> It seems like a feature entirely designed to trick old people. It's an old-school protection racket, particularly because they own both sides of the deal. "It'd be a shame if anything happened to your app store listing. But, you know, if you just pay us $5/mo we can make sure that doesn't happen to _you_."
seltzered_ 6y ago
> It seems like a feature entirely designed to trick old people. This. I've experienced this exact problem in helping elders install commonplace apps like Gmail.
- briandear 6y ago
  Why wouldn’t they just use the native mail app?
tempestn 6y ago
This is also very frustrating with branded searches on Google. It's basically extortion, where you have to buy the ads on your brand or someone else will. They excuse it by pointing to how cheap it is on a PPC basis, since the clickthrough rate and resulting quality score is so high. Great, you're only extorting a nominal amount. Thank you.

kortilla 6y ago

> I'm also not sure the web apps are really competition, when something isn't native I tend to think it sucks and choose something else if possible. Coming from the android world there is a very high bar for a native app for me. I tend to assume the app is garbage if it could have been done just as easily as a web app.

fossuser 6y ago
I find this surprising and it makes me wonder if native android apps are just bad? The difference between a native iOS app and a fake app that's really just a wrapped web page is obvious. Native apps are a lot faster. It's possible there is some selection bias here and you only notice the web apps when they're bad, but I really don't think this is the case. Native apps just seem categorically better. If Facebook pouring immense resources into it couldn't get web based mobile applications to be good, it's probably because the technology just can't compete with native.
- thrwaway69 6y ago
  More money doesn't mean good web app though. Most big websites ironically google's doesn't follow their own accessibility, speed, UX, UI, inclusiveness etc guidelines they recommend for getting into search results. They are also the biggest abuser of UA agent while chromium team is trying to get rid of it. There are so many things they get wrong that they preach or push themselves. Also, there are technical limitations especially around tracking lol. Web apps can't run processes in the background or access your files without your consent everytime.
- jollins 6y ago
  Facebook was pouring resources into their HTML5 mobile apps ten years ago. I’m not saying web apps on mobile feel native now by any means, but I don’t think that’s a good example of a big company trying and failing anymore.
  - sutterbomb 6y ago
    But what makes you think html+js+css performance have improved enough over native in the subsequent years where this isn’t relevant?
    - jollins 6y ago
      The Facebook html5 example predates react-native and all the other under-the-hood features and apps powered-by-JS that people don’t notice now.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago
  Native > web in general, but most Android apps are freemium garbage designed either to get you spend money on IAP, or as a vector for getting you to run a bunch of advertising SDKs, which promptly proceed to exfiltrate everything they can about you. This shifts the balance, because finding a non-crappy app on the appstore is so difficult that it's much safer to go with the web app.

qppo 6y ago

This bothers me on all search. Search for <model> <year> of any product on google, 50/50 shot its a different company's item in the first (few) places. Search bribes are user hostile but developer necessary it seems.

lostlogin 6y ago
Yes, but Google is an advertising company, Apple didn’t use to be.

intopieces 6y ago

Apple should wind down their ads system (iAd) entirely. Advertisements are antithetical to what Apple stands for - privacy, premium experience, doing the right thing for users. They should lower their cut to 10% (not to 20, as the article states) and start offering curated experience bundles like they do with AppleTV.

saagarjha 6y ago
iAd is dead. These are search ads.
fossuser 6y ago
Yeah I agree (at least on the ads piece, not sure about the rest of your comment) - I think the ads are an unnecessary dilution of their brand. They can help developers with ad discovery in a bunch of different and better ways that are less hostile for devs and users.
- thunderrabbit 6y ago
  *app discovery Thank you for the funny typo "ad discovery" "We curate the finest ads for your consumer experience.."
  - fossuser 6y ago
    Ah yes - my bad, too late to edit :) Ad discovery is more Facebook and Google’s business.
pvg 6y ago
iAd was shut down years ago. Tracking ads might not align with some of the values Apple espouses but it seems a bit of a stretch to say a company famous for its ads (and often lowbrow-dismissed as 'just marketing' entirely) and advertising are 'antithetical'.
- intopieces 6y ago
  I'd say ads inside apps is antithetical to Apple's brand. Does anyone like those?

sixothree 6y ago

I'm sick of this. I'm so, so sick of this. I swear every time this happens, I think "oh, there is no app by that name" and then I have to double check make sure I really used the right search term and that the result is actually a first party app. If I were searching for a genre such as "podcast" or "camera" app, I understand seeing paid ads. But when I search for a specific name, I see absolutely no reason whatsoever there should be an ad above my results. There has to be a better way.

californical 6y ago
Although this gets tricky -- will everyone just start naming their app "Podcast player" and "Podcast 1" so that their app name is optimized to match a search term exactly? Maybe this already happens, but I can see it being hard to distinguish if the person is looking up a specific app called "podcast player" or a generic term
- leonidasv 6y ago
  You're assuming that just looking for the title is everything a search engine does when it's not. It's easy to create and train a model to distinguish between brands and generic words by counting how many times a single word appears over app descriptions, for example - there are countless ways to do this. This, in turn, can neutralize the effect of naming your app after a generic word when it comes to search ranking.
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    How do you know it's not competitors putting the product in their descriptions enough times that it will count as generic so they can rank above? I mean you can solve that too I'm sure, but it starts becoming more complicated than sixothree originally suggested.
- lostlogin 6y ago
  > will everyone just start naming their app "Podcast player" and "Podcast 1" This would be quite funny. I still see businesses called things like AAA automotive and similar which date back to optimising their telephone book listing order. Was this early SEO?

Apocryphon 6y ago

Exact search results are getting bumped by paid ads https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23483101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23483101

rexf 6y ago

App Store search results aren't very good. Instead of trying to improve the interface or results, they added app search Ads to monetize their poor search functionality. Also, the App Store has prominent ads for their in-house services (Apple Arcade apps).

saagarjha 6y ago
The entire OS has ads for their services :/

akira2501 6y ago

> It seems like a feature entirely designed to trick old people. It's an old-school protection racket, particularly because they own both sides of the deal. "It'd be a shame if anything happened to your app store listing. But, you know, if you just pay us $5/mo we can make sure that doesn't happen to _you_."

seltzered_ 6y ago

> It seems like a feature entirely designed to trick old people. This. I've experienced this exact problem in helping elders install commonplace apps like Gmail.

briandear 6y ago
Why wouldn’t they just use the native mail app?

tempestn 6y ago

This is also very frustrating with branded searches on Google. It's basically extortion, where you have to buy the ads on your brand or someone else will. They excuse it by pointing to how cheap it is on a PPC basis, since the clickthrough rate and resulting quality score is so high. Great, you're only extorting a nominal amount. Thank you.