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Apple's App Store Has Become an Ad-Plagued Version of Its Former Self
- cuteboy19 4y agoAh so like the play store for the past 10 years
- ilkke 4y agoThe 10 years part is not quite accurate. Play store used to have fantastic organic discovery that gradually started deteriorating some 7 or 8 years ago until it reached the current state where everything is an ad of some sort. AppStore never had discovery this good, but relied on being heavily curated for quality instead. I do feel play store is in a much worse state still. The curating is barely there and the algorithms had user interests (our at least my interests) optimised out of them. The fact that it used to work so well is insulting in a way. It's like when android took out the process manager. Edit: formatting
- cuteboy19 4y agoThere is a beautifully simple game with a very inclusive and fun concept. But everytime I want to play it I have to scroll through my installation history If you search for the title word for word, you will never find it. If you search for the description word for word you will never find it. It is so deeply buried under a mountain of garbage that I sometimes wonder what other gems the play store keeps from seeing the light of day.
- kaba0 4y ago> AppStore never had discovery ANY good It literally has trouble finding exact string matches, and is just behind help when you want to search for a category of apps.
- pasttense01 4y ago"with Apple taking a modest 30% of all sales for their efforts maintaining the store." No, 30% is massively excessive. A very small fraction of this is all that is needed to maintain the store.
- IntelMiner 4y agoAh but you're free to not use the app stor- oh wait Ah but I *like* the 30% cut I'm forced to give for apps on the store like Spotify or Netflix. Because for my sacrifice I am allowed to live in the ivory tower above the plague rats of Android!
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoI think F-Droid and de-Googled repair-friendly devices like the Fair Phone is the ivory tower, and at the bottom are the Android and Apple peasants arguing which of their favorite anti consumer mega corp is the best to consume. :D
- kaba0 4y agoNot if you want decent hardware. I really wanted to go with Pixel 6 with Graphene, but the many bugs (both software and hardware) and especially that emergency call thingy that is still ongoing made me choose the Apple ecosystem (which is unmatched in hardware by any android phone, unfortunately)
- ChuckNorris89 4y agoIndeed, few Android phones can match Apple's quality, but not every Android phone and OS has such bugs though. I don't trust Apple's ecosystem one bit, especially after the whole "we're gonna constantly scan your phone (actually our phone since we own it but you're paying for it) for child porn pics and we're gonna limit functionality because it upsets the CCP". This is boiling the frog. Maybe next year they're gonna scan for Pepe the Frog memes on my phone to report me as a right wing extremist to my government. I'd rather have average hardware but have freedom and privacy, than live in big-corp's authoritarian prison for the sake of comfort.
- ReptileMan 4y agoThe sooner the app store model is broken down for ios devices - the better. People should be able to decide what to run on their devices (and unlike consoles phones are not sold at a loss) and it will also solve the discoverability problem.
- TylerE 4y agoAren’t the various android AppStore’s even more crap laden?
- ReptileMan 4y agoF-droid is fine and for most of the apps you can just sideload the apk.
- Gigachad 4y agoFdroid is the only thing I miss from android. The apps there were primitive but at least they weren’t abusive.
- fishcrackers 4y agothe nvidia shield store for games was pretty solid when it was around I'm not sure how I'd rate the quality of the amazon app store but they did have cool features that let you trial an app in your browser in all honestly with these two stores owning the entire us market there's never going to be much iteration or innovation.. even something simple like a ios version of itch.io would be fantastic
- izacus 4y agoNo. There are stores that even specialise in user-respectful and ad-free experience for people.
- Mindwipe 4y agoA centralised store at all is the issue.
- gigel82 4y agoI haven't bought an app in the store in at least 3 years. I installed maybe 4-5 new free apps over that period, all for smart home devices that need an app to activate / install and receive notifications. I used to go to the store a few times a week to check for top games and see if something tickles my fancy, but I haven't done it in 5+ years now, it's mostly all junk / IAP sinks.
- Gigachad 4y agoThis isn’t even unusual. There was some news report staying the average number of apps a user installs per month is 0. These days you don’t browse the App Store. You go there knowing exactly what app you want.
- henrikschroder 4y agoI have never, ever browsed the app store. My only interactions with it is getting annoyed every time they move the place you have to tap to update all your apps, or change the way you refresh the list of apps to update. In my mind, the entirety of the app store is crud that's in my way. As for getting new apps, it's almost always through a webpage that takes me directly to the app in the store. It has categories? Lists? Curated content? Ads? Paid placements? I had no idea.
- SanjayMehta 4y agoRemember the old iTunes on macOS? The App Store is heading in that direction.
- henrikschroder 4y agoFunnily enough, the only times I used the old iTunes was when I needed to upgrade my phone or something, and it was the exact same experience for me, everything in it was crud in the way of me doing the one thing I wanted to do. iTunes had music and movies and ringtones and shit? I had no idea...
- 4y ago
- onphonenow 4y agoWhy is the discoverability in these stores so poor? Outside of top 10 in a category its miserable. Can't we allow richer interfaces? I'd love to subscribe to a blocklist that just took out all the junk apps, then incorporate verified reviews from active users on my generation and one prior generation device etc etc. No device able to review more than 10 apps and hardware link/lock reviews.
- TylerE 4y agoAll I want in reviews is an indicator of how much they’ve actually used the app at the time the rate is made. Lots of apps crank up the forced ads/other BS after they’ve nagged you a few times, and they like to that right after a dopamine hit, like beating a boss.
- fishcrackers 4y agowell you see.. that's the problem they are selling ads to solve
- Jensson 4y agoCreating problems so you can sell the solution... Basically means they will be incentivised to make their app discoverability algorithm worse, to encourage companies to pay them for ads. Kinda like Google did with ads coming above the search results forcing companies to buy ads to be displayed at the top even when you search for the company directly.
- dzhiurgis 4y agoIntroducing App Store+ and App Store Pro…
- jeppester 4y agoI have a time tracking app in Google Play. It has fine reviews. Yet if I search for "time tracker" it's almost impossible to get to, and if I search by its full name "Hours - time tracker", it's still on page two. Almost all of the apps (I found one exception) that appear above my app have in-app purchases and or ads, and most of them have a lower score than mine. It's hard not to come to the conclusion that my app is somehow penalized for not generating income for Google. If we had real competition with stores competing to provide the most value for the users, then I would expect non-profit apps like mine to bubble up rather than drown.
- jbm 4y agoI opened the App Store today and it had its list of "Top Apps of 2022". To my shock, Microsoft Teams was at, or near, the top. Yes - Microsoft Teams (which makes me input my login / password twice, can't let me pair program by dual sharing screens, and can't let me tag Japanese people) is a "top app". It was actually rated higher than Tiktok, which seems completely at odds with reality. I remember when I used to look for apps actively, but it seems like the last time I really did that was when I had an iPhone 4S.
- pflenker 4y agoThese rankings are often based on Downloads, and since Teams is required in many companies, it is downloaded often. In my area some crappy banking apps made it to the top list for the same reason: often downloaded.
- jbm 4y agoI have no doubt you are right, but IMO, the title creates an expectation that this was an "Apple curated list" - which is clearly isn't.
- happymellon 4y agoApple doesn't curate. I'm not entirely convinced it truly ever did, but it's all just algorithms now. Even if the algorithm is only "sort by download between Jan 1 - NOW".
- adrr 4y agoThey do curate. The home view of the app store is all curated. They have a full team dedicated to that view and getting selected can get you significant installs. Also all the editor's choice apps are curated.
- happymellon 4y agoThen they should all be fired. What I'm looking at now, this is rubbish.
- AnonC 4y agoIn a way, I'm glad that Apple is moving in this direction at this point. Let things get even worse, let Apple be called out widely and let Apple realize how much its cultivated brand value (even with missteps on other fronts) is eroding. Some or most of it may turn out to be irreversible. Apple has fired executives for far less (like Scott Forstall). This needs entire departments to be shutdown. The desire and the solution are quite simple: Apple wants to increase revenues from services, so provide better quality paid services instead of looking at nooks and crannies to pick up a few (mega) pennies here and there. Apple may be under the false impression that the competition is far behind and that its loyal user base has nowhere else to go. Sometimes these things turn the other way quite quickly. Considering the regulatory scrutiny and pressure in other areas, Apple would be better off not antagonizing its user base with the "let's put ads everywhere and collect more information from our users" initiative.
- camillomiller 4y agoGood luck going to war with Eddy Cue.
- ckastner 4y ago> Apple may be under the false impression that the competition is far behind and that its loyal user base has nowhere else to go. If they'd be willing to go somewhere else, then they wouldn't be loyal. And the "somewhere else" can only be Android, and even for non-loyal users, that's a big step (and vice versa). In my own personal (and thus limited) experience, I know zero users that have made the switch. The Android/Apple choice seems to stick really hard.
- jemmyw 4y agoI switched from Android to Apple and then back again after a couple of years. Device was fine, just didn't like iOS.
- redbell 4y ago> Apple may be under the false impression that the competition is far behind. I believe Apple is falling into the "arrogance" trap.. When we were kids, we used to be told the "rabbit and turtle race story" and, if you hadn't heard about it, you must have been born directly as a teenager :) Apple is slowly playing the rabbit role, and yes, it can sleep for as long as it wants then, maybe waking some day to realize what damage the once-believed turtles have already caused to it. Yes, the "rabbit" role is, by no means, new in tech industry.. Kodak, Blockbuster, Windows (with its epic IE) -to some extents- , were all "rabbits" at some points in the past but not any more. And, guess what? Nokia Mobile was also the big "rabbit" that was taken in no time by.. Apple! I don't know if there is a proper term to describe this concept, but I will write it in plain English: I always tell myself, friends, and relatives that if any entity, whether it is a single person, a community, a company, or a government, is misbehaving and/or walking in an incorrect path, sooner or later it will pay a high bill in the future that is not apparent at present.
- SanjayMehta 4y agoI can't remember when I looked around on the App Store casually. Usually review sites will have a direct link.
- travisgriggs 4y agoAdvertising has been the Faustian bane of tech for the last 20 years. It wasn’t always like this. I wish the government would tax advertisers like they do other ruinous/harmful vices (e.g. tobacco).
- rc00 4y agoI would disagree on two points. One, ads aren't only a medium for tech. Two, ads have been around longer than 20 years. Ads were in print for newspapers. Then in television, allowing for content and network providers to grow. Tech just became the next delivery medium for ads and a superior one at that once data harvesting and targeted ads were the norm. Tech has become the de facto medium for ads due to the margins and greater potential for returns. Apple's implementation of IAP was to neutralize as much competition as possible, probably because they would not have been able to compete fairly. This anti-competitive behavior hurt the other ad companies but it also hurt tons of smaller businesses that were able to benefit from the targeted ads. This is probably the government intervention that needs to happen IMHO. NB, I don't know what the solution is for ads in tech. On one hand, targeted ads mean data harvesting and all the repercussions associated with that (we know now there is no such thing as anonymized data no matter who is collecting the data) while non-targeted ads have little value for all parties involved (wasted ad spend dollars by companies and patrons being shown ads that are not relevant to them), and no ads mean less revenue for services and sites, which mean they eventually go out of business unless they have other means of monetization. What is the optimal solution? (Or just the least bad one if we must?)
- gigatexal 4y agoYeah this is gross and very un-Apple. But giant companies are gonna giant company. Smh.
- pftburger 4y agoHumorously this website is almost unusable on mobile there are so many ads…
- Hnrobert42 4y agoAs I clicked on the link, I wondered if that would be the case. I was surprised when it wasn’t. I use Firefox Focus, and it seems it did its job well.
- brnt 4y agoFriends don't let friends use Big Tech app stores. Google Play is no better. I set myself and family (and anybody who wants) up with a degoogled phone plus F droid. Now that's a clean experience.
- rowanG077 4y agoThis is why the curation argument is total bullshit. I trust random binary downloaded from github much more then any app store app.