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More on Apple's Trust-Eroding 'F1 the Movie' Wallet Ad

977 points by dotcoma 1y ago

123sereusername 1y ago
[dead]
FirmwareBurner 1y ago
I feel vindicated for when I said that the moment Apple's line stops growing, they'll resort to monetizing their users like the rest of big-tech to increase their shareholder returns, and everyone here was like "Nooo, my sweet innocent publicly traded trillion dollar corporation would never betray me like that". Give it a few more years love, now they're boiling the frog.
- rafaelmn 1y ago
  What do you mean start monetizing ? I get adds for their Apple Arcade trial on top of my iOS settings main screen. I really hate Apple - but what's stopping me from moving out of the ecosystem is that nobody else builds shit that works and is on same level. The M Pro series processor is only touchable by that one AMD chip you can't get anywhere. Windows is garbage and Linux is a part time job. Android is even worse in terms of spam and jank, and the only ecosystem that works is Google - where if you get locked out - you're just praying to HN/Google contacts that you didn't lose your access.
  - jb1991 1y ago
    You are correct that, just like in politics, you have to pick the best among problematic choices, which will often be Apple.
    - bigyabai 1y ago
      Isn't politics famous for moralizing inherently immoral decisions, such that people forget how to engage in constructive discourse and resign themselves to tribalism? Doesn't that process inherently degrade the quality of both politics and technology? Maybe I'm alone, but one of the few reasons I care about technology is to not treat it like politics or fairy magic.
  - mrweasel 1y ago
    For the desktop, I could probably just use Linux, but you're right, in terms of eco-system, where would I go? Phones are even worse. You basically stuck on iOS and Android and I honestly see no situation where picking Android wouldn't be worse. You have a better selection of phone, and you could run /e/OS, Calyx, or something else, but that's just a hassle. I'm not a big fan of the direction iOS is developing, it tried to do way to much and the UI has become a mess.
    - fakedang 1y ago
      Graphene OS?
      - mrweasel 1y ago
        Graphene, Calyx, /e/OS... they work and you can install apps from the Play Store, the feedback I got is just that the few apps I need that can't be replaced keeps breaking. It's just more of a hassle than I'm willing to endure. But you right, it is an option.
        fakedang 1y ago
        I think banking apps don't play well with it. In the event that I have to deprecate my current Android, I might have a go at installing Graphene and trying it out in various countries.
        rglullis 1y ago
        Do you must have banking apps in your phone? And even if you do, do you need them so often that the apps must be installed in your daily driver?
        mrweasel 1y ago
        No, actually I don't because my banks app is awful, but my mobile payment app isn't any good if it's not on my phone.
    - fsflover 1y ago
  - jorvi 1y ago
    The biggest trick they ever pulled was changing Music.app into Apple Music, and on first app start showing you a "hey, want to try Apple Music? Tap here" fullscreen. That single-handedly unlocked a huge cohort of boomers and other tech laypeople that had never tried Spotify or any other music streaming platform before. It was smart and also a huge abuse of market power. Apple Music would have bombed without it. The only reason they didn't get in deep shit for it was that Apple doesn't have nearly the market capture in the EU that they have in the US, and in that time period the US didn't do antitrust against tech companies.
    - TheDong 1y ago
      The worse abuse of market power there is that Apple Music doesn't have to pay the 30% to the app store for subscriptions made on the device, but but spotify etc do, so Spotify can't charge a comparable price on iOS, and also wasn't allowed to tell the user in the app that they can subscribe for $x online. Deceptive app naming has nothing on that.
  - rglullis 1y ago
    > The M Pro series processor (...) even if it were the best processor to ever exist, it's not something that we can not live without. > Linux is a part time job It has been good enough for the past 15 years or so.
    - rafaelmn 1y ago
      >It has been good enough for the past 15 years or so. I daily drove fedora last summer for a few months and it was a joke on how unstable it was. Slack would crash when screen sharing, likewise for chrome/gmeet, camera corruption bugs. Just two days ago I was teasing a coworker on a daily that we can spot a linux user by how long it takes him to unmute himself. Chrome would randomly stop rendering all windows when watching YouToube in a separate window. KDE plasma would get messed up very frequently. Gnome was more stable but had issues with fractional scaling X11 apps on Wayland (Plasma 6 supported this). Installing a DAW took days of reading audio routing docs and trying stuff out, breaking my audio several times in the process. My LG C4 cannot be used at 4k/120Hz because you cant get HDMI 2.1 on Linux/AMD. And this is all on a well supported desktop machine. Laptop and power management was even worse last time I tried it. Hell I never had a PC laptop that managed sleep state reliably and didn't cook the battery in the backpack randomly. I just don't have these kinds of issues with MacOS. The processor/laptops are just best on the market and it just works, support is amazing. It is hard to justify dealing with Linux desktop and PC hardware even at a price premium, but these days Apple devices are even price competitive compared to similar windows/linux machines.
      - rglullis 1y ago
        > It is hard to justify dealing with Linux desktop and PC hardware even at a price premium There is only one justification that I need: Apple wants me in a golden cage, and I don't want to lose my freedom at any cost. No matter how much cheaper it can get, not matter how much "better" than the competition it is, it is not worth the price. I do not exchange my freedom for convenience, status or some materialistic joy. It's as simple as that. All your arguments against Linux are at best circumstantial and at worst bogus. Of course it is not perfect. Of course it has limitations. But it's undeniable that the gap between FOSS and Windows/Apple is getting narrower and narrower, despite the FOSS side getting a minuscule fraction of the resources available to trillion dollar corporations. And the really fucked up part is that You are the one claiming to "hate" Apple, yet you keep buying their products and making their market dominance ever stronger. --- Just to address your "claims": > we can spot a linux user by how long it takes him to unmute himself Never had any issues of that sort, whether I was using Google Meet, Slack, Zoom or anything else. > KDE plasma would get messed up very frequently. Gnome was more stable I've been using XFCE since 2010 (When Ubuntu went with Unity). It is not fancy and does everything I need. > issues with fractional scaling X11 apps on Wayland. It has been working fine on my Desktop and my Framework laptop for some good 3 years, when I actually bothered to look. Before that, I'd just go by through customization of window zoom levels (browser) and font-size (emacs, terminal, GTK apps). > My LG C4 cannot be used at 4k/120Hz because you cant get HDMI 2.1 on Linux/AMD hum, too bad? How significantly was your quality of life affected by this? Curiously, I also use an LG monitor with AMD running at 4k/60Hz, and the fact that I am "missing out" on something here does not even cross my mind. > Installing a DAW took days of reading audio routing docs Did you get it working? Was the software FOSS? Can you share your findings back with the developers and help them improve their product, or are you going to keep rationalizing the abusive relationship you're in because "at least things just work, most of the time".
  - Toritori12 1y ago
    As shitty as it is, Chromeos doesnt seem to have a lot bloatware to me.
    - Fade_Dance 1y ago
      Does it not have a huge slew of pre-installed Google apps that can't be uninstalled like Android phones?
      - deleted 1y ago
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  - seszett 1y ago
    I don't really understand, I don't get ads on my Android phone? And I'm not sure what you mean about ecosystems either, yes you do need a Google account to download apps from the Play store, but you also need an Apple account to use the Apple store as far as I know. In my experience it's easier to create a second Google account than a second Apple account. Now I'm not representative of most users, like all HN users probably. But at home, apart from my M1 Mac (running Linux because I hate macOS) my other machines are Intel n100-based. They work fine.
    - rafaelmn 1y ago
      Android is preloaded with different flavor of crap depending on the vendor and side-loading a phone OS and dealing with everything - I just don't have the energy these days. Likewise for running Linux on top of a M series Apple device. My devices just work and they all work together - all I have to do is login to the same account. My phone shares stuff with my Mac without any setup - shared clipboard, apps, storage. Buds connect to all my devices, Mac Mini, MadBook, iPad - not just 2 BT devices at a time, and they switch seamlessly. Stuff that saves me time and just does what I want. And all of the devices are usually among the best in class individually. Nobody outside of Apple even has that as a vision. Microsoft is so bad at building consumer products it's unbelievable. Google is struggling to build compiling phones with its own software - I doubt they can execute on other device types. Valve did a relatively small investment in this ecosystem and brought it forward light years in the gaming space.
  - deleted 1y ago
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- denkmoon 1y ago
  Ah, sweet vindication. Eventually the only company that doesn't do (all the) bad thing will start doing bad thing. What you say seems likely, but then what. Should I throw my phone in the bin because it might be bad in the future, as opposed to being actually bad now?
  - fsflover 1y ago
    > but then what. Should I throw my phone in the bin because it might be bad in the future No, but you should be always ready to jump the ship, always research reasonably good alternatives and never go deep in their walled garden. Ideally, you could even support the efforts to bring the freedom with your money or time, like GNU/Linux phones.
- latexr 1y ago
  > and everyone here was like Do you have links? Because every single time someone claims “everyone” on HN shared an opinion and I go check, the threads are split. What that tells me is that the people who accuse HN of being a biased hive mind are themselves biased to the point of being blind to other arguments. > now they're boiling the frog. That’s a myth. > according to modern biologists the premise is false: changing location is a natural thermoregulation strategy for frogs and other ectotherms, and is necessary for survival in the wild. A frog that is gradually heated will jump out. Furthermore, a frog placed into already boiling water will die immediately, not jump out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
jb1991 1y ago
Did they learn nothing from giving everyone a free U2 album that nobody wanted, and the backlash from that?
- x62Bh7948f 1y ago
  It was such a long time ago that the people who made the mistake have already retired, maybe.
  - msh 1y ago
    Most of the top management from that time is the same people today.
  - abcd_f 1y ago
    U2 stunt was Jobs' idea. He was a life-long fan of them. Edit - it wasn't, my bad, see below.
    - ryandrake 1y ago
      Didn’t the U2 stunt happen three years after Steve Jobs died?
    - latexr 1y ago
      The U2 album happened under Cook. https://www.rnz.de/cms_media/module_img/176/88193_1_detailxs2x_musikfreunde-unter-sich-apple-chef-tim-cook-und-u-2-saenger-bono-fotomonica-davey-archiv.webp https://www.rnz.de/cms_media/module_img/176/88193_1_detailxs...
      - abcd_f 1y ago
        Bah, my bad. This happened in 2014 and Jobs passed in 2011.
- JimDabell 1y ago
  I think this is a lot worse than the U2 thing. Operating systems bundle free stuff all the time. Even the Windows 95 CD had a Weezer music video on it. The U2 album wasn’t spammy it didn’t interrupt people, it was in an appropriate place, and it was easily removed. Even if you didn’t want it, it’s reasonable to not consider it a problem. This was outright spammy. It was trying to sell people something. It was in a sensitive place. And it was an attention-seeking, interrupting notification. This shouldn’t have even made it onto the drawing board, and for this to make it into production at Apple is a sign something is seriously wrong there.
tcshit 1y ago
Spot on!
deleted 1y ago
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eviks 1y ago
> destructive to all the hard work other teams at Apple have done to make Apple Wallet actually private — and, more importantly, to get users to believe that it’s private. That Apple can be trusted in ways that other “big tech” companies cannot. What's the downside of consumers getting their perceptions closer aligned with reality? Which side are you on?
- eptcyka 1y ago
  John Gruber has long been an Apple advocate, not saying this to detract from this post, but rather to add context to those who do not know this.
bambax 1y ago
> That Apple can be trusted in ways that other “big tech” companies cannot. That's funny. Why would Apple be "different"?
- deleted 1y ago
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- drysart 1y ago
  Because Apple makes its money by selling you hardware and services, not by selling advertising. Companies ultimately serve whoever they make their money from; and none of the other big tech players have a comprehensive business model where the end user is the customer instead of the product. And because it has positioned itself as the single most prominent privacy-conscious champion in big tech through repeated actions over the course of many years. There are plenty of reasons to dislike Apple depending on where your priorities are (lack of openness and cultivating an ecosystem based on locking you into it by not interoperating with anyone else are great places to start); but it's hard to make an argument that anyone else in big tech even comes close to the amount of trustworthiness Apple has demonstrated for their users. The fact that Apple actually pushing an ad to its users is headline news speaks volumes to the trust they've earned (and damaged by doing so). Do you think it'd make headlines if Google showed its users an ad? Or Microsoft? Or Meta?
  - charcircuit 1y ago
    Privacy and advertising are not mutually exclusive.
    - triska 1y ago
      Privacy is also about having control over your own space, both physically and digitally, and being free from unwanted intrusion or interference. For me, such a notification is an unwanted intrusion, and it is not compatible with privacy.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
andrewinardeer 1y ago
I'm sure at some marketing meeting at Google, a VP racing for pole posiiton has wanted to green-light the idea of putting advertisements in their Wallet app. With any luck this backlash against Apple is so significant that a red flag is waved so ferociously that Google will never blast an advertisement out to their Google Wallet users. As the article outlines, I am sure that due to the sheer number of people who use Apple Wallet there was someone out there who had just bought an advance ticket to Superman and the moment they received a 'Transaction Successful' message this F1 advertisement notification popped up and had them wondering if Apple preserving their privacy really is a competitive advantage.
- Kwpolska 1y ago
  Google was there first. During Euro 2024, the "transaction successful" screen displayed some football-related animation.
  - TheDong 1y ago
    Was it an ad or an easter egg, like the "google.com" logo animations you get on new years and other holidays? Did it send a push notification or bother the user? Got a screenshot or reference, since a quick google doesn't uncover it?
    - Neil44 1y ago
      Yeah it was an Easter egg style thing, similar to when the change the Google logo for special occasions. Not comparable to a push add for a movie (which I also haven't seen a screenshot of yet to be fair)
      - TheDong 1y ago
        > which I also haven't seen a screenshot of yet to be fair The article links to https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/26/apple-wallet-sends-push-notification-ad-pushing-f1-the-movie https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/26/apple-wallet-se... Which links to these examples: https://x.com/ParkerOrtolani/status/1937551035825807545 https://x.com/ParkerOrtolani/status/1937551035825807545 https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWallet/comments/1ljbjrs/how_do_i_turn_this_off/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWallet/comments/1ljbjrs/how_do... https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/24/apple-wallet-notification-f1-movie-ad/ https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/24/apple-wallet-notificati... (and actually a few more too)
altairprime 1y ago
Did we ever find out what happened at Mozilla that allowed that trust-destroying Mr. Robot advertisement to happen? There seems to be a trend (n=2) of Marketing spending consumer trust for one-time media engagement clicks.
- detaro 1y ago
  Not in detail afaik. The impression I got was that they somehow just didn't consider that people not looking for it would notice, and per the statement at the time (https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/retrospective-looking-glass/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/retrospective-looking-gl...) the review process was too focused on privacy vs the big picture.
  - altairprime 1y ago
    Yeah, that’s the non-answer post that I remember. Ah well.
efitz 1y ago
I think a conclusion has been leaped to that is not necessarily true. If everyone is getting the same annoying ad (in both wallet and App Store), then what individual user tracking or surveillance is happening? Certainly none is required. It’s still annoying AF and it’s clear they didn’t learn their lesson from U2. But I don’t jump to the conclusion that “Apple is spying on me”. Instead I conclude “iOS leadership are greedy jerks with defective long term memory”.
- triska 1y ago
  I think the article rightly speaks of "trust-erosion" in connection with this incident because, in addition to the showing of ads being subject to the suspicion of surveillance, it raises the question how seriously we can take a wallet app that shows ads or does anything completely unrelated to its designated and propagated purpose, something that is not the reason why this app is used and in fact detracts everyone from the intended use of this app. The breakdown of trust is already in the question "What absurdity comes next from such a sensitive app?"
- latexr 1y ago
  > If everyone is getting the same annoying ad (in both wallet and App Store) Not everyone is. I’m in the EU and did not get it. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was only in the US. > then what individual user tracking or surveillance is happening? That’s not at all what most people (including this article) are complaining about. It’s about an ad in an app which should never ever ever have them, the targeting is really low on the list of priorities compared to the rest. > it’s clear they didn’t learn their lesson from U2. The two cases are nothing alike. They both involved Apple and backlash, and that’s where the similarities end. > But I don’t jump to the conclusion that “Apple is spying on me”. Again, that’s not the major issue most people are complaining about.
keiferski 1y ago
Apple without Ive and Jobs increasingly has a taste problem. Everything from their ads to things like this are just in really poor taste, and aren’t something that they would have done 15 years ago because they would have thought it was beneath their brand. I like Apple, so I’m really hoping they bring on someone to solve this. Otherwise they’re on track to be the same as every other tasteless tech company. More on taste and Apple: https://www.readtrung.com/p/steve-jobs-rick-rubin-and-taste https://www.readtrung.com/p/steve-jobs-rick-rubin-and-taste
- dubcanada 1y ago
  Jobs has been gone for almost 15 years. From what I know Ive had nothing to do with anything but design aesthetic. I am not sure either of these people have anything to do with ads on Apple Wallet. Or even Apple Wallet…
  - keiferski 1y ago
    The entire reason Apple made devices that were a level above competitors is because the design wasn’t just the aesthetic. Ive was chief designer and so obviously had a key impact.
    - hshshshshsh 1y ago
      How do you know Ive had a key impact? Do you know it or read somewhere online?
      - dijit 1y ago
        “How do you know that <primary responsible person> had impact”. Do you hear yourself?
        hshshshshsh 1y ago
        Then all OP is saying key impact person had key impact. Doesn't add any substance to discussion.
sails 1y ago
They are also marketing “nearby” coffee shops in the Home Screen stack widget which is pretty invasive, I’m surprised not to hear about it
- basisword 1y ago
  They're not. The Maps widget shows you nearby businesses. You can remove the widget.
  - natch 1y ago
    My maps widget randomly took me to some BS Apple movie scene location with a bunch of movie branding right in the maps UI. There was nothing nearby about it. It was like two continents away from me.
  - 1oooqooq 1y ago
    so, they're not and you can remove the thing that doesn't exist?
  - sails 1y ago
    Turns out they are https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/p147sn/apps_like_yelp_are_using_widgets_as_home_screen/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/p147sn/apps_like_yelp_...
jrockway 1y ago
I'm glad that people are mad about this. I got the ad, went on here to see if 1000 people were complaining, and nobody was. I was kind of surprised. For me it's like "oh, I didn't know Wallet was an advertising app", I thought it was something I paid for with the purchase of my phone. But I was wrong. It's just adware. "We'll store your boarding pass if you'll let us spam you about movie tickets." Do not want. I disabled notifications. Now a year from now, I'll be searching for some pass in my wallet. Someone will say "don't you get a notification when you get to the venue"? I'll be like "no I've never seen that work". Multiply that by everyone, and suddenly the buzz is "Apple Wallet doesn't work. Trust my money and credit cards with something that doesn't work? No thank you." And now people are buying a Garmin watch for Garmin Pay instead of an Apple Watch for Apple Pay. Really dumb. Huge mistake. It makes me sad that they don't care about their own brand. "We won the smartphone wars, let's cash in!" Winning is temporary, but losing is forever.
- latexr 1y ago
  > went on here to see if 1000 people were complaining, and nobody was. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44368854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44368854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44371872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44371872 > Now a year from now (…) people are buying a Garmin watch for Garmin Pay instead of an Apple Watch for Apple Pay. Talk about a slippery slope fallacy. No, that will not happen. At all. There’s a better chance that this year will be the year of Linux on the Desktop.
  - ickelbawd 1y ago
    As it so happens I’m using my framework laptop with fedora linux almost exclusively at this point. That was not the case a year ago. :)
ksec 1y ago
The problem isn't sending an Ad to Wallet. It is the fact that Apple openly attack Ads, condemns Ads, talk about privacy as fundamental human rights, and then have targeted Ads, in a place / software / services where no body expected it to appear. And not everybody has the Ad, so by HN / Reddit / Internet definition that Ad is targeted. The thing I used to like about Apple, even if you disagree with some of its decision. It is very coherent. It act as if Apple is a single entity even when it was a hundred billion market cap company. Compared to companies like Google and Microsoft, every product and services are like their own subsidiaries. Now Apple has become just another cooperate entity but with design team holding sufficient political power.
- latexr 1y ago
  > It is the fact that Apple openly attack Ads, condemns Ads What? No they don’t. I wish. Where did you get that idea? Apple loves ads. They do a ton of them and sell them to you. You can’t do an App Store search without seeing an ad right at the top, and the bottom, and the sides, and under your pillow. It’s absolutely littered with them. What Apple rails against is the tracking and invasion of privacy. Which incidentally ads do a lot of. Even Safari content blockers are ingrained in that philosophy: it’s not about blocking ads, it’s about blocking things that invade your privacy.
  - encom 1y ago
    Apple is absolutely fine with tracking and privacy invasion, as long as they're the ones doing it.
    - latexr 1y ago
      Which has nothing to do with the point, which is that that’s what they rail against, not ads. If they are hypocrites about it is an orthogonal matter.
      - bigyabai 1y ago
        It's genuinely getting depressing watching HN try to justify Tim Cook's actions ad-hoc. You can't name a single ideal Apple values more than money. Soon (2028?) "Yes, we know Apple advertises to us and backdoors their services for the government. But *at least* my personal data isn't being sold, without Apple's privacy promise I would be helpless."
ctime 1y ago
I didn’t see any ads and nobody I know did. This may be a feature in ios26 (the next version in beta) that got leaked out to older versions? Ie a bug) Ios26 specifically enables promotions in wallet which is viewed as a feature that can be enabled/disabled
- reliablereason 1y ago
  Probably depends on where you live, or some other thing apple knows about you.
- mbreese 1y ago
  I saw the ad. iOS 18.5, in the Midwest, with notifications allowed for the Wallet app. I didn’t find it too intrusive, but it was surprising. It’s probably not a road Apple wants to go further down.
natch 1y ago
and in the maps widget
KingOfCoders 1y ago
As I've said for the last ten years about Apple and ads, as soon as the momentum slows down, they will put ads everywhere and sell your data next if it keeps revenue growth up.
lobochrome 1y ago
So - the gruber shadowban has been lifted eh?
- Chuzam 1y ago
  That's what I thought as well :D
- zbentley 1y ago
  What’s this referring to? What drama did I miss?
  - epaga 1y ago
    https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/the_website_hacker_news_is_afraid_to_discuss https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/the_website_hacker_news_i...
    - zbentley 1y ago
      Thank you!
    - somedude895 1y ago
      Is there any proof for that or just a case of sour blogger?
codedokode 1y ago
Chinese phones show ad in notifications, obviously Americans see it, get jealous (what a difficult spelling!) and want to do the same.
- kccqzy 1y ago
  Chinese phones are way more aggressive in showing ads. They have graduated to showing ads via the Live Activities feature, or push notifications with the Time Sensitive bit on to bypass Do Not Disturb. There are a lot that American companies can learn from Chinese ones in showing ads creatively. /s
Zufriedenheit 1y ago
I am probably not the average computer user. I didn’t even receive this notification, but just reading about this makes me reconsider switching my devices from Apple to open source software. I have every possible ad blocked and I have been a happy user of Apple devices so far. But this behavior feels so scammy and cheap, not worthy of a premium brand.
throwanem 1y ago
This year for the first time I started carrying an Android along with my iPhone. I've had Apple phones exclusively since I got my first smartphone in 2012, and before now never had a wandering eye. But the moves Apple has made lately make me realize it is time to make sure I'll have a ripcord to pull if I need one. It's not so bad. I would rather have an appliance than a computer as my primary phone, of course. But if Apple is leaving the appliance market, then thank goodness at least I have the skills to use a pocket computer safely. Most don't have such skills. None should be required to. That's why it's good there should be a company like Apple around, at least as Apple has been. If I need to advise my older relatives never to upgrade, and help them source and maintain older iPhones, I guess I can do that.
b0a04gl 1y ago
[dead]
em500 1y ago
Apple Wallet is in the App store, and the F1 ad debacle directly violates App Store guidelines https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/) > 4.5.4 Push Notifications must not be required for the app to function, and should not be used to send sensitive personal or confidential information. Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges.
- aqme28 1y ago
  Interesting. I feel like this clause is violated very often by major apps: > Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages.
  - foooorsyth 1y ago
    I’ve said several times before that notifications should be reportable as spam directly to Google/Apple, just like email spam reporting. Google tried to tackle this with notification channels, but the onus falls on the developer to actually use them honestly. No company trying to draw attention back to their app with advertisement notifications will willingly name a notification channel “advertisements” or “user re-engagement” or similar — they’ll just interleave spam with all the non-spam. This API from G hasn’t worked.
    - remus 1y ago
      > Google tried to tackle this with notification channels, but the onus falls on the developer to actually use them honestly. No company trying to draw attention back to their app with advertisement notifications will willingly name a notification channel “advertisements” or “user re-engagement” or similar — they’ll just interleave spam with all the non-spam. This API from G hasn’t worked. Revolut are really annoying for this. I'm sure there's a few spare days In their development cycle for someone to implement it if they wanted to, but instead they keep everything on the same channel which is 50% promo shit, because you don't want to miss that notification warning you about fraudulent activity on your card.
deleted 1y ago
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jiriro 1y ago
[flagged]
- todfox 1y ago
  Even if I wanted to see that movie, I would refuse to watch it purely because I received an unsolicited ad in the Wallet app.
nyc_pizzadev 1y ago
I got this ad, and ya, I was truly bewildered to get such an ad and then shocked that it came from my Wallet. I then spent the next hour searching how to disable this new marketing stream and it looks like nothing can be done. Anyway, glad to see I’m not alone here.
- manchmalscott 1y ago
  They have added an option to disable marketing messages in the wallet app..... in the new iOS 26 beta. which uh, really makes it look like they were not planning on doing this just this once.
  - thamer 1y ago
    This is what it looks like, the switch is for "Offers & Promotions": https://i.imgur.com/wodOoBo.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/wodOoBo.jpeg From the Wallet app, tap on "…" at the top right, then "notifications".
bfrog 1y ago
I have a fundamental fear that Apple will lose itself the day it chases profits with Ads. If I wanted Ad spam I would've used Google.
- bitpush 1y ago
  > Apple will lose itself the day it chases profits with Ads That shipped sailed many years back. Apple runs a highly successful ad network. It is just that most people are slowly starting to realize the true colors of the company.
- busymom0 1y ago
  They already make lots of money from ads on the App Store homepage and search. Small developers like me have a hard time competing when there's megacorps spending millions on App Store ads to rank higher.
memset 1y ago
I got this ad too. I increasingly use wallet for everything - multiple credit cards, show tickets, transit tickets. Is there an alternative? Android?
- surgical_fire 1y ago
  I use Google Wallet for some things because I am an Android user, and sometimes the most convenient way to pay for shit online is using the mobile wallet. I just happen to hate Apple more than I hate Google. That said, both Apple and Google are shit companies that should jot be trusted with this. I with there was a third option Also, please not FB. I have to be careful with what I wish sometimes.
briandw 1y ago
The Apple of old had a deep respect for their users. We paid for a product that tried its best to sweat the details and deliver the best experience possible. UX was king. Apple made hard choices and delivered minimal, thoughtful and delightful products. The motto was "less but better". Today we have an Apple that keeps pushing new poorly thought out features. More and more they don't respect the user. Constant interruptions that don't serve the user, a ridiculous onboarding process with far too many screens, forcing their own products like Apple Music on people, not making design choices and making the user pick an option. We are so far from less but better and it's only getting worse. I wish there was a way forward for Apple, but I think it's just going to slowly die.
- pornel 1y ago
  Apple has reverted to being a regular company. Everything is a potential revenue stream, and decisions are made based on next-quarter ROI. They needed the movie investment to meet the targets, so they've synergized with the Wallet team.
  - komali2 1y ago
    Google too. I wish the fact that every company enshittifies in the end would wake us all up to the fact that rampant unregulated capitalism just doesn't work before it's too late to make any changes at all.
    - _benton 1y ago
      Apple wouldn't exist without "rampant unregulated capitalism".
      - bigyabai 1y ago
        Sure they would, they just wouldn't be as profitable.
      - croes 1y ago
        Why not? I think Apple wouldn‘t exist without cheap labor in authoritarian countries but that‘s a prerequisite for capitalism
righthand 1y ago
> The perception of privacy is just as important as the technical details that make something actually private. Well at least it’s acknowledged Apple privacy is only perception and not actually secure or private.
- sneak 1y ago
  No, people really believe their nonsense marketing. The whole “FBI vs Apple” soap opera they cooked up after the San Bernardino shooting thing convinced a lot of people. Meanwhile Apple preserves a backdoor in the iMessage end to end encryption (in the form of non-e2ee iCloud Backups) for the FBI. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-apple-dropped-plan-encrypting-120506247.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-apple-dropped-plan-... (iCloud e2ee availability is irrelevant; nobody has it enabled.)
sneak 1y ago
By default, the home screen of an Apple TV shows video ads for Apple subscription content, also.
- binarymax 1y ago
  Ads are annoying but I at least understand that on Apple TV you'd see ads for entertainment content. Having it show up in Wallet is a complete disconnect.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
yieldcrv 1y ago
They did what?
t8sr 1y ago
I have never said and rarely thought this before, but I really hope the person who came up with / approved this idea got fired for it. It’s rare that you see something so unbelievably stupid and destructive of the shared pool of trust, which Apple spent 30 years building, only for one self-interested PM to blow a chunk of it up for no gain. If the person who came up with this reads this site, I hope they see this comment and think about how screwed the industry would be if everyone acted the way they did.
- jader201 1y ago
  Then you’re in agreement with the article: > I try very seldom to call for anyone to be fired, but I think whoever authorized this movie ad through Wallet push notifications ought to be canned.
- dustbunny 1y ago
  I think the person who came up with this shouldn't be fired, the person who _approved_ it should be reprimanded. There's some intersection point between who "owns" the wallet and who is coming up with ways to generate marketing revenue. Whoever lives at that intersection point is the real shot caller here aren't they? Imo you don't fire people for generating bad ideas, that just creates a culture of not thinking outside the box. But the person who is filtering those ideas is the critical lynch pin.
  - lupusreal 1y ago
    Why not fire them both? > Imo you don't fire people for generating bad ideas, If an idea is that bad, at the very least they should be transfered into a role that doesn't involve coming up with good ideas, since obviously that is outside of their skill set. And what's the argument for not firing the chain of people who approved it? Their job was to stop bad ideas and they catastrophically failed.
    - HelloMcFly 1y ago
      > at the very least they should be transfered into a role that doesn't involve coming up with good ideas, since obviously that is outside of their skill set. Proposing one bad idea is not unusual for people whose job is idea-driven. When ideas are the primary currency of your occupation, you'll necessarily generate some losers. But in a company of Apple's size, that's why you rely on colleagues and - critically - a more robust approval process to move from idea to deliverable. I hate your idea of firing (from org. or role) the idea person based on one bad idea. I don't hate the idea of firing (from org. or role) the leaders accountable for getting this idea into the world.
epolanski 1y ago
This company really is turning into the new IBM or something. No innovation whatsoever and more and more money squeezing the users. I'm sad they make the only decent laptop out there, for everything else I'm glad to be out their crap wallet garden.
- vitaflo 1y ago
  You could say this about all the large tech companies now. They're all just boring Megacorps.
  - Fade_Dance 1y ago
    NVIDIA is fairly unique and interesting.
supportengineer 1y ago
My fantasy is they create an entirely new product line called something like “Chunky” or maybe “Thiccc”. The idea is that it would have plenty of user replaceable modules. Everything would be swappable. The battery, the memory, the drives. Of course, this would still be a premium product. It would have expansion modules for things nobody has thought of yet. It’s a new market with unlimited opportunities
- mNovak 1y ago
  You should look up Google's Project Ara. I was really excited for it at the time (2014), but alas, it never made it to market.
- danielschreber 1y ago
  Fairphone?
steveBK123 1y ago
I think its rather telling about the state of Apple that Gruber has posted some fairly negative (for him) posts in the last few months. This is coming from a guy who generally fawned over every new iterative release as if it was revelatory for 20 years.
- linhns 1y ago
  But admittedly, they still have the only good laptop on the market
  - dlivingston 1y ago
    Downvoted but you aren't wrong. "Good laptop" meaning "few or no compromises" on EVERY component in the device.
dimal 1y ago
I think Apple may be in the process of being enshittified. Stuff like this, their complete failure to do anything useful with AI, the anti-accessibility of a Liquid Glass, and the simple observation of how many things in the Apple ecosystem don’t “just work” is making me feel like giving up on it. I spend an enormous amount of money on Apple products, and increasingly they lead to frustration and anger at the thoughtlessness and plain shittiness of them. I’m really wondering why I bother. They clearly don’t have my interests in mind.
jcoder 1y ago
I'm trying to remember if anyone complained like this about the Apple Card offers in Apple Wallet. For some reason advertising their credit card is completely fine, but advertising their movie is where people get out the pitchforks? Not defending either, I think both are egregious. I just think it's interesting.
karel-3d 1y ago
Living in Asia for a while, this stuff is so mild... all these "super-apps" are always so annoying with cross-promotions that are impossible to turn off. It's true that they are usually not yet having root level access.
- linhns 1y ago
  Asian here, always surprised when these apps keep putting their money into those promotions and getting almost nothing back in results.
ericyd 1y ago
> It’d be completely sensible to be spooked by that, and conclude that Apple Wallet is tracking you. Wait, there were/are people who believe Apple Wallet doesn't track them in some way?
- Fade_Dance 1y ago
  Yes. Apple has a fairly good user security track record.
linotype 1y ago
If Apple starts putting ads everywhere, I might as well switch to Android and save myself a thousand bucks every three years.
lukeschlather 1y ago
I feel like we need a CAN SPAM act that includes Smartphone notifications. And gatekeepers like Apple should probably simply be banned from placing any advertisements in push notifications. The updates Microsoft has been making to add stuff the Windows lockscreen and start menu also seem like they should be at the least legally questionable. And of course Google practically invented these things.
- inetknght 1y ago
  > I feel like we need a CAN SPAM act I feel like we need a CANT SPAM act.
- kevincox 1y ago
  We just need to expand it to all forms of communication. Smartphone notifications, web notifications, phone calls, carrier pigeons, town criers and messages in a bottle. Doesn't matter what the medium is. If it is unsolicited commercial communication it shouldn't be allowed.
  - account42 1y ago
    Don't forget billboards and similar advertisement space.
usernamed7 1y ago
This is why i have ALL notifications disabled, no matter the app. Companies, including apple, cannot help themselves but abuse it. Which is insane because it's a useful part of the phone functionality that I have to entirely disable because of greedy disrespectful companies. And there are no controls given to put us back in control. Apple has lost their taste and lost their respect for users.
logic_node 1y ago
Feels like a small thing, but it’s definitely a shift in tone. Curious if this becomes a trend in Apple’s UI decisions moving forward.
conradev 1y ago
I was watching the Phillies game the other day, like I usually do, except it was Friday, so Apple owns the rights to the game. It's not the usual announcers, but fine, I can watch it on Apple TV+. I remember getting a commercial for Ed Sheeran's new song for Apple's new F1 Movie which I can listen to on Apple Music and just ask Siri to play it and wanting to throw the remote at the TV. Apple just really wants to watch baseball with me. I prefer my crappy local OTT ads.
taylodl 1y ago
The irony is Apple is spending a fortune on their Secure with Apple marketing campaign, the one that ends with the Apple logo turning into a lock that clicks shut, and they’ve undone that, plus some, with the F1 campaign. This is a blunder of epic proportions and is illustrative of a company no longer in touch with their core identity and principles.
tapsboy 1y ago
Microsoft recently pushed Minecraft movie backgrounds for Teams users, including Enterprises
- wilsonnb3 1y ago
  They’ve had Minecraft backgrounds in teams for a while, since 2020 or 2021 at least
timewizard 1y ago
> That Apple can be trusted in ways that other “big tech” companies cannot. This is pure nonsense. From someone with the experience to know better. It's amazing to me that people could say this out loud. > The perception of privacy is just as important as the technical details that make something actually private. The "perception of privacy" is _all you have_. You don't even have access to the technical details! > I’m 99.9 percent certain this F1 ad was just blasted out to zillions of Wallet users indiscriminately Stop making excuses for the trillion dollar gorilla in the room with you. You don't understand it. You've anthropomorphized it to a point of pathos. It's going to rip your arms off. It's just a matter of time.
edfletcher_t137 1y ago
> The perception of privacy is just as important as the technical details that make something actually private. I try very seldom to call for anyone to be fired, but I think whoever authorized this movie ad through Wallet push notifications ought to be canned. Spot on. Look at it this way: would SJ have allowed this to happen? Absolutely not. And if it somehow had happened while he were still there, he would've unquestionably (and quickly) fired the responsible parties.
burnte 1y ago
Apple also pushed a notification through the AppleTV app. I thought I had all notifications turned off (I turn off notifications from most apps on all devices, just because you think I need to see your messages doesn't mean I think that and most apps do not need notifications). Quite irritating. That was the point where I decided I would not see F1 in theaters, and if I ever do it'll be free streaming.
- jtokoph 1y ago
  You may never see it because Apple holds all of the streaming rights.
tonymet 1y ago
I ended up buying tickets but the Fandango checkout flow had so many pitfalls that I doubt this converted very many people .At least 10 screens including one saying “sorry you can’t use Apple Pay to redeem the coupon” (you had to go through a further checkout and then choose Apple Pay ). They burned a lot of goodwill over a low conversion campaign. It reminds me of the U2 album that they snuck onto everyone’s phones, but even tackier .
DrTung 1y ago
Reminds me of the push of U2's 'Songs Of Innocence" into everyone's iPhones maybe 10 years ago.
4ndrewl 1y ago
C'mon, it's not like they dumped a complete album in your music collection!
bdelmas 1y ago
I thought they learn their mistakes from the time they gave a U2 album for free on iTunes (but forcing everyone on iTunes to have it). It’s the same thing here but worst with ads. Pushing their stuff in our personal apps and lives without our permission, free stuff or not. But they still made the same mistake…
aggregator-ios 1y ago
I’ve held the opinion as an Apple Fan for the better half of the last decade that Apple is lost. When looking at their product decisions and what they’ve decided to ship, it shows. - iPad is a confusing array of what that device is for. Is it for professional creators? Or consumers? Is it a PC? Or is it a mobile device? For the first time since its inception, it got a window manager at WWDC25. And yet, no support for any other apps outside of the App Store (EU excepted). Not a single creative professional uses it in the workplace. Not a single engineer uses it for development. And yet, a 11 iPad Pro with the trackpad+keyboard is more expensive and less capable than an M1 Macbook - iPhone: They are absolutely scared to change anything on here because the current culture at Apple is one of "do not change what brings us the most profits". Year over year small improvements, and rising phone costs. OS 26 brought about... a confusing design change. And while some analysts are fooled into thinking that this is preparation for their VR glasses, and even if that was remotely true (it's not) the analysts forgot that half transparent displays still obscure your vision. So that's not it. - Developer experience. There was recently a post on Hacker News about how the developer exhausted every avenue and was left with OS level behavior that only Apple could change or fix. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43901619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43901619 The comments ripped Apple apart. And you know what the response was? Apple finally helped them. But look at the second blog post where the developer posted it's resolved now. Not a single detail. They signed NDAs, and the post was essentially "we can't give any details because secrecy, but Apple helped us. They're great!". I can guarantee you 100% Apple forced their hand, and in fact Phil Schiller has said publicly that they are not willing to help you if you "cry to the press". Xcode reviews on the Mac App Store are scathing. Swift? Chris Lattner left months after Apple released Swift. And at the time it seemed like he just wanted to focus on something else. The details of why he left at the time was very hidden and hush hush. And guess what? It's come out in the Swift forums. https://forums.swift.org/t/core-team-to-form-language-workgroup/55455/6 https://forums.swift.org/t/core-team-to-form-language-workgr... Horrible. Performative nonsense. Their events are full of carefully chosen words and phrases that showcase a dead culture. One where you can't have any creativity beyond the new presenters and their fashion. Awkward corporate events that aren't fun anymore to watch as they release mundane features like "shake your mouse to make the cursor bigger!". AI? They spent 2 years removing the "hey" from "hey Siri". Everytime you turn off Apple Intelligence, a software update will force it back on. It still can't handle simple queries. And the UX even more confusing. There's a lot to lambaste in this department, but all of it has been said already. WWDC25 didn't address any of it. The interview with Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak was even more awkward and telling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCEkK1YzqBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCEkK1YzqBo I want Apple to be good. I want them to make great products again. I want them to innovate. But I guess I'm the fool for wanting a corporate entity to be good and cool.
gazatunnelrats 1y ago
[flagged]
gdubs 1y ago
I know the "what would Steve say" thing is tired, but seriously you can just imagine him on stage: "And ads in the operating system? YUCK."
dankwizard 1y ago
It actually only sent the notification if it detected in your wallet you had enough to cover 1 x ticket from your local theatre. If you didn't, the Notes app will notify you once it is free on streaming.
moqizhengz 1y ago
This stupid ad is officially the end of an era. Apple died.
leakycap 1y ago
Apple seems to have lost its way. I feel the only reason they still advertise Privacy is that they're stuck with it at this point, or they'd be another Samsung or Google. I miss the world when Apple had a point of view and vision that served to move things forward, not just stocks/revenue up.
albert_e 1y ago
Android apps blatantly misuse notifications to push inane ads and promotions Android provides a "notification categories" setting where user can trun some type of notifications on and other off. Most apps I use fall into two or three buckets -- 1. There is just one "default" notifications category ... so it is all or nothing. 2. There are a few categories named very vaguely with no way to actually discern what is useful and what is junk, and they also use them inconsistency. 3. There are tons and tons of notifications categories - list keeps changing frequently - so There is no way you can set and forget. So whatever you may do, ads still sneak through. Where/how can we start pushing back on this irresponsible behaviour and shame these billion dollar brands for abusing customers and treating us like fools. If someone has already given this form of abuse a name and a prominent online post -- maybe we could make it more popular and raise awareness.
MrDresden 1y ago
"Like, what if you recently bought tickets to see another summer blockbuster movie? Using Apple Wallet? And then you got this ad? It’d be completely sensible to be spooked by that, and conclude that Apple Wallet is tracking you." I am not in anyway agreeing with the tracking of people's activities and purchases, but if you use either of the main payment processor networks (VISA or MasterCard) then your purchase history is being tracked and sold to third parties. Any choice of wallet app, or ecosystem (ie iOS or Android) will not make any difference.
- Tijdreiziger 1y ago
  > if you use either of the main payment processor networks (VISA or MasterCard) then your purchase history is being tracked and sold to third parties. [citation needed]
dostick 1y ago
A

977 points by dotcoma 1y ago

[dead]

I feel vindicated for when I said that the moment Apple's line stops growing, they'll resort to monetizing their users like the rest of big-tech to increase their shareholder returns, and everyone here was like "Nooo, my sweet innocent publicly traded trillion dollar corporation would never betray me like that". Give it a few more years love, now they're boiling the frog.

rafaelmn 1y ago
What do you mean start monetizing ? I get adds for their Apple Arcade trial on top of my iOS settings main screen. I really hate Apple - but what's stopping me from moving out of the ecosystem is that nobody else builds shit that works and is on same level. The M Pro series processor is only touchable by that one AMD chip you can't get anywhere. Windows is garbage and Linux is a part time job. Android is even worse in terms of spam and jank, and the only ecosystem that works is Google - where if you get locked out - you're just praying to HN/Google contacts that you didn't lose your access.
- jb1991 1y ago
  You are correct that, just like in politics, you have to pick the best among problematic choices, which will often be Apple.
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    Isn't politics famous for moralizing inherently immoral decisions, such that people forget how to engage in constructive discourse and resign themselves to tribalism? Doesn't that process inherently degrade the quality of both politics and technology? Maybe I'm alone, but one of the few reasons I care about technology is to not treat it like politics or fairy magic.
- mrweasel 1y ago
  For the desktop, I could probably just use Linux, but you're right, in terms of eco-system, where would I go? Phones are even worse. You basically stuck on iOS and Android and I honestly see no situation where picking Android wouldn't be worse. You have a better selection of phone, and you could run /e/OS, Calyx, or something else, but that's just a hassle. I'm not a big fan of the direction iOS is developing, it tried to do way to much and the UI has become a mess.
  - fakedang 1y ago
    Graphene OS?
    - mrweasel 1y ago
      Graphene, Calyx, /e/OS... they work and you can install apps from the Play Store, the feedback I got is just that the few apps I need that can't be replaced keeps breaking. It's just more of a hassle than I'm willing to endure. But you right, it is an option.
      - fakedang 1y ago
        I think banking apps don't play well with it. In the event that I have to deprecate my current Android, I might have a go at installing Graphene and trying it out in various countries.
      - rglullis 1y ago
        Do you must have banking apps in your phone? And even if you do, do you need them so often that the apps must be installed in your daily driver?
        mrweasel 1y ago
        No, actually I don't because my banks app is awful, but my mobile payment app isn't any good if it's not on my phone.
  - fsflover 1y ago
- jorvi 1y ago
  The biggest trick they ever pulled was changing Music.app into Apple Music, and on first app start showing you a "hey, want to try Apple Music? Tap here" fullscreen. That single-handedly unlocked a huge cohort of boomers and other tech laypeople that had never tried Spotify or any other music streaming platform before. It was smart and also a huge abuse of market power. Apple Music would have bombed without it. The only reason they didn't get in deep shit for it was that Apple doesn't have nearly the market capture in the EU that they have in the US, and in that time period the US didn't do antitrust against tech companies.
  - TheDong 1y ago
    The worse abuse of market power there is that Apple Music doesn't have to pay the 30% to the app store for subscriptions made on the device, but but spotify etc do, so Spotify can't charge a comparable price on iOS, and also wasn't allowed to tell the user in the app that they can subscribe for $x online. Deceptive app naming has nothing on that.
- rglullis 1y ago
  > The M Pro series processor (...) even if it were the best processor to ever exist, it's not something that we can not live without. > Linux is a part time job It has been good enough for the past 15 years or so.
  - rafaelmn 1y ago
    >It has been good enough for the past 15 years or so. I daily drove fedora last summer for a few months and it was a joke on how unstable it was. Slack would crash when screen sharing, likewise for chrome/gmeet, camera corruption bugs. Just two days ago I was teasing a coworker on a daily that we can spot a linux user by how long it takes him to unmute himself. Chrome would randomly stop rendering all windows when watching YouToube in a separate window. KDE plasma would get messed up very frequently. Gnome was more stable but had issues with fractional scaling X11 apps on Wayland (Plasma 6 supported this). Installing a DAW took days of reading audio routing docs and trying stuff out, breaking my audio several times in the process. My LG C4 cannot be used at 4k/120Hz because you cant get HDMI 2.1 on Linux/AMD. And this is all on a well supported desktop machine. Laptop and power management was even worse last time I tried it. Hell I never had a PC laptop that managed sleep state reliably and didn't cook the battery in the backpack randomly. I just don't have these kinds of issues with MacOS. The processor/laptops are just best on the market and it just works, support is amazing. It is hard to justify dealing with Linux desktop and PC hardware even at a price premium, but these days Apple devices are even price competitive compared to similar windows/linux machines.
    - rglullis 1y ago
      > It is hard to justify dealing with Linux desktop and PC hardware even at a price premium There is only one justification that I need: Apple wants me in a golden cage, and I don't want to lose my freedom at any cost. No matter how much cheaper it can get, not matter how much "better" than the competition it is, it is not worth the price. I do not exchange my freedom for convenience, status or some materialistic joy. It's as simple as that. All your arguments against Linux are at best circumstantial and at worst bogus. Of course it is not perfect. Of course it has limitations. But it's undeniable that the gap between FOSS and Windows/Apple is getting narrower and narrower, despite the FOSS side getting a minuscule fraction of the resources available to trillion dollar corporations. And the really fucked up part is that You are the one claiming to "hate" Apple, yet you keep buying their products and making their market dominance ever stronger. --- Just to address your "claims": > we can spot a linux user by how long it takes him to unmute himself Never had any issues of that sort, whether I was using Google Meet, Slack, Zoom or anything else. > KDE plasma would get messed up very frequently. Gnome was more stable I've been using XFCE since 2010 (When Ubuntu went with Unity). It is not fancy and does everything I need. > issues with fractional scaling X11 apps on Wayland. It has been working fine on my Desktop and my Framework laptop for some good 3 years, when I actually bothered to look. Before that, I'd just go by through customization of window zoom levels (browser) and font-size (emacs, terminal, GTK apps). > My LG C4 cannot be used at 4k/120Hz because you cant get HDMI 2.1 on Linux/AMD hum, too bad? How significantly was your quality of life affected by this? Curiously, I also use an LG monitor with AMD running at 4k/60Hz, and the fact that I am "missing out" on something here does not even cross my mind. > Installing a DAW took days of reading audio routing docs Did you get it working? Was the software FOSS? Can you share your findings back with the developers and help them improve their product, or are you going to keep rationalizing the abusive relationship you're in because "at least things just work, most of the time".
- Toritori12 1y ago
  As shitty as it is, Chromeos doesnt seem to have a lot bloatware to me.
  - Fade_Dance 1y ago
    Does it not have a huge slew of pre-installed Google apps that can't be uninstalled like Android phones?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
- seszett 1y ago
  I don't really understand, I don't get ads on my Android phone? And I'm not sure what you mean about ecosystems either, yes you do need a Google account to download apps from the Play store, but you also need an Apple account to use the Apple store as far as I know. In my experience it's easier to create a second Google account than a second Apple account. Now I'm not representative of most users, like all HN users probably. But at home, apart from my M1 Mac (running Linux because I hate macOS) my other machines are Intel n100-based. They work fine.
  - rafaelmn 1y ago
    Android is preloaded with different flavor of crap depending on the vendor and side-loading a phone OS and dealing with everything - I just don't have the energy these days. Likewise for running Linux on top of a M series Apple device. My devices just work and they all work together - all I have to do is login to the same account. My phone shares stuff with my Mac without any setup - shared clipboard, apps, storage. Buds connect to all my devices, Mac Mini, MadBook, iPad - not just 2 BT devices at a time, and they switch seamlessly. Stuff that saves me time and just does what I want. And all of the devices are usually among the best in class individually. Nobody outside of Apple even has that as a vision. Microsoft is so bad at building consumer products it's unbelievable. Google is struggling to build compiling phones with its own software - I doubt they can execute on other device types. Valve did a relatively small investment in this ecosystem and brought it forward light years in the gaming space.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
denkmoon 1y ago
Ah, sweet vindication. Eventually the only company that doesn't do (all the) bad thing will start doing bad thing. What you say seems likely, but then what. Should I throw my phone in the bin because it might be bad in the future, as opposed to being actually bad now?
- fsflover 1y ago
  > but then what. Should I throw my phone in the bin because it might be bad in the future No, but you should be always ready to jump the ship, always research reasonably good alternatives and never go deep in their walled garden. Ideally, you could even support the efforts to bring the freedom with your money or time, like GNU/Linux phones.
latexr 1y ago
> and everyone here was like Do you have links? Because every single time someone claims “everyone” on HN shared an opinion and I go check, the threads are split. What that tells me is that the people who accuse HN of being a biased hive mind are themselves biased to the point of being blind to other arguments. > now they're boiling the frog. That’s a myth. > according to modern biologists the premise is false: changing location is a natural thermoregulation strategy for frogs and other ectotherms, and is necessary for survival in the wild. A frog that is gradually heated will jump out. Furthermore, a frog placed into already boiling water will die immediately, not jump out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog

jb1991 1y ago

Did they learn nothing from giving everyone a free U2 album that nobody wanted, and the backlash from that?

x62Bh7948f 1y ago
It was such a long time ago that the people who made the mistake have already retired, maybe.
- msh 1y ago
  Most of the top management from that time is the same people today.
- abcd_f 1y ago
  U2 stunt was Jobs' idea. He was a life-long fan of them. Edit - it wasn't, my bad, see below.
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    Didn’t the U2 stunt happen three years after Steve Jobs died?
  - latexr 1y ago
    The U2 album happened under Cook. https://www.rnz.de/cms_media/module_img/176/88193_1_detailxs2x_musikfreunde-unter-sich-apple-chef-tim-cook-und-u-2-saenger-bono-fotomonica-davey-archiv.webp https://www.rnz.de/cms_media/module_img/176/88193_1_detailxs...
    - abcd_f 1y ago
      Bah, my bad. This happened in 2014 and Jobs passed in 2011.
JimDabell 1y ago
I think this is a lot worse than the U2 thing. Operating systems bundle free stuff all the time. Even the Windows 95 CD had a Weezer music video on it. The U2 album wasn’t spammy it didn’t interrupt people, it was in an appropriate place, and it was easily removed. Even if you didn’t want it, it’s reasonable to not consider it a problem. This was outright spammy. It was trying to sell people something. It was in a sensitive place. And it was an attention-seeking, interrupting notification. This shouldn’t have even made it onto the drawing board, and for this to make it into production at Apple is a sign something is seriously wrong there.

tcshit 1y ago

Spot on!

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

eviks 1y ago

> destructive to all the hard work other teams at Apple have done to make Apple Wallet actually private — and, more importantly, to get users to believe that it’s private. That Apple can be trusted in ways that other “big tech” companies cannot. What's the downside of consumers getting their perceptions closer aligned with reality? Which side are you on?

eptcyka 1y ago
John Gruber has long been an Apple advocate, not saying this to detract from this post, but rather to add context to those who do not know this.

bambax 1y ago

> That Apple can be trusted in ways that other “big tech” companies cannot. That's funny. Why would Apple be "different"?

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
drysart 1y ago
Because Apple makes its money by selling you hardware and services, not by selling advertising. Companies ultimately serve whoever they make their money from; and none of the other big tech players have a comprehensive business model where the end user is the customer instead of the product. And because it has positioned itself as the single most prominent privacy-conscious champion in big tech through repeated actions over the course of many years. There are plenty of reasons to dislike Apple depending on where your priorities are (lack of openness and cultivating an ecosystem based on locking you into it by not interoperating with anyone else are great places to start); but it's hard to make an argument that anyone else in big tech even comes close to the amount of trustworthiness Apple has demonstrated for their users. The fact that Apple actually pushing an ad to its users is headline news speaks volumes to the trust they've earned (and damaged by doing so). Do you think it'd make headlines if Google showed its users an ad? Or Microsoft? Or Meta?
- charcircuit 1y ago
  Privacy and advertising are not mutually exclusive.
  - triska 1y ago
    Privacy is also about having control over your own space, both physically and digitally, and being free from unwanted intrusion or interference. For me, such a notification is an unwanted intrusion, and it is not compatible with privacy.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]

andrewinardeer 1y ago

I'm sure at some marketing meeting at Google, a VP racing for pole posiiton has wanted to green-light the idea of putting advertisements in their Wallet app. With any luck this backlash against Apple is so significant that a red flag is waved so ferociously that Google will never blast an advertisement out to their Google Wallet users. As the article outlines, I am sure that due to the sheer number of people who use Apple Wallet there was someone out there who had just bought an advance ticket to Superman and the moment they received a 'Transaction Successful' message this F1 advertisement notification popped up and had them wondering if Apple preserving their privacy really is a competitive advantage.

Kwpolska 1y ago
Google was there first. During Euro 2024, the "transaction successful" screen displayed some football-related animation.
- TheDong 1y ago
  Was it an ad or an easter egg, like the "google.com" logo animations you get on new years and other holidays? Did it send a push notification or bother the user? Got a screenshot or reference, since a quick google doesn't uncover it?
  - Neil44 1y ago
    Yeah it was an Easter egg style thing, similar to when the change the Google logo for special occasions. Not comparable to a push add for a movie (which I also haven't seen a screenshot of yet to be fair)
    - TheDong 1y ago
      > which I also haven't seen a screenshot of yet to be fair The article links to https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/26/apple-wallet-sends-push-notification-ad-pushing-f1-the-movie https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/26/apple-wallet-se... Which links to these examples: https://x.com/ParkerOrtolani/status/1937551035825807545 https://x.com/ParkerOrtolani/status/1937551035825807545 https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWallet/comments/1ljbjrs/how_do_i_turn_this_off/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWallet/comments/1ljbjrs/how_do... https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/24/apple-wallet-notification-f1-movie-ad/ https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/24/apple-wallet-notificati... (and actually a few more too)

altairprime 1y ago

Did we ever find out what happened at Mozilla that allowed that trust-destroying Mr. Robot advertisement to happen? There seems to be a trend (n=2) of Marketing spending consumer trust for one-time media engagement clicks.

detaro 1y ago
Not in detail afaik. The impression I got was that they somehow just didn't consider that people not looking for it would notice, and per the statement at the time (https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/retrospective-looking-glass/ https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/retrospective-looking-gl...) the review process was too focused on privacy vs the big picture.
- altairprime 1y ago
  Yeah, that’s the non-answer post that I remember. Ah well.

efitz 1y ago

I think a conclusion has been leaped to that is not necessarily true. If everyone is getting the same annoying ad (in both wallet and App Store), then what individual user tracking or surveillance is happening? Certainly none is required. It’s still annoying AF and it’s clear they didn’t learn their lesson from U2. But I don’t jump to the conclusion that “Apple is spying on me”. Instead I conclude “iOS leadership are greedy jerks with defective long term memory”.

triska 1y ago
I think the article rightly speaks of "trust-erosion" in connection with this incident because, in addition to the showing of ads being subject to the suspicion of surveillance, it raises the question how seriously we can take a wallet app that shows ads or does anything completely unrelated to its designated and propagated purpose, something that is not the reason why this app is used and in fact detracts everyone from the intended use of this app. The breakdown of trust is already in the question "What absurdity comes next from such a sensitive app?"
latexr 1y ago
> If everyone is getting the same annoying ad (in both wallet and App Store) Not everyone is. I’m in the EU and did not get it. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was only in the US. > then what individual user tracking or surveillance is happening? That’s not at all what most people (including this article) are complaining about. It’s about an ad in an app which should never ever ever have them, the targeting is really low on the list of priorities compared to the rest. > it’s clear they didn’t learn their lesson from U2. The two cases are nothing alike. They both involved Apple and backlash, and that’s where the similarities end. > But I don’t jump to the conclusion that “Apple is spying on me”. Again, that’s not the major issue most people are complaining about.

keiferski 1y ago

Apple without Ive and Jobs increasingly has a taste problem. Everything from their ads to things like this are just in really poor taste, and aren’t something that they would have done 15 years ago because they would have thought it was beneath their brand. I like Apple, so I’m really hoping they bring on someone to solve this. Otherwise they’re on track to be the same as every other tasteless tech company. More on taste and Apple: https://www.readtrung.com/p/steve-jobs-rick-rubin-and-taste https://www.readtrung.com/p/steve-jobs-rick-rubin-and-taste

dubcanada 1y ago
Jobs has been gone for almost 15 years. From what I know Ive had nothing to do with anything but design aesthetic. I am not sure either of these people have anything to do with ads on Apple Wallet. Or even Apple Wallet…
- keiferski 1y ago
  The entire reason Apple made devices that were a level above competitors is because the design wasn’t just the aesthetic. Ive was chief designer and so obviously had a key impact.
  - hshshshshsh 1y ago
    How do you know Ive had a key impact? Do you know it or read somewhere online?
    - dijit 1y ago
      “How do you know that <primary responsible person> had impact”. Do you hear yourself?
      - hshshshshsh 1y ago
        Then all OP is saying key impact person had key impact. Doesn't add any substance to discussion.

sails 1y ago

They are also marketing “nearby” coffee shops in the Home Screen stack widget which is pretty invasive, I’m surprised not to hear about it

basisword 1y ago
They're not. The Maps widget shows you nearby businesses. You can remove the widget.
- natch 1y ago
  My maps widget randomly took me to some BS Apple movie scene location with a bunch of movie branding right in the maps UI. There was nothing nearby about it. It was like two continents away from me.
- 1oooqooq 1y ago
  so, they're not and you can remove the thing that doesn't exist?
- sails 1y ago
  Turns out they are https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/p147sn/apps_like_yelp_are_using_widgets_as_home_screen/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ios/comments/p147sn/apps_like_yelp_...

jrockway 1y ago

I'm glad that people are mad about this. I got the ad, went on here to see if 1000 people were complaining, and nobody was. I was kind of surprised. For me it's like "oh, I didn't know Wallet was an advertising app", I thought it was something I paid for with the purchase of my phone. But I was wrong. It's just adware. "We'll store your boarding pass if you'll let us spam you about movie tickets." Do not want. I disabled notifications. Now a year from now, I'll be searching for some pass in my wallet. Someone will say "don't you get a notification when you get to the venue"? I'll be like "no I've never seen that work". Multiply that by everyone, and suddenly the buzz is "Apple Wallet doesn't work. Trust my money and credit cards with something that doesn't work? No thank you." And now people are buying a Garmin watch for Garmin Pay instead of an Apple Watch for Apple Pay. Really dumb. Huge mistake. It makes me sad that they don't care about their own brand. "We won the smartphone wars, let's cash in!" Winning is temporary, but losing is forever.

latexr 1y ago
> went on here to see if 1000 people were complaining, and nobody was. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44368854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44368854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44371872 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44371872 > Now a year from now (…) people are buying a Garmin watch for Garmin Pay instead of an Apple Watch for Apple Pay. Talk about a slippery slope fallacy. No, that will not happen. At all. There’s a better chance that this year will be the year of Linux on the Desktop.
- ickelbawd 1y ago
  As it so happens I’m using my framework laptop with fedora linux almost exclusively at this point. That was not the case a year ago. :)

ksec 1y ago

The problem isn't sending an Ad to Wallet. It is the fact that Apple openly attack Ads, condemns Ads, talk about privacy as fundamental human rights, and then have targeted Ads, in a place / software / services where no body expected it to appear. And not everybody has the Ad, so by HN / Reddit / Internet definition that Ad is targeted. The thing I used to like about Apple, even if you disagree with some of its decision. It is very coherent. It act as if Apple is a single entity even when it was a hundred billion market cap company. Compared to companies like Google and Microsoft, every product and services are like their own subsidiaries. Now Apple has become just another cooperate entity but with design team holding sufficient political power.

latexr 1y ago
> It is the fact that Apple openly attack Ads, condemns Ads What? No they don’t. I wish. Where did you get that idea? Apple loves ads. They do a ton of them and sell them to you. You can’t do an App Store search without seeing an ad right at the top, and the bottom, and the sides, and under your pillow. It’s absolutely littered with them. What Apple rails against is the tracking and invasion of privacy. Which incidentally ads do a lot of. Even Safari content blockers are ingrained in that philosophy: it’s not about blocking ads, it’s about blocking things that invade your privacy.
- encom 1y ago
  Apple is absolutely fine with tracking and privacy invasion, as long as they're the ones doing it.
  - latexr 1y ago
    Which has nothing to do with the point, which is that that’s what they rail against, not ads. If they are hypocrites about it is an orthogonal matter.
    - bigyabai 1y ago
      It's genuinely getting depressing watching HN try to justify Tim Cook's actions ad-hoc. You can't name a single ideal Apple values more than money. Soon (2028?) "Yes, we know Apple advertises to us and backdoors their services for the government. But *at least* my personal data isn't being sold, without Apple's privacy promise I would be helpless."

ctime 1y ago

I didn’t see any ads and nobody I know did. This may be a feature in ios26 (the next version in beta) that got leaked out to older versions? Ie a bug) Ios26 specifically enables promotions in wallet which is viewed as a feature that can be enabled/disabled

reliablereason 1y ago
Probably depends on where you live, or some other thing apple knows about you.
mbreese 1y ago
I saw the ad. iOS 18.5, in the Midwest, with notifications allowed for the Wallet app. I didn’t find it too intrusive, but it was surprising. It’s probably not a road Apple wants to go further down.

natch 1y ago

and in the maps widget

KingOfCoders 1y ago

As I've said for the last ten years about Apple and ads, as soon as the momentum slows down, they will put ads everywhere and sell your data next if it keeps revenue growth up.

lobochrome 1y ago

So - the gruber shadowban has been lifted eh?

Chuzam 1y ago
That's what I thought as well :D
zbentley 1y ago
What’s this referring to? What drama did I miss?
- epaga 1y ago
  https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/the_website_hacker_news_is_afraid_to_discuss https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/the_website_hacker_news_i...
  - zbentley 1y ago
    Thank you!
  - somedude895 1y ago
    Is there any proof for that or just a case of sour blogger?

codedokode 1y ago

Chinese phones show ad in notifications, obviously Americans see it, get jealous (what a difficult spelling!) and want to do the same.

kccqzy 1y ago
Chinese phones are way more aggressive in showing ads. They have graduated to showing ads via the Live Activities feature, or push notifications with the Time Sensitive bit on to bypass Do Not Disturb. There are a lot that American companies can learn from Chinese ones in showing ads creatively. /s

Zufriedenheit 1y ago

I am probably not the average computer user. I didn’t even receive this notification, but just reading about this makes me reconsider switching my devices from Apple to open source software. I have every possible ad blocked and I have been a happy user of Apple devices so far. But this behavior feels so scammy and cheap, not worthy of a premium brand.

throwanem 1y ago

This year for the first time I started carrying an Android along with my iPhone. I've had Apple phones exclusively since I got my first smartphone in 2012, and before now never had a wandering eye. But the moves Apple has made lately make me realize it is time to make sure I'll have a ripcord to pull if I need one. It's not so bad. I would rather have an appliance than a computer as my primary phone, of course. But if Apple is leaving the appliance market, then thank goodness at least I have the skills to use a pocket computer safely. Most don't have such skills. None should be required to. That's why it's good there should be a company like Apple around, at least as Apple has been. If I need to advise my older relatives never to upgrade, and help them source and maintain older iPhones, I guess I can do that.

b0a04gl 1y ago

[dead]

em500 1y ago

Apple Wallet is in the App store, and the F1 ad debacle directly violates App Store guidelines https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/) > 4.5.4 Push Notifications must not be required for the app to function, and should not be used to send sensitive personal or confidential information. Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges.

aqme28 1y ago
Interesting. I feel like this clause is violated very often by major apps: > Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages.
- foooorsyth 1y ago
  I’ve said several times before that notifications should be reportable as spam directly to Google/Apple, just like email spam reporting. Google tried to tackle this with notification channels, but the onus falls on the developer to actually use them honestly. No company trying to draw attention back to their app with advertisement notifications will willingly name a notification channel “advertisements” or “user re-engagement” or similar — they’ll just interleave spam with all the non-spam. This API from G hasn’t worked.
  - remus 1y ago
    > Google tried to tackle this with notification channels, but the onus falls on the developer to actually use them honestly. No company trying to draw attention back to their app with advertisement notifications will willingly name a notification channel “advertisements” or “user re-engagement” or similar — they’ll just interleave spam with all the non-spam. This API from G hasn’t worked. Revolut are really annoying for this. I'm sure there's a few spare days In their development cycle for someone to implement it if they wanted to, but instead they keep everything on the same channel which is 50% promo shit, because you don't want to miss that notification warning you about fraudulent activity on your card.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

jiriro 1y ago

[flagged]

todfox 1y ago
Even if I wanted to see that movie, I would refuse to watch it purely because I received an unsolicited ad in the Wallet app.

nyc_pizzadev 1y ago

I got this ad, and ya, I was truly bewildered to get such an ad and then shocked that it came from my Wallet. I then spent the next hour searching how to disable this new marketing stream and it looks like nothing can be done. Anyway, glad to see I’m not alone here.

manchmalscott 1y ago
They have added an option to disable marketing messages in the wallet app..... in the new iOS 26 beta. which uh, really makes it look like they were not planning on doing this just this once.
- thamer 1y ago
  This is what it looks like, the switch is for "Offers & Promotions": https://i.imgur.com/wodOoBo.jpeg https://i.imgur.com/wodOoBo.jpeg From the Wallet app, tap on "…" at the top right, then "notifications".

bfrog 1y ago

I have a fundamental fear that Apple will lose itself the day it chases profits with Ads. If I wanted Ad spam I would've used Google.

bitpush 1y ago
> Apple will lose itself the day it chases profits with Ads That shipped sailed many years back. Apple runs a highly successful ad network. It is just that most people are slowly starting to realize the true colors of the company.
busymom0 1y ago
They already make lots of money from ads on the App Store homepage and search. Small developers like me have a hard time competing when there's megacorps spending millions on App Store ads to rank higher.

memset 1y ago

I got this ad too. I increasingly use wallet for everything - multiple credit cards, show tickets, transit tickets. Is there an alternative? Android?

surgical_fire 1y ago
I use Google Wallet for some things because I am an Android user, and sometimes the most convenient way to pay for shit online is using the mobile wallet. I just happen to hate Apple more than I hate Google. That said, both Apple and Google are shit companies that should jot be trusted with this. I with there was a third option Also, please not FB. I have to be careful with what I wish sometimes.

briandw 1y ago

The Apple of old had a deep respect for their users. We paid for a product that tried its best to sweat the details and deliver the best experience possible. UX was king. Apple made hard choices and delivered minimal, thoughtful and delightful products. The motto was "less but better". Today we have an Apple that keeps pushing new poorly thought out features. More and more they don't respect the user. Constant interruptions that don't serve the user, a ridiculous onboarding process with far too many screens, forcing their own products like Apple Music on people, not making design choices and making the user pick an option. We are so far from less but better and it's only getting worse. I wish there was a way forward for Apple, but I think it's just going to slowly die.

pornel 1y ago
Apple has reverted to being a regular company. Everything is a potential revenue stream, and decisions are made based on next-quarter ROI. They needed the movie investment to meet the targets, so they've synergized with the Wallet team.
- komali2 1y ago
  Google too. I wish the fact that every company enshittifies in the end would wake us all up to the fact that rampant unregulated capitalism just doesn't work before it's too late to make any changes at all.
  - _benton 1y ago
    Apple wouldn't exist without "rampant unregulated capitalism".
    - bigyabai 1y ago
      Sure they would, they just wouldn't be as profitable.
    - croes 1y ago
      Why not? I think Apple wouldn‘t exist without cheap labor in authoritarian countries but that‘s a prerequisite for capitalism

righthand 1y ago

> The perception of privacy is just as important as the technical details that make something actually private. Well at least it’s acknowledged Apple privacy is only perception and not actually secure or private.

sneak 1y ago
No, people really believe their nonsense marketing. The whole “FBI vs Apple” soap opera they cooked up after the San Bernardino shooting thing convinced a lot of people. Meanwhile Apple preserves a backdoor in the iMessage end to end encryption (in the form of non-e2ee iCloud Backups) for the FBI. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-apple-dropped-plan-encrypting-120506247.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-apple-dropped-plan-... (iCloud e2ee availability is irrelevant; nobody has it enabled.)

sneak 1y ago

By default, the home screen of an Apple TV shows video ads for Apple subscription content, also.

binarymax 1y ago
Ads are annoying but I at least understand that on Apple TV you'd see ads for entertainment content. Having it show up in Wallet is a complete disconnect.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

yieldcrv 1y ago

They did what?

t8sr 1y ago

I have never said and rarely thought this before, but I really hope the person who came up with / approved this idea got fired for it. It’s rare that you see something so unbelievably stupid and destructive of the shared pool of trust, which Apple spent 30 years building, only for one self-interested PM to blow a chunk of it up for no gain. If the person who came up with this reads this site, I hope they see this comment and think about how screwed the industry would be if everyone acted the way they did.

jader201 1y ago
Then you’re in agreement with the article: > I try very seldom to call for anyone to be fired, but I think whoever authorized this movie ad through Wallet push notifications ought to be canned.
dustbunny 1y ago
I think the person who came up with this shouldn't be fired, the person who _approved_ it should be reprimanded. There's some intersection point between who "owns" the wallet and who is coming up with ways to generate marketing revenue. Whoever lives at that intersection point is the real shot caller here aren't they? Imo you don't fire people for generating bad ideas, that just creates a culture of not thinking outside the box. But the person who is filtering those ideas is the critical lynch pin.
- lupusreal 1y ago
  Why not fire them both? > Imo you don't fire people for generating bad ideas, If an idea is that bad, at the very least they should be transfered into a role that doesn't involve coming up with good ideas, since obviously that is outside of their skill set. And what's the argument for not firing the chain of people who approved it? Their job was to stop bad ideas and they catastrophically failed.
  - HelloMcFly 1y ago
    > at the very least they should be transfered into a role that doesn't involve coming up with good ideas, since obviously that is outside of their skill set. Proposing one bad idea is not unusual for people whose job is idea-driven. When ideas are the primary currency of your occupation, you'll necessarily generate some losers. But in a company of Apple's size, that's why you rely on colleagues and - critically - a more robust approval process to move from idea to deliverable. I hate your idea of firing (from org. or role) the idea person based on one bad idea. I don't hate the idea of firing (from org. or role) the leaders accountable for getting this idea into the world.

epolanski 1y ago

This company really is turning into the new IBM or something. No innovation whatsoever and more and more money squeezing the users. I'm sad they make the only decent laptop out there, for everything else I'm glad to be out their crap wallet garden.

vitaflo 1y ago
You could say this about all the large tech companies now. They're all just boring Megacorps.
- Fade_Dance 1y ago
  NVIDIA is fairly unique and interesting.

supportengineer 1y ago

My fantasy is they create an entirely new product line called something like “Chunky” or maybe “Thiccc”. The idea is that it would have plenty of user replaceable modules. Everything would be swappable. The battery, the memory, the drives. Of course, this would still be a premium product. It would have expansion modules for things nobody has thought of yet. It’s a new market with unlimited opportunities

mNovak 1y ago
You should look up Google's Project Ara. I was really excited for it at the time (2014), but alas, it never made it to market.
danielschreber 1y ago
Fairphone?

steveBK123 1y ago

I think its rather telling about the state of Apple that Gruber has posted some fairly negative (for him) posts in the last few months. This is coming from a guy who generally fawned over every new iterative release as if it was revelatory for 20 years.

linhns 1y ago
But admittedly, they still have the only good laptop on the market
- dlivingston 1y ago
  Downvoted but you aren't wrong. "Good laptop" meaning "few or no compromises" on EVERY component in the device.

dimal 1y ago

I think Apple may be in the process of being enshittified. Stuff like this, their complete failure to do anything useful with AI, the anti-accessibility of a Liquid Glass, and the simple observation of how many things in the Apple ecosystem don’t “just work” is making me feel like giving up on it. I spend an enormous amount of money on Apple products, and increasingly they lead to frustration and anger at the thoughtlessness and plain shittiness of them. I’m really wondering why I bother. They clearly don’t have my interests in mind.

jcoder 1y ago

I'm trying to remember if anyone complained like this about the Apple Card offers in Apple Wallet. For some reason advertising their credit card is completely fine, but advertising their movie is where people get out the pitchforks? Not defending either, I think both are egregious. I just think it's interesting.

karel-3d 1y ago

Living in Asia for a while, this stuff is so mild... all these "super-apps" are always so annoying with cross-promotions that are impossible to turn off. It's true that they are usually not yet having root level access.

linhns 1y ago
Asian here, always surprised when these apps keep putting their money into those promotions and getting almost nothing back in results.

ericyd 1y ago

> It’d be completely sensible to be spooked by that, and conclude that Apple Wallet is tracking you. Wait, there were/are people who believe Apple Wallet doesn't track them in some way?

Fade_Dance 1y ago
Yes. Apple has a fairly good user security track record.

linotype 1y ago

If Apple starts putting ads everywhere, I might as well switch to Android and save myself a thousand bucks every three years.

lukeschlather 1y ago

I feel like we need a CAN SPAM act that includes Smartphone notifications. And gatekeepers like Apple should probably simply be banned from placing any advertisements in push notifications. The updates Microsoft has been making to add stuff the Windows lockscreen and start menu also seem like they should be at the least legally questionable. And of course Google practically invented these things.

inetknght 1y ago
> I feel like we need a CAN SPAM act I feel like we need a CANT SPAM act.
kevincox 1y ago
We just need to expand it to all forms of communication. Smartphone notifications, web notifications, phone calls, carrier pigeons, town criers and messages in a bottle. Doesn't matter what the medium is. If it is unsolicited commercial communication it shouldn't be allowed.
- account42 1y ago
  Don't forget billboards and similar advertisement space.

usernamed7 1y ago

This is why i have ALL notifications disabled, no matter the app. Companies, including apple, cannot help themselves but abuse it. Which is insane because it's a useful part of the phone functionality that I have to entirely disable because of greedy disrespectful companies. And there are no controls given to put us back in control. Apple has lost their taste and lost their respect for users.

logic_node 1y ago

Feels like a small thing, but it’s definitely a shift in tone. Curious if this becomes a trend in Apple’s UI decisions moving forward.

conradev 1y ago

I was watching the Phillies game the other day, like I usually do, except it was Friday, so Apple owns the rights to the game. It's not the usual announcers, but fine, I can watch it on Apple TV+. I remember getting a commercial for Ed Sheeran's new song for Apple's new F1 Movie which I can listen to on Apple Music and just ask Siri to play it and wanting to throw the remote at the TV. Apple just really wants to watch baseball with me. I prefer my crappy local OTT ads.

taylodl 1y ago

The irony is Apple is spending a fortune on their Secure with Apple marketing campaign, the one that ends with the Apple logo turning into a lock that clicks shut, and they’ve undone that, plus some, with the F1 campaign. This is a blunder of epic proportions and is illustrative of a company no longer in touch with their core identity and principles.

tapsboy 1y ago

Microsoft recently pushed Minecraft movie backgrounds for Teams users, including Enterprises

wilsonnb3 1y ago
They’ve had Minecraft backgrounds in teams for a while, since 2020 or 2021 at least

timewizard 1y ago

> That Apple can be trusted in ways that other “big tech” companies cannot. This is pure nonsense. From someone with the experience to know better. It's amazing to me that people could say this out loud. > The perception of privacy is just as important as the technical details that make something actually private. The "perception of privacy" is _all you have_. You don't even have access to the technical details! > I’m 99.9 percent certain this F1 ad was just blasted out to zillions of Wallet users indiscriminately Stop making excuses for the trillion dollar gorilla in the room with you. You don't understand it. You've anthropomorphized it to a point of pathos. It's going to rip your arms off. It's just a matter of time.

edfletcher_t137 1y ago

> The perception of privacy is just as important as the technical details that make something actually private. I try very seldom to call for anyone to be fired, but I think whoever authorized this movie ad through Wallet push notifications ought to be canned. Spot on. Look at it this way: would SJ have allowed this to happen? Absolutely not. And if it somehow had happened while he were still there, he would've unquestionably (and quickly) fired the responsible parties.

burnte 1y ago

Apple also pushed a notification through the AppleTV app. I thought I had all notifications turned off (I turn off notifications from most apps on all devices, just because you think I need to see your messages doesn't mean I think that and most apps do not need notifications). Quite irritating. That was the point where I decided I would not see F1 in theaters, and if I ever do it'll be free streaming.

jtokoph 1y ago
You may never see it because Apple holds all of the streaming rights.

tonymet 1y ago

I ended up buying tickets but the Fandango checkout flow had so many pitfalls that I doubt this converted very many people .At least 10 screens including one saying “sorry you can’t use Apple Pay to redeem the coupon” (you had to go through a further checkout and then choose Apple Pay ). They burned a lot of goodwill over a low conversion campaign. It reminds me of the U2 album that they snuck onto everyone’s phones, but even tackier .

DrTung 1y ago

Reminds me of the push of U2's 'Songs Of Innocence" into everyone's iPhones maybe 10 years ago.

4ndrewl 1y ago

C'mon, it's not like they dumped a complete album in your music collection!

bdelmas 1y ago

I thought they learn their mistakes from the time they gave a U2 album for free on iTunes (but forcing everyone on iTunes to have it). It’s the same thing here but worst with ads. Pushing their stuff in our personal apps and lives without our permission, free stuff or not. But they still made the same mistake…

aggregator-ios 1y ago

I’ve held the opinion as an Apple Fan for the better half of the last decade that Apple is lost. When looking at their product decisions and what they’ve decided to ship, it shows. - iPad is a confusing array of what that device is for. Is it for professional creators? Or consumers? Is it a PC? Or is it a mobile device? For the first time since its inception, it got a window manager at WWDC25. And yet, no support for any other apps outside of the App Store (EU excepted). Not a single creative professional uses it in the workplace. Not a single engineer uses it for development. And yet, a 11 iPad Pro with the trackpad+keyboard is more expensive and less capable than an M1 Macbook - iPhone: They are absolutely scared to change anything on here because the current culture at Apple is one of "do not change what brings us the most profits". Year over year small improvements, and rising phone costs. OS 26 brought about... a confusing design change. And while some analysts are fooled into thinking that this is preparation for their VR glasses, and even if that was remotely true (it's not) the analysts forgot that half transparent displays still obscure your vision. So that's not it. - Developer experience. There was recently a post on Hacker News about how the developer exhausted every avenue and was left with OS level behavior that only Apple could change or fix. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43901619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43901619 The comments ripped Apple apart. And you know what the response was? Apple finally helped them. But look at the second blog post where the developer posted it's resolved now. Not a single detail. They signed NDAs, and the post was essentially "we can't give any details because secrecy, but Apple helped us. They're great!". I can guarantee you 100% Apple forced their hand, and in fact Phil Schiller has said publicly that they are not willing to help you if you "cry to the press". Xcode reviews on the Mac App Store are scathing. Swift? Chris Lattner left months after Apple released Swift. And at the time it seemed like he just wanted to focus on something else. The details of why he left at the time was very hidden and hush hush. And guess what? It's come out in the Swift forums. https://forums.swift.org/t/core-team-to-form-language-workgroup/55455/6 https://forums.swift.org/t/core-team-to-form-language-workgr... Horrible. Performative nonsense. Their events are full of carefully chosen words and phrases that showcase a dead culture. One where you can't have any creativity beyond the new presenters and their fashion. Awkward corporate events that aren't fun anymore to watch as they release mundane features like "shake your mouse to make the cursor bigger!". AI? They spent 2 years removing the "hey" from "hey Siri". Everytime you turn off Apple Intelligence, a software update will force it back on. It still can't handle simple queries. And the UX even more confusing. There's a lot to lambaste in this department, but all of it has been said already. WWDC25 didn't address any of it. The interview with Craig Federighi and Greg Joswiak was even more awkward and telling: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCEkK1YzqBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCEkK1YzqBo I want Apple to be good. I want them to make great products again. I want them to innovate. But I guess I'm the fool for wanting a corporate entity to be good and cool.

gazatunnelrats 1y ago

[flagged]

gdubs 1y ago

I know the "what would Steve say" thing is tired, but seriously you can just imagine him on stage: "And ads in the operating system? YUCK."

dankwizard 1y ago

It actually only sent the notification if it detected in your wallet you had enough to cover 1 x ticket from your local theatre. If you didn't, the Notes app will notify you once it is free on streaming.

moqizhengz 1y ago

This stupid ad is officially the end of an era. Apple died.

leakycap 1y ago

Apple seems to have lost its way. I feel the only reason they still advertise Privacy is that they're stuck with it at this point, or they'd be another Samsung or Google. I miss the world when Apple had a point of view and vision that served to move things forward, not just stocks/revenue up.

albert_e 1y ago

Android apps blatantly misuse notifications to push inane ads and promotions Android provides a "notification categories" setting where user can trun some type of notifications on and other off. Most apps I use fall into two or three buckets -- 1. There is just one "default" notifications category ... so it is all or nothing. 2. There are a few categories named very vaguely with no way to actually discern what is useful and what is junk, and they also use them inconsistency. 3. There are tons and tons of notifications categories - list keeps changing frequently - so There is no way you can set and forget. So whatever you may do, ads still sneak through. Where/how can we start pushing back on this irresponsible behaviour and shame these billion dollar brands for abusing customers and treating us like fools. If someone has already given this form of abuse a name and a prominent online post -- maybe we could make it more popular and raise awareness.

MrDresden 1y ago

"Like, what if you recently bought tickets to see another summer blockbuster movie? Using Apple Wallet? And then you got this ad? It’d be completely sensible to be spooked by that, and conclude that Apple Wallet is tracking you." I am not in anyway agreeing with the tracking of people's activities and purchases, but if you use either of the main payment processor networks (VISA or MasterCard) then your purchase history is being tracked and sold to third parties. Any choice of wallet app, or ecosystem (ie iOS or Android) will not make any difference.

Tijdreiziger 1y ago
> if you use either of the main payment processor networks (VISA or MasterCard) then your purchase history is being tracked and sold to third parties. [citation needed]

dostick 1y ago