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Apple is crossing a Steve Jobs red line

• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• duxup 1y ago
  Ads in Maps and how that contrasts with the customer experience is the message here. I'll be honest, I'm tired of the "steve jobs wouldn't" and "apple dying" articles, they're oh so shrill and tiresome and I think Steve would have changed with the times too ... Steve aside, I find this particular article's observation that ads in maps is a bad customer experience something I can agree with.
  • kelnos 1y ago
    > I think Steve would have changed with the times too That's the thing that annoys me whenever someone says "what would $DECEASED_PERSON do?" We can't know! Maybe we can make an accurate guess about what Steve Jobs would have done in 2011, but it's really hard to say what he would have done in 2025, had he lived. Not just because people change over time (he was 56 when he died, and would be 70 today), but because business requirements and practices change over time, and executives -- even Jobs -- adapt to those changes. Maybe this is exactly what Jobs would have done: resist adding advertising for years and years, but finally in 2025 decide it's necessary for the business in some cases. (But I also agree that this sort of thing is garbage for the user experience. In my fantasy world, advertising doesn't exist, at all.)
    • wrs 1y ago
      Of course we don’t know. But regarding this specific example, bear in mind that Apple is in vastly better shape as a business than it was in 1999. So if that argument didn’t work on him then, it doesn’t seem implausible that it wouldn’t work now.
      • pqtyw 1y ago
        Or the opposite. The Apple might and/or its execs might think that they are in such a dominant position that purposefully lowering UX to extract a few extra pennies from their users won't cause any short term harm. While back in the 90s the brand/reputational damage might have destroyed them.
        • tadfisher 1y ago
          Back in the 90s, Apple had zero brand or reputation. It had a few die-hard Mac fans and a bunch of inherited deals with public school district purchasing departments from when the Apple II dominated. They licensed Mac OS to clone manufacturers like Microsoft did with Windows. They were essentially already destroyed and waiting for the eviction notice. Jobs, with Mac OS X and the iMac, absolutely created the unassailable perception of quality and user experience Apple is known for today. The term "reality distortion field" was used a lot in relation to how much Jobs sold Apple and the Mac in keynotes. So it's completely fair to use his well-known positions against the company's current practices.
          • pqtyw 1y ago
            Yes, exactly. They couldn't afford to crapify their products for short term again and hope to survive. They wouldn't be here if they did that. Now they can. > well-known positions against the company's current practices Companies generally don't really have values besides maximizing profits. People working or leading them might. But that almost never lasts more than a few decades at most.
    • xp84 1y ago
      > decide it's necessary for the business Necessary? That implies that there is some real threat to the business that needs to be countered this way -- which is laughable. Even Tim Cook had enough spine to make a principled stand once: he told activist investors in 2014 that if they didn’t like Apple’s commitment to environmental responsibility, they should sell their shares. Steve had twice the principles as Cook (on issues he cared about at least), so I don't think he'd allow "the investors want even greater growth" to force him do something he found gross and degrading to the experience.
      • kelnos 1y ago
        > Necessary? Necessary, beneficial, has more upside than downside, whatever way you want to slice it. > Even Tim Cook had enough spine to make a principled stand once: he told activist investors in 2014 that if they didn’t like Apple’s commitment to environmental responsibility, they should sell their shares I feel like this is actually support for my argument that people change over time (either naturally, or to adapt to the times themselves changing): I cannot for a second imagine Cook making this sort of statement today.
        • xp84 1y ago
          > I cannot for a second imagine Cook making this sort of statement today. Agree, but personally I don't respect Cook and agree he seems to have sold his spine sometime around when he sold his soul. I got the sense that Jobs wasn't drifting toward increased greed but rather, a knowledge that he and Apple both had more than enough "F-you money" -- to do what they thought was best for the product, knowing that that was also exactly aligned with the long-term interests of the company anyway.
  • Noumenon72 1y ago
    There are lots of good experiences from ads in maps: - I search for "restaurants" and someone is having a special - A trampoline park opens near me, I'd like it to catch my eye - I've been googling chocolates recently, so populate the map with chocolate shops - Maybe I'm bored as a car passenger and watching the map screen so my attention is free anyway
    • kelnos 1y ago
      That sounds absolutely awful, honestly. I wouldn't want to see any of those things mess with the "natural" order of search results for whatever I've explicitly searched for.
    • joshgachnang 1y ago
      The 1st and 3rd are better served by Apple choosing the best result rather than who's paid for an ad.
      • xp84 1y ago
        I do agree with you in theory, though their 'attempts' at this kind of thing are comical if not absurd (witness the organic search results in the App Store).
    • ses1984 1y ago
      I don’t want my phone to consume any of my “free” attention, ever, but holy cow especially not while driving.
      • jdminhbg 1y ago
        > as a car passenger
        • thaumasiotes 1y ago
          Sometimes the driver looks at the map screen too. That's most of the reason it's there.
  • AlexandrB 1y ago
    Ads in the App Store continue to be a bad customer experience as well.
    • waylandsmithers 1y ago
      Anything you search for, the first thing at the top of the list is an ad from a competitor!
  • ndepoel 1y ago
    Honestly, I think that if Steve Jobs had lived, he would have continued to push the industry in a direction more aligned with his tastes, others would have followed suit, and whatever hot topics we'd be discussing today, they would be very different from the ones we are discussing now.
    • xp84 1y ago
      Sad but probably true. I hadn't really considered that aspect. Anyone so influential no doubt changed the whole Zeitgeist, not just their own company's course.
    • rhetocj23 1y ago
      Correct. This is something that is becoming increasingly apparent with time.
    • apples_oranges 1y ago
      He seemed very content in the end that Apple is on the right track and set up correctly for the future. I don't think he was talking about profit margins, but rather about the soul of the company, if there is such a thing.
    • TheOtherHobbes 1y ago
      I think he would have been all over AI, and would have pushed Siri ahead instead of letting the product stagnate. I suspect he'd have pushed into robotics as well, especially home automation robots. Home automation in general, in fact. His whole thing was being the smartest, most tasteful, and most creative person in the room. There was a lot of illusion/delusion there, but even with his failures he was absolutely focused on product design, user experience, and aesthetics in a way that Cook's Apple isn't. Cook's Apple is a hugely successful predatory and cynical cash extraction bureaucracy, with a world-leading hardware division and a shockingly mediocre and failing software division. The goal is penny-pinching acquisition, so we can expect more and more of this from Apple until there's a change of leadership. (If we're lucky...)
      • rhetocj23 1y ago
  • m463 1y ago
    > "steve jobs wouldn't" and "apple dying" ... shrill I think these are fans of apple who have lost something. Personally I think steve jobs was a good integrator - he got people together. Sometimes the people were apple <-> customers, sometimes music industry <-> computers, etc If there was controversy, he stepped in and lead - and stepped into the spotlight and explained. I don't see the same sort of leadership nowadays. Controversies like the app store woes, pricing, monopoly behavior, bad service to developers, even tariff stuff. Also he was good at creating/choosing new next products and killing not-quite-there products. yeah, but that ship has sailed.
    • ToucanLoucan 1y ago
      I think what Steve added to Apple more than anything was being the biggest asshole in the room who was willing to point at a fellow high-up person and tell them their idea sucked ass, and you may be surprised to read what comes next, I think that's critical to a good product line. There are numerous problems caused by having too many stakeholders, too many cooks in the kitchen if you will, steering your given ship, and sometimes exactly what you need is one guy who knows damn well what needs to be made, and isn't afraid to tell you to take a hike if you want to die on the hill in question. That all being said, he got it wrong a lot too. You have the good decisions: the original Macs, the iPhone, banning Flash from iOS, backing Pixar, demanding the iPad Mini be better before it goes to market, etc. But he got it wrong a lot too: the Apple III, very strict App Store policies, not replaceable batteries in the iPhone which would eventually infect every Apple product, and I'm sure there's plenty more. The one thing though that prevents me from truly looking up to him though is he was, by all accounts, an absolute fucking asshole to work for. I appreciate a man with a vision absolutely, as should be evident, but there's also something to be said for being able to navigate those difficult conversations with class and kindness, even when you need to tell someone their idea sucks ass, you can do it in such a way where they don't want to quit outright. And those failings were mirrored in Jobs' personal life, too. Dude just had no fucking ability to People at all. So yeah. Complicated guy. I think he represents both the best and worst of what can happen when you empower one person with a lot of good ideas- and some bad- to lead a company. I think it's broadly a good thing; and I also think if I worked under him, I probably would've ended up knocking a tooth of his out.
  • teaearlgraycold 1y ago
    The ads in Google Maps are fairly tame by modern standards. Of course, Apple can afford to not make this change and I hope they abstain. But it’s really not too offensive in my opinion.
    • qwerpy 1y ago
      > fairly tame by modern standards That means they’re still early in the ad-ification of the product. After a few dozen “what if we increase the ad density” A/B tests later, we’ll get to the point Google search is now. Except with maps you’re stuck using the app without an ad blocker.
  • wat10000 1y ago
    I usually don't like those articles, but I think this one has a pretty good point. If it was just "Steve said no to ads in MacOS X, so it's a betrayal to put ads in Maps" then I'd be right there with you. We got a lot of these. "Steve wouldn't have accepted the notch." "Steve wouldn't have made a VR headset." These are both baseless and boring. Even if it's true, so what? Steve specifically told his successors not to ask "what would Steve do?" And the objection is vague stuff about aesthetics or customer appeal or whatever. This one is more interesting than that by focusing on the customer experience angle, and there's little room for disagreement on that. I might argue that the notch makes for a better customer experience, you might argue it would have been better without it, and we're really just putting our opinions onto a dead man. But it's very hard to make the argument that adding ads to Maps makes for a better customer experience. Doing it isn't a matter of having different tastes or opinions than Steve had. It's directly going against a fundamental principle he had for the company. "Steve wouldn't have made Maps look like that" would be tedious, but "Steve wouldn't have deliberately made the customer experience worse in order to make more money" is a message I can get behind.
  • furyofantares 1y ago
    Ads is a red line for me too. They're in the App Store and I hate it. Adding ads to anything is going to make it significantly worse for me immediately - and I expect it only to get worse from there as the customer of the device or service is no longer the only customer of the product, and the more money the ads bring in, the more the needs of the advertisers will be weighted.
  • microtherion 1y ago
    Yes, I agree that ads in maps would be a bad customer experience. But "The customer experience was all-important" is a bit reductionist. The hockey puck mouse stuck around for years after it became clear it was a poor customer experience. And I have cursed desktop Macs countless times for having all their ports in the back, because Jobs disliked seeing them, customer experience be damned.
    • gretch 1y ago
      Or how the iphone 4 antenna was obstructed by normal holding of the phone (including poses in apple marketing materials), and then steve just told everyone they were holding their phones wrong.
      • Y-bar 1y ago
        Yeah. The phone was faulty from a hardware design standpoint, and the manner Steve Jobs handled it was bad. But he was correct on one point: Every other manufacturer at the time had a paragraph and illustration in their manual telling people not to hold their phone in a certain manner. I think much of his bad attitude came from this fact that he felt Apple was unfailingly singled out.
    • tonyedgecombe 1y ago
      >Yes, I agree that ads in maps would be a bad customer experience. If I search for a nearby cafe on Apple Maps it pulls in data from Trip Advisor. I suspect you could provide a better experience than that even with ads (although I doubt they will).
      • MangoToupe 1y ago
        Ads are a good way to be spammed with low-quality options that choose to pay apple.
  • TZubiri 1y ago
    >I'll be honest, I'm tired of the "steve jobs wouldn't" and "apple dying" articles, they're oh so shrill and tiresome and I think Steve would have changed with the times too ... Ok, but it's true, the man died, the company is public, and like all companies they will eventually profit off the brand by making a shitty product. It's all rug pulls, try a Hershey's chocolate bar, mine had soy in it.
  • bowsamic 1y ago
    I agree I’m also tired of it. It’s all so hypothetical, trying to guess what a dead man would think. Who cares anyway? He made loads of bad decisions
  • lowbloodsugar 1y ago
    Google maps is better, except for the ads. If Apple Maps gets ads, I’ll just switch to Google. So weird that Apple wouldn’t comprehend that privacy (which requires no ads) is their moat.
• matheusmoreira 1y ago
  They will always put ads into everything. Doesn't matter what they say, eventually someone's gonna show up and notice that money is being left on the table by not advertising to all those users. Paying them just makes your attention even more valuable.
  • PaulHoule 1y ago
    The trouble with any ad-free tier is that anybody who can’t afford the ad-free tier can’t afford what is being advertised.
  • bigyabai 1y ago
    There is some amusing "leopards ate my face" logic in paying a company to not pester you for further monetization.
    • matheusmoreira 1y ago
      Never pay them. You're essentially paying to segment yourself into the upper echelons of the market.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• generalpf 1y ago
  It doesn't matter what Steve Jobs would or wouldn't do, Tim Cook took Apple to a $3T company and that's where we are.
  • mason_mpls 1y ago
    Yeah every action a company takes is immediately and completely reflected in the market cap /s
    • graemep 1y ago
      It should be, or, to be precise, everything it is publicly known to have done is reflected in its share price. its called the semi-strong form of the efficient markets hypothesis.
  • bigstrat2003 1y ago
    Money isn't everything. We can, and should, shun businessmen who try to eke out every ounce of profit by making their products terrible.
• FrankWilhoit 1y ago
  Jobs's focus on the customer experience was useless because he judged the customer by himself. "Be like me and you will have a good experience" is not clever marketing; it is abuse.
  • ratelimitsteve 1y ago
    for something useless it worked very, extraordinarily well
  • pclowes 1y ago
    I dunno, for a while it was the most valuable company on the planet. While you might not like his judgment it seems plenty of people did.
    • eviks 1y ago
      So you approve of ads then since it makes the company more valuable?
  • bsimpson 1y ago
    This might be the worst take I've ever read on this website. I'm a lifetime Mac user who has bought exactly one iPhone (the 3G S) before switching to Android. I'm definitely not in the Jobs reality distortion field. But I do remember how the iPod was better than every similar thing at the time, and how people spent _years_ clamoring for Apple to harness that same focus to make a phone. Apple had to go out and buy the iPhone name because that's what it had been colloquially called for years before it was announced. There are plenty of things Apple has done wrong, many by Steve personally, but you can't seriously claim that his taste was only applicable to him. Don't denigrate the meaning of the word "abuse" to make your hot take spicier.
    • ratelimitsteve 1y ago
      as someone who bought the creativelabs mp3 player back in the day, the ipod was absolutely better and I was just being some combination of cheap and contrarian
• daft_pink 1y ago
  To me the really question is how that impacts my privacy. I’m okay with Ads in their software as long as it doesn’t negatively impact my privacy. It’s obvious that many of google services have huge negative impacts on my privacy, which is why I buy from apple.
  • nomel 1y ago
    I buy from Apple for privacy and the their respecting users and being "classier" by not putting ads in their apps. That is the reason I pay the "Apple tax". I think this is very unfortunate.
    • bigyabai 1y ago
      It's very likely that the "privacy" advertising is largely a sham too. As Senator Wyden proved, Apple can be compelled by the federal government to conceal spyware in iOS and its supporting systems: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-secretly-giving-governments-push-notification-data/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-... Hardly surprising given how they reneged their stance on in-OS advertising though.
• roywiggins 1y ago
  Is that AI Steve Jobs in the header image? Pretty uncanny and takes away from the article.
  • sjm 1y ago
    Yes. Pretty hypocritical for an article about "crossing red lines" to use AI slop for an image of a real person. Very disrespectful.
    • roywiggins 1y ago
      it also just looks awful and only about 80% like the guy
    • wat10000 1y ago
      It's not hypocritical for an article about crossing someone else's red line to simultaneously be crossing your red line.
      • sjm 1y ago
        Depicting deceased people with AI is objectively distasteful, especially from a self-described "ad guy" who should know better.
        • oenton 1y ago
          "objectively distasteful" - citation needed
        • wat10000 1y ago
          That’s not what “objectively” means.
  • amatecha 1y ago
    Yeah especially since it probably wouldn't take long to scrub through some WWDC presentations of his to find him holding up his hands like that (or a gesture of comparable meaning)
• fpauser 1y ago
  One word: Enshittification.
• torben-friis 1y ago
  I don’t care about whatever Jobs thought, but honestly I do care about apple forgetting that the walled garden’s walls are tolerated only because the experience inside is better. Their hardware is still amazing, but I’ve had enough issues with software quality and Cook’s penny pinching philosophy that I’ve bought a second hand laptop to explore moving to Linux. So far, the experience is making me question whether my next main driver will be a MacBook.
  • jabwd 1y ago
    Yeah for me it has been degrading ever since the Settings app became an upsell app. I'm sorry I came here to change a setting not dismiss a notification on your latest failed service thing that requires 20,- a month.
    • torben-friis 1y ago
      It’s the push for services. It’s the product ladder with artificial limitations like low fps screens or small storage to push you a bit more. It’s bugs piling up because Marketing needs the next buzzword released. It’s the aesthetics optimized for a screenshot rather than real usability. It’s the feeling that their top talent is not able to deliver anymore, like their camera’s processing or AI features.
      • thewebguyd 1y ago
        > It’s the product ladder with artificial limitations like low fps screens This one really pisses me off as someone who just had to upgrade their 2018 iPad Pro. The air would've been great, if it had a 120hz screen. I really don't need any other "pro" feature but I refused to tolerate 60hz in 2025 when every other device I own including my big desktop monitor is 120hz or more. But no, I have to spend an extra $500 for a higher refresh rate. I didn't even want the pro, I want a 120hz air so I can get the colors I want. Nonetheless, because my screen was broken and I needed a new iPad, I forked over the money for the pro. Conveniently, they use two different magic keyboards so now that I'm "locked in" to the pro ecosystem, I'm forever stuck buying iPad pros unless I also want to have to buy a new magic keyboard that works with the Air line if they ever release a 120hz air. Apple can easily differentiate the air from the pro in numerous other ways besides refresh rate, and yet they still continue to ship 60hz screens.
• uvaursi2 1y ago
  Click bait headline. Is that a real photo of SJ? Flagged and moving on.
• bell-cot 1y ago
  > What would Steve Jobs do? > ... I was in the room when Steve was presented with an eerily similar “opportunity.” ... 1999-ish ... Lee Clow and I were invited to a hastily scheduled meeting with Steve and his top lieutenants. The topic was building advertising into the Mac system software. ... Not that I like ads, but - Late 90's Apple, fresh out of a near-death experience, is an extremely different context from today's Apple, with it's 12-digit annual profits and #4 spot on the Fortune 500 list.
  • chankstein38 1y ago
    Speaking simply to your comment because I'm not aware enough of their behaviors myself, wouldn't the 12-digit profits and a high Fortune 500 listing potentially be enough to make Steve say "We have enough honestly" obviously that's not the norm, most companies just seem to find any way to extract every ounce of our souls but I thought that was where Apple was supposed to differ, at least under Steve. I honestly don't know this is just a question.
    • bell-cot 1y ago
      My thinking was that recently-near-death 1999 Apple, with no deep moats nor cash cows, needed to present itself as premium and squeaky-clean. > ... wouldn't the 12-digit profits and a high Fortune 500 listing potentially be enough to make Steve say "We have enough honestly" ... It'd be nice to imagine. But given Steve's documented horrible behaviors at a number of points in his life...I sadly doubt it.
• bamboozled 1y ago
  If I see ads in their proprietary software, I’m done as a customer.
  • radley 1y ago
    Uhm, have you opened your Settings app? It's had Apple ads for years. And the Wallet app showed a promo notification for the F1 movie.
    • intrasight 1y ago
      I see no ads there
• metabagel 1y ago
  I ran a reverse image search on the image of Steve Jobs, and couldn't come up with anything, so it does appear that it might be AI generated, which I don't approve of.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • furyofantares 1y ago
    It sure looks it. It was my assumption the moment I saw it.
  • monitron 1y ago
    Same reaction here. I think the author certainly crossed a line by using a diffusion model to publish an image of a dead famous person doing something he never did.
    • amelius 1y ago
      Does that somehow invalidate the message of the article?
      • 6031769 1y ago
        It weakens the message because knowing that the image is fake casts equal doubt on anything which the text says.
        • amelius 1y ago
          This is total nonsense. Every reader will understand that Jobs was never photographed like that while saying "stop" to anyone crossing his red lines. Even if the photo exists, it would have been out of context. The only question here is if using that image is tasteful or not. Also, suggesting that Jobs did not have these red lines is not making the situation any better.
          • 1y ago
• skhameneh 1y ago
  The very first thing I saw from Apple that, IMO, Jobs would have vehemently stopped was the two-toned back on the iPhone 5. That said, the iOS 26 release is abysmal. The only redeeming thing for me has been the enhancements to Stage Manager, everything else with the UI/UX is such a mess that every day it seems like I'm discovering something new in the realm of awful design. And this isn't limited to minor nitpicks, there are major CTAs that are essentially "black on black" and practically not visible below 50% screen brightness and not acceptably visible at max brightness. Just last night I noticed the browser tabs will render full color content behind the text. It's so bad I've been considering cataloging screenshots and writing about it, because some of it's laughably bad.
  • hbn 1y ago
    > The very first thing I saw from Apple that, IMO, Jobs would have vehemently stopped was the two-toned back on the iPhone 5. The iPhone 5 was revealed a year after Jobs stepped down as CEO and his death shortly after. The design was almost surely locked in while he was still CEO. The original iPhone had a 2-toned back too.
  • tartoran 1y ago
    Iphone user here. I have to admit that the IOS UI/UX has become really tiring and at times I'm utterly confused by inconsistency, a total contrast from the early days IOS when everything was consistent and intuitive. The silver lining is that I am using my Iphone less and less.
  • btown 1y ago
    I have no doubt that the team behind Liquid Glass had the same noble motivations as the team behind Microsoft's Metro Design Language in 2010. In a crowded market, making a completely innovative visual identity is often the only option. One hopes that the result is that the words "forward-looking" and "trend-setting" and "loyalty-inspiring" and "inimitable" begin to apply. And if they pull it off, more power to them! But there's a matter of taste as well as novelty. And while there were many incredible things about Metro, history bears witness to how much Zune and Windows Phone and Windows 8 have become beloved household names in the decade-and-a-half since. I do think that Jobs would have signed off on the motivation behind Liquid Glass. I do not think he would have signed off on Liquid Glass itself.
• radley 1y ago
  Uhm, is crossing?? Mate, you're going to have to reverse direction and travel back about eight years to find that line. I feel like most of this is Microsoft's fault. As MS lowers the bar for what's acceptable on Windows, Apple just has to be somewhat-obviously better. Additionally, Google's ad-driven economy set a low bar with Android, but that platform has always been that way. Together, those platforms make it really easy for Apple to posture as being considerate.
• chankstein38 1y ago
  I don't understand why car-based things can have ads or updates that popup or things like that. My car (2024 Subaru) + Android Auto is so restrictive that I can't even type a search query into the screen while I'm parked, I have to speak to it. Yet, while I was out grocery shopping the other day the thing popped up multiple times asking me if I wanted to start an update "That would require you to turn your car off for 5-10 minutes" It popped up a second time as I SLOWED DOWN at a red light. I didn't even come to a complete stop but apparently that was "stopped" enough for it to pop up. Not to mention while you're using Google Maps the whole time it's popping up asking "Is that cop still there? Is there still construction?" and they're looking for you to click on a button on the car's screen that indicates yes/no. However, when I'm parked at a rest area trying to look for the nearest cracker barrel it'll start navigating me automatically to one that's 45min in the wrong direction instead of just letting me pick which one I want to go to. And now, ads will show in Apple Maps? Ah yeah, when I'm driving is definitely the best time to distract me for your own greed! It's asinine. Obviously the "Safety features" are just performative. Probably so they can force us to have a mic enabled or something. It's bs.
  • tartoran 1y ago
    Whoever designs these should be fired and never allowed in this space again.
• spankalee 1y ago
  I don't know... ads in maps is very, very different from ads in the OS. Users buy the OS with the computer, and Apple doesn't incur any extra cost from users using it (maybe cloud-based AI will change this though?), and it doesn't require additional payments. Meanwhile, services like iCloud+ do require payment. Maps is a service, like iCloud, but users have been trained to expect it for free, with basically every other maps provider using ads to fund it. I suspect that most users think that ads are a better user experience than not using it at all because they won't pay $9.99/month for maps. Maps is also a search engine, and ads are the primary way to fund search engines. I guarantee that if Apple every launches iSearch they will eventually fund it with ads.
  • zakki 1y ago
    I just hope they won't change Calculator as a service app.
    • tartoran 1y ago
      Eventually it could get there if that's the direction Apple stays on.
  • xp84 1y ago
    > basically every other maps provider using ads to fund it. > iSearch they will eventually fund it with ads. See, I disagree with your entire premise here. Apple, unlike Google, has a very very profitable hardware business which provides so much to the bottom line that they don't have to operate Apple Maps or Apple Search or Calculator as a self-sustaining business with its own P&L. It's stupid to operate as though they must. The correct thinking (in my not so humble opinion) for a long-term-minded company is to recognize: 1. That massive firehose of money allows them to make Maps markedly better than what Google can afford to do. Since Apple gave up on UI/UX design excellence, this ability to not rely on ads is arguably their only remaining differentiated advantage. 2. Part of what allows Apple to command such monster-sized margins is that (usually... so far... outside of the App Stores at least) their product is not packed full of sleazy ads that significantly detract from the experience. You don't just get to fully enshittify the product and still command the same high prices as you did when you were offering a premium product. A Porsche covered in wraps advertising porn sites and penis pills, which plays loud AI-generated ads on every screen all day long would not sell at the price a normal one does.
• twsted 1y ago
  I am checking this carefully. The red line is here, for me and I think for many Apple customers. I choose Apple for being different from other companies, for valuing customer experiences and for rejecting ads and other "insults" for users. I think that if they cross the line, me and many other customers will leave.
  • thewebguyd 1y ago
    > I choose Apple for being different from other companies, for valuing customer experiences and for rejecting ads and other "insults" for users Yes. The point of willingly putting yourself in the walled garden was that the experience was definitively better than the other options. When the walled garden ceases to be better and starts adopting all the same dark patterns and user hostile experience as everyone else, what point is there in staying inside?
    • qwerpy 1y ago
      The hardware is still marginally better but the experience is no longer better. In fact with android at least you can sideload and install full powered ad blockers. At some point once the iOS experience degrades beyond a certain threshold, android will be a more attractive option.
      • int_19h 1y ago
        From the perspective of a casual user, on Android you get mobile Chrome which doesn't do extensions at all, while on iOS mobile Safari has extensions including ad blockers.
        • qwerpy 1y ago
          On Android you can get Firefox with its own rendering engine which can run full uBlock Origin. On iOS sure you can get some ad blockers on Safari but not the full powered uBlock Origin. Or you can get Firefox but it's just a reskinned Safari and can't run the powerful ad blockers.
• retskrad 1y ago
  Look at the Settings app on your iPhone or iPad. It’s constantly nudging you to subscribe to some Apple service, like AppleCare, or to pay for more iCloud storage because your measly 5 GB is running out. If Tim Cook is this shameless, then ads in Maps are practically old-school Apple by comparison.
  • gdulli 1y ago
    I don't understand why people are so tolerant of this first-party advertising.
  • cyberax 1y ago
    We develop for iOS, so we need to register a bunch of Apple test accounts once in a while. Every time an account is registered, you get around 5 emails of ads. WITHOUT ANY UNSUBSCRIBE links.
• zeld4 1y ago
  Everything breaks. Jobs, if lived, will bow to ads or get fired.
• dilap 1y ago
  They crossed it definitively, and still unbelievably, to me, when they started showing ads as the first result in App Store search. For a long time searching "ChatGPT" in the AppStore would surface a rip-off clone w/ a lookalike icon as the first result. How many thousands of users inadvertently downloaded the clone, paid for it, and were, basically, victims of a scam, facilitated by Apple? (Now the first result for ChatGPT, Claude, Grok is at least the correct first party ad, though this almost seems like extortion on the part of Apple.) (Software quality has also fallen off a cliff, though that's more a loss of instutional competence, I think, than active anti-user behavior motivated by avarice.)
  • bspammer 1y ago
    My mother fell for exactly this. Downloaded a ChatGPT clone and paid for it. She was quite upset with herself when I had to tell her. Until now I blamed Google, but now it seems much more likely that it was Apple’s fault.
• bambax 1y ago
  Could be wrong, but the photo of Steve Jobs at the top of the article looks AI. Disturbing suspicion.
  • roxolotl 1y ago
    Yea the sizing seems wrong. Hands are way too big compared to his head. Could be a weird lens/angle though. If it is AI wtf is it even doing there though? It adds nothing. A quick search returns a bunch of images where Jobs looks annoyed or trying to stop something.
• xd1936 1y ago
  Am I the only one that remembers Steve introducing the iAd platform?
• zahirbmirza 1y ago
  Apple has already cross a red line, it stepped over to one that has little interest in user experience. Recent releases of MacOS and iOS and iPadOS have given rise to Windowsesque complexity and ugliness. I have used Macs since the Classic, and am sad to say I no longer ascribe to the cult of Apple.
• al_borland 1y ago
  I will never understand why some companies turn away from some of the core principles that got them to their position. If it’s market pressure, it tells me that Cook doesn’t really believe their future roadmap is good enough for growth, so he needs to hedge with other things that make the product worse. Of course those very things will hurt future growth. That’s how an upward spiral turns downward.
  • deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  • ratelimitsteve 1y ago
    the thing that you're missing here is that Cook is gonna get roasted if he doesn't take every opportunity to maximize growth. That means the future roadmap as written PLUS ads in maps and other decisions like that. There's no such thing as enough.
    • al_borland 1y ago
      Not having ads was the thing that separated Apple from Google. Apple was winning by selling hardware with software that didn’t need ads to support the business model. Ads just feel greedy, especially when they are still charging a premium price on many things. How tolerant will people be of high prices when the resulting product feels cheap? This is a race to the bottom, which was a race Jobs was unwilling to compete in.
      • ratelimitsteve 1y ago
        it's not a race to the bottom, it's a zero sum game. someone is gonna lose money but everyone who currently has a stake thinks they can bail out before the crash (or if the people in charge try to abort the game and initiate a more sustainable but less immediately profitable model). Stockholders essentially hold a company hostage like that: maximize short term growth of my asset value right now or I tank the entire org, then when the bad decisions you made today come back to haunt you I dump stock, pull up stakes and haul ass right before the whole thing explodes. These people kill sheep for wool.
• wagwang 1y ago
  Very ironic but so much of tech ultimately comes down to taste and Tim Cook obviously just doesn't have it.
  • rhetocj23 1y ago
    Much of life does frankly...
• gwd 1y ago
  > From that point on, Steve would go on to spend lavishly on things that improved the experience, and he would reject—often brutally—any idea that diluted or harmed the experience. ...I’ll go out on a limb and say that uninvited advertising is not normally equated with a better customer experience. YES!!! SOO much of the Apple user experience has degraded due to this. I can't listen to my own music that I bought on the Music app, without being interrupted asking if I want Apple Music. I open up the Books app to read Winnie the Pooh to my son, and the opening screen has loads of random trashy romances to try to sell me. I go to comfort read Ender's Game, which I did buy though the store a decade ago, and it helpfully "groups" it with the other four (!?) books in that series which I haven't bought, as if to say, "Don't you want to buy these too?" NO! If I want to buy them, I know where to find them! It is SUCH an unpleasant experience. EVERY time I open the App Store to update some apps, I'm angry that I have to wander past advertising assaults to do it. EVERY time I open the music app to play an old favorite, I'm angry that I have to go past the advertising assault. EVERY time I open up the book app, I'm angry that I have to go past the advertising assault. I very much doubt the execs understand how much they're damaging the brand for that little bit of extra revenue. The see the extra revenue, but they don't see the lost brand, or the people that switch away. Is it really worth it? ETA: I don't think it's an exaggeration to say: Modern iPhones don't come with a music player. They come with a music store, that you happen to be able to put your own music into. But it's not structured to help you play your music, it's structured to sell you what they want to sell you. Modern iPhones don't come with an e-book app. They come with a book store that you happen to be able to upload some of your own books into. But it's not structured to help you organize and read your books -- even the ones you've bought; it's structured to sell you more books.
  • delusional 1y ago
    > I can't listen to my own music that I bought on the Music app That doesn't change if you buy the subscription even. I moved to YT Music only because the Apple Music app asked me to subscribe every time I used it. I was already subscribed.
  • vbezhenar 1y ago
    What do you mean "modern"? I'm using iPhones since 4S and I don't think that Music or iBooks workflow changed, it's largely the same. So probably Steve Jobs was OK with that.
• ratelimitsteve 1y ago
  I'm actually an apple convert, and I'm going back with my next new laptop purchase. About 8 years ago I got my first macbook at my first tech job and really loved what I was able to do with it as, essentially, a really fancy linux UI. Now it's a bloated linux UI that disrupts my ability to get work done, so I'm switching to a machine and OS that respect me.
• asadotzler 1y ago
  Decent short article built around a personal anecdote with SJ. The AI slop image of SJ at the top was such a turn off it was hard for me to respect anything this fellow had to say. It's a real shame that people feel the need to include images like that, presumably to draw attention on social media embeds, but it's just gross seeing death porn like that.
• manoDev 1y ago
  To be fair, ads on a map aren't the same as Windows 11 start menu ads – the former are useful and contextual. I feel the story being told would be more equivalent to what Microsoft is doing rather than Google. That said, advertising is like a virus, and every company and product is eventually infected by it. It's too tempting to not monetize your customer's eyeballs once you have enough of them.
  • qwerpy 1y ago
    I actually consider the windows start menu ads less objectionable. At least you can turn them off (for now). There is no way to disable ads embedded in the maps app. And it’s only useful and contextual if you’re using the map to look for somewhere to spend money. I rarely do this. I’m using it to check traffic, get directions to somewhere, or exploring out of geographical curiosity. In all of these use cases, ads are an unwanted distraction.
• pzo 1y ago
  Sadly iPhone sales and revenue saturated like 4 years ago (and the same for Mac, Wearables and iPad [0]). They focus now a lot on growing revenue from services. Which is kind of sad because they have still much room to grow Mac and iPad: - just make iPad more useful and support MacOS - it's not gonna canibalize Mac, they sale each year 2x more iPads than Macs and 12x more iPhones than Macs. - make macbook Pro standard with 32GB RAM / 1TB drive (macbook air with 500GB) and cheaper upgrades. It's not like those chips are expensive. Better to sell 2x more devices with smaller margin than holding to your margin like virginity. As for services they could go other way: - be AI gateway like OpenRouter and charge user 10% for token credits topup like electricity bill. Devs then don't have to setup back-end, protect API key, setup billings, auth etc or charge end user more with subscription. - make powerful Apple TV or cheaper Mac Mini for all users. Create a distributed computing platform that user can opt-in. Now you are competing with CloudFlare. Those devices normally do nothing during night but could generate/compute stuff, execute some lambda in sandbox, work as a proxy. Give 30-50% for device upgrades for such users that opted-in for 2 years. [0] https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/aapl/metrics/revenue-by-segment/ https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/aapl/metrics/revenue-by-seg...
  • polyomino 1y ago
    They don't put MacOS on iPad because they want MacOS to slowly die and make App Store the only way to install software. This has nothing to do with cannibalizing Mac.
    • skylurk 1y ago
      You might be right, but if MacOS dies, how will Apple develop for iOS etc?
      • iknowstuff 1y ago
        probably some subscription cloud environments
      • hshdhdhehd 1y ago
        And app developers too. Maybe sister comment about something cloud. Can fleece devs for more money too, bonus!
• 827a 1y ago
  I think you can point to the actual day Apple started this decline they're still on: September 16 2015. That was the day Apple News was released, which I think as a product perfectly encapsulates near-everything wrong with Apple in one convenient package.
  • smeeger 1y ago
    there are no many nails in the coffin. CSAM. memojies. macos phone home to launch apps. where do i even begin? apple is dead and buried but it will continue to haunt us for decades
• iknowstuff 1y ago
  Steve Jobs created iAd
• conductr 1y ago
  I think they’re trying to replace the hole they expect when the app stores are forced to be open. It is sad they lack any plan other than ads, it’s a complete lack of imagination from what is supposed to the one of the most innovative companies on earth. I feel this is a more worrisome signal than anything.
• raincole 1y ago
  What's with this uncanny AI Steve Jobs photo? I hope blog writers have red lines too. The sentiment of this article seems to be praising Jobs as a protector of user experience. And the author doesn't have the decency to use his real face?
• inshard 1y ago
  Local businesses with better quality usually have better ratings in maps and better economics—higher margins, repeat customers, lower acquisition costs. And since only nearby places can compete, you get real competition on merit instead of a race to the bottom with faceless actors. Good ads solve a real problem: helping people discover great spots in unfamiliar cities. Jobs saw something with iAd. The problem is simple auction mechanics favor whoever has the deepest pockets. A mediocre chain with fat margins outbids an amazing local place, even if the local spot delivers way more value. You’re optimizing for who can pay, not who’s actually good. To fix this, you weight bids by quality signals like ratings, time spent and repeat visits. Now ads amplify what’s already great instead of just selling visibility. Users get better recommendations, good businesses win, and Apple builds trust. That’s how you turn ads from a tax on attention into actual product value—and an improved user experience.
  • eigencoder 1y ago
    Or, you could just use quality signals like ratings, time spent and repeat visits and not weight by the bids. All the upside, none of the downside.
    • inshard 1y ago
      This misses the fundamental information problem. Your recommendation algorithm is centralized—it only knows what its signals can measure. Ads create a decentralized market mechanism where businesses themselves can signal “your algorithm is underweighting me.” Consider the failure modes of pure algorithmic ranking: Cold start problem: A phenomenal new restaurant opens. It has no ratings, no historical visit data, no repeat customer signals. Your algorithm buries it. How does it escape this trap? Organic discovery is glacial—it might take months to accumulate enough signals while the business burns cash. Structural bias: Your algorithm might systematically underweight certain business types. Maybe sit-down restaurants generate longer “time spent” signals than excellent quick-service spots. Maybe your visit detection misses certain building types. The algorithm doesn’t know it’s biased. Local knowledge asymmetry: The business owner knows their value proposition intimately—they know their recent quality improvements, their new chef, their differentiation. The algorithm is looking backwards at historical data. Network effects lock-in: Once a place is highly ranked, it gets more visits, more ratings, reinforcing its position. Even if quality declines, the algorithm is slow to react. Quality-weighted ads let businesses with superior local information challenge the algorithmic ranking. If you’re genuinely better than your algorithmic position suggests, you can bid to prove it. The quality weighting means you only profit if you’re right about your own quality—it’s costly signaling backed by conversion economics. This is “outside-in” because you’re not trying to perfect a centralized algorithm. You’re creating a market mechanism where distributed information surfaces through economic incentives. The businesses that are most undervalued by the algorithm have the strongest incentive to correct it. Pure algorithmic ranking is central planning. Quality-weighted ads are a market.
• thr0waway001 1y ago
  Tim Apple is a money grubbing robot with zero taste. Absolutely the bean counter type that Steve used to rail against. He makes IBM look cool in conparison.
• gigatexal 1y ago
  Who cares? He’s dead. I know that sounds harsh but this obsession and worship of founders has to stop. Companies are people or so says the Supreme Court. So now that the company exists it’s bigger than any one person even the founder. The company he built is now an order of magnitude more valuable and hardware is the best it’s ever been. It’s maturing. No company stays nimble and vibrant and agile forever. It’s paying a dividend for Pete’s sake. All these callbacks to oh no apple under Steve never would have done this … yeah well it’s 2025 and he unfortunately got cancer and died from it. Apple as a company lives on and new leadership should be free to take it in any direction they seem justified.
  • zahrevsky 1y ago
    Hi Tim Cook
  • tacker2000 1y ago
    Yea i also think this blind steve worship needs to stop. He was great back then but who knows what he would have done nowaday. The situation is different, the world is different, apple is serving much more consumers, the company has much more employees, more products, more markets. And i get it, the software they put out nowadays is pretty terrible and could be much better and everyone is frustrated but this constant steve ressurrection needs to stop.
    • gigatexal 1y ago
      To be fair — and I love my Mac — macOS isn’t as snappy as Linux in my experience. And yet I still rock macOS because it just works and slow app load times are just a small price to pay for things just working. YMMV of course.
      • Ylpertnodi 1y ago
        > MacOS [....] it just works and slow app load times are just a small price to pay for things just working. Oxymoron?
• aucisson_masque 1y ago
  I don't think apple executives understand what made apple so successful. Or maybe I'm out of touch ? I'd be happy to be proven wrong. But to me, i buy apple because this a premium device that is well thought out and doesn't make me waste time on advertisement, dark pattern and other bullshit i don't have the time nor the will to care about. I ditched windows for macos after the candy crush saga in start menu and just the overall philosophy of windows 10. For instance, not being able to decide if I want to update and when. I ditched Android because Google made me loose so much time with their ad riddled services, and their app professionalism is abysmal. It constantly change, no user interface is the same,... For all these reasons I bought expensive apple devices and I tolerated the many bugs, often having to restart my iphone once every day. Now if you're going to monetize me just as the other and make me waste my time fiddling around on apple maps checking if one thing is an ad or something I actually want to see, I'll just buy the cheapest thing I can get. There is no reason to pay premium for the same quality. But that's just me, maybe they know something I don't. Brand fidelity, especially in the USA is strong, people don't want to be that guy who has an Android ? iPhone are status symbols in China ?
• 7thaccount 1y ago
  I haven't had an iPhone in 15 years, but have been considering going back for my next phone as mine is over 5 years old. I had no idea it had gotten this bad though. What a pile of garbage. Ads in the map app?
• zahrevsky 1y ago
  > Some time ago (1999-ish) [...] a number of ways to integrate ads were discussed. > One was to show a cool video from a respected company (such as Nike) every time the Mac starts up. [...] This sounds so weird in 2025. However, I can see that probably in those times there was no "norm", and people were trying different things. Who knows, maybe if it weren't for Steve Jobs, ads at startup might be the norm. And who knows how many similar things we dodged because of people like Jobs.
  • int_19h 1y ago
    Kindles have been showing ads on their lock screen for the ad-supported tier for a very long time now. These days, we have moved to far more insane schemes. E.g. smart TV manufacturers are patenting detection of static frames to show you ads while TV is idle (although I don't think anyone has actually shipped that yet).
    • zahrevsky 1y ago
      > Kindles have been showing ads on their lock screen for the ad-supported tier for a very long time now. Wow, this is wild. I've also remembered that Viber puts ads among your chats in a chats list. It shocked me first time I've seen that. > patenting As I understand, big companies are making lots of patents, and most of those never come to life.
      • int_19h 1y ago
        If I remember correctly, it was Roku, which is already doing things like this: https://www.wired.com/story/roku-tests-showing-video-ads-before-the-home-screen-loads/ https://www.wired.com/story/roku-tests-showing-video-ads-bef...
  • eviks 1y ago
    > Who knows, maybe if it weren't for Steve Jobs, ads at startup might be the norm Are there video ads at startup on Windows? On Android?
• TZubiri 1y ago
  >It didn’t matter that customers would be free to choose a version with or without ads. He didn’t want any user to see the OS polluted in this way. Another subtle but distinct user experience cost of this would be that every user is given the option to choose between one option or the other, and that is already part of the user experience, and it has a cost. It's similar to the idea that more options are not better, you can't just keep adding more settings and levers and pulleys knobs on the task bar and the settings and the profile and the customization tab and the control panel, and the privacy center, etc... Each choice has a UX cost. Even if it's technically outside of the software and it occurs at the shop. The product line is the first part of the experience, will you choose a product? a product XL? A product XL Pro?
• plussed_reader 1y ago
  This 'red line' was quite apparent around 10.14 when macOS and iOS were set on the collision course we see today in Ta-hoe. So much wasted visual space in the last 5 releases, making room for touch. I doubt we'll see a pseudo macOS mode on mobileOS, but the mirroring for iOS in the last 2 major releases of macOS is just a jump to the left of local emulation.
  • seec 1y ago
    Yep. Information density and compact but efficient UIs were definitely an advantage of macOS. Now they are on track to emulate the big buttons of Windows so what's the point ?
• mensetmanusman 1y ago
  Apple Maps has always had subtle ads. They show various stores and shops at different zoom levels in your town, some requiring very high zoom levels meaning you wouldn’t stumble across them.
• ebbi 1y ago
  I probably sound like a broken record, but the death of Apple won't come from being behind on AI, from losing developer support, from bad products or services. Fundamentally, it'll be because it is optimising for being on the stock market and chasing endless revenue growth. All other issues I've outlined is a symptom of that fundamental issue. Apple is losing its soul. The author suggests Steve would have done something based on what Steve did in the past in that particular set of circumstances. But it's not fair to suggest what Steve would have done today, given where Apple is now. Would Steve have said "screw it" to the share price and just ran the company with the same ethos? Maybe, he was bold like that. But then he also had a Board to answer to.
  • estimator7292 1y ago
    I will never understand why "make good things and maintain customer loyalty" is not even remotely considered as a viable strategy to "make money" If you sell people things they want and you treat them well they keep buying from you instead of tolerating you until they stop buying from you. Capitalism is so fucked
    • Crestwave 1y ago
      It is a valid strategy for privately owned companies. Look at Valve—they have their flaws, but they're investing into open technologies and actually improving their product because they know they're sitting on an infinite money printer. If they went public, no amount of profit would be enough. They would have to squeeze every last cent out of their users for the quarterly reports.
• indigodaddy 1y ago
  Cool, if they ever fix the broken external monitor support, then I can see the ads on my second monitor too!!
• sleight42 1y ago
  There have been ads in Apple News for years now. There were not, at its outset. And I hate them. Yes. Steve would take a giant dump all over this nonsense. Apple is increasingly at risk of similar enshittification as Google.
• chipsrafferty 1y ago
  Ads should be illegal.
• eviks 1y ago
  > and he would reject—often brutally—any idea that diluted or harmed the experience. "brutally" is the only factual part, otherwise he harmed the experience plenty, often for the sake of appearances Goggle also had a memo on how ads were bad and rejected the idea ... until they didn't, with the same founders, so you don't need much of a leadership change for the strong incentive of ad money to dilute the resolve.
• sometimes_all 1y ago
  Whenever someone says, "oh Steve Jobs would have done / would never have done X", I always remember the scene in Silicon Valley where Laurie says "Monica, Peter Gregory is dead"[1]. Steve Jobs has been gone for a long time. Other people have taken his place, and Apple has been very successful since. While Jobs might have been very successful in his vision, a lot of things have changed since then, and it's very reasonable that the current apple execs might not align with what his philosophy was at the time. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW2-rGVw44A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW2-rGVw44A
• wseqyrku 1y ago
  I don't use my phone much other than you know, for calling and occasional messaging. For me the most annoying is constant asking of password in both phone and mac. It's so secure.
• pronik 1y ago
  I thought Jobs' red lines went out of the window as far back as the Apple Pencil (iPhone presentation 2007: "Stylus? Yuck!").
• lovidico 1y ago
  Standards sure have dropped. I saw a new iPad mini in store, on display, and it simply couldn’t run the home screen without stuttering and visible frame rate drops! At least in my mind, this seems like a transgression from Apple’s former standards and that’s before the accessibility and visual challenges new iOS has.
• carefulfungi 1y ago
  How much f'n money do these massive corporations really need?
• testfrequency 1y ago
  Most Apple veterans and current will agree and tell you they do not like the direction the company has gone/is going. Most are still there as Apple has one of the most stable employment places, ever. I know a lot of old senior Apple folks who all come back to Apple to retire as the benefits are good, pay is ok, and it’s beyond stable. To this end, including the way Apple operates, it’s low noise and low friction to just coast and let the leadership team duke it out over revenue streams.
• shevy-java 1y ago
  > What made Steve an effective and visionary leader was that his values were so crystal clear. Steve also underpaid developers - see the court proceedings here. I am not saying Steve was not creative and effective, mind you. He was that. But he also had a criminal side, and I hate this whitewashing of praising Steve without pointing at the criminal side at the same time. See reports such as this one here: https://www.thedrum.com/news/steve-jobs-named-top-conspirator-judge-throws-out-deal-give-suing-employees-less https://www.thedrum.com/news/steve-jobs-named-top-conspirato... The media is often not critical of the superrich, even more so when it is owned by them, which is why unaffiliated media must be a LOT more critical in general. The whole article here babbles about how great Steve Jobs is and how bad Tim Cook is. I'd rather like to think that both are or were humans with failure points.
  • smeeger 1y ago
    calling steve criminal is delusional. there probably isnt a single person let alone developer who ever worked for him who did not end up making lots of money and being well off
• tedggh 1y ago
  I don’t think Apple fundamental issues are that hard to fix. First, you need to fire whoever is leading the UX on the OS side. Hardware design is still pretty good. Then we can argue about their lack of innovation and missing the AI train, which btw is still not proven to be a bad (lack of) strategy. But until they don’t get the fundamentals right at the OS UX experience nothing else matters. I hate iOS with passion, both on my phone and Apple Watch, it feels like a Beta version most of the time.
• prinny_ 1y ago
  The ending of the article is such a low quality.. > Whatever his reason, Tim Cook is not as protective of the user experience as his predecessor was. If we were to ask Tim why it’s okay to bring ads into Apple products now, but wasn’t okay during Steve’s reign, the best (only?) answer would probably be, “Today’s Apple is very different from Steve’s Apple.” > Quite true. And that is exactly the problem. So Ken Segall first admits he doesn't know the reason, then speculates the answer Tim Cook would give if they were asked the question, then ends the article by contemplating on that speculative answer. And the thumbnail is quite obviously AI generated. Just low quality all around. The point could be driven home without resorting to either of these two things.
• TheAtomic 1y ago
  THIS! Ads, misusing notifications (thank LinkedIn for that idea), Tahoe's self-indulgent UI, changes for no reason than some new designer has an idea, getting things ready for spatial, the stupid dispute with Nvidia... Apple has a ruthless competitive upper echelon that gets rewarded on metrics that prioritize market hits and revenue increases. Get ready for more of this. Obligatory I've been using Macs since the SE comment but I know Apple gives 2 damns about that.
  • zitterbewegung 1y ago
    The NVIDIA dispute was from the 2000s when NVIDIA had discrete graphics in the Macbook Pro line but they all started failing and this was during Steve's tenure.
• etempleton 1y ago
  These moves are the dumbest thing Apple can do for the long- term. It is one of the few differentiators they have between Android and Windows. The App Store ads are one thing, it is a store after all, but adding ads to a core OS functionality like Maps is clear degradation of service. When people spend 1 to 2 grand on a premium phone they don’t expect to see ads, ever.
  • Ylpertnodi 1y ago
    > they don't expect to see ads, ever. Though I'm sure they'll get used to it.
• techscruggs 1y ago
  Remember that Steve Jobs appointed his COO Tim Cook to take over Apple. Not Ives or Cue or Federighi. I've always seen this as an acknowledgment that without Jobs the company would not be able to innovate in the same way. Having acknowledged that, Apple shifted to the value extraction phase of its business lifecycle. It sucks. It like when your favorite band starts selling out, but as publicly traded company, I am not sure it is avoidable.
  • WoodenChair 1y ago
    > Not Ives or Cue or Federighi. It’s “Ive” and Federighi wasn’t a candidate in 2011. Also, how you think someone is going to work out and how they actually work out is still worth commenting on. Not every CEO would have extracted value in the same way. You can prioritize extracting value by making customers super happy so they buy more. That’s what the article is about.
  • smeeger 1y ago
    i saw an interview with ives recently. he wasnt even close to being qualified for that job. it wasnt even an option
• quantum_state 1y ago
  Crossing the red line has consequences … though not immediately…
• lvl155 1y ago
  I’ve been an Apple fan for as long as I can remember. I didn’t worship Jobs but he had complete control of Apple when he returned and molded the company in his vision. The company lacks that vision. Vision Pro is an example of that failure. Luckily for them iPhone and Mac will continue to dominate. They are here for another decade plus and once the AI bubble passes and we settle on clear winners, Apple will pounce on that opportunity. Am I heartbroken that they’re not the trailblazers? Outsiders? Hipsters? Yes. The brand has gone from Ferrari to Toyota. That’s quite literally the most perfect analogy.
  • burnt-resistor 1y ago
    I was a fan post Mac classic. Tim Cook simply doesn't value taste or cool the way sj did with integrity, and chases money at the expense of everything nearly else. The public bribing of Trump was exceptionally sniveling and obsequious.
• sidcool 1y ago
  Interesting read. But I avoid deifying Jobs. I won't be surprised if he went ahead with Ads for revenue. Who wouldn't! If he were around the iPhone would not be dramatically different than what it's now.
  • smeeger 1y ago
    he wouldnt have done it. he doesnt need to be a deity for this to be true
• codingdave 1y ago
  > This is how Steve laid out his plan to us at the ad agency when he returned to a nearly bankrupt Apple in the late 1990s. The customer experience was all-important. Yes, it is a well-known truth that CX drives product success, and if you want to credit Jobs for that, fine. But referencing back to the 90s because Jobs talked to you directly 25 years ago truly dilutes the message. It is really weird, honestly, to claim that a business strategy from decades ago when Apple was in a completely different reality is some sacrosanct policy that shall never be questioned. I'm not saying the policy is wrong - I agree with it. So do most product managers I know. But all organizations change over time. Society changes. Tech changes. A viewpoint wherein you have "red lines" that cannot be challenged is short-sighted.
  • solatic 1y ago
    > Society changes It's rather disingenuous to claim, in context, that society has changed to enjoy advertisements. Indeed, I would make the argument that society will never, ever, get to the place where we enjoy advertising. Advertising is like the value-added tax: horrific for everybody involved, and society would have killed it a long time ago for that reason, if it wasn't for how much money it makes.
    • deprave 1y ago
      To me, there’s a difference between ads that help me learn about brands or products, or make me laugh or have some positive emotion (Super Bowl ads, billboard signs, and movie previews come to mind) and ads that take over search results, interfere with the content I want to consume on an already-small screen, or are just distasteful to me. I can’t say I like ads but I recognize that I specifically dislike some ads more than others.
    • marcosdumay 1y ago
      VAT is great, society worked a lot towards inventing it, and most countries are still trying hard to adopt some version of it while people entrenched in power resist the change. Ads can be done right too, and have been done right plenty of times. If you want to nitpick the GP, do not create such a glass ceiling.
• kwertyoowiyop 1y ago
  The “Guides We Love” feature in Apple Maps is my a great example of this. When I first saw it I was appalled by its complete uselessness. It’s hard to understand how an Apple team could have created and actually shipped such a waste of space. Edit: deleted a couple of company references that weren’t needed to make my point.
  • muragekibicho 1y ago
    I googled Taboola and Outbrain. I bet you used 'Taboola or Outbrain' in the pejorative but I can't tell exactly what's wrong with the two companies lol.
    • inemesitaffia 1y ago
      This means you use an ad blocker.
• ThouYS 1y ago
  Apple is far gone, macOS has been buggy for a while. At first I thought this was in favor of iOS, but seeing how iOS usability has suffered, and how they are squandering their reasources on pointless redesigns.. I guess they are just another company now. I guess it's a melancholic reality that only certain outstanding individuals can be relied on to produce greatness. Most of us are just not there. Another such example is Python. Python is slowly being bloated by the people in charge, since Guido basically gave up, soon to be as shitty as C++ is. I am afraid Blender and Pytorch will be next, seeing how the original visionaries have left or will leave in the not so distant future.
• cs702 1y ago
  TL;DR: Steve Jobs shut down efforts to incorporate advertising in Apple's software, because it would enshittify[a] the customer experience. Everyone here on HN likely agrees that he was right never to cross that red line. The path from "great user experience" to "enshittified user experience" consists of crossing such red lines, one after the other, for short-term profit. --- [a] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
  • bigyabai 1y ago
    Counterpoint; if Steve Jobs thought that advertising would ruin Apple, he would have never advocated for Cook as replacement CEO.
• skeptrune 1y ago
  Does nobody else remember Apple intentionally reducing battery life so you'd have to buy new phones?
  • RestartKernel 1y ago
    Did they? I only recall them reducing clock speed to offset battery degradation.
    • skeptrune 1y ago
      Yes, I forgot the details and just looked them up.
• throwaway984393 1y ago
  [dead]
• wafriedemann 1y ago
  the biggest mistake is thinking the rising revenue share of services adds diversification and makes Apple less dependend on iPhone revenue because barely anyone would choose Apple services if they didn't have an iPhone.
• LocalH 1y ago
  Jobs was a dick, but so were many visionaries. See: Torvalds, Gates, Kildall. All with some dickishness, to varying degrees. We need people willing to say "fuck you" to bullshit. Otherwise, the boards take over and focus on anything that brings them an extra few bucks. Enshittification is real, and we need people willing to fight back against it.
• kittikitti 1y ago
  It's not just Apple that's suffering, but every other company. Since Job's death, the entire tech industry lost its visionary. Apple used to be the company that set the high standard for others but now they don't think differently from any other.
• trippsydrippsy 1y ago
  [dead]
• throwuxiytayq 1y ago
  But don't you find it convenient to be connected with products you might like based on your preferences? /s VC-brained morons are literally incapable of not ruining the companies and products they get their hands on. I've been a soft proponent of a global ban on ads for as long as I can remember, and I've only become more convinced over the years that it is something we need to agree on and start enforcing as a society. Ads are evil, the whole incentive structure is fucked, the "free" products are brainrot trash. It is time to cut off the limb before the infection spreads.
• Gazoche 1y ago
  > One [way to integrate ads] was to show a cool video from a respected company (such as Nike) every time the Mac starts up. Of course Jobs blocked this, but it's insane that it was even proposed as a serious idea. I'm pretty sure this would have been a PR stain on Apple even in the pre-social media era.
• swrobel 1y ago
  If it really was a red line, why did Steve even take the meeting, and then take days to decide on it?
• novabridge 1y ago
  So I wonder what alternatives to iPhone or Mac would you recommend? It seems to me that neither Google nor Microsoft is doing better. Google appears to prioritize ad-revenue over user experience, and Microsoft is following in that direction too.
  • bigyabai 1y ago
    I quit daily-driving macOS in 2017 and Windows in 2019, GNOME on Linux does everything I need. Smartphones are a bit harder, but it's still possible to flash a Google-free ROM onto many Android phones. If push comes to shove, I could also see myself dailying a PostmarketOS-style handheld for basic SMS, auth and music player capabilities.
  • smeeger 1y ago
    i am downgrading to a semi-dumb phone. maps, email, calls and text. thats all you need. unfortunately nobody makes a full keyboard dumb phone anymore
    • novabridge 1y ago
      That's a bold move. I use whatsapp and apple pay so it's hard to find an dalternative. Which phone are you using? I’d love to hear how it compares to a smartphone in actual day-to-day use.
• mlmonkey 1y ago
  > Why would Apple do such a thing? Because Steve is not around to rip these MBA-types a new asshole for even mentioning such crap. Tim is not a visionary leader. He is a great manager who can manage logistics like nobody else and deliver the finished product. But Steve was the visionary leader: he laid out the plan of where they were going, sold his troops on the big picture and Tim helped get the troops there.
• wslh 1y ago
  Apple has crossed the "no QA here". I found bugs everyday that cannot believe an average team cannot detect.
• FpUser 1y ago
  >"What made Steve an effective and visionary leader was that his values were so crystal clear. He inspired Apple’s troops to excel in innovation, design and simplicity. But he was also passionate about something that seems almost “old school”—the customer experience. Creating the best experience would lure new customers and build brand loyalty." I find the opinions above very iffy. The only thing that is unquestionable to me was the design. Whether one likes it or not it is present and prominent. But I think he was a guru of creating cult.
• cyanydeez 1y ago
  Are they bathing?
• smeeger 1y ago
  im officially done with apple. they simply don't provide any value. they use their efficient hardware to make their devices thinner instead of having longer battery life… they are anti consumer
• ninetyninenine 1y ago
  This is a market opportunity for windows.
• zduoduo 1y ago
  I stopped using iCloud for just that reason and now with Tahoe.
• iamleppert 1y ago
  Only a matter of time now before you have to watch a 30 second ad before any app will open.