15 ms·

> 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 ha

by gwd 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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.
- gwd 11mo ago
  Um, no? Apple Music wasn't even a thing in the iPhone 4S timeframe. You used to buy music in the iTunes Store, and play it in the music player app. It used to be if you clicked the App Store, and you had apps to update, it would take you to the "Update" tab immediately. Then they changed it to take you to the main page, and you had to click the "Update" tab. Then they changed the updates to be under your account; so you have to find this little corner thing and scroll down, wading through all the ads for the new apps you haven't installed. Books always had a store, but your library was primary. You managed it; it had books that you'd bought, not empty placeholders for books you hadn't bought. There was a store, but it was the second tab. Now the store is the main tab, and your library is the second tab. And, as I said, they've now started reorganizing my library, adding "empty placeholder" books in. I don't see Enders Game in my library any more; I see the Ender Series, and if I click on that, I see all five titles, the first of which I can actually read (since that's the only one I bought). If I honestly thought Android would be any different, I might consider jumping ship.
  - mrandish 11mo ago
    > If I honestly thought Android would be any different I haven't used an iOS device for over a decade so I'm not familiar with exactly how it may be different now - but it sounds quite different. Here's how I use media on Android. All files are DRM-free generic formats (MP3, FLAC, EPUB) organized in folders on a removable 512GB micro SD card which auto-syncs between my desktop, laptop, Android tablet, phone and a generic cloud backup folder with SyncThing. I don't subscribe to any media service (and never have). My music library/player is PowerAmp, my ebook reader is the open source KOReader and my podcast app is Podcast Addict. None of them has a store and they are all free (although I did upgrade to the plus version of PowerAmp to support the developer). They all get regular updates, are highly customizable and have every feature I want or can imagine wanting. My browser is Android Firefox with uBlock Origin so I don't see any ads and for YouTube I side-loaded Revanced Extended from the open F-Droid store, which is a clone of the YouTube app with no ads and all dark patterns removed. I also run a side-loaded open-source DNS-level ad blocker for the occasional social media app. My phone is a Samsung Galaxy Note 20 that still works great (I did replace the original battery last year which took ~20 mins). I'm using a five year old phone not because I'm cost conscious, I'd happily pay >$1,500 for a new phone and I keep looking at new models every year but never see anything that would be a noticeable improvement for my usage. Really... I swear I'm NOT trying to be @SimpleLife or minimalist/retro, I have a significant yearly budget for discretionary toys, but some years I struggle to spend it all because I'm also allergic to things that are constantly low-grade annoying or that I can't customize to my prefs. I just refuse to adopt anything that wants to own me instead of me owning it.
strictnein 11mo ago
This is how Amazon is too with the movies and tv shows you bought. There's no way to search your owned library anymore. You just have to page through it to find what you want. And your library is hidden away behind a tiny little unlabeled icon in the upper right corner. And, to make matters worse, you have things like the Charlie Brown Halloween Special, which Apple now owns the rights to. You cannot in any way search for the version you bought from Amazon. The only result Amazon shows is the result that would require you to pay for Apple TV. So you can either look through all of the stuff you bought from them, or find the original email for the purchase and click the link in there.
- oh_my_goodness 11mo ago
  It's true, and it sucks. But at least I didn't pay Amazon $1800 for hardware first.
- delecti 11mo ago
  How are you browsing your Amazon content? I see search bars on the 'All Content' [1] page, and also on each individual page, like my movies and shows [2]. Though it seems like the interface is pretty rubbish in the Prime Video section [3], so maybe that's where you're looking? [1] https://www.amazon.com/hz/mycd/digital-console/contentlist/allcontent/dateDsc https://www.amazon.com/hz/mycd/digital-console/contentlist/a... [2] https://www.amazon.com/hz/mycd/digital-console/contentlist/video/dateDsc/ https://www.amazon.com/hz/mycd/digital-console/contentlist/v... [3] https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/mystuff/library https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/mystuff/library
  - strictnein 11mo ago
    Roku based TVs and their mobile app. And the website - #3 in your list above. Never seen those other two links, and they don't show up when you're trying to watch things on your tv.
- ReptileMan 11mo ago
  Torrent sites have amazing search ... just saying
doctorpangloss 11mo ago
[flagged]
- ngcazz 11mo ago
  Now where'd you cop that?
  - card_zero 11mo ago
    Disconcertingly many em dashes, but they're used correctly, without spaces, and are easy to type on MacOS.
staplers 11mo ago
I very much doubt the execs understand how much they're damaging the brand for that little bit of extra revenue. Our entire societal system is based on increasing revenue (due to inflation). Until we measure, define, and value experience in nominal terms through data, most leaders won't care because it will remain an estimate against hard data.
- edoceo 11mo ago
  Consumers need actual choice too. Choosing between ad-infested music and no-music is crap. The option of music, sans PM-bloat doesn't exist. Sub music with the thing you like. Freaking heck, I've gotta dismiss ads on my BANKING APP just to deposit a check.
  - ndriscoll 11mo ago
    It does exist. I ripped my CD collection ~20 years ago. VLC and Finamp both work great as players depending on whether you want to just load up files in a directory, or have a more advanced media server (jellyfin) that can do stuff like transcode FLAC to opus on the fly for mobile clients.
- PrairieFire 11mo ago
  Yes, profoundly true and sadly profoundly not understood by most. Levers can be pulled for near term quantitative gains at the expense of long term qualitative experience. ERP systems and the like largely measure the quantitative, all things pegged to the almighty dollar. Most orgs have no such system or competency (with the exception of siloed martech systems) for measuring the qualitative. And the customer journey isn’t set up in such a way to reliably and consistently throw off the needed data in the first place. I’ve been preaching that orgs looking for true longevity need to make measuring experiences and sentiment a core competency, so the qualitative impact of levers being pulled can be measured and reported on in realtime, allowing short sighted decisions to be backtracked, and ideally, long term, putting functional guard rails in place that prevent those decisions from being made in the first place.
- czl 11mo ago
gdulli 11mo ago
> Modern iPhones don't come with a music player. They come with a music store > Modern iPhones don't come with an e-book app. They come with a book store As a Windows person I see these as features, not criticisms. Windows not having good builtin versions of these or other apps is either a cause or effect of there being a robust ecosystem of third-party choices, both open-source and commercial. My frustration with Apple when I tried it out was that you either use iTunes or there's little other choice. Technically some choice, yes, but because most people are passive and use the Apple stuff by default, there's a smaller community of developers who are motivated to try to compete. When I see people criticize Notepad in Windows (for example) it feels irrelevant because you're not expected to use Notepad for anything but the most trivial use cases. There are so many other, better options, and the platform has a culture of exploring those options.
- com2kid 11mo ago
  Microsoft used to have one of the best media players around! Windows used to have built in streaming support from device to device. You could load up music on your personal PC and play it on your home theater through your Xbox360! Windows Media Player was huge, only eclipsed by Winamp at the time. Eventually MS released the Zune app, which was also awesome but lacked many of the WMP features. (But it looked amazing!) They also were huge in the ebook space for years before amzn sucked all the air out of the room. They also tried to popularize a standards based in car stereo system a decade before car play became a thing, and the first Windows tablets were released in the 1990s! Oh and they tried to make a smart TV box in 1999, because of course they did. (Nearly 20 years too early, oops!)
  - mulmen 11mo ago
    Microsoft had so many opportunities that they just failed to execute. How did they miss on everything? Home servers Media streaming Smartphones Touchscreens Tablets They even had media production with MSNBC. All of this was available from Microsoft in the XP era. How did they fail at literally all of it? There has to be a lesson.
    - 11mo ago
DarKraD 11mo ago
The iBooks one situation is the worst for me. Underneaths it’s actually a really good epub reader with the infinite scroll set up. Perfect for one hand reading. The front page got so annoying with all these trashy books that I eventually had to DNS blocking some iTunes/Apple endpoints. And now it just displays my current reading books, the previous titles and the daily goal every time I open iBooks.
- adastra22 11mo ago
  Would love to know that block list.
  - DarKraD 11mo ago
    Here are the two I have for iBooks. I’m using NextDNS so it will still get blocked when I’m outside the house. I only read my local epubs so I don’t know if blocking these will affect anything you bought on the store. *.amp-api.books.apple.com *.p2-buy.itunes.apple.com
    - tern 11mo ago
      Thank you for this! I applied using AdGuard Pro and it works great ||amp-api.books.apple.com^ ||p2-buy.itunes.apple.com^ In AdGuard syntax, in case it saves someone time
    - adastra22 11mo ago
      Thank you!
- shantara 11mo ago
  One huge downside of iBooks is that it would happily deauthorize access to the (DRM free) epub files you’ve added to the app manually after a couple of days without internet connection. I made a mistake of going on a long distance hiking trip and thinking can read some books in the tent before falling asleep. Nope, eBooks refused me until I returned to the mobile coverage area and resynced my library with their cloud service. I switched to an offline-first 3rd party app immediately after.
tgma 11mo ago
Modern iPhones? iTunes/iPod sync still works just fine. However, you have to question if that’s what most people who use iPhone want. For one thing, mobile users don’t necessarily have a PC. Mobile is the main device for most users not PC which is different from 2007. Also, I bet many users prefer ad supported free music streaming services if they never pay for music over a system of organizing custom MP3 downloaded. Arguably Android has a much worse and fragmented default experience with respect to having a decent jukebox music player that does it the old school way.
- xethos 11mo ago
  Android allows changing, and disabling, the default though. Last I checked, trying to open an MP3 will demand the Music app on an iPhone, and clicking an Apple Music link will do the same instead of allowing one to open a webpage
jmyeet 11mo ago
I have to rant about search in the App Store. Pick any app you want and search for it. Ideally it has a pretty unique name and not just a dictionary wod. What will you see? The first result will always be an ad for a completely different app. Google has long dealt with this problem with AdWords and search results. Google still tries to make the exact thing your searching for be the #1 organic result. Yes there are promoted links but they're not as prominent. The App Store #1 result, which is always an ad, is quite literally half the screen. I don't know how advertising works on the App STore but I suspect it's a CPM model not a CPC model (like AdWords). So Apple just doesn't care. But I don't think this would ever have happpened in the Steve Jobs era.
- kogepathic 11mo ago
  > Pick any app you want and search for it. Ideally it has a pretty unique name and not just a dictionary wod. What will you see? The first result will always be an ad for a completely different app. This is also the case on the Play Store. Google *always* places the ad above the actual result, even if you search by the app ID (e.g. org.videolan.vlc)
- deaux 11mo ago
  > I don't know how advertising works on the App STore but I suspect it's a CPM model not a CPC model (like AdWords). So Apple just doesn't care. But I don't think this would ever have happpened in the Steve Jobs era. Nope, it's CPC (they call it CPT as it's mobile) and it cost less time to find out than writing this comment ;)
- robotresearcher 11mo ago
  > The first result will always be an ad for a completely different app. I just tried Things, Excel, Photoshop Elements, and Grand Theft Auto. Each was the first result. So I guess YMMV on this. Like you, I hate it when ads trump organic results.
znpy 11mo ago
This is why you should always pirate digital media, even if you bought it. A pdf or epub file will never bother you in that way. And if they do, you can edit it and remove that trash. I always pirate the media i buy and/or the physical books i buy. Loading pdf documents into GoodNotes (regularly bought) is the quickest way to make them usable (no bullshit, no ads AND i can take… good notes on the pages).
basisword 11mo ago
>> 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. I would have argued against this in the past. But in iOS 26 they introduced the ability to 'pin' 6 favourite playlists or albums to the top of your library. Really useful. If you don't have a subscription (to Apple Music or iTunes Match) you don't get the feature. There is zero reason to do this other than to milk people for more money when they've already spent over $1k on the device and likely spent hundreds purchasing the music from iTunes Store.
amelius 11mo ago
An iPhone is a vending machine in your pocket. (owned and operated by Apple, and __you__ paid for it.)
- portaouflop 11mo ago
  I disagree. You can disable all the apps—in fact never use _any_ app if you can avoid it altogether. Apps are inherently bad, and the web version is always better. It didn’t have to be like this, but here we are. I often go weeks without opening any app but the browser on my phone.
  - amelius 11mo ago
    Good for you, but if you never buy from the vending machine that doesn't mean it's not a vending machine.
  - iamtedd 11mo ago
    That's a very, very expensive browser.
    - portaouflop 11mo ago
      True and if there was a good dumb phone alternative I would prefer that probably. I do however need to use some apps sometimes unfortunately. My bank for example implemented some proprietary 2fa method that I need to use an app for (or i buy a special device to it which also seems inconvenient). Anyway it’s the only phone i ever bought; only used 2hand ones before and I’ll probably won’t buy another
portaouflop 11mo ago
I haven’t used Apple devices back when they were good so I have always avoided all the built-in Apple bloat/adware. Because I came from Windows this was already my standard assumption - I need to violently throw out all the built-in stuff and replace it with free and good software. It’s funny because that means I never felt the same pain you feel; I just assumed that’s how operating systems are.
- kmac_ 11mo ago
  As a Linux user, I feel like a different breed here: I'm pretty sure the software I'll be using 10 years from now will be pretty much the same, and I'm happy about that.
  - mulmen 11mo ago
    I recently dusted off a CentOS 5 file server that hadn’t been powered on in a decade. It’s familiar but a lot has changed. But to your point it has changed less than Windows or MacOS.
  - marcosdumay 11mo ago
    > I'm pretty sure the software I'll be using 10 years from now will be pretty much the same It will be better, in ways I can't predict. But almost every detail of the interaction will improve somehow. But probably no big changes on the more mature parts. Oh, and it will have one infuriating thing that people keep doing wrong because everybody insists it's the right way. I'll lose some small functionality for disabling it. That's how it has ever been.
- layer8 11mo ago
  That means you also haven’t used Windows back when it was good.
  - portaouflop 11mo ago
    I did use win98 briefly, which was bearable but it also wasn’t good. You are probably referring to an even older version
freefaler 11mo ago
It's a general trend with hired managers who optimize for their bonuses. Also many founder led companies when they got sold to the shareholders are also optmizing for that. Some founder led companies are optimizing for something else, not profits only, but that's rare and that's what Jobs had the leeway to do when he got back to the almost bankrupt company. Current minions will try to squeeze more profit from any screen the incentives are such that they'd do that. Enshitification is possible where there is some kind of lock-in and the pain of leaving is greater than the level of annoyance of the product. Apple has one of the strongest lock-in ecosystems and it's rational for them to do so. I'm not sure there is a better way, because max freedom = open source, but that equals mostly subpar experience for the average user. Let's hope for more platforms and data transfer from one to the other.
sugarpimpdorsey 11mo ago
You forgot they broke iTunes Home Sharing on iOS some years ago and have refused to fix it. Takes over a minute to connect now. (Allegedly the fault of a new, yet horribly inefficient, parser that chokes on large libraries which worked fine a decade ago on phones with half the CPU and RAM.) Once connected, it won't play DRM-protected tracks I PAID FOR, says I'm not authorized. I ended up having to break the DRM because Apple can't be bothered to include a functioning music player anymore. An "iPod with touch controls" is no longer part of iPhone. An ad-filled music subscription consumption software is.
- seec 11mo ago
  Apple has stopped caring and producing local/personal software for a while now. Which is absolutely brain dead because that was the primary reason to buy their hardware in the first place. Why spend the premium for a Mac if you are going to run some shitty cloud software anyway. For now the illusion is maintained because they are dominating with their chips, but that won't last forever and the competition is almost caught up (it's not that relevant for non mobile computers anyway). iTunes had it's flaw but at least it was a very useful software and it worked quite well (at some point I had a library of over 100k tracks); the replacement while trying to keep some of the fundamentals is a joke in comparison.
  - pwg 11mo ago
    It sounds like they are well on their way down the "Enshittification" [1] path. Eventually they will enshittify sufficiently that the illusion will shatter. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
    - seec 11mo ago
      It looks like it but it's quite sad. We need another commercial desktop OS to compete with Microsoft. The problem is Apple is shooting itself in the foot with their greed on hardware pricing. This is the reasons many heavy/high-duty software never makes it to the Mac, it's just too expensive to outfit everyone with performant enough Mac computers. It's pretty sad because they don't even need the money, and clearly they have shown in the past 10 years that they are completely unable to do anything better with the surplus money. It's just self-defeating greed, they could eat a lot of Microsoft market share where it matters but instead they try to push an even more locked-down approach with the iPadOS.
lenerdenator 11mo ago
Apple's beancounters have figured out that they just have to be more polished than Microsoft and Google's environments, and despite the legitimate complaints you've made, they still are.
- 0manrho 11mo ago
  Precisely. This is their "Have the cake and eat it too" strategy, where so long as they aren't as egregious as their competitors, they know it's a Net gain as most of their customers will still feel the grass is still greener in their wall garden than elsewhere. Even if the grass isn't near as green or well kept so to speak as it used to be.
asdhtjkujh 11mo ago
This is especially egregious in the Books app on all platforms. I dream of a version that presents you with your library on launch instead of the store — good user experience would expect you to be opening the app to read books 99% of the time, not to purchase new ones. Thankfully, on macOS, you can disable the store in the Music app entirely. This will probably be removed at some point. When disabled, the only remnant is a small username in the bottom-left corner of the screen. I would love to see this gone as well, but local libraries are increasingly of no concern to Apple or the general public so I doubt they will fix this.
jimt1234 11mo ago
> 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. VLC is your friend.
int_19h 11mo ago
The worst part of it is that despite all this, Apple still has the least frustrating desktop experience overall, at least for the casual user who needs things to "just work", because the bar is plummeting that fast. Especially when looking at Windows.
- amelius 11mo ago
  AI will soon make this difference (if it even exists) irrelevant.
  - Hammershaft 11mo ago
    How will AI change this situation? I don't catch your drift.
    - mort96 11mo ago
      The only thing I can imagine is that both Apple and Microsoft will bog down the desktop equally in AI garbage, to the point where both are approximately equally unusable.
    - amelius 11mo ago
      Briefly, with an example: instead of going through menus looking for the option you need, you can just tell the AI (with a voice command) what you want to do. At that point it does not matter who has the nicest menus. Advanced users are already seeing this. You don't need HandBrake anymore. You can just use ffmpeg directly and ChatGPT will tell you the command line arguments.
      - mr_toad 11mo ago
        > you can just tell the AI (with a voice command) what you want to do Hard no. Not happening.
        pjmlp 11mo ago
        https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2025/10/16/making-every-windows-11-pc-an-ai-pc/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2025/10/16/makin... Apple will follow along
JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
If Apple puts ads in its Maps, there will be an opening for a gorgeously-skinned OpenStreetMaps app. Possibly even with a $1/year WhatsApp-style subscription. I really fucking hate ads. I’ll first pay to avoid them. If I can’t, I’ll bail. Because we live in a capitalist society, I’ll take folks with me. nose boops Kagi
- HacklesRaised 11mo ago
  Big ups for mentioning KAGI
- shantara 11mo ago
  Organic Maps is very close to be that gorgeous OSM app. Unfortunately, it still lacks a lot of functionality that’s missing from OSM dataset, and is present in most commercial mapping apps, like the opening hours for businesses, public transport schedules or user reviews.
tempodox 11mo ago
Once upon a time, Apple used to be different. Now they’re just another megacorp that abuses you with enshittification, like they all do.
- bigyabai 11mo ago
  Not really. 15 years ago it was "you're holding it wrong" and 50 years ago it was Steve Jobs swindling Woz to close Atari contracts. "Apple used to mean something" is a postmodern catechism to make you feel better when Apple reveals themselves as a federally-backdoored shoggoth.
- rasz 11mo ago
  Different indeed, like that time Jobs pushed U2 album into every iphone.
  - hurfdurf 11mo ago
    Steve Jobs died in 2011, that "Songs of Innocence" fiasco was in 2014.
    - rasz 11mo ago
      You are right, I misremembered U2 branded iPod as that song debacle.
MangoToupe 11mo ago
> 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. The books app itself is infuriating. It's more like a store with a list of purchases attached. Every single time I want to pull up my audiobooks, for instance, I hit the "audiobooks" button.... just to find the store instead. Every time I want to search through my library, I use the "search" box... just to find the store instead. Maddening. The apple music app I actual really like, probably because it's not actually easy to purchase anything through it. The only major ask is that they stop limiting the number of recently added so I can actually find music I added
kamma4434 11mo ago
Like fitness where they want you to activate Fitness+. This means the one they are shipping is trash? Plus, thank you, I know where the App store is in case I need it
kccqzy 11mo ago
I haven't seen ads on the App Store for a long time. To update my apps I just long press the App Store icon and tap Updates. It leads you directly to the updates without going to the homepage.
- ryandrake 11mo ago
  I just opened up App Store and the first screen is a full screen ad for Roblox. Then you scroll down and it’s 4 “now trending” ads, then below that another full screen as. The entire “Today” tab is a scroll full of ads.
  - kccqzy 11mo ago
    That's why I don't open the App Store's first screen or the Today tab. I usually open the App Store to look at the release notes for my updatable apps. To find new apps, I use Google to find an app's page. A web-based search engine has blockable ads, the App Store app does not.
    - InvertedRhodium 11mo ago
      The today tab is the default one that opens when you start the App Store. At least on my 16Pro.
      - kccqzy 11mo ago
        That's my point. I don't start the App Store by tapping on its icon. I go to a specific page within the App Store.
bombcar 11mo ago
I prefer my music through CarPlay because at least that doesn’t shit everything up with Apple Music. Hell, I’d be happy if they stopped defaulting the search to Apple Music instead of local library. That’s not even to begin talking about how having Apple Music subscription once fucks your iTunes library forever.
port11 11mo ago
I don't know what you're complaining about, this is obviously about making user interactions delightful. Of course most people will cherish the bundling opportunities of Apple products, and would be offended if similar books weren't shown in their libraries as easy purchases. It's delightful. /s More seriously: Apple, please never rework the compass, I don't need ads for Apple Compass+ when I'm hoping to figure out which was is north.
hexahedroid 11mo ago
I hated using the Books app without the book store disabled. The setting is buried in Settings -> Screen Time -> Content & Privacy Restrictions -> Allowed Apps & Features -> Book Store
dangus 11mo ago
Apple’s services pull in more revenue than Macs and iPads combined. The expectation that they won’t advertise them is, unfortunately, not a reasonable one. You can turn off Apple Music the service entirely from the music app. If you stick to the library tab in books you’ll never see an ad. It’s really not anywhere close to the worst offender in the industry. Is it a great thing? No.
musicale 11mo ago
> uninvited advertising is not normally equated with a better customer experience As Jobs understood (per TFA), pushing ads degrades the user experience - the prime differentiating factor for Apple products in the first place, and what attracted many people to the platform. It's bad, and it's probably going to get worse as Apple's services businesses increase their share of revenue and exert expanding influence over product design within the company. Banning Apple from leveraging its platform for advertising Apple services might help, but the fact that we have arrived at the point where we have to rely on antitrust enforcement to make Apple products less intrusive and user-hostile shows that the company has lost its way. > Modern iPhones don't come with a music player. They come with a music store Unfortunately, requirements that Apple provide a choice to install Spotify rather than Apple Music, or Kindle rather than Apple Books, on a new iPhone doesn't fix the problem.
- musicale 11mo ago
  s/doesn't/won't/
justin-reeves 11mo ago
My Kobo Libra 2 has a “My Books” tab with no ads. When I put it away, I always leave it there (or in an open book) and it always stays there (or in an open book). At least on Mac, I have noticed the Apple TV app seems to stay on one of the Library tabs indefinitely if I leave it there, but maybe it has just escaped their notice. On the other hand, there’s no separate tab for “Continue Watching.” (A partial work-around is using the widget.)
steve_adams_86 11mo ago
This behaviour deeply bothers me, and my family doesn't get it. I've tried to explain it, but I think they're so accustomed to it that it doesn't really matter to them or occur to them as nefarious or malicious. The way I see it, this type of behaviour by Apple (or any other company doing this) is an invasion of mental real estate. When you force things in front of my eyes that I didn't ask to see, or in my ears, or whatever, that's occupying my brain cycles and space in ways that are entirely uninvited. Of course, the EULAs and whatnot all require me to agree to this bullshit, so fine, it's technically invited when I opened the application and said "sure, try to sell me your stuff", but to me this isn't the spirit of the software or operating system at ALL, and has been a signal of worse things to come for some time now. It's essentially enshittification. My answer has been to stop using it. After 25 years of using Apple's computers and around 12 years on their phones, I'm migrating off. No more iPhone, Apple Watch, Airpods, etc. I'm still on a mac and that'll be hard to change, but it's slowly happening. I spent the last week on the ocean and in the woods on a toughbook, and that was kind of fun. It was eye opening to take a computer where I'd never take a macbook. I find this kind of behaviour totally deplorable anyway, and I can't tolerate it. It's insidious and damaging to their brand because ultimately it's harmful to their users. They want number to go up, I get it, but I'm not their fodder.
GreenVulpine 11mo ago
I was gifted an iPad for Christmas a few years back and quickly found out there's nothing you can do on it without either looking at ads or paying a subscription. I returned it before the factory battery charge ran out.
naravara 11mo ago
Hey now. If they allowed you to simply enjoy the stuff you have without butting in to remind you of everything you don’t have, you might actually feel a moment of lightness and happiness. If they want you spending money they need to cultivate feelings of covetousness, inadequacy, or fear. Contentment doesn’t sell.

by gwd 11mo ago

delusional 11mo 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 11mo 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.

gwd 11mo ago
Um, no? Apple Music wasn't even a thing in the iPhone 4S timeframe. You used to buy music in the iTunes Store, and play it in the music player app. It used to be if you clicked the App Store, and you had apps to update, it would take you to the "Update" tab immediately. Then they changed it to take you to the main page, and you had to click the "Update" tab. Then they changed the updates to be under your account; so you have to find this little corner thing and scroll down, wading through all the ads for the new apps you haven't installed. Books always had a store, but your library was primary. You managed it; it had books that you'd bought, not empty placeholders for books you hadn't bought. There was a store, but it was the second tab. Now the store is the main tab, and your library is the second tab. And, as I said, they've now started reorganizing my library, adding "empty placeholder" books in. I don't see Enders Game in my library any more; I see the Ender Series, and if I click on that, I see all five titles, the first of which I can actually read (since that's the only one I bought). If I honestly thought Android would be any different, I might consider jumping ship.
- mrandish 11mo ago
  > If I honestly thought Android would be any different I haven't used an iOS device for over a decade so I'm not familiar with exactly how it may be different now - but it sounds quite different. Here's how I use media on Android. All files are DRM-free generic formats (MP3, FLAC, EPUB) organized in folders on a removable 512GB micro SD card which auto-syncs between my desktop, laptop, Android tablet, phone and a generic cloud backup folder with SyncThing. I don't subscribe to any media service (and never have). My music library/player is PowerAmp, my ebook reader is the open source KOReader and my podcast app is Podcast Addict. None of them has a store and they are all free (although I did upgrade to the plus version of PowerAmp to support the developer). They all get regular updates, are highly customizable and have every feature I want or can imagine wanting. My browser is Android Firefox with uBlock Origin so I don't see any ads and for YouTube I side-loaded Revanced Extended from the open F-Droid store, which is a clone of the YouTube app with no ads and all dark patterns removed. I also run a side-loaded open-source DNS-level ad blocker for the occasional social media app. My phone is a Samsung Galaxy Note 20 that still works great (I did replace the original battery last year which took ~20 mins). I'm using a five year old phone not because I'm cost conscious, I'd happily pay >$1,500 for a new phone and I keep looking at new models every year but never see anything that would be a noticeable improvement for my usage. Really... I swear I'm NOT trying to be @SimpleLife or minimalist/retro, I have a significant yearly budget for discretionary toys, but some years I struggle to spend it all because I'm also allergic to things that are constantly low-grade annoying or that I can't customize to my prefs. I just refuse to adopt anything that wants to own me instead of me owning it.

strictnein 11mo ago

This is how Amazon is too with the movies and tv shows you bought. There's no way to search your owned library anymore. You just have to page through it to find what you want. And your library is hidden away behind a tiny little unlabeled icon in the upper right corner. And, to make matters worse, you have things like the Charlie Brown Halloween Special, which Apple now owns the rights to. You cannot in any way search for the version you bought from Amazon. The only result Amazon shows is the result that would require you to pay for Apple TV. So you can either look through all of the stuff you bought from them, or find the original email for the purchase and click the link in there.

oh_my_goodness 11mo ago
It's true, and it sucks. But at least I didn't pay Amazon $1800 for hardware first.
delecti 11mo ago
How are you browsing your Amazon content? I see search bars on the 'All Content' [1] page, and also on each individual page, like my movies and shows [2]. Though it seems like the interface is pretty rubbish in the Prime Video section [3], so maybe that's where you're looking? [1] https://www.amazon.com/hz/mycd/digital-console/contentlist/allcontent/dateDsc https://www.amazon.com/hz/mycd/digital-console/contentlist/a... [2] https://www.amazon.com/hz/mycd/digital-console/contentlist/video/dateDsc/ https://www.amazon.com/hz/mycd/digital-console/contentlist/v... [3] https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/mystuff/library https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/mystuff/library
- strictnein 11mo ago
  Roku based TVs and their mobile app. And the website - #3 in your list above. Never seen those other two links, and they don't show up when you're trying to watch things on your tv.
ReptileMan 11mo ago
Torrent sites have amazing search ... just saying

doctorpangloss 11mo ago

[flagged]

ngcazz 11mo ago
Now where'd you cop that?
- card_zero 11mo ago
  Disconcertingly many em dashes, but they're used correctly, without spaces, and are easy to type on MacOS.

staplers 11mo ago

I very much doubt the execs understand how much they're damaging the brand for that little bit of extra revenue. Our entire societal system is based on increasing revenue (due to inflation). Until we measure, define, and value experience in nominal terms through data, most leaders won't care because it will remain an estimate against hard data.

edoceo 11mo ago
Consumers need actual choice too. Choosing between ad-infested music and no-music is crap. The option of music, sans PM-bloat doesn't exist. Sub music with the thing you like. Freaking heck, I've gotta dismiss ads on my BANKING APP just to deposit a check.
- ndriscoll 11mo ago
  It does exist. I ripped my CD collection ~20 years ago. VLC and Finamp both work great as players depending on whether you want to just load up files in a directory, or have a more advanced media server (jellyfin) that can do stuff like transcode FLAC to opus on the fly for mobile clients.
PrairieFire 11mo ago
Yes, profoundly true and sadly profoundly not understood by most. Levers can be pulled for near term quantitative gains at the expense of long term qualitative experience. ERP systems and the like largely measure the quantitative, all things pegged to the almighty dollar. Most orgs have no such system or competency (with the exception of siloed martech systems) for measuring the qualitative. And the customer journey isn’t set up in such a way to reliably and consistently throw off the needed data in the first place. I’ve been preaching that orgs looking for true longevity need to make measuring experiences and sentiment a core competency, so the qualitative impact of levers being pulled can be measured and reported on in realtime, allowing short sighted decisions to be backtracked, and ideally, long term, putting functional guard rails in place that prevent those decisions from being made in the first place.
czl 11mo ago

gdulli 11mo ago

> Modern iPhones don't come with a music player. They come with a music store > Modern iPhones don't come with an e-book app. They come with a book store As a Windows person I see these as features, not criticisms. Windows not having good builtin versions of these or other apps is either a cause or effect of there being a robust ecosystem of third-party choices, both open-source and commercial. My frustration with Apple when I tried it out was that you either use iTunes or there's little other choice. Technically some choice, yes, but because most people are passive and use the Apple stuff by default, there's a smaller community of developers who are motivated to try to compete. When I see people criticize Notepad in Windows (for example) it feels irrelevant because you're not expected to use Notepad for anything but the most trivial use cases. There are so many other, better options, and the platform has a culture of exploring those options.

com2kid 11mo ago
Microsoft used to have one of the best media players around! Windows used to have built in streaming support from device to device. You could load up music on your personal PC and play it on your home theater through your Xbox360! Windows Media Player was huge, only eclipsed by Winamp at the time. Eventually MS released the Zune app, which was also awesome but lacked many of the WMP features. (But it looked amazing!) They also were huge in the ebook space for years before amzn sucked all the air out of the room. They also tried to popularize a standards based in car stereo system a decade before car play became a thing, and the first Windows tablets were released in the 1990s! Oh and they tried to make a smart TV box in 1999, because of course they did. (Nearly 20 years too early, oops!)
- mulmen 11mo ago
  Microsoft had so many opportunities that they just failed to execute. How did they miss on everything? Home servers Media streaming Smartphones Touchscreens Tablets They even had media production with MSNBC. All of this was available from Microsoft in the XP era. How did they fail at literally all of it? There has to be a lesson.
  - 11mo ago

DarKraD 11mo ago

The iBooks one situation is the worst for me. Underneaths it’s actually a really good epub reader with the infinite scroll set up. Perfect for one hand reading. The front page got so annoying with all these trashy books that I eventually had to DNS blocking some iTunes/Apple endpoints. And now it just displays my current reading books, the previous titles and the daily goal every time I open iBooks.

adastra22 11mo ago
Would love to know that block list.
- DarKraD 11mo ago
  Here are the two I have for iBooks. I’m using NextDNS so it will still get blocked when I’m outside the house. I only read my local epubs so I don’t know if blocking these will affect anything you bought on the store. *.amp-api.books.apple.com *.p2-buy.itunes.apple.com
  - tern 11mo ago
    Thank you for this! I applied using AdGuard Pro and it works great ||amp-api.books.apple.com^ ||p2-buy.itunes.apple.com^ In AdGuard syntax, in case it saves someone time
  - adastra22 11mo ago
    Thank you!
shantara 11mo ago
One huge downside of iBooks is that it would happily deauthorize access to the (DRM free) epub files you’ve added to the app manually after a couple of days without internet connection. I made a mistake of going on a long distance hiking trip and thinking can read some books in the tent before falling asleep. Nope, eBooks refused me until I returned to the mobile coverage area and resynced my library with their cloud service. I switched to an offline-first 3rd party app immediately after.

tgma 11mo ago

Modern iPhones? iTunes/iPod sync still works just fine. However, you have to question if that’s what most people who use iPhone want. For one thing, mobile users don’t necessarily have a PC. Mobile is the main device for most users not PC which is different from 2007. Also, I bet many users prefer ad supported free music streaming services if they never pay for music over a system of organizing custom MP3 downloaded. Arguably Android has a much worse and fragmented default experience with respect to having a decent jukebox music player that does it the old school way.

xethos 11mo ago
Android allows changing, and disabling, the default though. Last I checked, trying to open an MP3 will demand the Music app on an iPhone, and clicking an Apple Music link will do the same instead of allowing one to open a webpage

jmyeet 11mo ago

I have to rant about search in the App Store. Pick any app you want and search for it. Ideally it has a pretty unique name and not just a dictionary wod. What will you see? The first result will always be an ad for a completely different app. Google has long dealt with this problem with AdWords and search results. Google still tries to make the exact thing your searching for be the #1 organic result. Yes there are promoted links but they're not as prominent. The App Store #1 result, which is always an ad, is quite literally half the screen. I don't know how advertising works on the App STore but I suspect it's a CPM model not a CPC model (like AdWords). So Apple just doesn't care. But I don't think this would ever have happpened in the Steve Jobs era.

kogepathic 11mo ago
> Pick any app you want and search for it. Ideally it has a pretty unique name and not just a dictionary wod. What will you see? The first result will always be an ad for a completely different app. This is also the case on the Play Store. Google *always* places the ad above the actual result, even if you search by the app ID (e.g. org.videolan.vlc)
deaux 11mo ago
> I don't know how advertising works on the App STore but I suspect it's a CPM model not a CPC model (like AdWords). So Apple just doesn't care. But I don't think this would ever have happpened in the Steve Jobs era. Nope, it's CPC (they call it CPT as it's mobile) and it cost less time to find out than writing this comment ;)
robotresearcher 11mo ago
> The first result will always be an ad for a completely different app. I just tried Things, Excel, Photoshop Elements, and Grand Theft Auto. Each was the first result. So I guess YMMV on this. Like you, I hate it when ads trump organic results.

znpy 11mo ago

This is why you should always pirate digital media, even if you bought it. A pdf or epub file will never bother you in that way. And if they do, you can edit it and remove that trash. I always pirate the media i buy and/or the physical books i buy. Loading pdf documents into GoodNotes (regularly bought) is the quickest way to make them usable (no bullshit, no ads AND i can take… good notes on the pages).

basisword 11mo ago

>> 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. I would have argued against this in the past. But in iOS 26 they introduced the ability to 'pin' 6 favourite playlists or albums to the top of your library. Really useful. If you don't have a subscription (to Apple Music or iTunes Match) you don't get the feature. There is zero reason to do this other than to milk people for more money when they've already spent over $1k on the device and likely spent hundreds purchasing the music from iTunes Store.

amelius 11mo ago

An iPhone is a vending machine in your pocket. (owned and operated by Apple, and __you__ paid for it.)

portaouflop 11mo ago
I disagree. You can disable all the apps—in fact never use _any_ app if you can avoid it altogether. Apps are inherently bad, and the web version is always better. It didn’t have to be like this, but here we are. I often go weeks without opening any app but the browser on my phone.
- amelius 11mo ago
  Good for you, but if you never buy from the vending machine that doesn't mean it's not a vending machine.
- iamtedd 11mo ago
  That's a very, very expensive browser.
  - portaouflop 11mo ago
    True and if there was a good dumb phone alternative I would prefer that probably. I do however need to use some apps sometimes unfortunately. My bank for example implemented some proprietary 2fa method that I need to use an app for (or i buy a special device to it which also seems inconvenient). Anyway it’s the only phone i ever bought; only used 2hand ones before and I’ll probably won’t buy another

portaouflop 11mo ago

I haven’t used Apple devices back when they were good so I have always avoided all the built-in Apple bloat/adware. Because I came from Windows this was already my standard assumption - I need to violently throw out all the built-in stuff and replace it with free and good software. It’s funny because that means I never felt the same pain you feel; I just assumed that’s how operating systems are.

kmac_ 11mo ago
As a Linux user, I feel like a different breed here: I'm pretty sure the software I'll be using 10 years from now will be pretty much the same, and I'm happy about that.
- mulmen 11mo ago
  I recently dusted off a CentOS 5 file server that hadn’t been powered on in a decade. It’s familiar but a lot has changed. But to your point it has changed less than Windows or MacOS.
- marcosdumay 11mo ago
  > I'm pretty sure the software I'll be using 10 years from now will be pretty much the same It will be better, in ways I can't predict. But almost every detail of the interaction will improve somehow. But probably no big changes on the more mature parts. Oh, and it will have one infuriating thing that people keep doing wrong because everybody insists it's the right way. I'll lose some small functionality for disabling it. That's how it has ever been.
layer8 11mo ago
That means you also haven’t used Windows back when it was good.
- portaouflop 11mo ago
  I did use win98 briefly, which was bearable but it also wasn’t good. You are probably referring to an even older version

freefaler 11mo ago

It's a general trend with hired managers who optimize for their bonuses. Also many founder led companies when they got sold to the shareholders are also optmizing for that. Some founder led companies are optimizing for something else, not profits only, but that's rare and that's what Jobs had the leeway to do when he got back to the almost bankrupt company. Current minions will try to squeeze more profit from any screen the incentives are such that they'd do that. Enshitification is possible where there is some kind of lock-in and the pain of leaving is greater than the level of annoyance of the product. Apple has one of the strongest lock-in ecosystems and it's rational for them to do so. I'm not sure there is a better way, because max freedom = open source, but that equals mostly subpar experience for the average user. Let's hope for more platforms and data transfer from one to the other.

sugarpimpdorsey 11mo ago

You forgot they broke iTunes Home Sharing on iOS some years ago and have refused to fix it. Takes over a minute to connect now. (Allegedly the fault of a new, yet horribly inefficient, parser that chokes on large libraries which worked fine a decade ago on phones with half the CPU and RAM.) Once connected, it won't play DRM-protected tracks I PAID FOR, says I'm not authorized. I ended up having to break the DRM because Apple can't be bothered to include a functioning music player anymore. An "iPod with touch controls" is no longer part of iPhone. An ad-filled music subscription consumption software is.

seec 11mo ago
Apple has stopped caring and producing local/personal software for a while now. Which is absolutely brain dead because that was the primary reason to buy their hardware in the first place. Why spend the premium for a Mac if you are going to run some shitty cloud software anyway. For now the illusion is maintained because they are dominating with their chips, but that won't last forever and the competition is almost caught up (it's not that relevant for non mobile computers anyway). iTunes had it's flaw but at least it was a very useful software and it worked quite well (at some point I had a library of over 100k tracks); the replacement while trying to keep some of the fundamentals is a joke in comparison.
- pwg 11mo ago
  It sounds like they are well on their way down the "Enshittification" [1] path. Eventually they will enshittify sufficiently that the illusion will shatter. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
  - seec 11mo ago
    It looks like it but it's quite sad. We need another commercial desktop OS to compete with Microsoft. The problem is Apple is shooting itself in the foot with their greed on hardware pricing. This is the reasons many heavy/high-duty software never makes it to the Mac, it's just too expensive to outfit everyone with performant enough Mac computers. It's pretty sad because they don't even need the money, and clearly they have shown in the past 10 years that they are completely unable to do anything better with the surplus money. It's just self-defeating greed, they could eat a lot of Microsoft market share where it matters but instead they try to push an even more locked-down approach with the iPadOS.

lenerdenator 11mo ago

Apple's beancounters have figured out that they just have to be more polished than Microsoft and Google's environments, and despite the legitimate complaints you've made, they still are.

0manrho 11mo ago
Precisely. This is their "Have the cake and eat it too" strategy, where so long as they aren't as egregious as their competitors, they know it's a Net gain as most of their customers will still feel the grass is still greener in their wall garden than elsewhere. Even if the grass isn't near as green or well kept so to speak as it used to be.

asdhtjkujh 11mo ago

This is especially egregious in the Books app on all platforms. I dream of a version that presents you with your library on launch instead of the store — good user experience would expect you to be opening the app to read books 99% of the time, not to purchase new ones. Thankfully, on macOS, you can disable the store in the Music app entirely. This will probably be removed at some point. When disabled, the only remnant is a small username in the bottom-left corner of the screen. I would love to see this gone as well, but local libraries are increasingly of no concern to Apple or the general public so I doubt they will fix this.

jimt1234 11mo ago

> 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. VLC is your friend.

int_19h 11mo ago

The worst part of it is that despite all this, Apple still has the least frustrating desktop experience overall, at least for the casual user who needs things to "just work", because the bar is plummeting that fast. Especially when looking at Windows.

amelius 11mo ago
AI will soon make this difference (if it even exists) irrelevant.
- Hammershaft 11mo ago
  How will AI change this situation? I don't catch your drift.
  - mort96 11mo ago
    The only thing I can imagine is that both Apple and Microsoft will bog down the desktop equally in AI garbage, to the point where both are approximately equally unusable.
  - amelius 11mo ago
    Briefly, with an example: instead of going through menus looking for the option you need, you can just tell the AI (with a voice command) what you want to do. At that point it does not matter who has the nicest menus. Advanced users are already seeing this. You don't need HandBrake anymore. You can just use ffmpeg directly and ChatGPT will tell you the command line arguments.
    - mr_toad 11mo ago
      > you can just tell the AI (with a voice command) what you want to do Hard no. Not happening.
      - pjmlp 11mo ago
        https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2025/10/16/making-every-windows-11-pc-an-ai-pc/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2025/10/16/makin... Apple will follow along

JumpCrisscross 11mo ago

If Apple puts ads in its Maps, there will be an opening for a gorgeously-skinned OpenStreetMaps app. Possibly even with a $1/year WhatsApp-style subscription. I really fucking hate ads. I’ll first pay to avoid them. If I can’t, I’ll bail. Because we live in a capitalist society, I’ll take folks with me. nose boops Kagi

HacklesRaised 11mo ago
Big ups for mentioning KAGI
shantara 11mo ago
Organic Maps is very close to be that gorgeous OSM app. Unfortunately, it still lacks a lot of functionality that’s missing from OSM dataset, and is present in most commercial mapping apps, like the opening hours for businesses, public transport schedules or user reviews.

tempodox 11mo ago

Once upon a time, Apple used to be different. Now they’re just another megacorp that abuses you with enshittification, like they all do.

bigyabai 11mo ago
Not really. 15 years ago it was "you're holding it wrong" and 50 years ago it was Steve Jobs swindling Woz to close Atari contracts. "Apple used to mean something" is a postmodern catechism to make you feel better when Apple reveals themselves as a federally-backdoored shoggoth.
rasz 11mo ago
Different indeed, like that time Jobs pushed U2 album into every iphone.
- hurfdurf 11mo ago
  Steve Jobs died in 2011, that "Songs of Innocence" fiasco was in 2014.
  - rasz 11mo ago
    You are right, I misremembered U2 branded iPod as that song debacle.

MangoToupe 11mo ago

> 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. The books app itself is infuriating. It's more like a store with a list of purchases attached. Every single time I want to pull up my audiobooks, for instance, I hit the "audiobooks" button.... just to find the store instead. Every time I want to search through my library, I use the "search" box... just to find the store instead. Maddening. The apple music app I actual really like, probably because it's not actually easy to purchase anything through it. The only major ask is that they stop limiting the number of recently added so I can actually find music I added

kamma4434 11mo ago

Like fitness where they want you to activate Fitness+. This means the one they are shipping is trash? Plus, thank you, I know where the App store is in case I need it

kccqzy 11mo ago

I haven't seen ads on the App Store for a long time. To update my apps I just long press the App Store icon and tap Updates. It leads you directly to the updates without going to the homepage.

ryandrake 11mo ago
I just opened up App Store and the first screen is a full screen ad for Roblox. Then you scroll down and it’s 4 “now trending” ads, then below that another full screen as. The entire “Today” tab is a scroll full of ads.
- kccqzy 11mo ago
  That's why I don't open the App Store's first screen or the Today tab. I usually open the App Store to look at the release notes for my updatable apps. To find new apps, I use Google to find an app's page. A web-based search engine has blockable ads, the App Store app does not.
  - InvertedRhodium 11mo ago
    The today tab is the default one that opens when you start the App Store. At least on my 16Pro.
    - kccqzy 11mo ago
      That's my point. I don't start the App Store by tapping on its icon. I go to a specific page within the App Store.

bombcar 11mo ago

I prefer my music through CarPlay because at least that doesn’t shit everything up with Apple Music. Hell, I’d be happy if they stopped defaulting the search to Apple Music instead of local library. That’s not even to begin talking about how having Apple Music subscription once fucks your iTunes library forever.

port11 11mo ago

I don't know what you're complaining about, this is obviously about making user interactions delightful. Of course most people will cherish the bundling opportunities of Apple products, and would be offended if similar books weren't shown in their libraries as easy purchases. It's delightful. /s More seriously: Apple, please never rework the compass, I don't need ads for Apple Compass+ when I'm hoping to figure out which was is north.

hexahedroid 11mo ago

I hated using the Books app without the book store disabled. The setting is buried in Settings -> Screen Time -> Content & Privacy Restrictions -> Allowed Apps & Features -> Book Store

dangus 11mo ago

Apple’s services pull in more revenue than Macs and iPads combined. The expectation that they won’t advertise them is, unfortunately, not a reasonable one. You can turn off Apple Music the service entirely from the music app. If you stick to the library tab in books you’ll never see an ad. It’s really not anywhere close to the worst offender in the industry. Is it a great thing? No.

musicale 11mo ago

> uninvited advertising is not normally equated with a better customer experience As Jobs understood (per TFA), pushing ads degrades the user experience - the prime differentiating factor for Apple products in the first place, and what attracted many people to the platform. It's bad, and it's probably going to get worse as Apple's services businesses increase their share of revenue and exert expanding influence over product design within the company. Banning Apple from leveraging its platform for advertising Apple services might help, but the fact that we have arrived at the point where we have to rely on antitrust enforcement to make Apple products less intrusive and user-hostile shows that the company has lost its way. > Modern iPhones don't come with a music player. They come with a music store Unfortunately, requirements that Apple provide a choice to install Spotify rather than Apple Music, or Kindle rather than Apple Books, on a new iPhone doesn't fix the problem.

musicale 11mo ago
s/doesn't/won't/

justin-reeves 11mo ago

My Kobo Libra 2 has a “My Books” tab with no ads. When I put it away, I always leave it there (or in an open book) and it always stays there (or in an open book). At least on Mac, I have noticed the Apple TV app seems to stay on one of the Library tabs indefinitely if I leave it there, but maybe it has just escaped their notice. On the other hand, there’s no separate tab for “Continue Watching.” (A partial work-around is using the widget.)

steve_adams_86 11mo ago

This behaviour deeply bothers me, and my family doesn't get it. I've tried to explain it, but I think they're so accustomed to it that it doesn't really matter to them or occur to them as nefarious or malicious. The way I see it, this type of behaviour by Apple (or any other company doing this) is an invasion of mental real estate. When you force things in front of my eyes that I didn't ask to see, or in my ears, or whatever, that's occupying my brain cycles and space in ways that are entirely uninvited. Of course, the EULAs and whatnot all require me to agree to this bullshit, so fine, it's technically invited when I opened the application and said "sure, try to sell me your stuff", but to me this isn't the spirit of the software or operating system at ALL, and has been a signal of worse things to come for some time now. It's essentially enshittification. My answer has been to stop using it. After 25 years of using Apple's computers and around 12 years on their phones, I'm migrating off. No more iPhone, Apple Watch, Airpods, etc. I'm still on a mac and that'll be hard to change, but it's slowly happening. I spent the last week on the ocean and in the woods on a toughbook, and that was kind of fun. It was eye opening to take a computer where I'd never take a macbook. I find this kind of behaviour totally deplorable anyway, and I can't tolerate it. It's insidious and damaging to their brand because ultimately it's harmful to their users. They want number to go up, I get it, but I'm not their fodder.

GreenVulpine 11mo ago

I was gifted an iPad for Christmas a few years back and quickly found out there's nothing you can do on it without either looking at ads or paying a subscription. I returned it before the factory battery charge ran out.

naravara 11mo ago

Hey now. If they allowed you to simply enjoy the stuff you have without butting in to remind you of everything you don’t have, you might actually feel a moment of lightness and happiness. If they want you spending money they need to cultivate feelings of covetousness, inadequacy, or fear. Contentment doesn’t sell.