9 ms·

2026 Apple introducing more ads to increase opportunity in search results

261 points by punnerud 10mo ago

pupppet 10mo ago
When you’re a publicly traded company, all roads lead to enshittification. You are beholden to your shareholders and shareholders demand growth.
zakki 10mo ago
No worries, Apple will execute ads better than others. We will love with it and praise Apple for it.
ChrisArchitect 10mo ago
Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46310986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46310986
al_borland 10mo ago
I’m really not a fan of this direction for Apple. One of the differentiators between iOS and Google was a lack of ads, which make the experience feel more premium. Increasing ads, or having them at all, really erodes the user experience. Apple managed to become the most valuable company in the world without ads. Adding them after hitting that milestone feels either greedy or desperate, maybe a little of both. I know the ads themselves aren’t new, but the steady increase is a worrying trend. I’d rather pay an extra $100 for the phone than have ads all over it.
- bg_tagas 10mo ago
  Well if the app creator isn’t going to pay Apple money. You have to pay Apple money. If you don’t like ads. Thank Tim Swineey
- dash2 10mo ago
  Yeah, they seem to be moving from innovators to exploiting their user base. In particular, I interpret their AI failures as the innovator's dilemma. They have loads of highly paid people designing and creating beautiful UIs. A chatbot could replace a lot of this: just tell your phone what to do instead of clicking and swiping. But that would put most of their employees out of work. So instead they are going to milk and lock in their user base, and hope rivals don't get traction.
  - fodkodrasz 10mo ago
    1. Their UIs were never beautiful or really good tbh. The iOS26 is the worst so far, and they really went too far this time. 2. They are no charity, they don't care for giving work to their designers. 3. They won't milk their userbase or long, friends and family are already abandoning their ecosystem due to v26's atrocious UI, I'll be doing so also. Adding more ads to the mix will just speed things up. I'm not selling my stock just of yet though, as investors like these moves. Layoffs also usually bump the stock price.
    - thomassmith65 10mo ago
      Presumably the person who wrote this comment is too young to have used Apple products prior to 2010?
      - nottorp 10mo ago
        They do have a point though, because you can't continue to use a phone made by Apple in 2010.
        thomassmith65 10mo ago
        I would if I could! Apple has been a mess since they lost Steve Jobs.
  - bee_rider 10mo ago
    Apple hasn’t been much of an innovator for decades. They take an idea that’s already been worked out (like MP3 players) and then just out-execute the competition. It is possible they won’t pull it off for “AI,” of course. But we won’t know until when somebody finds a profitable consumer-facing application for these models.
    - tyre 10mo ago
      They innovate in design and user experience. I wouldn’t have expected Apple to introduce the first AI, for example. I definitely would have expected them to wrap it better than anyone and boy was I wrong about that. But their innovative design tends to be in hardware and supply chains.
- IlikeKitties 10mo ago
  > I’d rather pay an extra $100 for the phone than have ads all over it. Yeah, not gonna happen, no ads means ownership of a device. That must be prohibited at all cost. Unless you are one of those pesky grapeneos users that block ads but they'll soon be excluded from any public discourse by eID enforcement. You vill watch tze Ads and you vill eat tze bugs.
  - crapple8430 10mo ago
    This. If you pay them $100 for no ads, they'll just come back next quarter to ask for another $100, unless you actually own your device, i.e. are able to modify its software to actually enforce your rights.
- hhoorzad 10mo ago
  > I’d rather pay an extra $100 for the phone than have ads all over it. In all likelihood, we will pay an extra $100 AND have ads.
  - isodev 10mo ago
    Apple Ads+, curated selection of premium ads for 9.99€/month. Also available as part of Apple One if you buy 2TB of extra iCloud storage.
    - notyourwork 10mo ago
      Cannot wait for ads to slip into my iCloud storage.
  - mystifyingpoi 10mo ago
    THIS. Never promote the idea of "can you please not bother me with ads, there you go there is your extra $100, what, $200? okay sure". That's how mafia operates. Do not promote such.
    - fasbiner 10mo ago
      People pay the mafia protection money because it's cheaper than fighting the mob and it makes the mob go away for awhile, and in the long run, we're all dead. Most mafia-like entities don't have an inexorable existential drive to take it all, they just charge what the market will bear. And if you think there's a definitional difference between a government, a corporation and a mafia that stands up to any objective measure and isn't based entirely on social cues and special pleading, I think that's an extraordinary claim you have no evidence for. Go lead a maoist insurgency or don't, but the fingerwagging moral appeal is worse than useless.
      - bigyabai 10mo ago
        > and in the long run, we're all dead. Well gee, when you put it like that all morality is relative huh?
- N_Lens 10mo ago
  Enshittification is Inevitable.
  - palmotea 10mo ago
    > Enshittification is Inevitable. Only under our current cultural and economic assumptions.
    - jopsen 10mo ago
      > Only under our current cultural and economic assumptions. I think we shouldn't hope those changes, that could lead to interesting times.
  - thomassmith65 10mo ago
    Perhaps, but it exploded in the tech industry as soon as Steve Jobs died. Whatever his faults, he had a high bar for user experience, a massive megaphone, and the respect of journalists, industry leaders, and the public. Apple's market differentiator, under Steve Jobs, was that it wasn't shitty. Jobs would regularly mock competitors publicly for the way in which they 'enshittified' their products (in words of the time, obviously). And his reputation was such that people listened. We have a dearth of authority figures today; there's nobody around to shame bad actors.
    - weikju 10mo ago
      > We have a dearth of authority figures today; there's nobody around to shame bad actors. Worse. The bad actors have become the authority figures.
- ee64a4a 10mo ago
  > Apple managed to become the most valuable company in the world without ads. Yeah, but what about next quarter? Jokes aside, they're not the most valuable company anymore. Nvidia is ahead, I think MS has jockeyed with them on that position a few times and is still on their heels, and Google is ascendant (even ahead of MS as of end of close) after the antitrust clouds started to recede and Gemini started to match Claude and ChatGPT. They can't sit idly forever if they want to please shareholders, and there aren't many avenues for expansion.
  - spiderfarmer 10mo ago
    What will happen to nvidia when their market becomes saturated? That seems inevitable.
    - luz666 10mo ago
      Maybe just reduce production amount an increase prices? Profit probably continues, but on a lower level, I guess.
    - bigyabai 10mo ago
      HPC is still only a portion of the overall datacenter market. Nvidia is well-equipped to tackle the networking and cheap RISC VPS portions if they set their mind to it.
    - Timon3 10mo ago
      Don't you worry - there are many, many ways for GPUs to inject ads :) Of course you'll first have to dismiss the ad injected by your monitor manufacturer, but before that you'll have to dismiss the ad injected by your mouse manufacturer (or keyboard if you prefer that). Whoops, looks like your OS ads refreshed - drink another verification can! Just in time for your ISP to inject ads. But to dismiss them, first you have to dismiss the ad injected by your mouse manufacturer. Oh look, another GPU ad! I feel lucky that all these companies want to provide me with the best information about new products and services.
    - raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
      The failure rate of data center GPUs is around 2 years…
- rgreekguy 10mo ago
  I see many ads and irrelevant results in the App Store regardless. So much so, that at some point said "why don't I turn on personalised ads, since I am seeing all this trash anyway", and it turned out it was already on. So I cannot really imagine how this will change things.
- MangoToupe 10mo ago
  > One of the differentiators between iOS and Google was a lack of ads, which make the experience feel more premium. Both app stores always felt like fumbling in the dumpster. Between the ads and the gambling, if you managed to find an app that treated you right it was like finding a baby who was somehow living despite choking in all the ashes > Apple managed to become the most valuable company in the world without ads Ma'am they literally sell ads through the apps on their app store
- heavyset_go 10mo ago
  > One of the differentiators between iOS and Google was a lack of ads Both have had ads in apps, in app stores and on websites. This was never a differentiator.
  - matsemann 10mo ago
    Yeah, and no way of using a browser with ad blocker for a decade or to avoid them in apps. If anything, the iOS experience has always been more ad-riddled than Android.
    - raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
      The App Store came out in 2008, ad blocking in browsers came out in 2016. I have exactly one ad supported app on my phone - Overcast. Mobile games have become so enshittified they aren’t interesting. The only reason I haven’t paid for ad free Overcast is just because when I was about to in order to support an indie developer, the author introduced his own ad platform that wasn’t scammy and its ads for other podcasts in the same category for the one you are actually listening to. I found his ads good and I found other interesting podcasts because of it.
  - realusername 10mo ago
    And both have an advertising id built-in into the OS (which I find insane as a concept)
  - agos 10mo ago
    there was definitely a time when iOS App Store did not have ads
- erik 10mo ago
  On top of this, I find ads on app store search results to be particularly bad. It's a business model that comes with all sorts of perverse incentives. It's so bad for users and legitimate developers.
  - malfist 10mo ago
    On android, I love when I search for my bank's app I get a bunch of scam apps taking up all the above the fold results. If iOS goes that route I really don't know what the differentiator is
    - type0 10mo ago
      You will have a better UX while being scammed
- dangus 10mo ago
  I hate to break it to you, but it's been like this for YEARS now. The frog has been boiled. Line must go up and the market is saturated. I watched an "Android user switched to iOS" YouTube video recently and it's interesting how much you don't see when you haven't been removed from an environment. This Android user was shocked at how much iOS advertises to you, which is not intuitively what any of us would think an Android user would be shocked by switching platforms. A lot of us iPhone users think that Android phones are like a used car sales lot with bloat apps and you can't delete Facebook and all that. You know how when you haven't seen a friend for a long time and they've changed appearance? But if you see them every day you don't really notice the gradual changes as much. I think that's what's happening here: long time iOS users just don't see that Apple is using all the same tactics as Microsoft and Google in their OSes, but Windows especially is seen as hyper-commercial and ad-riddled. iOS has what are effectively ads in the Settings page in exactly in the same way that you get critical updates which is crazy. Every major OS update advertises some new feature that siphons up your personal data like Apple Intelligence. Heck, they suggest you turn analytics back on years after turning it off - every single major update! I know this is common practice but we have to pause and recognize that these things are advertisements. You think Windows is bad with OneDrive and Copilot? At least you can uninstall those! Try removing Apple News on your Mac! You can't delete the app, not allowed! Congratulations, you bought a piece of hardware from Apple, now you get a 3-month trial to [random service they run] and you will be notified about this in the settings page...again, right next to your critical security updates. App Store? It's an ad platform, not a package manager. Sure, another industry standard, but it's not like Apple is some kind of unique premium company in this regard. Apple TV is touted as having no ads, but it really does if you don't move Apples apps off the top row of the screen. For now, it's far less egregious than any other streaming box I can think of, but I imagine it's this way because the product is a bit of an afterthought that predates Apple's orange squeezing (we are the oranges).
  - Rebelgecko 10mo ago
    As an Android user, it really is depressing to see screenshots of how clean the Android Market used to be. Nowadays even when I search an app name verbatim it's a crapshoot if I'll actually find it
- Towaway69 10mo ago
  How does market capitalism work again? Shareholders what higher ROI each quarter. Where does that come from? Profits. Where do profits come from? Selling data, innovation, selling hardware, etc. Biggest profit margins come from selling stuff you have to multiple buyers that costs you nothing to duplicate/produce. My data can be sold to multiple buyers, multiple times to make that magic profit that shareholders want. Just wait until everyone on this planet has apple devices, how will apple continue to grow ROI?
  - willis936 10mo ago
    Where do profits fall? In several quarters when users vote with their wallet and let you know about your decisions to disrespect them and reduce their trust in you. It isn't about maximizing profits, otherwise they wouldn't make shortsighted choices. It's cashing in on goodwill that took decades to build. We are a far cry from "only the paranoid survive".
    - Towaway69 10mo ago
      If you lower the standard to such a level that every “wallet vote” would actually be worse, how does one cast ones vote then? Does Android have less ads? Which company does hardware integration so well? What are the alternative to an Apple tech stack? So in the end, the consumer is left to sucking it up, counting their shareholder profits and suffering on a remote island in the sun.
      - willis936 10mo ago
        Buying a used pixel and flashing grapheneOS is the only refuge for now. We'll have to hold out for the SteamPhone.
- gostsamo 10mo ago
  but, but, think of the shareholders!
- vjvjvjvjghv 10mo ago
  “I’d rather pay an extra $100 for the phone than have ads all over it.” I guarantee you will do both soon
- Someone 10mo ago
  I think that, on the App Store, ads may be the least worse solution. Currently, some developers try to get into your view by creating multiple similar apps, as that gets them screen space for free. Given developers the ability to pay to have their app show above the sea of (almost) clones may revert that trend, as such developers would either have to pay for multiple adverts or to put all their money on one horse. (It wouldn’t make the iOS App Store good, though. One thing it definitely also needs is clearer information on what features you get for free, what you can buy as add-on, and what requires a subscription)
  - matwood 10mo ago
    Yeah. It’s hard for me to get worked up about ads in a store.
- tcfhgj 10mo ago
  Greed is the law of capitalism
- mgh2 10mo ago
  Ads is just a tool, I hope Apple does it right for UX, as it is planning to do w/ Maps
  - bigyabai 10mo ago
    A bicycle... no, a hamburger for the mind.
- pjmlp 10mo ago
  The John Sculley Apple is back, the time of being nice for survival reasons is long gone.
- nottorp 10mo ago
  > One of the differentiators between iOS and Google was a lack of ads Newsflash: the first slot in an app store search is an ad that is not marked as such. Your extra $100 are already wasted. Here's a nice ad I ran into recently: https://imgur.com/a/sq1HFHK https://imgur.com/a/sq1HFHK I was trying to install microsoft authenticator and the first "result"... I don't want to know what that is. If they add more ads at the top I suppose I'll have to only use external searches to install apps.
  - krackers 10mo ago
    I'm surprised that this wasn't brought up during trials as an argument against Apple's supposed "curated" walled-garden. There is a bunch of dangerous scammy junk on there.
    - nottorp 10mo ago
      I think I ran into one of the most dangerous situations without looking for it. What happens if you install the first result and put your microsoft account credentials in...
  - audunw 10mo ago
    You say it's not marked as an ad, but in that image there's a clear blue "Ad" label. Are there cases where that label is not present?
    - nottorp 10mo ago
      Seriously? I haven't noticed it. Maybe it's clear to you... or you work in marketing and have a different definition of "clear". Note that this is a screenshot from a hi dpi iphone that went through a few upload/download/reencode cycles [1] so it lost all density information. On the real phone screen the "Ad" thing is extremely tiny and unnoticeable. [1] Downloaded it from my work chat where i posted it as a warning to my colleagues a couple days ago.
      - al_borland 10mo ago
- m463 10mo ago
  they are tarnishing their brand.
- godelski 10mo ago
  > I’d rather pay an extra $100 for the phone than have ads all over it. Wasn't that part of the deal with iPhones in the first place? You pay more for less but you get a "more premium" experience. Though lately I feel like Apple is just really bad at being... Apple It's like they are dumping all the good parts and doubling down on all the bad parts. Things are far from "just working", have more glitches/bugs, but at the same time they're increasing hostility towards developers and walled garden. At least with Android (or linux) I can fix any issues but with Apple it's more "fuck you, deal with it." This was frustrating but passable when it was more streamlined but now? God fucking damnit I swiped one word just fine but when swiping the second word you decide the first word wasn't correct and none of the suggestions are what I'm intending to type but pressing delete deletes both words and now I can't swipe the original word because you already decided I'm not trying to type that word because I pressed delete? This is version of Apple is just rotten... When literally typing on a phone is a daily frustrating experience you know you fucked up. I mean how long have they even failed to capitalize a singular "i"? What the fuck is going on over there? Side note: Try searching "Claude" in the iPhone app store. For me I get a half page ad for Gemini, a small result for Claude, and then a larger result for Grok. Literally the thing I searched for, and has an unambiguous result, is the smallest thing on the page! This is some bullshit dark patterns that is very anti-user.
  - type0 10mo ago
    > When literally typing on a phone is a daily frustrating experience you know you fucked up "You are holding it wrong", maybe it's intentional and Apple decided that you should use Siri more
    - hurfdurf 10mo ago
      It is intentional: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46232528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46232528
      - godelski 10mo ago
        That's saying something a bit different, though yeah I agree. And btw, I have "auto-correct" disabled and this stupid bug still happens. Which is to say, yes, I agree, Apple is user hostile.
- nine_k 10mo ago
  This looks like enshittification :( When a company that sits on enormous reams of cash, and positions itself as a premium brand, goes for a fistful of dollars more per customer by showing them ads, it can mean two things. One is that it's a cold calculated move, another, that it's clueless enthusiastic "brilliant idea". In either case, the company is going to burn a lot of its customers' goodwill, and much of its longer-term prospects, in exchange for some more immediate revenue, and higher stock valuation. What looks like stupidity in doing such a move is more likely cynicism. The corporate officers who will reap the benefits will have retired by the time when their successors would have to handle the fallout. It's not stupidity, it's rot at the highest echelons. This would explain the really poor recent software decisions, and the general decline of its quality. But at least Apple still has amazing, best-in-class hardware! Well, like Nokia did. And like Blackberry did. Like Boeing used to. Sad :(
- zx8080 10mo ago
  AI needs more personal info (like iCloud is not enough yet). Ads provide more insights to user real needs than anything else, and there's inescapable sharing of user behaviour (otherwise ads business model does not work) that allows Apple to collect and process the user behaviour for its own AI training and to sell it to others. Sitting on a tons of value (even though backed by users trust) gives no rest to Apple's managers who just does not connect the dots between users trust and profits. Or they think they are a monopoly. Maybe Apple is?
  - avaer 10mo ago
    > Ads provide more insights to user real needs than anything else How? You can get insights into user behavior without ads, and I'm sure Apple is doing that already. Doesn't making good products that people want give more insight to user needs? Who wants ads?
- sandworm101 10mo ago
  Ya, they are at the top doing what they are doing. There is little room for growth. So, to continue growing, Apple must now do something different. If ads pull money today, but threaten the brand in 5 or 10 years, then that is a problem for 5 or 10 years from now. With the monopoly in hand, now is the time to squeeze the blood from the stone.
- monegator 10mo ago
  > I’d rather pay an extra $100 for the phone You're already paying a huge premium on the phone.
- faust201 10mo ago
  > One of the differentiators between iOS and Google was a lack of ads I always wonder how apple's marketing team pulled this off. - If you use any decent browser like Firefox* (or its different clones) one get enhanced privacy, no ads, byepasspaywalls etc. - Even Chromium forks have decent adblocking - Using NewPipe (like revanced opensource) for ad free YouTube All my iOS friends scroll through so many ads - admittedly - SIM/data is paid for my their employers but it is awful experience. * -> Don't be pendantic and point out yesterday's Verge article that Mozilla is becoming bad.
  - raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
    The same Firefox that only survives because most of its revenue comes from Google? Your friends are only scrolling through ads because they haven’t installed an ad blocker. They have been available for iOS Safari for over a decade - since iOS 8.
- re-thc 10mo ago
  > I’d rather pay an extra $100 for the phone than have ads all over it. With the average lifetime of a phone these days $100 might not justify it.
- classified 10mo ago
  Apple has decayed into a bog-standard $$$-maximizing lawnmower. Any products, services, ads, or other performances are merely incidental to that goal.
- alex1138 10mo ago
  but but but but 'if you're not paying then you are the product' Turns out that doesn't work, either
- neya 10mo ago
  Rather not create a told you so moment, but I switched to Samsung - which has tons of garbage apps pre-installed, and tons of ads - but I'm not atleast buying into a delusion that a private company somehow has my privacy at its best interest just because I paid a premium to them. In the end, I got a good deal with a cheaper price for more features - I can have a real file system access, install apps from anywhere I like, etc.
- squibonpig 10mo ago
  Yeah. My iPhone SE finally ran out of steam recently and I decided to go ahead and exit the ecosystem as best as I could. Saw grapheneos had just added experimental support for the Pixel fold 10 and picked one of those up. Some annoyances like no tap payment, but honestly a great experience so far, no regrets. Probably not for people who need the interop with other apple devices tho.
- ulrikrasmussen 10mo ago
  This is the result of effectively having a duopoly on the smartphone OS market and the extremely hostile environment for post-market operating systems. Apple just has to make sure that they are marginally less shitty than Google, and Google can keep increasing how obnoxious their ads are once Apple catches up.
- black3r 10mo ago
  There have been ads in App Store for a long time. The upcoming change is that they will also appear further down in search results, right now they only show on top...
  - palla89 10mo ago
    this morning I read not only on bottom, but also every few apps.. hopefully it's only in the bottom!
- dewey 10mo ago
  They already plaster iOS with ads...just for their own services and it's disguised as a system feature. It's especially obvious if you don't subscribe to paid iCloud and see ads for "Apple Arcade", "Increase iCloud Drive storage space", "Sign up for Apple Music", "Have you heard of Apple Fitness+" or "New show on Apple TV+"-push notifications everywhere. Something that in theory they discourage to use these for promotional messages, but that hasn't been the case for a long time.
  - soared 10mo ago
    Syncing that new pair of AirPods you just bought? Yup - Apple Music free trial ad.
  - port11 10mo ago
    I've no need to defend Apple but I don't see this. I don't see any of those things, ever. What am I doing differently?
    - dewey 10mo ago
      Example: Settings / Your Name / iCloud. There I have an add to download "Apple Invites". Another one: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Unwanted-Apple-advertising-Push-notification-annoys-iPhone-users-in-the-USA-10459443.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/Unwanted-Apple-advertising-Push...
      - port11 10mo ago
        Ah, I see what you mean. But I've rejected all their “Recommendations”, so I don't see any of that anymore. It shows up once, you reject it, and it's gone. Better than ‘no but remind me tomorrow’.
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- coldtea 10mo ago
  >Apple managed to become the most valuable company in the world without ads. Adding them after hitting that milestone feels either greedy or desperate, maybe a little of both. The way the modern economy works they don't care for maintaining the same revenues and profit level. They need to show they do better than other stocks so people buy theirs. So if they have to increase margins by doing whatever crap, show ads, etc they will do it. >I’d rather pay an extra $100 for the phone than have ads all over it. Half of your wish is granted: you already pay $100 extra for the phone or even more. On top of that, it will also have ads.
- Isamu 10mo ago
  Yeah I’m dreading a change in Apple TV in this direction. I avoid the crappiness of smart tvs by not connecting them to wifi and just using Apple TV, but how long before that becomes crappy too?
- bartread 10mo ago
  In future this will be cited as a canonical example of enshittification. They’ve extracted 80% or whatever of the value out of customers in the current markets and now, rather than figuring out a new value adding product or service they can offer to make another 80% in a slightly different market, they’re going to expend a completely disproportionate amount of effort to slowly and miserably grind out that last 20% in the markets they already operate in. Honestly, screw all of this.
- ryandvm 10mo ago
  The extra price of Apple products was never about not having advertising. The extra price is the feature. It means you have enough money (status) to have a green bubble. It means you can afford an adorable little infotainment gewgaw. Apple products don't look unique because they need to, they look unique so that you can effectively signal your consumption.
- poemxo 10mo ago
  This isn't ads all over your phone. It's ads for the App Store. Honestly the App Store looks gamed af as it stands and this might be a move toward curation (instead of letting the App Store descend into SEO hell).
- Gibbon1 10mo ago
  Was recently thinking we should change tax law to exclude ad spend as a business expense so it gets taxed.
- musicale 10mo ago
  The crapification pathway where Services can place ads in Product 1) neutralizes a historical Apple differentiating advantage and 2) is probably going to increase monotonically. :(
trvz 10mo ago
Ads in the App Store are filthy and everyone at Apple should be ashamed. The responsible people should be fired.
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sgentle 10mo ago
Only time I've ever been successfully phished was the App Store. I have an Android phone but I wanted to try the ChatGPT app on my iPad and naively clicked the first result, which was of course a scummy clone. I have since wised up and understand the App Store search results to be roughly torrent search levels of trustworthy. I guess the bar for user trust has now dropped enough across the board to sell more off without losing customers? Pretty sorry state of affairs.
- skylurk 10mo ago
  There are also a lot scummy Microsoft Authenticator clones with near identical icons being advertized ahead of the real one. Be careful in the App Store!
- nottorp 10mo ago
  > torrent search levels of trustworthy Proper torrent search sites have a comments section that you should check before downloading anything :)
- BLKNSLVR 10mo ago
  30% curation tax doing a wonderful job.
- IlikeKitties 10mo ago
  > I have since wised up and understand the App Store search results to be roughly torrent search levels of trustworthy. join a private tracker friend :)
- mrweasel 10mo ago
  Your experience illustrates precisely why the ads in the ad store should be worthless. I have never clicked on the ad in the app store. Regardless of how legitimate it looks, I will never click it. The vast majority for ads are clearly either scams or they are at least attempting to piggy back on the popularity of others, and I'll support neither of those cases. I don't know what it is with Apple, maybe they aren't sufficiently exposed to scams, but they seem to not understand it's an issue, or their metrics are solely based on revenue. Because even if something is a borderline scam, Apple probably gets their 30%.
n2d4 10mo ago
The title should probably mention that this is for search results in the App Store, which already had ads. Still an unfortunate development though.
dav43 10mo ago
The App Store is an absolute sh!t hole of an experience. Irrelevant ads, impossible to find anything decent. It’s the internet of 1998 pre google.
- axus 10mo ago
  Have you browsed Google Play? :) Or Amazon appstore for that matter.
  - bitpush 10mo ago
    Why? Does Apple allow you to download apps from Google Play or Amazon?
    - gloxkiqcza 10mo ago
      In EU and Japan it would (have to) if Google/Amazon managed to provide iOS binaries.
    - latexr 10mo ago
      In think the point of your parent comment is those are as bad or worse.
  - solarkraft 10mo ago
    If Apple had always strived to for their products suck as much as others, they would never have gained any traction.
  - miloignis 10mo ago
    Have you browsed F-Droid?
    - GlitchInstitute 10mo ago
      Yup half of the apps don't work :D
      - 10mo ago
oliviergg 10mo ago
Serious question: who still goes on the App Store, and why? Personally, I haven’t searched for anything there except once out of boredom in 5 year
- dangus 10mo ago
  It's literally the only way to download apps. A platform that doesn't let you simply install a desired package without being shown ads is kind of crazy but it's basically industry standard for everything that's not Linux.
  - user2722 10mo ago
    He/She meant _searching_ for apps for a functionality in App Store is a sure way to get gobbledygooky apps. He/She probably searches them on $SEARCH_ENGINE and uses the AppStore just for the download.
    - dangus 10mo ago
      Ah, so using a different advertisement platform instead of this one. Let me put this another way: if you want to manually kick off app updates, you literally have to see ads. App Store > Today tab (the default view) has ads. Then you hit your profile button to escape the ad center and there is your app update interface. This has been normalized by basically all commercial OS platforms, but imagine how insanely negatively received it would be if apt upgrade or brew upgrade displayed ads before your packages downloaded. Apple even shows ads for stuff like Apple Music/TV+/Fitness/News+ free trials in the settings pane. And people give Microsoft shit for having ads in their platform...at least they don't show you ads in Windows Update!
      - littlecranky67 10mo ago
        $SEARCH_ENGINE engine is nowadays copilot or chatgpt, both ad-free if you use a simple ad-blocker.
rgovostes 10mo ago
Related: How Apple’s ad targetting works https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertising/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertisin...
heavyset_go 10mo ago
Imagine paying $100 a year for the privilege to develop apps, only to have your revenue confiscated to the tune of 15% - 30% and for the same entity to spam users who are looking for your apps, on the only place they can look for apps, with ads for your competitors, or with scummy ads that make you look bad by association.
- charcircuit 10mo ago
  If such a platform can get your business billions of dollars I think they are happy to have access to such a platform. Businesses are free to partner with other platforms if they don't like the agreement.
  - Wilder7977 10mo ago
    They are not free to do that when there is a duopoly and in most countries the platforms don't even allow competitors for that market (especially true for Apple). Seriously, playing the "free market" card in the tech (especially mobile) space is really brave.
    - charcircuit 10mo ago
      No one is forcing people to make businesses that release ios apps. A business could be based off of a Windows app. Or they could even not have an app and do business through an existing one like Discord.
      - Wilder7977 10mo ago
        Reality forces people to do that. When 90% of people do whatever they use programs for via mobile, you (as in, a business who wants to succeed) are forced to make an android and an iOS app.
        charcircuit 10mo ago
        Plenty of apps are Android only or iOS only. The only "force" is that businesses see these platforms as worth it to make enough money to be a return on investment.
b3lvedere 10mo ago
I hate ads with such a gigantic passion it may be a good thing i'm not in any power to block them all over this universe. Oh well, back to blocking as much possible by any means necessary again. Still rule my own home infrastructure, thank Zeus.
- BLKNSLVR 10mo ago
  I saw someone using an app that's 'ad-supported' recently, and it reminded me of the vastly better internet/device experience I have as a result of my not-insignificant efforts at ad-blocking at various layers. It took them 20 seconds and a number of very specific button presses (sometimes mis-clicked because the size of the 'correct area' to dismiss the ad is so small and this was an adult male with our sausage-sized fingers) before they could show me the thing they were intending to show me. And that 20 seconds was after the ad had finished playing. How do people settle for such an experience?
Imagenuity 10mo ago
The App Store has one slot at the top of the search listing for a promoted app. This will change to multiple slots. As an app developer, I used to have to outbid everyone to get the one and only spot. Now I need only outbid the top 3 bidders (or however many slots there are). I advertised for many months back when App Store ads first started, and it was worth the expense because of higher sales. I no longer advertise because the one and only slot is far outbid what that slot is worth to me, and that I can recoup without spending a lot or raising the price for the app. So I chose not to advertise and keep the app price lower.
- dangus 10mo ago
  You will be able to win more bids, but you'll be bidding for something significantly less valuable, and the entire experience for users will be worsened. It's the Amazonification of the App Store. Next it'll morph into more ads than legitimate results. Your app won't show up at all unless you pay your mafia dues.
dangus 10mo ago
It's crazy that a piece of marketing material like this isn't gated behind an advertiser portal. For a company that's been so professional and protective of its brand this is a pretty insane look. Just posting a public article telling its customers that they're getting more ads soon! Could this article not be gated to the paid developer audience? This would be like if Disney put a press release out bragging about how Mickey Mouse was going to help sell alcohol sales inside their theme parks.
BLKNSLVR 10mo ago
Apple is just another runner in the race to the bottom, and they're trying their best to catch up to 'the leaders'. One thing I've noticed with the Play Store is that top-level advertised app results are, more often than not, totally unrelated to what I searched for, and therefore completely useless as both a suggestion to the user and an 'opportunity' for the app creator. In fact, it usually invokes a 'this app must be a scam' response from me. Thank you, Apple, for increasing the number of opportunities for getting scammed and manipulated on your platform. I will be telling my friends.
- hu3 10mo ago
  What baffles me is when people defend this broken wallet garden to be used by their grandmas. Surely they won't be able to tell which one of the 20 ChatGPT apps is the correct one in search results.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
teekert 10mo ago
When I switched to iOS from Android it took me a while to realize why App Store search was so bad compared to the Play store (and f-droid, at least back then). It was because the first option was never wat you wanted. The highlighted app at the top was always an ad, never relevant. I immediately lost some respect for Apple “so this is the expensive luxury platform people talk about?” I hate that “we” focus on the second derivative to determine value (not just growth but speed of growth). It’s just for the shareholders, meanwhile us customers are looking at a company that is rich beyond believe thinking: “Seriously??”
sintax 10mo ago
How long until the AppleTV will look like your own in-home billboard? At least on the NVIDIA Shield you could just not install the update that changed the homescreen to incorporate ads (or install an alternative launcher). With the closed eco system of the AppleTV, the options are probably limited if/when Apple decides they need to extract more money from you by blastering ads all over the interface.
- mctt 10mo ago
  Projectivy Launcher, for Nvidia Shield Home Screen. Before that I was building a rooted firmware and downgrading from that awful advert ridden update. I also tried Dispatch as a home screen replacement, but Projectivy wins.
threatripper 10mo ago
The "increased opportunity" is for advertisers. For users it will mean more ads in their search results. Not sure if they provide users with a switch to turn off the opportunities. Apple doesn't like configuration options too much, i guess users will have to live with more ads and spend extra time to find what they were searching when using the shop search where you go to search for specific apps. Maybe Apple AI will present the user with their desired search result without first scrolling through more ads but i sense that there, too, might be new opportunities.
gloxkiqcza 10mo ago
In EU, and freshly Japan, alternative iOS app stores are allowed. Let’s hope they manage to use this to their advantage. https://www.macrumors.com/2025/12/18/altstore-japan-launch/ https://www.macrumors.com/2025/12/18/altstore-japan-launch/
- sleight42 10mo ago
  and perhaps this new initiative for ads in the App Store is an attempt to replace the money lost by Europe and Japan allowing alternate app stores
  - bigyabai 10mo ago
    Doubtful. App Store ads predate European and Japanese regulation, if Apple wants to compete on-merits then they should be removing ads to justify their developer fees.
  - zakki 10mo ago
    Okay, blame the regulators. Apple is right as always.
fmajid 10mo ago
You can charge a premium for a premium experience, or you can show ads, but not booth. This reinforces my determination to move off macOS and iOS to Linux and GrapheneOS.
VerifiedReports 10mo ago
Thus Apple announces that they're making their already piss-poor, fraudulent app-store search WORSE. I wrote an app for my company and put it on Apple's app store. It was basically IMPOSSIBLE to find. You could search for the company's exact name (it was the publisher of the app), and it did not appear in the top 300 results (which is where I gave up). What I caught Apple doing was essentially hijacking the company's (trademarked) name and not showing it, but rather any and every alternate spelling of a similar word... or listings that had no part of the string in their name or description at all. The search string was not present in ANY part of the vast majority of search "hits." I complained to Apple, and after being blown off once with a bullshit boilerplate response, I mentioned legal action in defense of our trademark. Then they addressed my case with a lie: They claimed that the publisher name is one of the top three search criteria. That is utter bullshit, in practice.
helsinkiandrew 10mo ago
> Search is the way most people find and download apps on the App Store, with nearly 65 percent of downloads happening directly after a search This is misleading - does it mean people are searching for an app that they already know about and want to download - chatgpt, samsung, gmail etc. Or searching for a topic or problem and see what apps are available - LLM, camera, running etc. I rarely do the latter - using web search to find reviews or asking an LLM to give me a list comparing the features and then search for the apps in the appstore (trying to ignore the ads)
- the_gipsy 10mo ago
  Exactly. This is just a racket so that bad apps can "steal" downloads by getting in the way. The good apps then also need to pay the racket to fight the bad apps.
  - port11 10mo ago
    Yup, and this is the thing Apple really doesn't have to do because they make plenty of money. Enough that they never need to run ads; but certainly enough that you should never be allowed to pay to be at the top of app searches. It forces the actual best hit to pay to be a hit. I just searched for ‘Jellyfin’ and got an ad for an app that tells you your Spotify stats.
- klustregrif 10mo ago
  Just to add yo this, the way the AppStore is set up, if you know you want to download the app “MyLocalCoffePlaces7thAppThisYear” and you search for it with the exact name. The first “Hit” will most often be an add for that exact app. And you’ll click it, despite the “natural search result” 5 rows below. This of cause is exactly the intention because the add click means apple gets to charge the app owner for the interaction because it wasn’t just a search it was an add.
  - Obscurity4340 10mo ago
    I make a point to do exactly not that. Its so seldom relevant or attractive and its almost reflexive at this point. By default, appstore will show you the scummiest, subscriptioniest, privacy-invasive apps in hopes you'll be lazy and click but thats never been the answer for me. All the gems I found I had to look quite hard for which pisses me off
solarkraft 10mo ago
The continuing enshittification of Apple software is so unfortunate. It has already gone too far. Apple was the one vendor you could buy stuff from to be able to look down on the peasants bombarded by ads all the time. Now, when I specifically search for an app in the App Store, the result is barely on the screen because it is filled with an ad for another. You get deeply embedded ads and nudges for iCloud pretty often. It already sucks. It‘s like they hate USPs.
emsign 10mo ago
"Increasing opportunity" what could that even mean when you ignore the fact that they actually mean clicking ads out of an impulse? But if you'd even ignore the truth, what could this even be in a positive sense?
type0 10mo ago
How long until we get ads in our lockscreens like in certain android devices?
wrxd 10mo ago
If I try to search for Mastodon on the App Store the ad at the top of the search results is Truth Social. I cant wait for the second and third results to be X and Threads /s
nixass 10mo ago
"increase opportunity in search results" - what a bunch of bollocks
lopis 10mo ago
Google Play is plagued with these ads and they are just scams most of the times. You search for an app and get ads from similarly names apps, apps with visually similar icons, ebooks to use the app you searched, etc. They prey on the less tech savvy to install this spam. There's zero user value in them.
- left-struck 10mo ago
  When you think about it, why should you trust any app that tries to trick you when you’re looking for something else? It’s such awful behaviour, I don’t want any part of it, I don’t want to reward it so in any place where I can’t forcibly remove this trash I go out of my way to never click on the ad results even if in the rare case it’s exactly what I searched for.
  - Anamon 10mo ago
    You are also not the target of these ads. My parents, on the other hand? My mum doesn't have a lot of experience with this stuff, and my dad's eyesight deteriorated. They could definitely fall for lookalike apps in an app store. This seems like something in need of some laws and regulation. It fosters a kind of phishing-light ecosystem. Apple and Google are laughing to the bank while pretending they're helpless against fraudulent apps. They're not, they're creating a marketplace that makes them viable in the first place.
    - left-struck 10mo ago
      Yes, I 100% agree Some people think ad blocking is unethical but I think until there’s more sensible regulation or behaviour it’s your moral duty to block ads, especially on less tech savvy family member’s devices. We’re in a war and the tech companies have been playing dirty for decades.
  - lopis 10mo ago
    It's not necessarily shady behavior. Maybe you're just paying ads on your competitor for your legitimate app.
hugodan 10mo ago
Shame on Apple. And thanks for making me consider alternatives for me and my relatives
jwr 10mo ago
Enshittification at its best (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification), I'm very disappointed that Apple is doing the same thing as everybody else: degrading user experience for short-term increases in profits.
FabHK 10mo ago
I searched for "Sparkasse" on the German Apple App Store, the good old staid conservative public savings bank. The top result was an ad for Crypto.com: Buy BTC, ETC, ...
- Obscurity4340 10mo ago
  Search it in DuckDuckGo or your search engine + ios unless you were just doing an experiment to see if you would get the expected result Appraven has collections which are pretty handy, like actually curated lists
bambax 10mo ago
> Search results ads help customers discover your app right when they’re searching for apps to download. One would think it's good search that helps users find what they want. But noooo! It's ads! Ads help users! One has to love this kind of orwellian language. And one has to wonder if it's ever written in good faith? Or is everyone lying as a matter of course, to people who know perfectly well they're being lied to. Is it even lying if you know they know you're lying?
- wrxd 10mo ago
  If I were an app developer I would feel this is extortion. Users that are searching for your app can find it as the top result, if you pay enough. Don't want to pay? We'll show them your competitor's app, no problem.
  - bambax 10mo ago
    Yes. It is extortion. Same on Amazon. Those "platforms" are no better than plain old mafia thugs.
monomial 10mo ago
I recently switched to GrapheneOS and it's been great. Letting any sort of commercial entity between you and your computing just seems like a bad idea these days. Linux is top notch, self-hosting has never been easier. There's really no excuse (as a technologist at least) to subject yourself to these increasingly enshittified platforms. As someone who works in tech for a career it's honestly a bit of an existential crisis. I actively work on a SaaS product but would never even consider paying for SaaS any more myself.
blinding-streak 10mo ago
"Increase opportunity in search results" is hilarious PR. Obviously it's to increase revenue.
2OEH8eoCRo0 10mo ago
They must really be struggling
boxed 10mo ago
Apple forces names on the iOS app store to be globally unique. But if you search for the exact name of an app it's not the first hit. A good example of this is my app Bit.
sajithdilshan 10mo ago
So Apple gets like 30% of commission for every payment in app store and still they want to push more ads? Like what's going on
earthnail 10mo ago
Wow. Now you need to pay even more as a developer in order to be distributed on the App Store. These ads are yet another fee on top of the revenue share that Apple takes. It's obscene. Let's hope alternative App Stores take off. I have very low hopes but hope dies last.
cebert 10mo ago
I wish HN had dislike buttons. Apple is slowly losing what made it unique.
- MagicMoonlight 10mo ago
  The post itself is nothing to do with the change
wkjagt 10mo ago
I haven't looked at Apple in a long time. The page reads like a parody, and I had to double check that I was actually on apple.com. The whole industry seems to be in a place where everyone just accepts that most good things are now ruined anyway, so might as well ruin them some more.
- surgical_fire 10mo ago
  I think this is a good move from Apple. They will make a lot more money. Their customers will keep buying their phones. They want a slick looking, fashionable cell phone. The usability has been horrid forever. They probably can have ads and increase the price.
andrewstuart 10mo ago
The enshittification of Apple is here. Anything for money.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
Gud 10mo ago
No thanks and another reason why Apple needs to be forced to allow third party package managers(“app stores”).
xtiansimon 10mo ago
Apple isn’t the darling “it” product it’s been in years past. Apps are addictive but not enriching our lives like we once thought. Now you want to add advertising? If a new product comes along and hits the right notes—maybe the e-ink variety, or Cat’s Android with thermal camera. I have the four previous, so I don’t imagine it as a trauma to step off the merry-go-round for my next phone.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]

261 points by punnerud 10mo ago

When you’re a publicly traded company, all roads lead to enshittification. You are beholden to your shareholders and shareholders demand growth.

zakki 10mo ago

No worries, Apple will execute ads better than others. We will love with it and praise Apple for it.

ChrisArchitect 10mo ago

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46310986 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46310986

al_borland 10mo ago

I’m really not a fan of this direction for Apple. One of the differentiators between iOS and Google was a lack of ads, which make the experience feel more premium. Increasing ads, or having them at all, really erodes the user experience. Apple managed to become the most valuable company in the world without ads. Adding them after hitting that milestone feels either greedy or desperate, maybe a little of both. I know the ads themselves aren’t new, but the steady increase is a worrying trend. I’d rather pay an extra $100 for the phone than have ads all over it.

bg_tagas 10mo ago
Well if the app creator isn’t going to pay Apple money. You have to pay Apple money. If you don’t like ads. Thank Tim Swineey
dash2 10mo ago
Yeah, they seem to be moving from innovators to exploiting their user base. In particular, I interpret their AI failures as the innovator's dilemma. They have loads of highly paid people designing and creating beautiful UIs. A chatbot could replace a lot of this: just tell your phone what to do instead of clicking and swiping. But that would put most of their employees out of work. So instead they are going to milk and lock in their user base, and hope rivals don't get traction.
- fodkodrasz 10mo ago
  1. Their UIs were never beautiful or really good tbh. The iOS26 is the worst so far, and they really went too far this time. 2. They are no charity, they don't care for giving work to their designers. 3. They won't milk their userbase or long, friends and family are already abandoning their ecosystem due to v26's atrocious UI, I'll be doing so also. Adding more ads to the mix will just speed things up. I'm not selling my stock just of yet though, as investors like these moves. Layoffs also usually bump the stock price.
  - thomassmith65 10mo ago
    Presumably the person who wrote this comment is too young to have used Apple products prior to 2010?
    - nottorp 10mo ago
      They do have a point though, because you can't continue to use a phone made by Apple in 2010.
      - thomassmith65 10mo ago
        I would if I could! Apple has been a mess since they lost Steve Jobs.
- bee_rider 10mo ago
  Apple hasn’t been much of an innovator for decades. They take an idea that’s already been worked out (like MP3 players) and then just out-execute the competition. It is possible they won’t pull it off for “AI,” of course. But we won’t know until when somebody finds a profitable consumer-facing application for these models.
  - tyre 10mo ago
    They innovate in design and user experience. I wouldn’t have expected Apple to introduce the first AI, for example. I definitely would have expected them to wrap it better than anyone and boy was I wrong about that. But their innovative design tends to be in hardware and supply chains.
IlikeKitties 10mo ago
> I’d rather pay an extra $100 for the phone than have ads all over it. Yeah, not gonna happen, no ads means ownership of a device. That must be prohibited at all cost. Unless you are one of those pesky grapeneos users that block ads but they'll soon be excluded from any public discourse by eID enforcement. You vill watch tze Ads and you vill eat tze bugs.
- crapple8430 10mo ago
  This. If you pay them $100 for no ads, they'll just come back next quarter to ask for another $100, unless you actually own your device, i.e. are able to modify its software to actually enforce your rights.
hhoorzad 10mo ago
> I’d rather pay an extra $100 for the phone than have ads all over it. In all likelihood, we will pay an extra $100 AND have ads.
- isodev 10mo ago
  Apple Ads+, curated selection of premium ads for 9.99€/month. Also available as part of Apple One if you buy 2TB of extra iCloud storage.
  - notyourwork 10mo ago
    Cannot wait for ads to slip into my iCloud storage.
- mystifyingpoi 10mo ago
  THIS. Never promote the idea of "can you please not bother me with ads, there you go there is your extra $100, what, $200? okay sure". That's how mafia operates. Do not promote such.
  - fasbiner 10mo ago
    People pay the mafia protection money because it's cheaper than fighting the mob and it makes the mob go away for awhile, and in the long run, we're all dead. Most mafia-like entities don't have an inexorable existential drive to take it all, they just charge what the market will bear. And if you think there's a definitional difference between a government, a corporation and a mafia that stands up to any objective measure and isn't based entirely on social cues and special pleading, I think that's an extraordinary claim you have no evidence for. Go lead a maoist insurgency or don't, but the fingerwagging moral appeal is worse than useless.
    - bigyabai 10mo ago
      > and in the long run, we're all dead. Well gee, when you put it like that all morality is relative huh?
N_Lens 10mo ago
Enshittification is Inevitable.
- palmotea 10mo ago
  > Enshittification is Inevitable. Only under our current cultural and economic assumptions.
  - jopsen 10mo ago
    > Only under our current cultural and economic assumptions. I think we shouldn't hope those changes, that could lead to interesting times.
- thomassmith65 10mo ago
  Perhaps, but it exploded in the tech industry as soon as Steve Jobs died. Whatever his faults, he had a high bar for user experience, a massive megaphone, and the respect of journalists, industry leaders, and the public. Apple's market differentiator, under Steve Jobs, was that it wasn't shitty. Jobs would regularly mock competitors publicly for the way in which they 'enshittified' their products (in words of the time, obviously). And his reputation was such that people listened. We have a dearth of authority figures today; there's nobody around to shame bad actors.
  - weikju 10mo ago
    > We have a dearth of authority figures today; there's nobody around to shame bad actors. Worse. The bad actors have become the authority figures.
ee64a4a 10mo ago
> Apple managed to become the most valuable company in the world without ads. Yeah, but what about next quarter? Jokes aside, they're not the most valuable company anymore. Nvidia is ahead, I think MS has jockeyed with them on that position a few times and is still on their heels, and Google is ascendant (even ahead of MS as of end of close) after the antitrust clouds started to recede and Gemini started to match Claude and ChatGPT. They can't sit idly forever if they want to please shareholders, and there aren't many avenues for expansion.
- spiderfarmer 10mo ago
  What will happen to nvidia when their market becomes saturated? That seems inevitable.
  - luz666 10mo ago
    Maybe just reduce production amount an increase prices? Profit probably continues, but on a lower level, I guess.
  - bigyabai 10mo ago
    HPC is still only a portion of the overall datacenter market. Nvidia is well-equipped to tackle the networking and cheap RISC VPS portions if they set their mind to it.
  - Timon3 10mo ago
    Don't you worry - there are many, many ways for GPUs to inject ads :) Of course you'll first have to dismiss the ad injected by your monitor manufacturer, but before that you'll have to dismiss the ad injected by your mouse manufacturer (or keyboard if you prefer that). Whoops, looks like your OS ads refreshed - drink another verification can! Just in time for your ISP to inject ads. But to dismiss them, first you have to dismiss the ad injected by your mouse manufacturer. Oh look, another GPU ad! I feel lucky that all these companies want to provide me with the best information about new products and services.
  - raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
    The failure rate of data center GPUs is around 2 years…
rgreekguy 10mo ago
I see many ads and irrelevant results in the App Store regardless. So much so, that at some point said "why don't I turn on personalised ads, since I am seeing all this trash anyway", and it turned out it was already on. So I cannot really imagine how this will change things.
MangoToupe 10mo ago
> One of the differentiators between iOS and Google was a lack of ads, which make the experience feel more premium. Both app stores always felt like fumbling in the dumpster. Between the ads and the gambling, if you managed to find an app that treated you right it was like finding a baby who was somehow living despite choking in all the ashes > Apple managed to become the most valuable company in the world without ads Ma'am they literally sell ads through the apps on their app store
heavyset_go 10mo ago
> One of the differentiators between iOS and Google was a lack of ads Both have had ads in apps, in app stores and on websites. This was never a differentiator.
- matsemann 10mo ago
  Yeah, and no way of using a browser with ad blocker for a decade or to avoid them in apps. If anything, the iOS experience has always been more ad-riddled than Android.
  - raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
    The App Store came out in 2008, ad blocking in browsers came out in 2016. I have exactly one ad supported app on my phone - Overcast. Mobile games have become so enshittified they aren’t interesting. The only reason I haven’t paid for ad free Overcast is just because when I was about to in order to support an indie developer, the author introduced his own ad platform that wasn’t scammy and its ads for other podcasts in the same category for the one you are actually listening to. I found his ads good and I found other interesting podcasts because of it.
- realusername 10mo ago
  And both have an advertising id built-in into the OS (which I find insane as a concept)
- agos 10mo ago
  there was definitely a time when iOS App Store did not have ads
erik 10mo ago
On top of this, I find ads on app store search results to be particularly bad. It's a business model that comes with all sorts of perverse incentives. It's so bad for users and legitimate developers.
- malfist 10mo ago
  On android, I love when I search for my bank's app I get a bunch of scam apps taking up all the above the fold results. If iOS goes that route I really don't know what the differentiator is
  - type0 10mo ago
    You will have a better UX while being scammed
dangus 10mo ago
I hate to break it to you, but it's been like this for YEARS now. The frog has been boiled. Line must go up and the market is saturated. I watched an "Android user switched to iOS" YouTube video recently and it's interesting how much you don't see when you haven't been removed from an environment. This Android user was shocked at how much iOS advertises to you, which is not intuitively what any of us would think an Android user would be shocked by switching platforms. A lot of us iPhone users think that Android phones are like a used car sales lot with bloat apps and you can't delete Facebook and all that. You know how when you haven't seen a friend for a long time and they've changed appearance? But if you see them every day you don't really notice the gradual changes as much. I think that's what's happening here: long time iOS users just don't see that Apple is using all the same tactics as Microsoft and Google in their OSes, but Windows especially is seen as hyper-commercial and ad-riddled. iOS has what are effectively ads in the Settings page in exactly in the same way that you get critical updates which is crazy. Every major OS update advertises some new feature that siphons up your personal data like Apple Intelligence. Heck, they suggest you turn analytics back on years after turning it off - every single major update! I know this is common practice but we have to pause and recognize that these things are advertisements. You think Windows is bad with OneDrive and Copilot? At least you can uninstall those! Try removing Apple News on your Mac! You can't delete the app, not allowed! Congratulations, you bought a piece of hardware from Apple, now you get a 3-month trial to [random service they run] and you will be notified about this in the settings page...again, right next to your critical security updates. App Store? It's an ad platform, not a package manager. Sure, another industry standard, but it's not like Apple is some kind of unique premium company in this regard. Apple TV is touted as having no ads, but it really does if you don't move Apples apps off the top row of the screen. For now, it's far less egregious than any other streaming box I can think of, but I imagine it's this way because the product is a bit of an afterthought that predates Apple's orange squeezing (we are the oranges).
- Rebelgecko 10mo ago
  As an Android user, it really is depressing to see screenshots of how clean the Android Market used to be. Nowadays even when I search an app name verbatim it's a crapshoot if I'll actually find it
Towaway69 10mo ago
How does market capitalism work again? Shareholders what higher ROI each quarter. Where does that come from? Profits. Where do profits come from? Selling data, innovation, selling hardware, etc. Biggest profit margins come from selling stuff you have to multiple buyers that costs you nothing to duplicate/produce. My data can be sold to multiple buyers, multiple times to make that magic profit that shareholders want. Just wait until everyone on this planet has apple devices, how will apple continue to grow ROI?
- willis936 10mo ago
  Where do profits fall? In several quarters when users vote with their wallet and let you know about your decisions to disrespect them and reduce their trust in you. It isn't about maximizing profits, otherwise they wouldn't make shortsighted choices. It's cashing in on goodwill that took decades to build. We are a far cry from "only the paranoid survive".
  - Towaway69 10mo ago
    If you lower the standard to such a level that every “wallet vote” would actually be worse, how does one cast ones vote then? Does Android have less ads? Which company does hardware integration so well? What are the alternative to an Apple tech stack? So in the end, the consumer is left to sucking it up, counting their shareholder profits and suffering on a remote island in the sun.
    - willis936 10mo ago
      Buying a used pixel and flashing grapheneOS is the only refuge for now. We'll have to hold out for the SteamPhone.
gostsamo 10mo ago
but, but, think of the shareholders!
vjvjvjvjghv 10mo ago
“I’d rather pay an extra $100 for the phone than have ads all over it.” I guarantee you will do both soon
Someone 10mo ago
I think that, on the App Store, ads may be the least worse solution. Currently, some developers try to get into your view by creating multiple similar apps, as that gets them screen space for free. Given developers the ability to pay to have their app show above the sea of (almost) clones may revert that trend, as such developers would either have to pay for multiple adverts or to put all their money on one horse. (It wouldn’t make the iOS App Store good, though. One thing it definitely also needs is clearer information on what features you get for free, what you can buy as add-on, and what requires a subscription)
- matwood 10mo ago
  Yeah. It’s hard for me to get worked up about ads in a store.
tcfhgj 10mo ago
Greed is the law of capitalism
mgh2 10mo ago
Ads is just a tool, I hope Apple does it right for UX, as it is planning to do w/ Maps
- bigyabai 10mo ago
  A bicycle... no, a hamburger for the mind.
pjmlp 10mo ago
The John Sculley Apple is back, the time of being nice for survival reasons is long gone.
nottorp 10mo ago
> One of the differentiators between iOS and Google was a lack of ads Newsflash: the first slot in an app store search is an ad that is not marked as such. Your extra $100 are already wasted. Here's a nice ad I ran into recently: https://imgur.com/a/sq1HFHK https://imgur.com/a/sq1HFHK I was trying to install microsoft authenticator and the first "result"... I don't want to know what that is. If they add more ads at the top I suppose I'll have to only use external searches to install apps.
- krackers 10mo ago
  I'm surprised that this wasn't brought up during trials as an argument against Apple's supposed "curated" walled-garden. There is a bunch of dangerous scammy junk on there.
  - nottorp 10mo ago
    I think I ran into one of the most dangerous situations without looking for it. What happens if you install the first result and put your microsoft account credentials in...
- audunw 10mo ago
  You say it's not marked as an ad, but in that image there's a clear blue "Ad" label. Are there cases where that label is not present?
  - nottorp 10mo ago
    Seriously? I haven't noticed it. Maybe it's clear to you... or you work in marketing and have a different definition of "clear". Note that this is a screenshot from a hi dpi iphone that went through a few upload/download/reencode cycles [1] so it lost all density information. On the real phone screen the "Ad" thing is extremely tiny and unnoticeable. [1] Downloaded it from my work chat where i posted it as a warning to my colleagues a couple days ago.
    - al_borland 10mo ago
m463 10mo ago
they are tarnishing their brand.
godelski 10mo ago
> I’d rather pay an extra $100 for the phone than have ads all over it. Wasn't that part of the deal with iPhones in the first place? You pay more for less but you get a "more premium" experience. Though lately I feel like Apple is just really bad at being... Apple It's like they are dumping all the good parts and doubling down on all the bad parts. Things are far from "just working", have more glitches/bugs, but at the same time they're increasing hostility towards developers and walled garden. At least with Android (or linux) I can fix any issues but with Apple it's more "fuck you, deal with it." This was frustrating but passable when it was more streamlined but now? God fucking damnit I swiped one word just fine but when swiping the second word you decide the first word wasn't correct and none of the suggestions are what I'm intending to type but pressing delete deletes both words and now I can't swipe the original word because you already decided I'm not trying to type that word because I pressed delete? This is version of Apple is just rotten... When literally typing on a phone is a daily frustrating experience you know you fucked up. I mean how long have they even failed to capitalize a singular "i"? What the fuck is going on over there? Side note: Try searching "Claude" in the iPhone app store. For me I get a half page ad for Gemini, a small result for Claude, and then a larger result for Grok. Literally the thing I searched for, and has an unambiguous result, is the smallest thing on the page! This is some bullshit dark patterns that is very anti-user.
- type0 10mo ago
  > When literally typing on a phone is a daily frustrating experience you know you fucked up "You are holding it wrong", maybe it's intentional and Apple decided that you should use Siri more
  - hurfdurf 10mo ago
    It is intentional: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46232528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46232528
    - godelski 10mo ago
      That's saying something a bit different, though yeah I agree. And btw, I have "auto-correct" disabled and this stupid bug still happens. Which is to say, yes, I agree, Apple is user hostile.
nine_k 10mo ago
This looks like enshittification :( When a company that sits on enormous reams of cash, and positions itself as a premium brand, goes for a fistful of dollars more per customer by showing them ads, it can mean two things. One is that it's a cold calculated move, another, that it's clueless enthusiastic "brilliant idea". In either case, the company is going to burn a lot of its customers' goodwill, and much of its longer-term prospects, in exchange for some more immediate revenue, and higher stock valuation. What looks like stupidity in doing such a move is more likely cynicism. The corporate officers who will reap the benefits will have retired by the time when their successors would have to handle the fallout. It's not stupidity, it's rot at the highest echelons. This would explain the really poor recent software decisions, and the general decline of its quality. But at least Apple still has amazing, best-in-class hardware! Well, like Nokia did. And like Blackberry did. Like Boeing used to. Sad :(
zx8080 10mo ago
AI needs more personal info (like iCloud is not enough yet). Ads provide more insights to user real needs than anything else, and there's inescapable sharing of user behaviour (otherwise ads business model does not work) that allows Apple to collect and process the user behaviour for its own AI training and to sell it to others. Sitting on a tons of value (even though backed by users trust) gives no rest to Apple's managers who just does not connect the dots between users trust and profits. Or they think they are a monopoly. Maybe Apple is?
- avaer 10mo ago
  > Ads provide more insights to user real needs than anything else How? You can get insights into user behavior without ads, and I'm sure Apple is doing that already. Doesn't making good products that people want give more insight to user needs? Who wants ads?
sandworm101 10mo ago
Ya, they are at the top doing what they are doing. There is little room for growth. So, to continue growing, Apple must now do something different. If ads pull money today, but threaten the brand in 5 or 10 years, then that is a problem for 5 or 10 years from now. With the monopoly in hand, now is the time to squeeze the blood from the stone.
monegator 10mo ago
> I’d rather pay an extra $100 for the phone You're already paying a huge premium on the phone.
faust201 10mo ago
> One of the differentiators between iOS and Google was a lack of ads I always wonder how apple's marketing team pulled this off. - If you use any decent browser like Firefox* (or its different clones) one get enhanced privacy, no ads, byepasspaywalls etc. - Even Chromium forks have decent adblocking - Using NewPipe (like revanced opensource) for ad free YouTube All my iOS friends scroll through so many ads - admittedly - SIM/data is paid for my their employers but it is awful experience. * -> Don't be pendantic and point out yesterday's Verge article that Mozilla is becoming bad.
- raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
  The same Firefox that only survives because most of its revenue comes from Google? Your friends are only scrolling through ads because they haven’t installed an ad blocker. They have been available for iOS Safari for over a decade - since iOS 8.
re-thc 10mo ago
> I’d rather pay an extra $100 for the phone than have ads all over it. With the average lifetime of a phone these days $100 might not justify it.
classified 10mo ago
Apple has decayed into a bog-standard $$$-maximizing lawnmower. Any products, services, ads, or other performances are merely incidental to that goal.
alex1138 10mo ago
but but but but 'if you're not paying then you are the product' Turns out that doesn't work, either
neya 10mo ago
Rather not create a told you so moment, but I switched to Samsung - which has tons of garbage apps pre-installed, and tons of ads - but I'm not atleast buying into a delusion that a private company somehow has my privacy at its best interest just because I paid a premium to them. In the end, I got a good deal with a cheaper price for more features - I can have a real file system access, install apps from anywhere I like, etc.
squibonpig 10mo ago
Yeah. My iPhone SE finally ran out of steam recently and I decided to go ahead and exit the ecosystem as best as I could. Saw grapheneos had just added experimental support for the Pixel fold 10 and picked one of those up. Some annoyances like no tap payment, but honestly a great experience so far, no regrets. Probably not for people who need the interop with other apple devices tho.
ulrikrasmussen 10mo ago
This is the result of effectively having a duopoly on the smartphone OS market and the extremely hostile environment for post-market operating systems. Apple just has to make sure that they are marginally less shitty than Google, and Google can keep increasing how obnoxious their ads are once Apple catches up.
black3r 10mo ago
There have been ads in App Store for a long time. The upcoming change is that they will also appear further down in search results, right now they only show on top...
- palla89 10mo ago
  this morning I read not only on bottom, but also every few apps.. hopefully it's only in the bottom!
dewey 10mo ago
They already plaster iOS with ads...just for their own services and it's disguised as a system feature. It's especially obvious if you don't subscribe to paid iCloud and see ads for "Apple Arcade", "Increase iCloud Drive storage space", "Sign up for Apple Music", "Have you heard of Apple Fitness+" or "New show on Apple TV+"-push notifications everywhere. Something that in theory they discourage to use these for promotional messages, but that hasn't been the case for a long time.
- soared 10mo ago
  Syncing that new pair of AirPods you just bought? Yup - Apple Music free trial ad.
- port11 10mo ago
  I've no need to defend Apple but I don't see this. I don't see any of those things, ever. What am I doing differently?
  - dewey 10mo ago
    Example: Settings / Your Name / iCloud. There I have an add to download "Apple Invites". Another one: https://www.heise.de/en/news/Unwanted-Apple-advertising-Push-notification-annoys-iPhone-users-in-the-USA-10459443.html https://www.heise.de/en/news/Unwanted-Apple-advertising-Push...
    - port11 10mo ago
      Ah, I see what you mean. But I've rejected all their “Recommendations”, so I don't see any of that anymore. It shows up once, you reject it, and it's gone. Better than ‘no but remind me tomorrow’.
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coldtea 10mo ago
>Apple managed to become the most valuable company in the world without ads. Adding them after hitting that milestone feels either greedy or desperate, maybe a little of both. The way the modern economy works they don't care for maintaining the same revenues and profit level. They need to show they do better than other stocks so people buy theirs. So if they have to increase margins by doing whatever crap, show ads, etc they will do it. >I’d rather pay an extra $100 for the phone than have ads all over it. Half of your wish is granted: you already pay $100 extra for the phone or even more. On top of that, it will also have ads.
Isamu 10mo ago
Yeah I’m dreading a change in Apple TV in this direction. I avoid the crappiness of smart tvs by not connecting them to wifi and just using Apple TV, but how long before that becomes crappy too?
bartread 10mo ago
In future this will be cited as a canonical example of enshittification. They’ve extracted 80% or whatever of the value out of customers in the current markets and now, rather than figuring out a new value adding product or service they can offer to make another 80% in a slightly different market, they’re going to expend a completely disproportionate amount of effort to slowly and miserably grind out that last 20% in the markets they already operate in. Honestly, screw all of this.
ryandvm 10mo ago
The extra price of Apple products was never about not having advertising. The extra price is the feature. It means you have enough money (status) to have a green bubble. It means you can afford an adorable little infotainment gewgaw. Apple products don't look unique because they need to, they look unique so that you can effectively signal your consumption.
poemxo 10mo ago
This isn't ads all over your phone. It's ads for the App Store. Honestly the App Store looks gamed af as it stands and this might be a move toward curation (instead of letting the App Store descend into SEO hell).
Gibbon1 10mo ago
Was recently thinking we should change tax law to exclude ad spend as a business expense so it gets taxed.
musicale 10mo ago
The crapification pathway where Services can place ads in Product 1) neutralizes a historical Apple differentiating advantage and 2) is probably going to increase monotonically. :(

trvz 10mo ago

Ads in the App Store are filthy and everyone at Apple should be ashamed. The responsible people should be fired.

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sgentle 10mo ago

Only time I've ever been successfully phished was the App Store. I have an Android phone but I wanted to try the ChatGPT app on my iPad and naively clicked the first result, which was of course a scummy clone. I have since wised up and understand the App Store search results to be roughly torrent search levels of trustworthy. I guess the bar for user trust has now dropped enough across the board to sell more off without losing customers? Pretty sorry state of affairs.

skylurk 10mo ago
There are also a lot scummy Microsoft Authenticator clones with near identical icons being advertized ahead of the real one. Be careful in the App Store!
nottorp 10mo ago
> torrent search levels of trustworthy Proper torrent search sites have a comments section that you should check before downloading anything :)
BLKNSLVR 10mo ago
30% curation tax doing a wonderful job.
IlikeKitties 10mo ago
> I have since wised up and understand the App Store search results to be roughly torrent search levels of trustworthy. join a private tracker friend :)
mrweasel 10mo ago
Your experience illustrates precisely why the ads in the ad store should be worthless. I have never clicked on the ad in the app store. Regardless of how legitimate it looks, I will never click it. The vast majority for ads are clearly either scams or they are at least attempting to piggy back on the popularity of others, and I'll support neither of those cases. I don't know what it is with Apple, maybe they aren't sufficiently exposed to scams, but they seem to not understand it's an issue, or their metrics are solely based on revenue. Because even if something is a borderline scam, Apple probably gets their 30%.

n2d4 10mo ago

The title should probably mention that this is for search results in the App Store, which already had ads. Still an unfortunate development though.

dav43 10mo ago

The App Store is an absolute sh!t hole of an experience. Irrelevant ads, impossible to find anything decent. It’s the internet of 1998 pre google.

axus 10mo ago
Have you browsed Google Play? :) Or Amazon appstore for that matter.
- bitpush 10mo ago
  Why? Does Apple allow you to download apps from Google Play or Amazon?
  - gloxkiqcza 10mo ago
    In EU and Japan it would (have to) if Google/Amazon managed to provide iOS binaries.
  - latexr 10mo ago
    In think the point of your parent comment is those are as bad or worse.
- solarkraft 10mo ago
  If Apple had always strived to for their products suck as much as others, they would never have gained any traction.
- miloignis 10mo ago
  Have you browsed F-Droid?
  - GlitchInstitute 10mo ago
    Yup half of the apps don't work :D
    - 10mo ago

oliviergg 10mo ago

Serious question: who still goes on the App Store, and why? Personally, I haven’t searched for anything there except once out of boredom in 5 year

dangus 10mo ago
It's literally the only way to download apps. A platform that doesn't let you simply install a desired package without being shown ads is kind of crazy but it's basically industry standard for everything that's not Linux.
- user2722 10mo ago
  He/She meant _searching_ for apps for a functionality in App Store is a sure way to get gobbledygooky apps. He/She probably searches them on $SEARCH_ENGINE and uses the AppStore just for the download.
  - dangus 10mo ago
    Ah, so using a different advertisement platform instead of this one. Let me put this another way: if you want to manually kick off app updates, you literally have to see ads. App Store > Today tab (the default view) has ads. Then you hit your profile button to escape the ad center and there is your app update interface. This has been normalized by basically all commercial OS platforms, but imagine how insanely negatively received it would be if apt upgrade or brew upgrade displayed ads before your packages downloaded. Apple even shows ads for stuff like Apple Music/TV+/Fitness/News+ free trials in the settings pane. And people give Microsoft shit for having ads in their platform...at least they don't show you ads in Windows Update!
    - littlecranky67 10mo ago
      $SEARCH_ENGINE engine is nowadays copilot or chatgpt, both ad-free if you use a simple ad-blocker.

rgovostes 10mo ago

Related: How Apple’s ad targetting works https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertising/ https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertisin...

heavyset_go 10mo ago

Imagine paying $100 a year for the privilege to develop apps, only to have your revenue confiscated to the tune of 15% - 30% and for the same entity to spam users who are looking for your apps, on the only place they can look for apps, with ads for your competitors, or with scummy ads that make you look bad by association.

charcircuit 10mo ago
If such a platform can get your business billions of dollars I think they are happy to have access to such a platform. Businesses are free to partner with other platforms if they don't like the agreement.
- Wilder7977 10mo ago
  They are not free to do that when there is a duopoly and in most countries the platforms don't even allow competitors for that market (especially true for Apple). Seriously, playing the "free market" card in the tech (especially mobile) space is really brave.
  - charcircuit 10mo ago
    No one is forcing people to make businesses that release ios apps. A business could be based off of a Windows app. Or they could even not have an app and do business through an existing one like Discord.
    - Wilder7977 10mo ago
      Reality forces people to do that. When 90% of people do whatever they use programs for via mobile, you (as in, a business who wants to succeed) are forced to make an android and an iOS app.
      - charcircuit 10mo ago
        Plenty of apps are Android only or iOS only. The only "force" is that businesses see these platforms as worth it to make enough money to be a return on investment.

b3lvedere 10mo ago

I hate ads with such a gigantic passion it may be a good thing i'm not in any power to block them all over this universe. Oh well, back to blocking as much possible by any means necessary again. Still rule my own home infrastructure, thank Zeus.

BLKNSLVR 10mo ago
I saw someone using an app that's 'ad-supported' recently, and it reminded me of the vastly better internet/device experience I have as a result of my not-insignificant efforts at ad-blocking at various layers. It took them 20 seconds and a number of very specific button presses (sometimes mis-clicked because the size of the 'correct area' to dismiss the ad is so small and this was an adult male with our sausage-sized fingers) before they could show me the thing they were intending to show me. And that 20 seconds was after the ad had finished playing. How do people settle for such an experience?

Imagenuity 10mo ago

The App Store has one slot at the top of the search listing for a promoted app. This will change to multiple slots. As an app developer, I used to have to outbid everyone to get the one and only spot. Now I need only outbid the top 3 bidders (or however many slots there are). I advertised for many months back when App Store ads first started, and it was worth the expense because of higher sales. I no longer advertise because the one and only slot is far outbid what that slot is worth to me, and that I can recoup without spending a lot or raising the price for the app. So I chose not to advertise and keep the app price lower.

dangus 10mo ago
You will be able to win more bids, but you'll be bidding for something significantly less valuable, and the entire experience for users will be worsened. It's the Amazonification of the App Store. Next it'll morph into more ads than legitimate results. Your app won't show up at all unless you pay your mafia dues.

dangus 10mo ago

It's crazy that a piece of marketing material like this isn't gated behind an advertiser portal. For a company that's been so professional and protective of its brand this is a pretty insane look. Just posting a public article telling its customers that they're getting more ads soon! Could this article not be gated to the paid developer audience? This would be like if Disney put a press release out bragging about how Mickey Mouse was going to help sell alcohol sales inside their theme parks.

BLKNSLVR 10mo ago

Apple is just another runner in the race to the bottom, and they're trying their best to catch up to 'the leaders'. One thing I've noticed with the Play Store is that top-level advertised app results are, more often than not, totally unrelated to what I searched for, and therefore completely useless as both a suggestion to the user and an 'opportunity' for the app creator. In fact, it usually invokes a 'this app must be a scam' response from me. Thank you, Apple, for increasing the number of opportunities for getting scammed and manipulated on your platform. I will be telling my friends.

hu3 10mo ago
What baffles me is when people defend this broken wallet garden to be used by their grandmas. Surely they won't be able to tell which one of the 20 ChatGPT apps is the correct one in search results.
- deleted 10mo ago
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teekert 10mo ago

When I switched to iOS from Android it took me a while to realize why App Store search was so bad compared to the Play store (and f-droid, at least back then). It was because the first option was never wat you wanted. The highlighted app at the top was always an ad, never relevant. I immediately lost some respect for Apple “so this is the expensive luxury platform people talk about?” I hate that “we” focus on the second derivative to determine value (not just growth but speed of growth). It’s just for the shareholders, meanwhile us customers are looking at a company that is rich beyond believe thinking: “Seriously??”

sintax 10mo ago

How long until the AppleTV will look like your own in-home billboard? At least on the NVIDIA Shield you could just not install the update that changed the homescreen to incorporate ads (or install an alternative launcher). With the closed eco system of the AppleTV, the options are probably limited if/when Apple decides they need to extract more money from you by blastering ads all over the interface.

mctt 10mo ago
Projectivy Launcher, for Nvidia Shield Home Screen. Before that I was building a rooted firmware and downgrading from that awful advert ridden update. I also tried Dispatch as a home screen replacement, but Projectivy wins.

threatripper 10mo ago

The "increased opportunity" is for advertisers. For users it will mean more ads in their search results. Not sure if they provide users with a switch to turn off the opportunities. Apple doesn't like configuration options too much, i guess users will have to live with more ads and spend extra time to find what they were searching when using the shop search where you go to search for specific apps. Maybe Apple AI will present the user with their desired search result without first scrolling through more ads but i sense that there, too, might be new opportunities.

gloxkiqcza 10mo ago

In EU, and freshly Japan, alternative iOS app stores are allowed. Let’s hope they manage to use this to their advantage. https://www.macrumors.com/2025/12/18/altstore-japan-launch/ https://www.macrumors.com/2025/12/18/altstore-japan-launch/

sleight42 10mo ago
and perhaps this new initiative for ads in the App Store is an attempt to replace the money lost by Europe and Japan allowing alternate app stores
- bigyabai 10mo ago
  Doubtful. App Store ads predate European and Japanese regulation, if Apple wants to compete on-merits then they should be removing ads to justify their developer fees.
- zakki 10mo ago
  Okay, blame the regulators. Apple is right as always.

fmajid 10mo ago

You can charge a premium for a premium experience, or you can show ads, but not booth. This reinforces my determination to move off macOS and iOS to Linux and GrapheneOS.

VerifiedReports 10mo ago

Thus Apple announces that they're making their already piss-poor, fraudulent app-store search WORSE. I wrote an app for my company and put it on Apple's app store. It was basically IMPOSSIBLE to find. You could search for the company's exact name (it was the publisher of the app), and it did not appear in the top 300 results (which is where I gave up). What I caught Apple doing was essentially hijacking the company's (trademarked) name and not showing it, but rather any and every alternate spelling of a similar word... or listings that had no part of the string in their name or description at all. The search string was not present in ANY part of the vast majority of search "hits." I complained to Apple, and after being blown off once with a bullshit boilerplate response, I mentioned legal action in defense of our trademark. Then they addressed my case with a lie: They claimed that the publisher name is one of the top three search criteria. That is utter bullshit, in practice.

helsinkiandrew 10mo ago

> Search is the way most people find and download apps on the App Store, with nearly 65 percent of downloads happening directly after a search This is misleading - does it mean people are searching for an app that they already know about and want to download - chatgpt, samsung, gmail etc. Or searching for a topic or problem and see what apps are available - LLM, camera, running etc. I rarely do the latter - using web search to find reviews or asking an LLM to give me a list comparing the features and then search for the apps in the appstore (trying to ignore the ads)

the_gipsy 10mo ago
Exactly. This is just a racket so that bad apps can "steal" downloads by getting in the way. The good apps then also need to pay the racket to fight the bad apps.
- port11 10mo ago
  Yup, and this is the thing Apple really doesn't have to do because they make plenty of money. Enough that they never need to run ads; but certainly enough that you should never be allowed to pay to be at the top of app searches. It forces the actual best hit to pay to be a hit. I just searched for ‘Jellyfin’ and got an ad for an app that tells you your Spotify stats.
klustregrif 10mo ago
Just to add yo this, the way the AppStore is set up, if you know you want to download the app “MyLocalCoffePlaces7thAppThisYear” and you search for it with the exact name. The first “Hit” will most often be an add for that exact app. And you’ll click it, despite the “natural search result” 5 rows below. This of cause is exactly the intention because the add click means apple gets to charge the app owner for the interaction because it wasn’t just a search it was an add.
- Obscurity4340 10mo ago
  I make a point to do exactly not that. Its so seldom relevant or attractive and its almost reflexive at this point. By default, appstore will show you the scummiest, subscriptioniest, privacy-invasive apps in hopes you'll be lazy and click but thats never been the answer for me. All the gems I found I had to look quite hard for which pisses me off

solarkraft 10mo ago

The continuing enshittification of Apple software is so unfortunate. It has already gone too far. Apple was the one vendor you could buy stuff from to be able to look down on the peasants bombarded by ads all the time. Now, when I specifically search for an app in the App Store, the result is barely on the screen because it is filled with an ad for another. You get deeply embedded ads and nudges for iCloud pretty often. It already sucks. It‘s like they hate USPs.

emsign 10mo ago

"Increasing opportunity" what could that even mean when you ignore the fact that they actually mean clicking ads out of an impulse? But if you'd even ignore the truth, what could this even be in a positive sense?

type0 10mo ago

How long until we get ads in our lockscreens like in certain android devices?

wrxd 10mo ago

If I try to search for Mastodon on the App Store the ad at the top of the search results is Truth Social. I cant wait for the second and third results to be X and Threads /s

nixass 10mo ago

"increase opportunity in search results" - what a bunch of bollocks

lopis 10mo ago

Google Play is plagued with these ads and they are just scams most of the times. You search for an app and get ads from similarly names apps, apps with visually similar icons, ebooks to use the app you searched, etc. They prey on the less tech savvy to install this spam. There's zero user value in them.

left-struck 10mo ago
When you think about it, why should you trust any app that tries to trick you when you’re looking for something else? It’s such awful behaviour, I don’t want any part of it, I don’t want to reward it so in any place where I can’t forcibly remove this trash I go out of my way to never click on the ad results even if in the rare case it’s exactly what I searched for.
- Anamon 10mo ago
  You are also not the target of these ads. My parents, on the other hand? My mum doesn't have a lot of experience with this stuff, and my dad's eyesight deteriorated. They could definitely fall for lookalike apps in an app store. This seems like something in need of some laws and regulation. It fosters a kind of phishing-light ecosystem. Apple and Google are laughing to the bank while pretending they're helpless against fraudulent apps. They're not, they're creating a marketplace that makes them viable in the first place.
  - left-struck 10mo ago
    Yes, I 100% agree Some people think ad blocking is unethical but I think until there’s more sensible regulation or behaviour it’s your moral duty to block ads, especially on less tech savvy family member’s devices. We’re in a war and the tech companies have been playing dirty for decades.
- lopis 10mo ago
  It's not necessarily shady behavior. Maybe you're just paying ads on your competitor for your legitimate app.

hugodan 10mo ago

Shame on Apple. And thanks for making me consider alternatives for me and my relatives

jwr 10mo ago

Enshittification at its best (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification), I'm very disappointed that Apple is doing the same thing as everybody else: degrading user experience for short-term increases in profits.

FabHK 10mo ago

I searched for "Sparkasse" on the German Apple App Store, the good old staid conservative public savings bank. The top result was an ad for Crypto.com: Buy BTC, ETC, ...

Obscurity4340 10mo ago
Search it in DuckDuckGo or your search engine + ios unless you were just doing an experiment to see if you would get the expected result Appraven has collections which are pretty handy, like actually curated lists

bambax 10mo ago

> Search results ads help customers discover your app right when they’re searching for apps to download. One would think it's good search that helps users find what they want. But noooo! It's ads! Ads help users! One has to love this kind of orwellian language. And one has to wonder if it's ever written in good faith? Or is everyone lying as a matter of course, to people who know perfectly well they're being lied to. Is it even lying if you know they know you're lying?

wrxd 10mo ago
If I were an app developer I would feel this is extortion. Users that are searching for your app can find it as the top result, if you pay enough. Don't want to pay? We'll show them your competitor's app, no problem.
- bambax 10mo ago
  Yes. It is extortion. Same on Amazon. Those "platforms" are no better than plain old mafia thugs.

monomial 10mo ago

I recently switched to GrapheneOS and it's been great. Letting any sort of commercial entity between you and your computing just seems like a bad idea these days. Linux is top notch, self-hosting has never been easier. There's really no excuse (as a technologist at least) to subject yourself to these increasingly enshittified platforms. As someone who works in tech for a career it's honestly a bit of an existential crisis. I actively work on a SaaS product but would never even consider paying for SaaS any more myself.

blinding-streak 10mo ago

"Increase opportunity in search results" is hilarious PR. Obviously it's to increase revenue.

2OEH8eoCRo0 10mo ago

They must really be struggling

boxed 10mo ago

Apple forces names on the iOS app store to be globally unique. But if you search for the exact name of an app it's not the first hit. A good example of this is my app Bit.

sajithdilshan 10mo ago

So Apple gets like 30% of commission for every payment in app store and still they want to push more ads? Like what's going on

earthnail 10mo ago

Wow. Now you need to pay even more as a developer in order to be distributed on the App Store. These ads are yet another fee on top of the revenue share that Apple takes. It's obscene. Let's hope alternative App Stores take off. I have very low hopes but hope dies last.

cebert 10mo ago

I wish HN had dislike buttons. Apple is slowly losing what made it unique.

MagicMoonlight 10mo ago
The post itself is nothing to do with the change

wkjagt 10mo ago

I haven't looked at Apple in a long time. The page reads like a parody, and I had to double check that I was actually on apple.com. The whole industry seems to be in a place where everyone just accepts that most good things are now ruined anyway, so might as well ruin them some more.

surgical_fire 10mo ago
I think this is a good move from Apple. They will make a lot more money. Their customers will keep buying their phones. They want a slick looking, fashionable cell phone. The usability has been horrid forever. They probably can have ads and increase the price.

andrewstuart 10mo ago

The enshittification of Apple is here. Anything for money.

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Gud 10mo ago

No thanks and another reason why Apple needs to be forced to allow third party package managers(“app stores”).

xtiansimon 10mo ago

Apple isn’t the darling “it” product it’s been in years past. Apps are addictive but not enriching our lives like we once thought. Now you want to add advertising? If a new product comes along and hits the right notes—maybe the e-ink variety, or Cat’s Android with thermal camera. I have the four previous, so I don’t imagine it as a trauma to step off the merry-go-round for my next phone.

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