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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 premi

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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
    Presumably the person who wrote this comment is too young to have used Apple products prior to 2010?
    - nottorp 11mo ago
      They do have a point though, because you can't continue to use a phone made by Apple in 2010.
      - thomassmith65 11mo ago
        I would if I could! Apple has been a mess since they lost Steve Jobs.
- bee_rider 11mo 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 11mo 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.
    - al_borland 11mo ago
      It’s still early. The model for AI that will seem as if it was inevitable in 10 years is likely something we haven’t seen yet. There are a ton of chatbots and they are all in the App Store. Apple brings nothing to the table by doing another chatbot, and their users can still use all of them. I don’t see why everyone seems to harp on that so much. Where Apple can do something useful is using AI to integrate solutions to real world stuff throughout the OS. These features are rarely flashy, but they become an indispensable part of people’s daily workflow. Current LLMs also seem to have a much higher tolerance for hallucinations than Apple does. I’d rather wait for something good and reliable than have them rush out a copy-cat chatbot that lies to me. People are much more forgiving with OpenAI than they’d be with Apple.
    - type0 11mo ago
      > But their innovative design tends to be They should release iphone pocket mankini edition as their hallmark of innovative design
  - dd8601fn 11mo ago
    > They take an idea that’s already been worked out (like MP3 players) and then just out-execute the competition. I’m inclined to think of that as innovation. To your point, not a single, earth shattering kind (inventing the first mp3 player), but by 100 lesser improvements in a single product. But yeah, all their stuff is that way. They didn’t invent smartphones, or satellite messaging in a phone, or rich mobile messaging, or end to end encryption of data on your cloud services, or biometrics and secure enclaves, etc. They just usually execute better than others.
- sublinear 11mo ago
  > A chatbot could replace a lot of this: just tell your phone what to do instead of clicking and swiping. I'm confused by this take. We've had this for over a decade? Technology is not holding this idea back. It just sucks big time for every situation except driving. Talking to a computer is dumb, but Knight Rider nailed it.
  - cwillu 11mo ago
    We've had voice recognition for over a decade, but we have not had “tell your phone what to do”. Heavy structured voice input to a command line is not what we're talking about.
- al_borland 11mo ago
  Apple spent a lot of time already doing a lot of this with Siri instead of focusing on external knowledge. This didn’t replace their UI people. Voice commands aren’t always appropriate and a UI is still needed. The UI for setting up a daily alarm is a little clunky, since it requires individually selecting each day. I needed to setup alarms for pills every 12 hours. Instead of doing this manually, I asked Siri to do it and it was much easier. As an easter egg, you can even use some Harry Potter spells. “Lumos” will turn the flashlight on, “nox” will turn it off. Not everything needs a bunch of AI. Most OS operations and settings are probably better without it, other than maybe for helping to process intent if it’s unclear.
  - t-sauer 11mo ago
    > I needed to setup alarms for pills every 12 hours. In case you didn’t know, there is a medication reminder built into Apple Health that might work better than an alarm.
  - dash2 11mo ago
    C'mon. Five years ago I could still tell myself Siri is fine. Now it's embarrassing.
- wolvesechoes 11mo ago
  > Yeah, they seem to be moving from innovators to exploiting their user base Wow, who could have expected that to happen?!
IlikeKitties 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
    Cannot wait for ads to slip into my iCloud storage.
- mystifyingpoi 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
Enshittification is Inevitable.
- palmotea 11mo ago
  > Enshittification is Inevitable. Only under our current cultural and economic assumptions.
  - jopsen 11mo ago
    > Only under our current cultural and economic assumptions. I think we shouldn't hope those changes, that could lead to interesting times.
- thomassmith65 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
  What will happen to nvidia when their market becomes saturated? That seems inevitable.
  - luz666 11mo ago
    Maybe just reduce production amount an increase prices? Profit probably continues, but on a lower level, I guess.
  - bigyabai 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
    The failure rate of data center GPUs is around 2 years…
rgreekguy 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
  And both have an advertising id built-in into the OS (which I find insane as a concept)
- agos 11mo ago
  there was definitely a time when iOS App Store did not have ads
erik 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
    You will have a better UX while being scammed
dangus 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
      Buying a used pixel and flashing grapheneOS is the only refuge for now. We'll have to hold out for the SteamPhone.
gostsamo 11mo ago
but, but, think of the shareholders!
vjvjvjvjghv 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
  Yeah. It’s hard for me to get worked up about ads in a store.
tcfhgj 11mo ago
Greed is the law of capitalism
mgh2 11mo ago
Ads is just a tool, I hope Apple does it right for UX, as it is planning to do w/ Maps
- bigyabai 11mo ago
  A bicycle... no, a hamburger for the mind.
pjmlp 11mo ago
The John Sculley Apple is back, the time of being nice for survival reasons is long gone.
nottorp 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
m463 11mo ago
they are tarnishing their brand.
godelski 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
    It is intentional: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46232528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46232528
    - godelski 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
> I’d rather pay an extra $100 for the phone You're already paying a huge premium on the phone.
faust201 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
Apple has decayed into a bog-standard $$$-maximizing lawnmower. Any products, services, ads, or other performances are merely incidental to that goal.
alex1138 11mo ago
but but but but 'if you're not paying then you are the product' Turns out that doesn't work, either
neya 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
  this morning I read not only on bottom, but also every few apps.. hopefully it's only in the bottom!
dewey 11mo 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 11mo ago
  Syncing that new pair of AirPods you just bought? Yup - Apple Music free trial ad.
- port11 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
Was recently thinking we should change tax law to exclude ad spend as a business expense so it gets taxed.
musicale 11mo 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. :(

bg_tagas 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
  Presumably the person who wrote this comment is too young to have used Apple products prior to 2010?
  - nottorp 11mo ago
    They do have a point though, because you can't continue to use a phone made by Apple in 2010.
    - thomassmith65 11mo ago
      I would if I could! Apple has been a mess since they lost Steve Jobs.
bee_rider 11mo 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 11mo 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.
  - al_borland 11mo ago
    It’s still early. The model for AI that will seem as if it was inevitable in 10 years is likely something we haven’t seen yet. There are a ton of chatbots and they are all in the App Store. Apple brings nothing to the table by doing another chatbot, and their users can still use all of them. I don’t see why everyone seems to harp on that so much. Where Apple can do something useful is using AI to integrate solutions to real world stuff throughout the OS. These features are rarely flashy, but they become an indispensable part of people’s daily workflow. Current LLMs also seem to have a much higher tolerance for hallucinations than Apple does. I’d rather wait for something good and reliable than have them rush out a copy-cat chatbot that lies to me. People are much more forgiving with OpenAI than they’d be with Apple.
  - type0 11mo ago
    > But their innovative design tends to be They should release iphone pocket mankini edition as their hallmark of innovative design
- dd8601fn 11mo ago
  > They take an idea that’s already been worked out (like MP3 players) and then just out-execute the competition. I’m inclined to think of that as innovation. To your point, not a single, earth shattering kind (inventing the first mp3 player), but by 100 lesser improvements in a single product. But yeah, all their stuff is that way. They didn’t invent smartphones, or satellite messaging in a phone, or rich mobile messaging, or end to end encryption of data on your cloud services, or biometrics and secure enclaves, etc. They just usually execute better than others.
sublinear 11mo ago
> A chatbot could replace a lot of this: just tell your phone what to do instead of clicking and swiping. I'm confused by this take. We've had this for over a decade? Technology is not holding this idea back. It just sucks big time for every situation except driving. Talking to a computer is dumb, but Knight Rider nailed it.
- cwillu 11mo ago
  We've had voice recognition for over a decade, but we have not had “tell your phone what to do”. Heavy structured voice input to a command line is not what we're talking about.
al_borland 11mo ago
Apple spent a lot of time already doing a lot of this with Siri instead of focusing on external knowledge. This didn’t replace their UI people. Voice commands aren’t always appropriate and a UI is still needed. The UI for setting up a daily alarm is a little clunky, since it requires individually selecting each day. I needed to setup alarms for pills every 12 hours. Instead of doing this manually, I asked Siri to do it and it was much easier. As an easter egg, you can even use some Harry Potter spells. “Lumos” will turn the flashlight on, “nox” will turn it off. Not everything needs a bunch of AI. Most OS operations and settings are probably better without it, other than maybe for helping to process intent if it’s unclear.
- t-sauer 11mo ago
  > I needed to setup alarms for pills every 12 hours. In case you didn’t know, there is a medication reminder built into Apple Health that might work better than an alarm.
- dash2 11mo ago
  C'mon. Five years ago I could still tell myself Siri is fine. Now it's embarrassing.
wolvesechoes 11mo ago
> Yeah, they seem to be moving from innovators to exploiting their user base Wow, who could have expected that to happen?!

IlikeKitties 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
  Cannot wait for ads to slip into my iCloud storage.
mystifyingpoi 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago

Enshittification is Inevitable.

palmotea 11mo ago
> Enshittification is Inevitable. Only under our current cultural and economic assumptions.
- jopsen 11mo ago
  > Only under our current cultural and economic assumptions. I think we shouldn't hope those changes, that could lead to interesting times.
thomassmith65 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
What will happen to nvidia when their market becomes saturated? That seems inevitable.
- luz666 11mo ago
  Maybe just reduce production amount an increase prices? Profit probably continues, but on a lower level, I guess.
- bigyabai 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
  The failure rate of data center GPUs is around 2 years…

rgreekguy 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
And both have an advertising id built-in into the OS (which I find insane as a concept)
agos 11mo ago
there was definitely a time when iOS App Store did not have ads

erik 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
  You will have a better UX while being scammed

dangus 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
    Buying a used pixel and flashing grapheneOS is the only refuge for now. We'll have to hold out for the SteamPhone.

gostsamo 11mo ago

but, but, think of the shareholders!

vjvjvjvjghv 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
Yeah. It’s hard for me to get worked up about ads in a store.

tcfhgj 11mo ago

Greed is the law of capitalism

mgh2 11mo ago

Ads is just a tool, I hope Apple does it right for UX, as it is planning to do w/ Maps

bigyabai 11mo ago
A bicycle... no, a hamburger for the mind.

pjmlp 11mo ago

The John Sculley Apple is back, the time of being nice for survival reasons is long gone.

nottorp 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago

m463 11mo ago

they are tarnishing their brand.

godelski 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
  It is intentional: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46232528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46232528
  - godelski 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago

> I’d rather pay an extra $100 for the phone You're already paying a huge premium on the phone.

faust201 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago

Apple has decayed into a bog-standard $$$-maximizing lawnmower. Any products, services, ads, or other performances are merely incidental to that goal.

alex1138 11mo ago

but but but but 'if you're not paying then you are the product' Turns out that doesn't work, either

neya 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago
this morning I read not only on bottom, but also every few apps.. hopefully it's only in the bottom!

dewey 11mo 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 11mo ago
Syncing that new pair of AirPods you just bought? Yup - Apple Music free trial ad.
port11 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo 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 11mo ago

Was recently thinking we should change tax law to exclude ad spend as a business expense so it gets taxed.

musicale 11mo 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. :(