4 ms·

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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo ago
      $SEARCH_ENGINE engine is nowadays copilot or chatgpt, both ad-free if you use a simple ad-blocker.
      - AnonymousPlanet 9mo ago
        For how long? Months?
        littlecranky67 9mo ago
        4 years, 11 months, and 3 days. Guaranteed. So not an issue right now.
      - dangus 9mo ago
        ChatGPT just announced ads, right? AI chat will be even harder to ad block than search engines. It won’t be a simple matter of blocking ad domains.
    - charcircuit 9mo ago
      >but imagine how insanely negatively received it would be if apt upgrade So what already happens when you ssh into an Ubuntu server to run apt upgrade to manually update it. It turns out people don't care that much.
      - dangus 9mo ago
        I think they do care. In the gaming community, Ubuntu has gone from about 40% to 10% marketshare since 2018. https://youtu.be/Pwt216nn0zE https://youtu.be/Pwt216nn0zE Now, you might say this is because of the influence of SteamOS, but I think you’d be hard pressed to argue that Ubuntu has been getting more popular overall. Linux users have a choice while iOS and Android users essentially don’t.
        charcircuit 9mo ago
        I am talking in relation server market share since the ad is targeted towards people running servers.
        dangus 9mo ago
        I wouldn’t be surprised if Ubuntu server has lost marketshare to other Linux distributions, but I don’t know that I have any way to verify it.
    - fmajid 9mo ago
      Web search engines' advertising can be hidden with an ad blockier. The App Store? Not so much. Its search is completely unusable anyway, even when you give it the exact app name you want. Apple's enshittification is real, and accelerating.
- azangru 9mo ago
  > It's literally the only way to download apps. Is it? I don't think I've ever downloaded anything from Apple's app store. Hmm. What have I got? Chrome. Installed from website. GIMP. Installed from website. LibreOffice. Installed from website. VSCode. Installed from website. VLC. Installed from website. Zoom. Installed from website. Homebrew. Installed by using a command from a website. And then, a bunch of stuff installed from brew.
  - dangus 9mo ago
    It is on iOS and iPadOS which is obviously what I was talking about.
    - azangru 9mo ago
      Oh. Sorry. It honestly didn't even occur to me :-) I don't use those devices.
christoph 9mo ago
Other than all the scammy & microtransaction BS for the kids I’m always confused about this as well. I can count on one hand how many “new” apps I’ve installed in 2025 - one - the Bambu app for talking to the 3D printer. I’ve got my banking apps, business apps, Strava, etc. the same now, for years. It would take a monumental effort from Apple for me to feel like “cruising” the App store, the idea is so patently ridiculous to me, I actually LOL’d thinking about it. Literally any other portable device is better to play games on - Switch, Steamdeck, 3DS, Atari Lynx, etc. I have Apple Arcade as well (included with something else), I can’t even remember the last time I could be bothered to scroll that… If Apple thinks more ads is a solution to some of their problems, things must be way worse than imagined over there.

dangus 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo 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 9mo ago
    $SEARCH_ENGINE engine is nowadays copilot or chatgpt, both ad-free if you use a simple ad-blocker.
    - AnonymousPlanet 9mo ago
      For how long? Months?
      - littlecranky67 9mo ago
        4 years, 11 months, and 3 days. Guaranteed. So not an issue right now.
    - dangus 9mo ago
      ChatGPT just announced ads, right? AI chat will be even harder to ad block than search engines. It won’t be a simple matter of blocking ad domains.
  - charcircuit 9mo ago
    >but imagine how insanely negatively received it would be if apt upgrade So what already happens when you ssh into an Ubuntu server to run apt upgrade to manually update it. It turns out people don't care that much.
    - dangus 9mo ago
      I think they do care. In the gaming community, Ubuntu has gone from about 40% to 10% marketshare since 2018. https://youtu.be/Pwt216nn0zE https://youtu.be/Pwt216nn0zE Now, you might say this is because of the influence of SteamOS, but I think you’d be hard pressed to argue that Ubuntu has been getting more popular overall. Linux users have a choice while iOS and Android users essentially don’t.
      - charcircuit 9mo ago
        I am talking in relation server market share since the ad is targeted towards people running servers.
        dangus 9mo ago
        I wouldn’t be surprised if Ubuntu server has lost marketshare to other Linux distributions, but I don’t know that I have any way to verify it.
  - fmajid 9mo ago
    Web search engines' advertising can be hidden with an ad blockier. The App Store? Not so much. Its search is completely unusable anyway, even when you give it the exact app name you want. Apple's enshittification is real, and accelerating.
azangru 9mo ago
> It's literally the only way to download apps. Is it? I don't think I've ever downloaded anything from Apple's app store. Hmm. What have I got? Chrome. Installed from website. GIMP. Installed from website. LibreOffice. Installed from website. VSCode. Installed from website. VLC. Installed from website. Zoom. Installed from website. Homebrew. Installed by using a command from a website. And then, a bunch of stuff installed from brew.
- dangus 9mo ago
  It is on iOS and iPadOS which is obviously what I was talking about.
  - azangru 9mo ago
    Oh. Sorry. It honestly didn't even occur to me :-) I don't use those devices.

christoph 9mo ago

Other than all the scammy & microtransaction BS for the kids I’m always confused about this as well. I can count on one hand how many “new” apps I’ve installed in 2025 - one - the Bambu app for talking to the 3D printer. I’ve got my banking apps, business apps, Strava, etc. the same now, for years. It would take a monumental effort from Apple for me to feel like “cruising” the App store, the idea is so patently ridiculous to me, I actually LOL’d thinking about it. Literally any other portable device is better to play games on - Switch, Steamdeck, 3DS, Atari Lynx, etc. I have Apple Arcade as well (included with something else), I can’t even remember the last time I could be bothered to scroll that… If Apple thinks more ads is a solution to some of their problems, things must be way worse than imagined over there.