[HN Gopher] More on Apple's Trust-Eroding 'F1 the Movie' Wallet Ad
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More on Apple's Trust-Eroding 'F1 the Movie' Wallet Ad
Author : dotcoma
Score : 785 points
Date : 2025-06-29 07:45 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (daringfireball.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (daringfireball.net)
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| I feel vindicated for when I said that the moment Apple's line
| stops growing, they'll resort to monetizing their users like the
| rest of big-tech to increase their shareholder returns, and
| everyone here was like _" Nooo, my sweet innocent publicly traded
| trillion dollar corporation would never betray me like that"_.
| Give it a few more years love, now they're boiling the frog.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| What do you mean start monetizing ? I get adds for their Apple
| Arcade trial on top of my iOS settings main screen.
|
| I really hate Apple - but what's stopping me from moving out of
| the ecosystem is that nobody else builds shit that works and is
| on same level. The M Pro series processor is only touchable by
| that one AMD chip you can't get anywhere. Windows is garbage
| and Linux is a part time job. Android is even worse in terms of
| spam and jank, and the only ecosystem that works is Google -
| where if you get locked out - you're just praying to HN/Google
| contacts that you didn't lose your access.
| jb1991 wrote:
| You are correct that, just like in politics, you have to pick
| the best among problematic choices, which will often be
| Apple.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Isn't politics famous for moralizing inherently immoral
| decisions, such that people forget how to engage in
| constructive discourse and resign themselves to tribalism?
| Doesn't that process inherently degrade the quality of both
| politics and technology?
|
| Maybe I'm alone, but one of the few reasons I care about
| technology is to _not_ treat it like politics or fairy
| magic.
| mrweasel wrote:
| For the desktop, I could probably just use Linux, but you're
| right, in terms of eco-system, where would I go?
|
| Phones are even worse. You basically stuck on iOS and Android
| and I honestly see no situation where picking Android
| wouldn't be worse. You have a better selection of phone, and
| you could run /e/OS, Calyx, or something else, but that's
| just a hassle. I'm not a big fan of the direction iOS is
| developing, it tried to do way to much and the UI has become
| a mess.
| fakedang wrote:
| Graphene OS?
| mrweasel wrote:
| Graphene, Calyx, /e/OS... they work and you can install
| apps from the Play Store, the feedback I got is just that
| the few apps I need that can't be replaced keeps
| breaking. It's just more of a hassle than I'm willing to
| endure. But you right, it is an option.
| fakedang wrote:
| I think banking apps don't play well with it.
|
| In the event that I have to deprecate my current Android,
| I might have a go at installing Graphene and trying it
| out in various countries.
| rglullis wrote:
| Do you _must_ have banking apps in your phone? And even
| if you do, do you need them so often that the apps _must_
| be installed in your daily driver?
| fsflover wrote:
| There are also GNU/Linux phones (Librem 5 and Pinephone).
| jorvi wrote:
| The biggest trick they ever pulled was changing Music.app
| into Apple Music, and on first app start showing you a "hey,
| want to try Apple Music? Tap here" fullscreen.
|
| That single-handedly unlocked a huge cohort of boomers and
| other tech laypeople that had never tried Spotify or any
| other music streaming platform before.
|
| It was smart and also a huge abuse of market power. Apple
| Music would have bombed without it. The only reason they
| didn't get in deep shit for it was that Apple doesn't have
| nearly the market capture in the EU that they have in the US,
| and in that time period the US didn't do antitrust against
| tech companies.
| TheDong wrote:
| The worse abuse of market power there is that Apple Music
| doesn't have to pay the 30% to the app store for
| subscriptions made on the device, but but spotify etc do,
| so Spotify can't charge a comparable price on iOS, and also
| wasn't allowed to tell the user in the app that they can
| subscribe for $x online.
|
| Deceptive app naming has nothing on that.
| rglullis wrote:
| > The M Pro series processor (...)
|
| even if it were the best processor to ever exist, it's not
| something that we can not live without.
|
| > Linux is a part time job
|
| It has been good enough for the past 15 years or so.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| >It has been good enough for the past 15 years or so.
|
| I daily drove fedora last summer for a few months and it
| was a joke on how unstable it was. Slack would crash when
| screen sharing, likewise for chrome/gmeet, camera
| corruption bugs. Just two days ago I was teasing a coworker
| on a daily that we can spot a linux user by how long it
| takes him to unmute himself. Chrome would randomly stop
| rendering all windows when watching YouToube in a separate
| window. KDE plasma would get messed up very frequently.
| Gnome was more stable but had issues with fractional
| scaling X11 apps on Wayland (Plasma 6 supported this).
| Installing a DAW took days of reading audio routing docs
| and trying stuff out, breaking my audio several times in
| the process. My LG C4 cannot be used at 4k/120Hz because
| you cant get HDMI 2.1 on Linux/AMD. And this is all on a
| well supported desktop machine. Laptop and power management
| was even worse last time I tried it. Hell I never had a PC
| laptop that managed sleep state reliably and didn't cook
| the battery in the backpack randomly.
|
| I just don't have these kinds of issues with MacOS. The
| processor/laptops are just best on the market and it just
| works, support is amazing. It is hard to justify dealing
| with Linux desktop and PC hardware even at a price premium,
| but these days Apple devices are even price competitive
| compared to similar windows/linux machines.
| rglullis wrote:
| > It is hard to justify dealing with Linux desktop and PC
| hardware even at a price premium
|
| There is only one justification that I need: Apple wants
| me in a golden cage, and I don't want to lose my freedom
| at any cost. No matter how much cheaper it can get, not
| matter how much "better" than the competition it is, it
| is not worth the price. I do not exchange my freedom for
| convenience, status or some materialistic joy. It's as
| simple as that.
|
| All your arguments against Linux are at best
| circumstantial and at worst bogus. Of course it is not
| perfect. Of course it has limitations. But it's
| undeniable that the gap between FOSS and Windows/Apple is
| getting narrower and narrower, despite the FOSS side
| getting a minuscule fraction of the resources available
| to trillion dollar corporations.
|
| And the really fucked up part is that You are the one
| claiming to "hate" Apple, yet you keep buying their
| products and making their market dominance ever stronger.
|
| ---
|
| Just to address your "claims":
|
| > we can spot a linux user by how long it takes him to
| unmute himself
|
| Never had any issues of that sort, whether I was using
| Google Meet, Slack, Zoom or anything else.
|
| > KDE plasma would get messed up very frequently. Gnome
| was more stable
|
| I've been using XFCE since 2010 (When Ubuntu went with
| Unity). It is not fancy and does everything I need.
|
| > issues with fractional scaling X11 apps on Wayland.
|
| It has been working fine on my Desktop and my Framework
| laptop for some good 3 years, when I actually bothered to
| look. Before that, I'd just go by through customization
| of window zoom levels (browser) and font-size (emacs,
| terminal, GTK apps).
|
| > My LG C4 cannot be used at 4k/120Hz because you cant
| get HDMI 2.1 on Linux/AMD
|
| hum, too bad? How significantly was your quality of life
| affected by this? Curiously, I also use an LG monitor
| with AMD running at 4k/60Hz, and the fact that I am
| "missing out" on something here does not even cross my
| mind.
|
| > Installing a DAW took days of reading audio routing
| docs
|
| Did you get it working? Was the software FOSS? Can you
| share your findings back with the developers and help
| them improve their product, or are you going to keep
| rationalizing the abusive relationship you're in because
| "at least things just work, most of the time".
| Toritori12 wrote:
| As shitty as it is, Chromeos doesnt seem to have a lot
| bloatware to me.
| Fade_Dance wrote:
| Does it not have a huge slew of pre-installed Google apps
| that can't be uninstalled like Android phones?
| seszett wrote:
| I don't really understand, I don't get ads on my Android
| phone?
|
| And I'm not sure what you mean about ecosystems either, yes
| you do need a Google account to download apps from the Play
| store, but you also need an Apple account to use the Apple
| store as far as I know.
|
| In my experience it's easier to create a second Google
| account than a second Apple account.
|
| Now I'm not representative of most users, like all HN users
| probably. But at home, apart from my M1 Mac (running Linux
| because I hate macOS) my other machines are Intel n100-based.
| They work fine.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| Android is preloaded with different flavor of crap
| depending on the vendor and side-loading a phone OS and
| dealing with everything - I just don't have the energy
| these days. Likewise for running Linux on top of a M series
| Apple device. My devices just work and they all work
| together - all I have to do is login to the same account.
| My phone shares stuff with my Mac without any setup -
| shared clipboard, apps, storage. Buds connect to all my
| devices, Mac Mini, MadBook, iPad - not just 2 BT devices at
| a time, and they switch seamlessly. Stuff that saves me
| time and just does what I want. And all of the devices are
| usually among the best in class individually.
|
| Nobody outside of Apple even has that as a vision.
| Microsoft is so bad at building consumer products it's
| unbelievable. Google is struggling to build compiling
| phones with its own software - I doubt they can execute on
| other device types. Valve did a relatively small investment
| in this ecosystem and brought it forward light years in the
| gaming space.
| denkmoon wrote:
| Ah, sweet vindication. Eventually the only company that doesn't
| do (all the) bad thing will start doing bad thing.
|
| What you say seems likely, but then what. Should I throw my
| phone in the bin because it might be bad in the future, as
| opposed to being actually bad now?
| fsflover wrote:
| > but then what. Should I throw my phone in the bin because
| it might be bad in the future
|
| No, but you should be always ready to jump the ship, always
| research reasonably good alternatives and never go deep in
| their walled garden. Ideally, you could even support the
| efforts to bring the freedom with your money or time, like
| GNU/Linux phones.
| latexr wrote:
| > and everyone here was like
|
| Do you have links? Because every single time someone claims
| "everyone" on HN shared an opinion and I go check, the threads
| are split. What that tells me is that the people who accuse HN
| of being a biased hive mind are themselves biased to the point
| of being blind to other arguments.
|
| > now they're boiling the frog.
|
| That's a myth.
|
| > according to modern biologists the premise is false: changing
| location is a natural thermoregulation strategy for frogs and
| other ectotherms, and is necessary for survival in the wild. A
| frog that is gradually heated will jump out. Furthermore, a
| frog placed into already boiling water will die immediately,
| not jump out.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
| tcshit wrote:
| Spot on!
| jb1991 wrote:
| Did they learn nothing from giving everyone a free U2 album that
| nobody wanted, and the backlash from that?
| x62Bh7948f wrote:
| It was such a long time ago that the people who made the
| mistake have already retired, maybe.
| msh wrote:
| Most of the top management from that time is the same people
| today.
| abcd_f wrote:
| U2 stunt was Jobs' idea. He was a life-long fan of them.
|
| Edit - it wasn't, my bad, see below.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Didn't the U2 stunt happen three years after Steve Jobs
| died?
| latexr wrote:
| The U2 album happened under Cook.
|
| https://www.rnz.de/cms_media/module_img/176/88193_1_detailx
| s...
| abcd_f wrote:
| Bah, my bad.
|
| This happened in 2014 and Jobs passed in 2011.
| JimDabell wrote:
| I think this is a lot worse than the U2 thing. Operating
| systems bundle free stuff all the time. Even the Windows 95 CD
| had a Weezer music video on it.
|
| The U2 album wasn't spammy it didn't interrupt people, it was
| in an appropriate place, and it was easily removed. Even if you
| didn't want it, it's reasonable to not consider it a problem.
|
| This was outright spammy. It was trying to sell people
| something. It was in a sensitive place. And it was an
| attention-seeking, interrupting notification.
|
| This shouldn't have even made it _onto_ the drawing board, and
| for this to make it into production at Apple is a sign
| something is seriously wrong there.
| daqnz wrote:
| Completely disagree, for many people it was the only track in
| iTunes. And when things triggered iTunes to play it played
| that.
|
| I was in an older man's car last year. It started playing the
| album. He remarked "oh that always plays, I don't know why"
| as I reached for the volume.
|
| A decade later that album is still annoying people. Bluetooth
| triggered play or something like that and the only music on
| the old iPhone started playing.
| ryandrake wrote:
| I've met so many people who only have that one album on
| their devices, and it plays every time they plug into their
| car or connect via Bluetooth. And they are all just
| annoyed/accepting of it. My wife was one of them. And what
| made it worse was you couldn't just pause it: with her
| car's particular head unit, anything you touched (like the
| volume control) would cause the head unit to issue another
| "play music" command to restart it. Eventually enough was
| enough and I figured out how to remove the album for good.
| jama211 wrote:
| If it annoyed them that much they'd have rung apple
| support and gotten it removed. I agree it's bad and they
| shouldn't have done it, but after a decade you have to
| accept some personal responsibility for it, if I bought a
| shoe and a rock was inside from factory and my foot hurt
| for 10 years at some point some of your current suffering
| is your own fault for not removing it lol
| earthtograndma wrote:
| If I'm reading all this correctly, it sounds like Apple
| has a system that will automatically play unintended
| music at various times from the music library. The only
| way to prevent this is to completely wipe out the entire
| library.
|
| And the chief complaint is that there is an album in the
| library.
| jmathai wrote:
| Because the presence of that album is what creates this
| bug and the user never purchased or downloaded it
| themself.
|
| I have this same problem but it plays my wedding playlist
| from nearly 20 years ago. Some terribly annoying song I
| no longer like. I assume it's too much work to delete my
| library and so I just deal with the annoyance.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Both are annoying as hell, but people found a workaround,
| and that album screws it again.
|
| But yes, it's still the insult on top of the injury.
| fwip wrote:
| If I'm reading correctly, the bug is in the car's audio
| control system.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > If I'm reading all this correctly, it sounds like Apple
| has a system that will automatically play unintended
| music at various times from the music library.
|
| No, in this case the play command was coming from the
| attached device. Apple's product was complying with the
| command in the only way it could, by playing the songs in
| the library.
| ryandrake wrote:
| That's right. Various connected devices are over-eager to
| assume the user wants to play media, and command the
| phone into do so unexpectedly. This is fine if there is
| no media to play, but then all of a sudden, thanks to
| Apple's decision, there was unwanted media to play, and
| this album would be the one always playing.
|
| So the album didn't cause the problem but it revealed it.
| acomjean wrote:
| My partners young niece dislikes U2 and apple for that
| move. She said a lot of her friend are the same. It was a
| bad move. They should have just made the album free and not
| pushed it to every device.
|
| Apple did give away free videos on the old Mac OS install
| cds like widows did. I think to show off quick time and
| that your computer can play videos (back when that was
| newish). They didn't install onto you hard drive..
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _He remarked "oh that always plays, I don't know why" as I
| reached for the volume._
|
| I use Spotify in the car, and have for years. A couple of
| weeks ago I made the mistake of saying, "Hey, Siri, play
| liked songs."
|
| "OK, playing Apple Music."
|
| Oh, well, yet another spark of genius from the tire fire
| that is Siri. Whatever. I switched back to Spotify manually
| and went on with my day.
|
| Since then, _every time I get in the car_ it starts playing
| tracks on Apple Music. No matter how many times I relaunch
| Spotify, even after force-closing the Apple Music app on
| the phone itself, Apple Music keeps coming back.
|
| If there is a way to get it to properly resume the playback
| state at shutdown time, I'm not smart enough to find it.
| 100% pure unadulterated enshittification... courtesy of
| Apple, the company with "taste."
| lycopodiopsida wrote:
| This damn U2 album still appears in my smart playlists in
| Apple Music from time to time - it is insane that I can't
| delete it completely so many years later.
| lozenge wrote:
| Apparently they removed the removal tool in 2018, you now
| have to contact Apple Support to get it removed.
| JimDabell wrote:
| > you now have to contact Apple Support to get it
| removed.
|
| I just checked, and I can delete it from my library the
| same way I can delete any other album.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Thanks for the tip! I'd given up on deleting this crap.
| Glad to see it works now, good riddance!
| al_borland wrote:
| It was only able to be removed after the backlash. Apple had
| to build a tool for it, and users had to be connected to tech
| media enough to know that existed. And if they didn't do it
| already, it's too late.
|
| That doesn't sound easily removed to me.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The U2 episode is a perfect example of something that went
| unnoticed by people who already used iTunes heavily, but
| became a major pain point for anyone who didn't already
| have a large library on their phone.
|
| If your iTunes was filled with songs, it got lost in the
| noise. This probably describes all of the Apple employees
| who thought it was a good idea.
|
| If your iTunes was empty, U2 became that annoying song that
| played by default when you connected your phone to your car
| for any reason or other systems that played music by
| default. For years I can remember this happening to people
| in random situations and then everyone around would groan.
| eviks wrote:
| > destructive to all the hard work other teams at Apple have done
| to make Apple Wallet actually private -- and, more importantly,
| to get users to believe that it's private. That Apple can be
| trusted in ways that other "big tech" companies cannot.
|
| What's the downside of consumers getting their perceptions closer
| aligned with reality? Which side are you on?
| eptcyka wrote:
| John Gruber has long been an Apple advocate, not saying this to
| detract from this post, but rather to add context to those who
| do not know this.
| bambax wrote:
| > _That Apple can be trusted in ways that other "big tech"
| companies cannot._
|
| That's funny. Why would Apple be "different"?
| drysart wrote:
| Because Apple makes its money by selling you hardware and
| services, not by selling advertising. Companies ultimately
| serve whoever they make their money from; and none of the other
| big tech players have a comprehensive business model where the
| end user is the customer instead of the product.
|
| And because it has positioned itself as the single most
| prominent privacy-conscious champion in big tech through
| repeated actions over the course of many years.
|
| There are plenty of reasons to dislike Apple depending on where
| your priorities are (lack of openness and cultivating an
| ecosystem based on locking you into it by not interoperating
| with anyone else are great places to start); but it's hard to
| make an argument that anyone else in big tech even comes close
| to the amount of trustworthiness Apple has demonstrated for
| their users.
|
| The fact that Apple actually pushing an ad to its users is
| headline news speaks volumes to the trust they've earned (and
| damaged by doing so). Do you think it'd make headlines if
| Google showed its users an ad? Or Microsoft? Or Meta?
| charcircuit wrote:
| Privacy and advertising are not mutually exclusive.
| triska wrote:
| Privacy is also about having control over your own space,
| both physically and digitally, and being free from unwanted
| intrusion or interference.
|
| For me, such a notification is an unwanted intrusion, and
| it is not compatible with privacy.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| Privacy and targeted advertising are, which is the name of
| the game
| tommoose wrote:
| This is technically correct, but supporting examples are
| statistically insignificant.
| pmontra wrote:
| Advertising on old style TV, newspapers, billboards did not
| impact on privacy. Even non targeted advertising on the web
| can impact privacy because our browsers send requests to
| the ad servers and that's the beginning of fingerprinting,
| even with Javascript disabled.
| trinix912 wrote:
| The only way it would work on the web while fully
| preserving privacy would be if (1) ads were stored on the
| server of the website you're accessing or proxied by it,
| and (2) the website owner would never give the ad
| provider server logs. It can be done (and used to be).
| Xss3 wrote:
| When i first got into web hosting in the early noughties
| this is how i remember it being done. Want to advertise
| my game server on some site? Provide an image url and a
| link url. That was it.
| JimDabell wrote:
| > And because it has positioned itself as the single most
| prominent privacy-conscious champion in big tech through
| repeated actions over the course of many years.
|
| I just want to highlight this because Hacker News can be
| incredibly dismissive about this.
|
| Apple's focus on privacy is a competitive advantage.
| Consumers value it, and Apple's competitors have business
| models that undermine it.
|
| Even if you think Tim Cook is the literal devil and Apple
| will do absolutely anything for a buck, Apple's focus on
| privacy is still relevant.
|
| Privacy is _valuable_ to Apple. It's a wedge they can use
| against their competitors. Google doesn't make their fortune
| selling hardware, they make it selling ads. Privacy is
| something that gets in the way of Google's profits.
|
| Because Apple are in this position, it's profitable to them
| to champion privacy. It's something they can do that's
| valuable to customers that their competitors are at a
| disadvantage with.
|
| You don't have to be a fan of Apple, and you don't have to
| trust Apple. All you have to do is believe they want to make
| money. Being pro-privacy is profitable to Apple, and so they
| act accordingly.
| bambax wrote:
| The incident we are discussing absolutely disproves this!
| Apple is happy to jeopardize privacy and the very idea of
| it, for a quick buck blasting an ad to all its users. They
| don't care one way or the other.
|
| But the truth is, nobody really cares about privacy, least
| of all, users. Nobody ever bought an iPhone because of
| "privacy"; people buy iPhones because they work, and
| because they seem cool. Everyone's happy to hand over data
| to any service.
|
| Facebook has three billion users.
| JimDabell wrote:
| The reason why even the most die-hard Apple fans are up
| in arms about this is because it's such a break from
| Apple's normal standards. It's the exception that proves
| the rule. This harms Apple more than it benefits them.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| No, it proves that large organizations have competing
| priorities and that they can make bad decisions.
| codedokode wrote:
| So if Apple really cares about privacy, their products send
| less telemetry than my Linux system, correct?
| JimDabell wrote:
| > So if Apple really cares about privacy
|
| This is a complete misunderstanding of what I was saying.
| I wasn't arguing that Apple _"really cares"_ about
| privacy; quite the opposite - I was arguing that _it
| doesn't matter_ if Apple _"really cares"_ , what matters
| is that they are financially and strategically
| incentivised to be pro-privacy.
|
| Linux is not Apple's competitor. Apple only have to be
| better at privacy than their competitors.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Apple only have to be better at privacy than their
| competitors.
|
| Yeah, that's the sad thing. And on mobile their only
| competitor is Google... so they don't have to be really
| good at privacy.
| rpdillon wrote:
| I agree with this point as well. I had the privilege of
| talking to a telemetry ingestion engineer at Apple, and I
| learned quite a bit about the amount of data they collect
| on their users. It's absolutely staggering.
| rpdillon wrote:
| I disagree with you. I think the majority of Apple's
| promises are purely marketing. And this is a moment where
| the mask has slipped. Your account does not allow for the
| case where Apple can successfully convince their users that
| they are privacy-oriented while simultaneously not being
| privacy oriented.
|
| A great example of this is that they say that iMessage is
| end-to-end encrypted, and then the second you have an
| iCloud backup that's completely broken. An actual privacy-
| centric product, this would be a major problem. Consider
| Signal.
|
| Apple is also the company that tried to introduce client-
| side content scanning of user photos.
|
| There is no giant moat between Apple and privacy violation.
| They'll do it whenever they feel like it, and Apple
| customers are very forgiving.
| JimDabell wrote:
| > they say that iMessage is end-to-end encrypted, and
| then the second you have an iCloud backup that's
| completely broken.
|
| It's not completely broken. For average users, erring on
| the side of being able to restore from backup is the best
| choice. For people who need more security, that's what
| Advanced Data Protection is for. You have the choice of
| which option suits you best; I think the default is
| appropriate for typical users.
|
| > Apple is also the company that tried to introduce
| client-side content scanning of user photos.
|
| What happened was they put a huge amount of effort into
| building a system that goes as far as it possibly can to
| implement CSAM detection that could work on E2E encrypted
| photo libraries while maintaining as much privacy as
| possible.
|
| The design of the feature demonstrates they put a lot of
| effort into privacy - competitors just scan everything
| that's uploaded to them, while Apple went above and
| beyond to do something a lot more difficult. The entire
| point of it was to detect _without_ Apple having to have
| access to your photo library. There's no point to design
| a system like that if they weren't prioritising privacy -
| they could just scan on the server like everybody else if
| privacy isn't a priority.
|
| And what happened - everybody freaked out anyway, _so
| they cancelled the feature_. It's an example that
| _supports_ my point. Apple respond to incentives.
|
| Personally, I wish they hadn't cancelled the feature.
| Virtually everybody complaining about it didn't
| understand how it worked and thought it worked in a
| completely different way.
| rpdillon wrote:
| I sense that you're arguing in good faith, but your first
| argument is very strange.
|
| The purpose of end-to-end encryption is that the messages
| cannot be read even by Apple. This is a feature that they
| advertise in their webpage about iMessage security.
|
| All I'm saying is that a bunch of people believe that
| iMessage supports end-to-end encryption and at the same
| time know that their messages are encrypted by a key that
| Apple holds and can decrypt them with via iCloud backup.
|
| That's quite literally marketing a privacy-centric
| product and having the reality (for the vast majority of
| users using the defaults) be substantially different than
| what was promised.
|
| To put it even more starkly, Apple advertises that they
| can't read your messages, and yet they can.
| bambax wrote:
| > _lack of openness_
|
| Lack of openness means lack of privacy. If we can't install
| apps on the side that have proper adblock filtering, then all
| the promises in the world are hollow.
| Veen wrote:
| Lack of openness means a lack of privacy in theory, but in
| practice, openness often results in less privacy. The
| average user lacks the knowledge, time, and motivation to
| install and configure open systems to maximize privacy.
| They're likely to make mistakes that expose private data.
|
| A closed system that prioritizes privacy will result in
| more users benefiting from greater privacy overall, even if
| it does give the platform more control than is ideal. And
| that's the issue with the wallet ads: Apple makes users
| more secure on average, but it depends on user trust, which
| it just betrayed.
|
| Those who can take advantage of total control are a
| minority, and they are not really the people Apple cares
| about.
| holowoodman wrote:
| A non-open system is not verifyable and therefore not
| trustable. Therefore a non-open system can never deliver
| privacy. At best it can attempt to trick you into
| believing it does.
| Veen wrote:
| Risk isn't an absolute. Open systems may be verifiable,
| but they are also more difficult to use, inconvenient,
| and lack the features users want. So most people won't
| use them or will use them badly. Apple reduces privacy
| risk relative to open solutions used by non-expert users.
| The purist approach to privacy increases risk to ordinary
| users. It's better to be pragmatic; Apple isn't ideal,
| but it's better than the realistic alternatives.
| Xss3 wrote:
| Such a false dichotomy that open automatically means
| insecure and leaky due to user error.
|
| Sensible defaults and warnings about changing them is all
| you need to put any argument of 'bad for privacy' down.
| Veen wrote:
| It's not a dichotomy, but an observation about how data
| privacy tends to work in the real world. You can easily
| refute it with practical examples of how openness has
| actually improved privacy for the average user relative
| to Apple's closed, managed privacy programs. Would an
| average non-technical Apple user be exposed to higher or
| lower security and privacy risk if they moved from Apple
| platforms to open platforms?
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Apple needs to show revenue growth every single year. Their
| hardware and services businesses will eventually tap out, and
| then they'll start mining their users for data and
| advertising. It's a miracle they've managed to avoid it for
| so long, but they will eventually be forced to. It will
| probably coincide with Tim Cook's retirement, unfortunately.
| hibikir wrote:
| The fact that they make money doing something doesn't stop
| hungry PMs and VPs from pushing other revenue sources.
|
| Amazon used to sell us items, now ad sales are a big part of
| their storefront's revenue. Cable used to not have ads.
|
| If you aren't paying, you are the product doesn't also imply
| that if you paying you are definitely not the product. To the
| modern exec, everything and everyone is the product. I an
| surprised that gig economy apps aren't also selling the
| eyeballs of their workers, making them watch ads to work.
| blibble wrote:
| > Because Apple makes its money by selling you hardware and
| services, not by selling advertising.
|
| have you used the app store in the last few years?
|
| I search for my bank and the first results are a load of
| scammy crypto app ads
|
| then my actual bank app is at result number 3
|
| this is the sort of behaviour I would have expected from
| Google
| eviks wrote:
| > Because Apple makes its money by selling you hardware and
| services, not by selling advertising.
|
| _and_ by selling ads, seriously, just open their app store.
|
| > And because it has positioned itself
|
| And they can continue that while simultaneously doing the
| opposite. There is no law against inconsistent behavior
|
| > Do you think it'd make headlines if Google showed its users
| an ad? Or Microsoft? Or Meta?
|
| Yes, of course, that's easy to find via a 5 sec google search
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2024/4/12/24128640/microsoft-
| window...
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/5/23712440/gmail-ads-more-
| an...
| triska wrote:
| Quoting from https://www.apple.com/privacy/:
|
| _" Privacy. That's Apple.
|
| Privacy is a fundamental human right. It's also one of our core
| values. Which is why we design our products and services to
| protect it. That's the kind of innovation we believe in."_
|
| So, Apple explicitly advertises with privacy, which makes it
| very different from other big tech companies, and it seems
| justified to expect it to uphold its promise. "Privacy. That's
| Apple.", according to Apple.
| tropicalfruit wrote:
| "advertises" is the key word here
| passwordoops wrote:
| From industry analysis:
|
| "Apple does have a traditional advertising business, and it
| does appear to be growing: The folks at Business Insider's
| sister company EMarketer think it will hit $6.3 billion this
| year, up from $5.4 billion last year.
|
| And that's not nothing. For context: That's more than the
| $4.5 billion in ad sales Twitter generated in 2021, its last
| full year before Elon Musk bought the company; it's also more
| than the $4.6 billion Snap generated in 2023."
|
| The article goes on to specify it's only 6% of Apple revenue.
| But 20% comes from Google and looking at how the antitrust
| trials are going, that source may soon dry up. The logical
| conclusion is Apple will aggressively move to make up for the
| loss by exploiting their captive audience.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-advertising-google-
| sea...
| 369548684892826 wrote:
| That's true until it isn't, just like "Don't be evil" was for
| Google.
| gumby271 wrote:
| Privacy. Except when you want to install software on a
| computer you own, then Apple has to know about it and approve
| of it. That's Apple.
|
| It's wild to me they would claim privacy as some human right
| while making the only computer in the world you can't
| actually control without their involvement.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| Marketing.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| I'm sure at some marketing meeting at Google, a VP racing for
| pole posiiton has wanted to green-light the idea of putting
| advertisements in their Wallet app.
|
| With any luck this backlash against Apple is so significant that
| a red flag is waved so ferociously that Google will never blast
| an advertisement out to their Google Wallet users.
|
| As the article outlines, I am sure that due to the sheer number
| of people who use Apple Wallet there was someone out there who
| had just bought an advance ticket to Superman and the moment they
| received a 'Transaction Successful' message this F1 advertisement
| notification popped up and had them wondering if Apple preserving
| their privacy really is a competitive advantage.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Google was there first. During Euro 2024, the "transaction
| successful" screen displayed some football-related animation.
| TheDong wrote:
| Was it an ad or an easter egg, like the "google.com" logo
| animations you get on new years and other holidays?
|
| Did it send a push notification or bother the user? Got a
| screenshot or reference, since a quick google doesn't uncover
| it?
| Neil44 wrote:
| Yeah it was an Easter egg style thing, similar to when the
| change the Google logo for special occasions. Not
| comparable to a push add for a movie (which I also haven't
| seen a screenshot of yet to be fair)
| TheDong wrote:
| > which I also haven't seen a screenshot of yet to be
| fair
|
| The article links to
| https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/26/apple-
| wallet-se...
|
| Which links to these examples:
|
| https://x.com/ParkerOrtolani/status/1937551035825807545
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWallet/comments/1ljbjrs/how
| _do...
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/24/apple-wallet-
| notificati...
|
| (and actually a few more too)
| Neil44 wrote:
| ewww how cheesy is that.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| It was shown full screen after completing payment, as a
| distraction, and increasing the time for which Google
| Wallet takes over your screen during payments.
| theginger wrote:
| They have been doing that for years for all sorts of things
| usually seasonal but sometimes other stuff
| avhception wrote:
| While Google may or may not refrain from putting ads in their
| wallet app due to this incident, the aggressive ways that they
| use to get me to use the wallet app have been off putting
| enough.
|
| Every now and then, there is a full-screen popup on my phone
| that wants to onboard me into the wallet app. The only options
| I have are "yes" or "later".
|
| Clearly a company that operates on the principle of "If the
| user doesn't want to, let's just nag them to death until they
| give up" is not to be trusted.
| ryandrake wrote:
| To be fair, the "Yes, Maybe Later" pattern can be seen
| throughout Silicon Valley. Tech companies, by and large,
| cannot accept "No" from users.
| netsharc wrote:
| What I learned about consent I learned from megacorps...
| avhception wrote:
| You're right, and I have seen this pattern elsewhere.
| Especially on Windows systems (I, personally, switched to
| Linux decades ago). So Google is definitely not alone here.
|
| But, as already mentioned in the original article, the
| wallet is an especially sensitive area.
| lozenge wrote:
| Have you tried going to "App Info" and "Disable" for Wallet?
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| I love these choices, yes or yes later.
|
| They do the same on my windows computer, ever time I open
| edge and every time I open a new tab !
|
| This is the kind of behavior I wouldn't even tolerate in real
| life, they are really taking us for sheeps.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| Using windows and tolerating it's crap is a choice, my
| dude. Linux and MacOS are right there.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Windows' sins are the utter lack of elegance and outright
| hostility to the generic users. And I understand those
| trigger visceral reactions for many.
|
| Yet macos' polish and elegance just hide different
| issues, in particular the utter lack of flexibility
| (Apple's way or the highway) and expecting to solve most
| issues by throwing money at it (want 3D perfs ? just buy
| another computer)
|
| I personally couldn't understand why I'd keep paying for
| both a macbook and an ipad just to have a "real" computer
| and a touch screen. Microsoft made the Surface Pro a
| decade ago now.
| loloquwowndueo wrote:
| You can have a non-Mac computer with a non-Microsoft OS.
| Like I said - choices, choices. All choices have
| downsides for sure.
| lozenge wrote:
| Google already has ads in their Wallet.
| https://madeby.tfl.gov.uk/2025/03/31/google-pay-tube-challen...
| mslansn wrote:
| Google Photos, which comes installed by default on all Android
| phones, sends notifications asking you to print an album with
| your photos through a partner.
| lmm wrote:
| That doesn't feel like a comparable violation. I've bought
| more than one (physical) photo album that came with a flyer
| in for ordering more copies.
| mslansn wrote:
| Google Photos is the gallery app that comes with Android
| phones. Sometimes you will get notifications asking you to
| buy a printed, real life photo album with the photos that
| you have in your phone. That album is sold through a
| partner, which makes this an ad. It's not upselling you on
| something you already purchased. It's telling you to buy a
| photo album with the photos you took using your phone.
|
| https://support.google.com/photos/thread/162190/how-to-
| turn-...
| altairprime wrote:
| Did we ever find out what happened at Mozilla that allowed that
| trust-destroying Mr. Robot advertisement to happen? There seems
| to be a trend (n=2) of Marketing spending consumer trust for one-
| time media engagement clicks.
| detaro wrote:
| Not in detail afaik. The impression I got was that they somehow
| just didn't consider that people not looking for it would
| notice, and per the statement at the time
| (https://blog.mozilla.org/en/firefox/retrospective-looking-
| gl...) the review process was too focused on privacy vs the big
| picture.
| altairprime wrote:
| Yeah, that's the non-answer post that I remember. Ah well.
| efitz wrote:
| I think a conclusion has been leaped to that is not necessarily
| true.
|
| If _everyone_ is getting the same annoying ad (in both wallet and
| App Store), then what individual user tracking or surveillance is
| happening? Certainly none is required.
|
| It's still annoying AF and it's clear they didn't learn their
| lesson from U2. But I don't jump to the conclusion that "Apple is
| spying on me". Instead I conclude "iOS leadership are greedy
| jerks with defective long term memory".
| triska wrote:
| I think the article rightly speaks of "trust-erosion" in
| connection with this incident because, in addition to the
| showing of ads being subject to the suspicion of surveillance,
| it raises the question how seriously we can take a wallet app
| that shows ads _or does anything completely unrelated to its
| designated and propagated purpose_ , something that is not the
| reason why this app is used and in fact detracts everyone from
| the intended use of this app.
|
| The breakdown of trust is already in the question "What
| absurdity comes next from such a sensitive app?"
| latexr wrote:
| > If _everyone_ is getting the same annoying ad (in both wallet
| and App Store)
|
| Not everyone is. I'm in the EU and did not get it. I wouldn't
| be surprised if this was only in the US.
|
| > then what individual user tracking or surveillance is
| happening?
|
| That's not at all what most people (including this article) are
| complaining about. It's about an ad in an app which should
| never ever ever have them, the targeting is really low on the
| list of priorities compared to the rest.
|
| > it's clear they didn't learn their lesson from U2.
|
| The two cases are nothing alike. They both involved Apple and
| backlash, and that's where the similarities end.
|
| > But I don't jump to the conclusion that "Apple is spying on
| me".
|
| Again, that's not the major issue most people are complaining
| about.
| keiferski wrote:
| Apple without Ive and Jobs increasingly has a taste problem.
| Everything from their ads to things like this are just in really
| poor taste, and aren't something that they would have done 15
| years ago because they would have thought it was beneath their
| brand.
|
| I like Apple, so I'm really hoping they bring on someone to solve
| this. Otherwise they're on track to be the same as every other
| tasteless tech company.
|
| More on taste and Apple: https://www.readtrung.com/p/steve-jobs-
| rick-rubin-and-taste
| dubcanada wrote:
| Jobs has been gone for almost 15 years. From what I know Ive
| had nothing to do with anything but design aesthetic.
|
| I am not sure either of these people have anything to do with
| ads on Apple Wallet. Or even Apple Wallet...
| keiferski wrote:
| The entire reason Apple made devices that were a level above
| competitors is because the design _wasn't_ just the
| aesthetic. Ive was chief designer and so obviously had a key
| impact.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| How do you know Ive had a key impact? Do you know it or
| read somewhere online?
| dijit wrote:
| "How do you know that <primary responsible person> had
| impact".
|
| Do you hear yourself?
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Then all OP is saying key impact person had key impact.
| Doesn't add any substance to discussion.
| dijit wrote:
| > How do you know that? Because of the title?
|
| Yes
| tempaccount420 wrote:
| 3x Boosted?
| exe34 wrote:
| Neither did your second sentence, and you still wrote it.
| Sometimes we write things down to draw attention to the
| fact, not to inform a naive audience of facts that they
| did not know.
| nottorp wrote:
| Key impact like the shit emoji keyboard that couldn't
| survive a single speck of dust?
| pqtyw wrote:
| It might be a complete misinterpretation but it seems like
| Ive went completely haywire when Job's was gone with the
| ultra thin, portless, overheating Macs with a crappy
| keyboards and pointless touch bars that sort of looked cool
| but provided no other real value.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| The point is, when Jobs was around, there was an overarching
| (unstated?) policy at Apple of "nobody do anything to make us
| look like cheap tasteless shits". Whereas now, Tim Cook is
| very happy to sell out for a quick buck. He's a logistics
| guy, not a product guy, and at his core is a bean counter; he
| neither has taste nor appreciates that it has value unto
| itself.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| There were ~60M iPhone users when Jobs was the CEO. There
| are about ~1.4B right now. Both respectively accomplished
| very respectable things. It's not selling for a quick buck
| if he was able to scale the business to such degrees. That
| being said, I agree that Apple makes a lot of wrongs.
| trinix912 wrote:
| Part of the appeal of Apple was that not everyone and
| their mom just had an Apple device. They heavily played
| on that, similar to how fashion does. That "exclusivity"
| (sort of) is gone now, and it shows with Apple trying to
| create likable, noncontroversial designs for the larger
| crowd. They try to make up for it with prices, but it
| misses the point.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| Apple became Gucci
| danaris wrote:
| Maybe that was part of the appeal to _you_.
|
| To most of us, the appeal of Apple has always been
| primarily that it does what it does well.
|
| I don't think Apple themselves thinks their appeal
| depends on exclusivity, but rather on a premium
| experience.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| I promise you, in 2005, everyone and their mom had an
| iPod. If you couldn't afford the full fat iPod, you
| bought any of the various cheaper stripped down models.
| If anything, Apple has gotten more exclusive through
| their pricing.
| ZenoArrow wrote:
| > There are about ~1.4B right now.
|
| What are you basing this on, the total number of iPhones
| sold since 2007? If so, it doesn't account for the users
| that have bought multiple iPhones.
| jama211 wrote:
| One google shows that's considered the "current active
| user" count, not total sales. 2.3 billion by Jan 2024 (so
| more now) is the estimate for total sales.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| I did quick Googling, and it sounded about right. Roughly
| 50% USA, 20% China, 50% Japan, 30% Europe, 3% India
| already is a big number.
| bliteben wrote:
| Jobs had won complete cultural dominance of desktop pcs
| with the iMac 27". If you saw a desktop on a tv show for
| the past 20 years it was an iMac 27". Tim saw they could
| cancel it and go against their policy of minimal cords and
| sell separate Mac minis and Mac Studio displays.
| simonh wrote:
| My current and previous machines were 27" iMacs. The
| first one, a first gen 5k bought in 2014, is in our
| kitchen and still heavily used.
|
| I don't know what I'll do when I need a new personal
| machine.
| orangecat wrote:
| _Tim saw they could cancel it and go against their policy
| of minimal cords and sell separate Mac minis and Mac
| Studio displays._
|
| I much prefer being able to use third-party displays and
| not having to get rid of perfectly good screens when
| getting a new computer.
| dkersten wrote:
| > I know Ive had nothing to do with
|
| Ok you haven't but what about Ive?
| ryandrake wrote:
| The whole forcing a U2 album onto people's devices thing, which
| happened shortly after Jobs died, was the first time I, a
| former Apple fan, sat up and realized "wow, these guys are
| really losing their taste/tact!" Weird to think that was over a
| decade ago!
| andyferris wrote:
| I agree that was weird - but it was never forced onto your
| device unless you chose to download that album (it would be
| like saying a particular album was "forced" onto your spotify
| when they are ALL available and free - this was just the
| first "spotify"-style album designed to be streamed not
| purchased).
| yunwal wrote:
| It was automatically added to your library, so if you
| shuffle your recently added or your whole library it got
| included.
| iinnPP wrote:
| Wow. Depending on the timing, that's a brand ending event
| for me. Though I am definitely not the norm.
| alwa wrote:
| It was forced onto your device to the extent that any other
| of your library songs or iTunes purchases were, whether
| that worked out to be streamed on demand or downloaded
| locally. Space was never the issue, forcing bad music in my
| shuffle play was.
|
| I remember distinctly, because after trying patiently for
| months then years to get rid of it through official
| channels, I rage-quit iTunes when that whiny man's voice
| started playing again the moment I connected my phone in a
| rental car. I still won't touch Apple Music to this day.
|
| For that matter, it still comes back from time to time all
| these years later:
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/13kc29l
| /...
|
| Apparently, since they have taken down their dedicated
| removal tool from 11 years ago [0], your remaining recourse
| is to contact Apple Support and persist through upsell
| attempts to paid support.
|
| [0] https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-29208540
| iambateman wrote:
| I think Jobs makes the same mistake with U2 even if he is at
| the helm. But I think he would've been more effective at
| handling the fall out.
|
| Apple had enjoyed having world-leading crisis communications
| embodied within Steve and didn't immediately know what to do
| when he was gone.
| hylaride wrote:
| > I think Jobs makes the same mistake with U2 even if he is
| at the helm. But I think he would've been more effective at
| handling the fall out.
|
| Perhaps, but there probably would have been more thought
| over it than just shoving it onto everybody's phone. The
| problem, I think, is that Apple is *mostly* run by white
| men over 50 - a demographic that sees U2 as the pinnacle of
| the rock band. They probably don't even realize that rock
| bands aren't "cool" anymore. I remember when Apple Music
| was first announced and Eddy Cue spent far too long
| "demonstrating" his music library and it fell flat even to
| the press in his age range. Usually you're best off
| demonstrating with "timeless" music as music tastes are so
| personal.
| leptons wrote:
| >But I think he would've been more effective at handling
| the fall out.
|
| "You're holding it wrong" was about the worst case of
| "handling the fall out" that I can remember in computing
| history. Jobs was an absolute laughing stock after he said
| that.
| matthewmc3 wrote:
| That album still shows up today in jarring ways in Apple
| Music when you use the Create Station feature because it was
| on everyone's phones and their algorithm still isn't good
| enough to recognize when one of these things is not like the
| others.
| qwerpy wrote:
| They learned from this but still couldn't help themselves.
| There's massive full screen ads in Apple Music to "preload
| the F1 the movie album". At least it's a choice to load it or
| not this time, but it's still extremely disappointing that
| people paying for Apple Music get shown these ads. I had
| recently canceled my Spotify subscription because of
| sponsored content in their app.
| jmsdnns wrote:
| Jobs hated ads. You're right that he never wouldve done what
| Apple is doing now.
|
| Cook needs to stop listening to investors, like Warren Buffett,
| because he's letting them wreck Apple's integrity for the sake
| of making a buck. Apple just isnt user focused like they used
| to be and it's crappy.
| chii wrote:
| Cook is an operations person. He makes the logistics work.
| He's no visionary. Jobs is a visionary, but is not a
| logistics person. Apple struck lightning when both existed,
| to provide complimentary ideas and counterbalances.
|
| Lighting doesnt strike twice imho.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Tell that to Van Halen!
| hylaride wrote:
| Same with Ive and Jobs. Ive was a great designer, but no
| usability expert. Jobs put practical limits on and as soon
| as Jobs was gone, Ive got total control. The result is some
| of the least-popular Mac laptops ever.
| bluedevilzn wrote:
| Jobs created iAd. He hated bad ads.
|
| Here's him announcing and talking about ads in WWDC:
| https://youtu.be/eY3BZzzLaaM?si=Dttc5eJJ1B7Zf3sB
| jmsdnns wrote:
| he was vocal about his opposition to intrusive ads in
| particular. he'd say "You're either the customer or you're
| the product." he believed users paid a premium for apple
| products and that they should not be subjected to
| compromises with advertising.
|
| iAd was something that happened right at the end of his
| life because devs were putting ads in apple apps anyway and
| he wanted to control how that was done.
|
| this is meant to add context to what bluedevilzn said, btw.
| it is not a refutation.
| simonh wrote:
| I think Jobs recognised that ads are intrusions into
| people's lives. The advertiser has a responsibility to
| respect the audience. They don't have a natural right to
| that attention, and have to earn it.
|
| Thats why the F1 wallet add is such a bad move. It's
| disrespectful and intrusive.
|
| iAD was supposed to be about innovative, informative,
| well designed high quality adverts. It never really
| worked out though.
| rchaud wrote:
| Jobs disliked anything where Apple wasn't getting a cut.
| Flash games and Google ads being two of the biggest
| offenders in his eyes.
|
| He also "hated" the small tablets Samsung were making,
| saying in a keynote that you'd have to file your finger
| down to use it. He said this knowing full well Apple were
| launching the iPad Mini in 12 months' time.
|
| I really hope one day Jobs' marketer-speak soundbites
| stop being repeated like like biblical pronouncements.
| The App Store, Apple News, Stocks and other properties
| are filled with hideous Google-like ads today, and Jobs
| likely wouldn't bat an eye, because they brought in
| money.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Yeah, "Jobs hated ads" is a such a wild rewriting of the
| history of one of industry's greatest marketers and, yes,
| ad men. (1984 commercial. Mac vs PC.)
| jmsdnns wrote:
| please check my other comment. it's not a wild rewriting,
| just needed clarification.
| jameshart wrote:
| Jobs paid for some of the most iconic ads of all time - 1984,
| Think Different, Rip Mix Burn, dancing iPod silhouettes, I'm
| a PC...
| Nemi wrote:
| I am curious what you attribute that Warren Buffett is asking
| Tim Cook to do? Warren is notorious for being hands-off with
| operations. I can't imagine him having ANY commentary on what
| Tim Cook should be doing with Apple other than with capital
| allocation.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| Yeah. One thing I learned working at a Big company is that
| companies are full of parasites who are there to get their
| promotion or salary increase and don't give a cat shit about
| users or mission or values. Honestly it sucked any joy out of
| my life but I am stuck here because of visa.
| bombcar wrote:
| You almost _need_ (not going to be definitive because some
| big companies just need to execute the same operations for
| hundreds of years) a Jobs or Gates or _someone_ who doesn 't
| believe their own bullshit and is willing to say "this sucks,
| we're shitcanning it."
|
| Otherwise you get generic slop, eventually.
| breckenedge wrote:
| Happens at small companies too, especially those owned by
| private equity.
| soderfoo wrote:
| Visionaries and solution oriented devs can't deliver the kind
| of quarterly "profitability" that careerist, KPI-chasing,
| promotion-hungry product managers love to promise.
| noisy_boy wrote:
| Until a company fully supports the combination of top-class
| engineering + top-class user experience to the exclusion and
| expulsion of political parasites, this is inevitable.
| Unfortunately, the ever-expanding blind profit chasing, at
| the exclusion of everything else, kills the chance of that
| happening.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| You described any regular workplace.
|
| You are not supposed to find joy in work. Work is something
| that you do so you can afford to find joy elsewhere.
| hshshshshsh wrote:
| But isn't that a bad way to live life? Spending the best
| years of life working a job that you don't like so that you
| get weekends free?
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Starving is worse.
|
| Try to find a job that is tolerable and devote your free
| time to things that make you happy - family, friends,
| hobbies, etc
| rewgs wrote:
| You're both not wrong.
|
| What @surgical_fire is describing is the "minimum viable
| product" for a career. It's the thing that serves the
| basics on Maslow's Hierarchy.
|
| What @hshshshshsh is describing is anything past that. We
| briefly exist sandwiched between two eternities --
| shouldn't we care about the quality of our time during
| the thing that takes up the largest quantity of our time?
|
| The problem is that, the issue that @hshshshshsh is
| pointing out is precisely what makes the minimum
| @surgical_fire is describing damn near impossible to
| find.
|
| Because no one gives a shit about users, values, mission,
| etc, the company suffers and turns into a shit-show,
| incentivizing people to become more selfish so that they
| don't get sucked into the vortex of shit.
|
| In order to reach the minimum of a "tolerable" job that
| doesn't suck up all your free time or make your time
| there a living hell, the company _must_ engage with at
| least some of what @hshshshshsh is describing.
|
| This requires some amount of good faith from the majority
| involved. This is a tricky and fragile thing. It's easy
| to lose. And thus the cycle begins anew.
|
| Ultimately, we need more people thinking like
| @hshshshshsh so that we can get what @surgical_fire is
| describing.
| mpalmer wrote:
| You're not _supposed_ to do anything.
|
| Why on earth would you discourage someone from finding joy
| in their work? It's possible.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > Why on earth would you discourage someone from finding
| joy in their work?
|
| For the same reason I discourage people believing in
| Santa Claus or in the Easter Bunny
|
| Finding joy in their work is a cute idea. But it is cute
| and false, believing in it will lead to nothing but
| frustration and lower income.
| mpalmer wrote:
| I'm sure believing that helps you if that's been your own
| experience. But it's demonstrably possible, at least for
| people for are not you.
|
| Like, are you reading "find joy" as "find a job doing
| what you already love"? Those are different things.
|
| This affectation of weary cynicism is so easy and
| popular. I'm over it.
| jwr wrote:
| Jobs was no angel, but he did follow "build great things and
| profits will come" philosophy. Apple these days is run for
| profit: profits are clearly first, and good things might
| accidentally come as well as a side effect.
|
| That would be ok, because competition, except these days the
| moat is huge: it is _very_ difficult for a new entrant to
| compete.
| jama211 wrote:
| They did loads of tacky things back in the day, we've just
| forgotten about them.
| troupo wrote:
| Modern Apple can't even do tacky things.
|
| Tacky things under Jobs were failed experiments. Modern
| Apple doesn't believe in either experiments or failed
| experiments.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| I think back then their stock was so bad that anything to
| make it go up was a good thing.
|
| Now Apple is a multi trillion dollar company and they
| can't take as much risk.
| layer8 wrote:
| Given the Vision Pro, and the many billions spent on the
| now-defunct car project, I'm not so sure this is true.
| Fade_Dance wrote:
| I agree about project titan/cars. That was a behemoth of
| a failed experiment experiment.
|
| As for vision pro though and I guess even to a little
| extent the car exploration, it's sort of "safe" and
| derivative conceptually.
|
| Steve's experiments were often seemingly directly at odds
| with profitability. Like, one day he may have looked at
| the extensive lineup with the "Pro Max" etc, and made the
| call to cut back down to one iPhone model. Or he would,
| you know, do something ridiculous like make the next
| Imac's screen round or something.
|
| It's decisions like that which primarily profit driven
| mega corporations just can't do.
| layer8 wrote:
| They could do "tacky things" without affecting a whole
| product category. Arguably they are doing potentially
| unprofitable experiments in their main product lines,
| like with the iPhone mini and the upcoming iPhone Air.
| They just aren't "tacky". I think they could go a bit
| more outside the comfort zone without immediately
| jeopardizing profitability and incurring the wrath of the
| shareholders.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| True but I guess I don't find those visionary at all.
|
| Historically Apple refines something common that already
| exists and makes it cool. The last big thing they made
| cool was the smartphone, followed by the AirPod pros. I
| think AirPods really pushed headphones ahead. Do you
| remember how bad wireless headphones used to be?
|
| So I guess I want that sort of Apple experience. If Apple
| turned ordinary hardware experiences into premium, that
| would be nice. AR googles are not ordinary experiences.
| Smartphones were.
|
| That's just my opinion though.
| mcphage wrote:
| > Modern Apple doesn't believe in either experiments
|
| Apple Vision Pro qualifies here.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| One of their costliest, most visible, failed experiments
| ever.
| jama211 wrote:
| Which doesn't disqualify it from disproving the statement
| above it
| troupo wrote:
| You got me :) I _completely_ forgot about Vision Pro
| ninkendo wrote:
| You and everyone else.
| jama211 wrote:
| Well that's just demonstrably false, even aside from the
| fact that that's a fairly large goalpost move.
| croes wrote:
| You're holding it wrong
| aspenmayer wrote:
| I had a 3rd party band-aid sticker on the iPhone 4 I waited
| in line to buy at the flagship Apple Store in San
| Francisco. I remember Square handing out aux-input
| cardreaders for free to me and other line-con attendees
| pre-purchase. This was jailbreakme times. Cydia pre-exists
| the Apple App Store on iOS, in case anyone was unaware.
| Cydia and the wider jb scene used to keep Apple honeset, as
| Cydia is the original App Store. How the mighty have
| fallen.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| You mean the old classic way of doing business where the
| company focuses on the product and the customer and not the
| shareholder? What a shocking and novel idea.
| necovek wrote:
| Until it shows up in the bottom line, they will have all the
| metrics and data they need to continue pushing this way.
|
| The old adage of "vote with your (physical?) wallet" holds
| double here.
| AdamN wrote:
| I remember when Jobs killed the Herald Square Apple Store even
| though the lease had been signed and it 'made sense' on paper.
| When visiting the location it's clear it's a dump and no Apple
| store will fix that. He put his brand before short term
| revenue.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Apple is basically a smartphone company at this point, and
| smartphone sales are plummeting. And I think they're plummeting
| for the same reason desktop sales plummeted. We went from a
| time where a new PC was a bit dated in 3 months and obsolete in
| 2 years, to modern times where a desktop from a decade ago is
| good for pretty much everything, even including high end gaming
| if you started with a high end card.
|
| The exact same thing's happening to phones. I have a 6 year old
| phone that was cheap when it was new, and it still runs 100% of
| what I use my phone for, and most people use their phones for,
| perfectly. Tech hardware as a recurring business model only
| works when there's perceived significant improvements between
| generations. Trying to sell a few more pixels, or a fraction of
| a cm thinner case or whatever just isn't worth it for most
| people.
|
| So, as typical with corporations in this spot, they start
| flailing to try to maintain revenue, let alone growth.
| Microsoft became a 'cloud' company paired with a side gig of
| spyware marketed as an OS. It'll be interesting to see what
| Apple transforms into.
| gizajob wrote:
| Nokia.
| drob518 wrote:
| Yep. And this is why "liquid glass" is the hot new thing this
| year. That's basically all we have left to drive the refresh
| cycle that tech is addicted to.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| It surprises me that this is what apple has essentially
| boiled down to. Yes there are people stuck in the walled
| garden but they were willingly stuck there tbh. They liked
| apple vision and felt different. But if apple is just going
| to lose on all fronts ("AI","vision?","This year
| innovation=liquid-glass") Yeah, they might not be in a good
| state..., Also most people I see want an iphone just rebuy
| old iphones and those phones themselves are still in good
| conditions.
| drob518 wrote:
| Well, I'm pretty entrenched in Apple's ecosystem because
| I value the iCloud integration between my devices, but
| all my devices are a couple years old and I tend to keep
| them until they are no longer supported (M1 Air, iPhone
| 14, iPad Air M1, etc.). In particular, I don't drive my
| iPhone hard. As long as it can do phone and texting and
| run a browser and the Kindle app, I'm good. Needless to
| say, I won't be upgrading devices for liquid glass.
| supertrope wrote:
| Just like the new fashion season, car model year updates,
| and spectator sport video games roster updates. Change for
| the sake of driving sales. Has anyone done fashion as a
| service (FaaS)?
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Probably more hardware while trying to recreate the "your
| friends and family will leave you out" effect of iMessage.
| rrr_oh_man wrote:
| not outside NA
| sillyfluke wrote:
| >I have a 6 year old phone that was cheap when it was new,
| and it still runs 100% of what I use my phone for
|
| What's especially annoying about iphones is that my decade
| old andriod phones without any os updates work more robustly
| on the modern web than a 2021 iphone with its original os.
| You can blame it on chrome dominance. but it's pretty much
| bullshit if you're a company with Apple's treasure chest and
| you are no longer able to push out any buy-me features to
| make up for your outdated build and release cycle.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You're an outlier. Apple has arguably the best lifecycle in
| the personal computing space in all of its categories.
|
| They support most devices for 5-7 years, and have a strong
| incentive to do so as there is a pipeline of used devices
| into developing markets and their branding and segmentation
| means their devices have strong resale value.
|
| With your old android, you're either running an open source
| stack of some sort, which is out of the reach of most
| users, or operating on an ancient os that Google or your
| carrier (or both) has long abandoned that leaves you
| vulnerable to a variety of issues.
| hermanzegerman wrote:
| > They support most devices for 5-7 years
|
| That's the bare minimum under the new EU Ecodesign Rules.
| Also for phones this is long, but for PCs/Notebooks this
| is rather short.
|
| >With your old android, you're either running an open
| source stack of some sort, which is out of the reach of
| most users, or operating on an ancient os that Google or
| your carrier (or both) has long abandoned that leaves you
| vulnerable to a variety of issues.
|
| That completely misses the point that old Android Devices
| still get updated and recent Apps that work well, while
| Apple blocks their users from enjoying that. No more iOS
| Updates on Apple usually means no more App
| Installs/Updates after a short time
| sillyfluke wrote:
| >They support most devices for 5-7 years
|
| You're not responding to the case I'm specifically
| talking about. As new major iOS or Android releases have
| features I could care less about, I primarily only care
| about critical security releases for the OS I have. Why
| is it thatI have to install a new OS just to get a
| updated version of Safari?
|
| Whereas I seem to be able to download usable browsers on
| older Android phones (with older Android versions
| installed) from the play store?
|
| These phones are not my primary phones, so I'm less
| concerned with security and more concerned about them
| turning into bricks of trash sooner rather than later. A
| phone that can stay usuable for longer without any os
| updates versus one that requires os updates to stay
| usuable should get some points in that category. And it's
| been my experience that battery life of older phones are
| negatively affected after os updates anyway, as they are
| not the targete phones for new OS.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| Because it doesn't make sense with their business model.
|
| My company had some ancient capital equipment that
| required windows 2000. We had a contract that supported
| them up until a few years ago. That contract costed _a
| fortune_ , but made perfect sense for the use case.
| Nobody is going to pay to keep an iPhone 4 updated.
|
| Note my comment is that you're an outlier. That doesn't
| mean that your needs are flawed, wrong or anything else.
| It's just not consistent with the market's need and
| represents an addressable market too small for Apple.
|
| Sometimes companies do serve niche markets by rolling
| them together. Sonim, for example, made a fully
| waterproof Android phone that was rugged and marketed to
| public safety and construction customers. It also solved
| a problem for small customers like mine who had
| environments where traditional smartphones could trigger
| an explosion.
|
| I don't want a phone with design characteristics the lets
| it operate in a grain elevator. Likewise, I have no
| desire to operate a phone for many years, and the market,
| rightly or wrongly, agrees with me.
| ericmay wrote:
| > I have a 6 year old phone that was cheap when it was new,
| and it still runs 100% of what I use my phone for, and most
| people use their phones for, perfectly.
|
| Just to be clear your suggesting that your 6 year old iPhone
| runs a suit of social media apps, full graphics games like
| Minecraft (or whatever the hell people play these days I
| don't know), fitness apps, connects to the latest audio
| devices like Apple's AirPods Pro (as an example), works with
| CarPlay/Android Auto, has wireless charging capability, can
| place 3D objects in a room to help you plan out a new design,
| and allows you to use payments features like tap to pay? Plus
| equivalent camera and video quality?
|
| Because if your phone doesn't do all of those things and
| perform as well and have great battery life too, your 6 year
| old Android phone _doesn't really do what most people use
| their phones for today_.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| I don't know anyone who uses their phone to play full
| graphics games or use it to plan out interior design, and
| for everything else, a 6 year old iPhone can most
| definitely do all of that. I know, because I did all of
| these things on an iPhone 11 up until earlier this year,
| and I only replaced it because the charging port was
| damaged.
| simonklitj wrote:
| My almost 5 year old iPhone 12 does all of this. No issues,
| no pull towards upgrading except for USB-C.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Not sure why I'd want USB-C and then have to spend a
| fortune to replace all my existing charger leads with the
| highly unreliable USB-C ecosystem.
| Fade_Dance wrote:
| Frankly, you might as well. It's an inevitability that
| you'll have to do that.
|
| If you're talking about charging a phone, the usb-c
| ecosystem is literally never going to give you even a
| single instance of annoyance. If you're talking about
| lightning and laptop sized power delivery then, yes the
| cables need better labeling, but _all_ of those cables
| are going to work for charging a phone.
| ta1243 wrote:
| I have several USB-C chargers and cables, some of which
| work to charge my headphones, some of which don't.
|
| How they managed to convert the simplicity and
| reliability of 20 years of USB-A into this mess is
| anyones guess.
| Spunkie wrote:
| With USB-C you don't actually have to pay the apple tax
| on cords or chargers, so in no way should it "cost a
| fortune".
| ta1243 wrote:
| I was in my local store on Friday looking for a new torch
| and had a quick browse of the chargers. USB-C cables were
| more expensive than lightning.
| TheBicPen wrote:
| That's supply and demand I suppose. As demand for
| lightning dwindles due to a decreasing number of people
| actively using devices with lightning ports, the price
| will tend to drop. That's not an invalid reason to prefer
| lightning over USB-C, but it's not sustainable.
| Production of lightning accessories is probably at or
| near 0 at this point so the oversupply will not last
| forever. Enjoy the deals while you can!
| simonklitj wrote:
| My PS5, iPad, MacBook, Kindle all use USB-C. It sure
| would be nice to have just one charger.
| cardamomo wrote:
| I didn't think it matters if they are an average smartphone
| user. They are still representative of a person of
| smartphone users.
| transcriptase wrote:
| An iPhone 11 does indeed do all of those things easily. The
| only thing it lacks is LiDAR, which I would argue very few
| people use intentionally and was introduced the following
| year anyway. Camera of course not going to be equivalent,
| but still takes stunning photos.
| rocketvole wrote:
| I have an iPhone 8. It does literally everything you've
| listed, and the battery is cheap/easy to replace. My lg
| v30, with a battery replacement is about the same (albiet
| with a custom os since androids didn't get many years of
| updates back then)
| gausswho wrote:
| I'd argue the that most people with phones use them largely
| for social apps, messengers, and the camera. Maybe social
| signaling.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| My 2019 iPhone 11 does all that just fine. I chose to
| replace the battery when it 80% of original capacity a few
| months ago.
| ta1243 wrote:
| Thinking about my previous iphones
|
| > Just to be clear your suggesting that your 6 year old
| iPhone runs a suit of social media apps
|
| No, I deleted them all - other than youtube (premium, no
| adverts). I used to have them 10 years ago though so a 10
| year old phone would run them.
|
| > full graphics games like Minecraft (or whatever the hell
| people play these days I don't know)
|
| I have a few games to pass the time in some cases, but a
| touchscreen is rubbish for proper gaming. Sadly some games
| I had (monkey island rings a bell) seem to have been
| removed.
|
| > fitness apps
|
| Alas I'm not particularly fit, however I do recall a
| fitness tracker on windows 3.1, so I imagine that the
| supercomputer in my pocket can keep track of my heart-rate
| with the right sensor. I am fairly sure these were all the
| rage when covid hit 5 years ago so it's a fair bet they'll
| work now.
|
| > connects to the latest audio devices like Apple's AirPods
| Pro (as an example)
|
| Headphones? My 25 year old phone will do that. Bluetooth?
| I'm fairly sure my 3GS did that. Sadly modern phones don't
| do wired headphones any more, so have regressed on that
| metric.
|
| > works with CarPlay/Android Auto
|
| Yes, I had carplay in my 2016 car so any iphone since then
| will do carplay.
|
| > has wireless charging capability
|
| My 4 year old iphone does that, although I rarely use it.
| It came out 5 years ago.
|
| > can place 3D objects in a room to help you plan out a new
| design
|
| I have to admit I have never even considered doing that
|
| > and allows you to use payments features like tap to pay?
|
| Yes. It's face recognition so less convenient than the
| older phone it replaced which was a touch sensor and also
| did tap-to-pay, more like "double click, stare at phone,
| wait, then pay". Apple Pay came out over 10 years ago.
|
| > Plus equivalent camera and video quality?
|
| Equivalent to what? A decade ago Apple were doing big
| advertising spreads about how good iphones were. I assume
| phones released 4 years later were at least as good.
|
| Nothing on your list is a feature a phone from about 2016
| didn't have, other than magnetic charging, and the 2020 era
| iphone 12 had that.
| ericmay wrote:
| You're thinking about how _you_ use your phone, not how
| most people use their phone. The reason people continue
| to upgrade their phones isn 't always mindless
| consumerism.
|
| For example, when you write:
|
| > Headphones? My 25 year old phone will do that.
| Bluetooth? I'm fairly sure my 3GS did that. Sadly modern
| phones don't do wired headphones any more, so have
| regressed on that metric.
|
| You're already showing me how you don't understand what
| people are buying or why they are buying it. You're
| referencing wired headphones as if anyone besides a tiny
| group of people wants wired headphones anymore. People
| are buying AirPods and AirPods Pro - they want them
| connected to their Apple Watch so they can go for a run
| with them, and they want new health features that
| continue to be released for such devices.
|
| Reading these responses reminds me of the "inverse Reddit
| stock pics". If I were to take these responses seriously,
| and I don't because they are nonsense, Apple and others
| would be out of business tomorrow because any old Joe
| just wants to use their wired headphones and their 10
| year old iPhone is JuST aS G00d. It's rubbish.
|
| Here's a good example haha:
|
| > Alas I'm not particularly fit, however I do recall a
| fitness tracker on windows 3.1
|
| Yea man. That feature existed on Windows 3.1, ergo nobody
| should or would want to buy the next iPhone. Give me a
| break. Even so you yourself said you're not particularly
| fit. What makes you think you know the first thing about
| why people are buying new phones or new devices as it
| relates to fitness activities or apps?
| iwontberude wrote:
| 2015 Nvidia GTX 970 is such a piece of shit card, no you
| couldn't do modern gaming. It has relatively few pipelines,
| low bandwidth and has no frame generation capability to make
| anything new playable.
| HighGoldstein wrote:
| Op said "if you started with a high end card". The GTX 970
| was Nvidia's mid-range at the time, and not a great one at
| that. A 980 Ti or Titan X can still perform reasonably well
| for a 10 year old card. Even with the 970, the real problem
| is its low VRAM (and the 3.5+0.5GB fiasco). The AMD RX 480
| 8G which was comparable but with much more VRAM can still
| run most games, even if you have to make some compromises.
| gausswho wrote:
| And yet it can capably power many classics. Skyrim. Portal
| 2. Witcher 3. The same argument made above about phone
| hardware is largely true for gaming. The hallmark of modern
| gaming (and increasingly television) is sadly one of
| eschewing artistic creation in favor of monetizing eyeballs
| and the construction of social phenomena, artificial
| scarcity.
| Spunkie wrote:
| You absolutely can do modern gaming on it. I literally have
| 2 friends in our gaming group that are still rocking 970 in
| their desktops.
|
| They have had to replace the fans on the graphics card a
| few times and a repaste but other than that they are
| chugging away.
|
| Also solid lol on "frame generation". Marketing
| fluff/features like that only exists but because they have
| run out of real generational performance gains to sell
| cards with.
| dontlaugh wrote:
| I used one until last year and it worked even for most new
| games.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| Agree they have a huge taste problem, but even besides that
| Apple has a huge incumbent problem now really.
|
| Smartphones ate the world, and they ate the majority of
| profit in the space. We are now 20 years on and the software
| is no longer driving the urgency of the hardware upgrade
| cycle it used to. Apple gets the majority of its revenue from
| iPhones and related services. Note that services category
| includes all sorts of App Store extortion payment stuff that
| they are slowly losing court cases over.
|
| iPhones are so big for them, no other product category
| created since is even in the same order of magnitude.
| Partially I think thats on Apple, but I look across the
| consumer electronics space and don't really see anything new
| categories they aren't already dominating anyway (tablet,
| smart watches, etc).
|
| One "moat" they probably do have is that in the US at least,
| theres not a lot of other physical retailers to go try out
| consumer electronics. 20+ years ago Apple Store were filled
| with 3rd party products, now its all Apple everything.
| wat10000 wrote:
| Apple's MO, at least in recent decades, is to let others
| blaze the trail into a new space, then do their own version
| that gets it right.
|
| Smartphones were a big deal before the iPhone. People would
| talk about how they were addicted to checking email on
| their "crackberries." But they were niche. You could see
| that they were going to be big, but they weren't there yet.
| Then the iPhone catapulted smartphones from a popular niche
| to a ubiquitous product.
|
| Before the iPhone, they did the same thing with portable
| music players. Afterwards, it was the same story for tables
| and smart watches, although not with the same degree of
| ubiquity. Arguably it was the same for PCs ("personal
| computers," not IBM-compatible machines, of course) and
| GUIs, way back when.
|
| What big upcoming thing would they do this with now? As you
| say, there really isn't anything. Maybe VR/AR, but that
| isn't even in the "popular niche" stage yet, the technology
| isn't there yet, and it's far from certain that it will
| _ever_ be more than a tiny niche. Otherwise, what? Self-
| driving cars? That's not a new market, that's a product
| feature in an existing large, mature market. AI? That's
| also looking like a feature rather than a new product
| category.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| You're 100% right, Apple as a fast-follower "getting it
| right" tech company, and there's nothing to fast follow
| right now.
|
| IoT/smarthome has been a niche/fad going nowhere since
| day 1.
|
| Smart speakers are commodities.
|
| They dabbled in an EV project, canned it.
|
| They've dabbled in AR with the VisionPro but really it's
| too early, if it will ever work.
|
| AI is software not hardware.
|
| Apple smartphones/tablets/watches have essentially killed
| 10x more hardware categories than have come into
| existence since.
|
| They sell a lot of headphones I guess.
|
| The only consumer electronics I buy now outside Apple are
| basically higher end niche hobbyist stuff in for example
| music or photography. Nothing that would ever sell at the
| price levels ($200-1000) or volumes (billions) to move
| the needle for Apple.
| graemep wrote:
| Other way round with GUIs. Apple were first to mass
| market, and MS were far more successful.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Let's hope eink or any other type of outdoors usable
| display. That's a new market of hundreds of millions of
| devices they can sell.
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I've dabbled in a bunch of those. Kindle. Remarkable.
| Daylight.
|
| The problem is it's always a great 3rd or 4th device. Not
| sure there's a high margin high volume demand for it.
| wat10000 wrote:
| I think regular LCD/OLED displays will become fully
| daylight capable before these specialized displays become
| high volume. We're almost there today. My phone and
| laptop are usable outside in most conditions, but not
| great in direct sunlight. It's not really the right
| technology for that environment, but the R&D money being
| poured into it is immense.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| LCD/OLED displays are hardly usable outdoors or in well-
| lit spaces, unless you live in a very dark place
| geographically. They need to become at least twice as
| bright if not more to be pleasant to use, and by that
| point battery life and heat starts to become a problem.
|
| But if they are able to make it, I'm all the happier. If
| Apple manages to make a fully daylight compatible device
| (whichever display technology), then they will have
| unlocked sales of hundreds of millions of devices.
| Because who doesn't want to get out of the cave?
| hedora wrote:
| As far as I'm concerned, they don't make smartphones anymore.
|
| Sent from my iPhone 13 mini. It it breaks, I'll replace it
| with a refurbished 13 mini or SE 3.
|
| (My smartphone replacement budget is $1200.)
| hliyan wrote:
| Maturity/commoditization of technology (a good thing) can
| only be seen as problematic in a world where steady-state
| businesses with steady profits are seen as "stagnant", and
| only companies that delivers (or at least promises) perpetual
| growth are seen as successful. Apple has been wildly
| successful. There has to be a world in which such a company
| can benefit from a demand spike without betting its entire
| future on that demand continuing.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > Maturity/commoditization of technology (a good thing)
|
| We are in a forum were more than once I have seen people
| deriding mature companies as "mediocre" because of
| "moderate profits".
|
| This idea that line must eternally go up and growth must be
| infinite is pervasive, no matter how destructive it is.
|
| The result is this unholy abomination of a union of hustle-
| culture and rent-seeking.
| JimDabell wrote:
| > Apple is basically a smartphone company at this point, and
| smartphone sales are plummeting.
|
| _iPhone_ sales aren't plummeting at all:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/263401/global-apple-
| ipho...
|
| https://www.demandsage.com/iphone-user-statistics/
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| There seems to have been a downward trend for smartphones
| since 2017.
|
| Growth is either from an expanding market or an expanding
| market share, since it's not an expanding market that
| leaves the market share.
|
| I would image there is some substitution, with iPhones
| lasting longer on average it becomes more cost effective to
| switch to iPhones so they capture more market share. But if
| the general market doesn't expand then it's a fairly safe
| assumption that the new converts are going to wait before
| upgrading meaning that a decrease in sales is already
| partially baked in.
|
| My anecdotal datapoint is 4 iPhones in 16 years which makes
| them rather cheap on an annual basis.
|
| Edit: I had assumed that parent was correct, but as the
| peer pointed out iPhone sales have declined
| wohoef wrote:
| This is missing the last 7 years of data...
| andy99 wrote:
| The graph I see on that link goes only to 2018 and seems to
| show slight decline. What is the takeaway meant here?
| JimDabell wrote:
| Sorry, added a second source with more up to date data.
| autobodie wrote:
| the second source shows sales have been increasing.
| refulgentis wrote:
| This threads confusing so I'll jump in!
|
| Well, no, it shows:
|
| 2021 < 2023
|
| 2022 < 2021
|
| 2023 > 2021
|
| 2024 ??
| autobodie wrote:
| 2023 > all previous years
| refulgentis wrote:
| That's not true, though!
|
| We can see the bar for 2021 is longer than 2023!
|
| We can see the table value for 2021 is > 2023!
|
| Screenshots, for sales, from 2nd link, i.e. what we are
| told to look to see 2021 < 2023:
| https://imgur.com/a/CpGWbWM
|
| (although, my comment makes a hash of the whole thing and
| says 2021 is both < and > than 2023. Sigh.)
|
| (n.b. not trying to be aggressive, or disagree, or make a
| statement about the overall premise that sales are
| declining. Just mildly amused by the confusion in the
| thread)
|
| (my $0.02 would be that we're seeing the same general
| stasis that was presumed after the iPhone 6 release, but
| really, we just need more data (2021 was COVID stimmy
| high))
|
| (but my $0.02 _should_ be that "yeah stuff plateaued, or
| at least no more hypergrowth, post-2018" because this is
| what we were shown on the Pixel team at Google, and a
| little birdy told me that's how Apple thinks about it)
| jcranmer wrote:
| A graph whose data ends in 2018 isn't strong evidence for
| "they aren't plummeting."
|
| That said, doing some searches for newer information (e.g.,
| https://www.businessofapps.com/data/apple-statistics/)
| suggests that iPhone sales aren't plummeting but are
| instead rather stable. (Although I wonder how much of that
| is services attributed to iPhone as opposed to solely the
| sales revenue from iPhone, the source doesn't make that
| clear).
| WrongAssumption wrote:
| How does the source not make it clear? The first two
| bullets from your source.
|
| "Apple generated $390.8 billion revenue in 2024, 51% came
| from iPhone sales
|
| Apple Services is the second largest division,
| responsible for 24% of revenue in 2024"
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Do either of those facts point to increases in iPhone
| sales?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The second source's first paragraph says "with total
| sales expected to surpass previous records" for 2023, at
| least.
| somenameforme wrote:
| Sales are accounted for in $ terms, not units sold. It's
| the same thing with Hollywood. You might think movies are
| more popular than ever thanks to record breaking sales
| (pre-COVID at least). In reality, we reached peak movie,
| in terms of tickets sold, in 2002! [1]
|
| Back to iPhones, this [2] page shows their stats by units
| sold (about half way down). iPhone is essentially
| treading water _if_ those data are correct (with a peak
| in 2015 overcome twice since, but by ~1% each time), but
| I strongly suspect that that 's showing units shipped and
| not units sold, as iPhone sales declining has been
| universally reported.
|
| [1] - https://www.the-numbers.com/market/
|
| [2] - https://www.demandsage.com/iphone-user-statistics/
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Ask yourself the question of what it means when a company
| makes more dollars from a product while not increasing
| the number of units sold. It's completely obvious if you
| think about it for a moment.
| brookst wrote:
| No services are attributed to iPhone. It's a different
| category, reported separately. No conspiratorial thinking
| on easily-checked assertions please.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Well, since you can actually look at Apple's quarterly
| report where they break down revenue from iPhones and
| services separately...
| nixpulvis wrote:
| While sales may not be plummeting. Hype around the market
| sure has. Nobody is really that excited about the next
| iPhone anymore.
| op00to wrote:
| This is the first time in a long time I'm not interested
| in replacing my phone after a year.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| which when you look at your device, it's cost and what
| you use it for, should not be all that remarkable of a
| statement. I mean, what if you replaced "phone" with car,
| house or partner?
| op00to wrote:
| I bet id buy a new car more frequently if cars were first
| invented!
|
| As it is, I bought my car new and is 20 years old in
| great condition. Partner ... I mean, who wouldn't want to
| trade in for a new model if it weren't for the social
| concerns? (I kiiiid I kiiid)
| me_smith wrote:
| The last time I bought the newest iPhone was iPhone 5. In
| the past, I've been getting hand me downs since most
| people change their phone between 12-18 months. I'm still
| using an iPhone X. I can't upgrade the iOS at the moment
| so looking forward to getting an iPhone 13 in the next
| year or so.
|
| I agree with you. Hand me downs aren't coming as fast as
| they used to.
| andy99 wrote:
| If they are offering value add services, I'd much rather pay
| for them directly than have them subsidized be ads, sort of
| analogous to MS Office 365 (ideally with better privacy).
|
| Maybe a direct pay model doesn't have enough reach for a big
| company in which case hopefully we'll get a Kagi-style paid
| phone OS from someone.
| michaelt wrote:
| Unfortunately even if you're paying for the hardware, _and_
| paying monthly for iCloud, _and_ paying 30% of every app
| and in-app purchase Apple still won 't give you an ad-free
| experience.
|
| The cash brought in by ads is concrete, quantifiable, and
| can be attributed to specific people. The lost sales and
| eroded brand trust are almost impossible to measure or
| attribute. This means it's very easy for businesses to
| (inadvertently) incentivise managers to destroy brand trust
| in pursuit of profit.
|
| Nobody's every gotten a bonus for their restrained and
| tasteful decision not to put ads into something.
| hylaride wrote:
| On top of that, Apple users tend to be in the upper half
| of the income distribution - like in the USA iPhones are
| 55-60% of the market, but that skyrockets to well over
| 80% in the upper income half.
|
| There's a reason advertisers salivate at that (and why
| Google gives Apple billions to default to Google search).
| Apofis wrote:
| I still have my iPhone 12 Pro that I preordered and got in
| release day and it still does everything I can ask of it,
| though the latest Call of Duty runs a bit slow, which is
| making me want to upgrade. Them not releasing a smart Siri
| that answers to more than just basic prompts is really
| hurting them and I can see why investors sued them. There's
| no reason for me to have to use ChatGPT on an iPhone, I
| should be able to talk to Siri like she's an actual personal
| assistant and not just an easier way to check the weather and
| set a timer.
| hopelite wrote:
| I would say it's simpler than that. Between Wall Street
| demanding "growth" and the executives' stock options being
| tied to meeting those numbers, they always pull out any and
| all stops to push "growth". As others have implied, with
| people like Jobs and others gone, there is also no cultural
| resistance based on core values that created Apple to push
| back on shameless debasement.
|
| It is also what is happening all over the western world in
| general as "growth" sacrifices the indigenous cultures and
| people at the altar of money for the executives, ie
| aristocrats, and anyone resisting or even just objecting is
| silenced, including here, because resistance to growth at all
| costs is futile.
| supportengineer wrote:
| All you can do is be an executive, or failing that, be a
| shareholder
| pas wrote:
| > resistance to growth at all costs is futile
|
| humans want to improve their (material) conditions, it's
| pretty much the thing we do at this point (that other
| species don't really)
|
| the issue that was a bit of an inconvenience, a mere side-
| effect of our culture is nowadays burning down the whole
| shebang
|
| we overvalue short-term gains (thus we have serious agent-
| principal and integrity issues), we have a laundry list of
| cognitive biases, and we managed to invent the weaponized
| cognitive-bias-exploitor and immediately tried it out on
| ourselves, and ... since the good old days of pamphlets and
| religious wars we are engaged in all kinds psyops.
|
| we are both great and terrible at "winning hearts and
| minds" (that's why it works, but unfortunately it works
| much better at turning people into crazy self-destructive
| antisocial trolls than courageous prosocial reformers)
| roody15 wrote:
| " we overvalue short-term gains (thus we have serious
| agent-principal and integrity issues),"
|
| Agree and would even make the argument that Chinas rise
| in some is a response to short term with patience.
|
| China is willing to move mountains and allow western
| corporations 8-10 years of ridiculous low labor costs and
| promote incredible profits. They then learn the process
| and the tech and now companies like TP-link, Huawei, BYD,
| tencent, and so forth are all legit and make good
| products. This approach can even be seen in their
| military. With all the talk of China invading Taiwan...
| the reality is it just won't happen. China will patiently
| build the largest Navy and infiltrate the political
| landscape of Taiwan until they just peacefully transfer
| back into the fold.
|
| Not sure what the answer is here but perhaps we could
| learn something back ?
| fireflash38 wrote:
| Do you think that strategy is from their rulers? And do
| you think that when the rulers die, that strategy will
| live on?
|
| I think it will pass like every other empire/business:
| ruined by future generations who did not toil for it and
| who will trade it for short term gain.
| somenameforme wrote:
| I don't think the obsession with the short-term is
| necessarily the natural state of people, especially not
| in leadership. There were buildings built in times past
| knowing full well that it would take decades and even
| centuries to complete.
|
| But I think long-term thinking requires a unified people
| in a democracy, or a non-democratic system. Democracy in
| a divided society makes long-term stuff basically
| impossible when the next guy who comes in will just undo
| it to spite you. And long-term visions often come with
| short-term costs without anything yet to show for it,
| which can then be weaponized against you. Oh and the best
| trick of all is doing something with short term benefit
| and mid-term costs, and then blame the consequences of
| your own actions on the next guy in office. Excessive
| printing of money is an obvious and extremely common
| example of this.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| > China will patiently build the largest Navy and
| infiltrate the political landscape of Taiwan until they
| just peacefully transfer back into the fold.
|
| I don't think this would work, they can't manipulate a
| sophisticated Western political system without actual
| sovereignty over the land. Western soft power is just
| that good.
|
| If China had a playbook that could accomplish that, they
| would have used that instead for assimilating Hong Kong
| instead of what they ended up doing. They tried, but HK
| resisted Chinese influence HARD. So China stopped
| offering carrots and brought out the stick.
| graemep wrote:
| The west is very naive. A lot of the current state of the
| world is a result of western politicians believing the
| "end of history" theories of the 1980s - the idea that
| any country would naturally become a free market liberal
| democracy as it grew richer.
|
| China is building soft power. We have Chinese funded
| teaching in British universities, lecturers moved from
| teaching a course because they upset Chinese students
| (who supported the regime), open apologists at places
| like Jesus College, Cambridge, agents building influence
| with MPs....
|
| I agree Taiwan is unlikely to easily agree to be taken
| over by China, but that is because they know what living
| under Chinese rule will be like, not because of the soft
| power of the west.
| vinceguidry wrote:
| The limiting factor to Chinese soft power development is
| its need to remain authoritarian. Folks will accept
| living under one if that's all they know. But if you
| didn't grow up with the brainwashing nobody will trust
| you and everything is transactional. You see Chinese
| attempts to exert political control over its diaspora and
| it never works as well as they would like.
|
| Where the West's soft power essentially comes from in is
| in being the alternative to authoritarianism and it
| really doesn't have to be any more than that. The West
| will operate its own authoritarian regimes, like Puerto
| Rico, and Hawaii before it became a state, and the
| Phillipines, and these folks are perhaps the most
| oppressed of all. The West knows authoritarianism
| extremely well and is far better at the carrot / stick
| game of manipulating people.
|
| When your carrots consist of patently self-serving deals
| to other autocrats at the expense of the public, the
| public eventually gets wise and puts pressure on the
| autocrat. The West can offer much more lucrative
| arrangements for all around, like that of building
| Taiwan's semiconductor industry. It's become a source of
| national pride for them and has created middle classes, a
| necessity for a modern political system.
| labster wrote:
| I don't know man, I would have believed this
| wholeheartedly ten years ago. But people are choosing
| true authoritarianism in droves. People just keep voting
| for Trump, Orban, Erdogan, and Le Pen. Trump is extremely
| transactional.
|
| All of which is great news for China, and a great victory
| for their 'do nothing: win' policy.
| simonask wrote:
| They always have. The present isn't super special, and I
| think Europeans (speaking as one) realize this a bit
| easier, because we see populist governments rise and fall
| again, over and over, in different countries.
|
| Populism is notoriously brittle, and almost every
| European populist party has eventually fallen once they
| gained actual power, because it turns out governing is
| complicated and can't be done effectively while
| maintaining that beautiful, simple, enticing narrative
| that brought you into power.
|
| But the Chinese government is not populist in the same
| sense, often quite the contrary. Their legitimacy seems
| to be derived from the fact that they have achieved real
| results for their population, which means they will
| eventually hit a different road block.
| Yeul wrote:
| Electing Trump and supporting Netanyahu doesn't help much
| with the soft power thing.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Growth is awesome. We're incredibly fortunate to live in
| this high growth era!
|
| What Apple may be guilty of here is focusing on _short
| term_ growth at the expense of the long term. If you make
| an extra buck today, at the expense of losing user loyalty,
| that 's not what any shareholder wants.
|
| This _could_ be a case of short term growth being rewarded
| inside the company. It could also be any number of other
| reasons.
| rchaud wrote:
| > What Apple may be guilty of here is focusing on short
| term growth at the expense of the long term.
|
| Wall St growthbros do not draw these sorts of
| distinctions. If the focus on short-term growth ends up
| tanking a company, there will simply be another company
| to project its growth obssession on. It could be Apple
| services, or Peloton bikes or Subway sandwiches, they
| could not care less. Those companies aren't their
| customers; the investment houses, short sellers, market
| makers and pension funds are.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| That's a theoretical argument.
|
| The empirically existing stock market does quite well
| long term. Apple itself is over half a century old, as
| are many other big companies.
| Tepix wrote:
| Maybe. But future generations (like yours kids) will have
| to pay dearly for our ,,growth at all cost" mentality
| that uses up limited resources disproportionately and
| unsustainably.
| Yeul wrote:
| Growth is difficult when Apple is pushed out of the Chinese
| market because of geopolitics.
|
| Decoupling was coined by Americans and enthusiastically
| embraced by the CCP.
| rewgs wrote:
| > Between Wall Street demanding "growth" and the
| executives' stock options being tied to meeting those
| numbers, they always pull out any and all stops to push
| "growth".
|
| This right here. The perverse incentives integral to public
| companies are at the core of so much that is wrong with the
| world.
| msgodel wrote:
| This stupidity isn't leading to growth though. I'm actually
| shorting them because their inability to produce products
| that actually add value to their customers lives is already
| manifesting in earnings/sales decay.
| supportengineer wrote:
| You missed an important use-case. If my phone lasts for six
| years and I'm extremely pleased with it, then of course I'm
| going to buy another one. I'm going to keep doing that
| indefinitely.
| cronelius wrote:
| 6 year customer cycles are not recurring revenue. they want
| your money monthly and annually
| scarface_74 wrote:
| There is no evidence from Apple's breakout of iPhone revenue
| that sales or "plummeting". They are stagnant.
|
| And statistics show that the average person buys a new phone
| every 3 years. Apple's laptop sales are also stagnate and not
| declining.
|
| Most people use laptops - not desktops. There is no six year
| old laptop that has the combination of speed, battery life,
| quietness and lack of heat that a modern M series Mac has.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Apple is an ecosystem company.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Apple wants to be a services company that sells smartphones.
| v5v3 wrote:
| >Apple is basically a smartphone company at this point
|
| Not entirely correct. Apple is a software sales platform.
|
| Apple have stated that even older phones and iPads and macs
| will get the new OS26.
|
| Apple realised a long time ago that, as you said, consumers
| don't have a need to upgrade.
|
| So rather than taking the approach of others, which is to
| stop OS updates and then also security updates, which would
| result in compatibility issues. Apple are trying to maintain
| the largest possible user base.
|
| So they can sell to all of them.
| hcarvalhoalves wrote:
| Company takeover by bean counters and clowns. It happens with
| every company, sooner or later.
|
| Apple remains on the edge with hardware though. I guess the
| show is still ran by the engineers at this department.
| ttcbj wrote:
| I have been reading the book "apple in China" after hearing the
| author on a podcast. It has fundamentally altered my view of
| apple as a company. From a consumer perspective, I thought it
| was a an amazing company. But looking behind the scenes, I came
| to understand how morally compromised it has been for a very
| long time. In retrospect, I feel complicit in things I didn't
| understand I was part of.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Anything looks worse when you see behind the curtain. The
| question is in comparison - who produces technology you want
| without that behind the scenes behavior (or being dependent
| on someone else's behind the scenes behavior!)?
| librasteve wrote:
| Tim Cook needs to get a grip on this. If Apple loses the
| privacy advocate reputation, then they will lose a lot of
| customers.
| newAccount2025 wrote:
| Will they though? Where does a privacy-conscious consumer
| turn? The only other serious option is Android, where Google
| will eagerly track all the things.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I doubt it. They might lose a few nerds but no casual
| consumer gives a shit.
| ls-a wrote:
| Ads are planed to come to every single wallet out there. Card
| companies, merchants, and tech companies are working on this
| together. Apple just thought it would be a good idea to be the
| first to launch it. Soon it will be a norm and everyone will
| forget about it or even find it useful.
| epolanski wrote:
| The company is donezo to be honest.
|
| Without the huge hold of the cloud and business markets
| Microsoft enjoys they only have hardware.
|
| And besides their excellent laptops you can forget of the
| existence of any other of their products.
| Fade_Dance wrote:
| Apple services revenue has gone from 10 to 30 billion within
| the last 5 years. They are seeing extremely strong services
| growth.
| mr_toad wrote:
| They have a huge chunk of the smartwatch and tablet market.
| epolanski wrote:
| Neither of those products is really hard to replace with
| competitor's products.
| caycep wrote:
| one would've hoped w/ Angela Ahrendts Bosom St John but I guess
| not a cultural/operational fit.
| DidYaWipe wrote:
| It has become increasingly clear that Apple needs a management
| housecleaning. Their purposeful antagonism of entire
| geopolitical blocs with anti-developer douchebaggery alone
| should have resulted in heads rolling.
|
| But Jony Ive was part of the problem. His "taste level"
| resulted in the embarrassing emoji bar forced on "pro" users, a
| grossly defective keyboard that crippled Apple computers for
| five years, a computer with no available ports on it,
| regressive UI that made products less useful with every
| revision, battery life so poor that people were crouching in
| the corners of cafes next to outlets before lunch, the removal
| of headphone jacks from the best-selling music players... Ive
| is pompous hack with no ideas for the advancement of products.
|
| Meanwhile, lazy and ignorant pundits have incorrectly lumped
| Apple into "big tech" with Google, Amazon, and Meta because
| they can't be bothered to inform themselves (or even think)
| about the fact that those companies are all gatekeepers to huge
| swaths of the Internet; Apple is not. And their continual
| whining about Apple being "behind on AI" further testifies to
| their laziness and lack of critical thinking.
|
| Nonetheless, Apple has forfeited the high road. They're now
| another asshole in the club, inviting scrutiny and crackdowns
| that threaten the value of the company. What are the owners
| going to do about it?
| diskzero wrote:
| Apple employee pre, during and post Steve. I was in a lot of
| meetings with VPs whose tasteless suggestions were shut down
| immediately with the usual Steve critiques attached.
|
| My recollection is that Eddy Cue got the most critiques, Phil
| Schiller the least and the rest were in between. Eddy would
| push back and still get shut down.
|
| When Steve left the last time, it was knives out between these
| guys with Scott Forstall taking a fall as Tim Cook got
| ultimatums from everyone including Jony. I imagine loud voices
| with bad taste are pushing Tim hard. Apple can be an investor
| darling but Tim has needed to consider an exit and find a
| strong successor that knows what made Apple great in other
| ways.
| SSLy wrote:
| > Phil Schiller
|
| Rings a bell.
|
| > _Tim Cook asserted his control over the company, putting
| his own personnel in place, and now his authority is
| absolute. Even those few others who remain from the Jobs era,
| such as "Apple Fellow" Phil Schiller, are overridden by Cook_
|
| https://lapcatsoftware.com/articles/2025/5/6.html by way of
| https://mjtsai.com/blog/2025/05/23/apple-turnaround/
| lapcat wrote:
| > I was in a lot of meetings with VPs whose tasteless
| suggestions were shut down immediately with the usual Steve
| critiques attached.
|
| Was it common for lower-level employees to take part in
| C-suite meetings and arguments?
| pests wrote:
| Sounds like he's been around awhile, might not be as lower-
| level as you think.
| lapcat wrote:
| Well, I think it would be odd for an ex-VP to be posting
| on HN for us plebs.
| alwa wrote:
| From chummy nerd fora we arise, and to chummy nerd fora
| we shall return...
| diskzero wrote:
| Apple was fairly flat under Steve and meetings could have a
| fair number of interested parties involved. I can recall
| numerous weekly UI meetings with several of the people
| listed above there. Also note that Jony, Eddy and others
| weren't always high level. Steve handed out his harsh
| comments regardless of concern for your level. Steve was a
| micromanager and was involved in anything that the user
| came in contact with and more.
|
| To directly address your question, the answer was yes in
| that if you developed a feature, a demo, or anything Steve
| wanted to see, you would end up in a forum with a bunch a
| various levels of employees.
|
| Thinking of C suite meetings happening when Steve was
| around cracks me up. Steve was always on the move, making
| edicts, rejecting things, walking into offices, having
| lunch with people, etc. There was no Jira, Confluence,
| Agile or any of that. It was a fight to ship by an imposed
| date or die trying.
| destitude wrote:
| Ive wanted to get rid of all the ports on everything! Thank
| goodness he's gone and we now have MagSafe, HDMI, and SD card
| readers back on portables.
| prewett wrote:
| I loved MagSafe, but after the USB C power, I don't love it.
| USB C power could go on either side of the laptop, and if I
| stepped on the cable it still easily disconnected, but
| MagSafe only goes on one side, which frequently means the
| cord needs to wrap around the back.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Is this really that different than pushing an immutable U2
| album into your itunes account years ago? "liking Apple" is a
| weird position; they're several generations away from when you
| could identify the company with actual people, and
| anthropomorphizing the company at this point seems wild.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| There was that event where everyone's iTunes suddenly had a U2
| album on it. I don't really see a difference.
|
| Truth is Apple was always like that, but Apple in particular
| has a lot of fans willing to play the white knight in its name.
| keiferski wrote:
| I would consider that the beginning of the problem - and it
| happened shortly after Jobs died.
| yomismoaqui wrote:
| > Apple without Ive and Jobs increasingly has a taste problem
|
| Sorry, having seen the sappy photo of Ive & Altman I cannot
| trust his taste.
|
| https://in.mashable.com/tech/94502/sam-altman-taps-worlds-gr...
| roughly wrote:
| Nor should you. OP should've said Apple without Jobs - Ive
| had artistic taste, but not product or human taste.
| thrashh wrote:
| A lot of people like Apple because it was built on Jobs' taste
| and they liked Jobs' taste.
|
| With Jobs gone, it still has a taste but it someone else's
| taste.
|
| That said, I think some people have developed their own
| original taste but some people's tastes are just an
| amalgamation of the people around them.
| graemep wrote:
| Is that lack of competence, or lack of motive? Is it a problem
| from their point of view.
|
| Apple's main user base is not like HN users - not even like the
| Apple users/advocates here. I have come across many who are too
| deeply convinced that Apple is hugely ahead of other OSes
| (often because they assume other OSes capabilities are what
| they were years ago), and they do not want to adjust to
| anything that is different from what they are familiar with.
| They will stay will Apple almost whatever Apple do. Some
| examples of things Apple users I know have said were advantages
| of their products:
|
| 1. I can copy and paste between my phone and my desktop!
|
| 2. There is a terminal app that is so amazing you will want to
| buy a Mac just to use it. It was roughly similar to terminal
| apps I have used over many years.
|
| 3. If you buy a ticket on your laptop instead of your phone you
| will have to bring your laptop out to scan at the gate. When I
| explained my phone syncs selected folders with my laptop the
| reply was "that is so complicated".
|
| Only the first comment came from a person who is not
| comfortable with technology - obviously in the case of the
| second comment!
| alwa wrote:
| I feel like there's a taste aspect and also a focus/discipline
| kind of dimension to it. For the longest, they'd essentialize
| everything almost brutally: like that whole thing about the
| iPhone coming with no manual since you didn't need it. The
| design only afforded you one right way to find and do things.
|
| This is a toaster, it makes toast. This is Apple TV, it plays
| TV. This is Apple Wallet, it does what your wallet does.
|
| And that was the magic! Of _course_ the simplicity masked
| kaleidoscopic technical, commercial, and functional complexity
| --that's not new!
|
| This weird cross-promotion is the latest, most crass, symptom;
| but it almost reads as the metastasis of a deeper disease--
| namely this urge to cross-pollute between little functional
| fiefdoms from inside the megacorp, instead of prioritizing the
| perspective of one user on one tool for one purpose at a time.
| Zafira wrote:
| I'm actually curious how they were able to exactly filter some
| of their less promising impulses.
|
| Ive famously wanted the Apple Watch to be a standalone luxury
| product.
|
| > Jony Ive envisioned the future of the Apple Watch as a luxury
| product. Not only did he want to build a $25 million lavish
| white tent to promote the first Watch, but he "regarded a rave
| from Vogue as more important than any tech reviewer's opinion."
| According to Mickle, "the tent was critical to making the event
| as glamorous as a high-end fashion show."
|
| Meanwhile Jobs always seemed to have an obsession with cubes
| (NeXTcube, Power Mac G4 Cube), no fans and nobody touching his
| products (the original iPhone "SDK" announcement was a badly
| received joke).
| sails wrote:
| They are also marketing "nearby" coffee shops in the Home Screen
| stack widget which is pretty invasive, I'm surprised not to hear
| about it
| basisword wrote:
| They're not. The Maps widget shows you nearby businesses. You
| can remove the widget.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| so, they're not and you can remove the thing that doesn't
| exist?
| natch wrote:
| My maps widget randomly took me to some BS Apple movie scene
| location with a bunch of movie branding right in the maps UI.
| There was nothing nearby about it. It was like two continents
| away from me.
| jrockway wrote:
| I'm glad that people are mad about this. I got the ad, went on
| here to see if 1000 people were complaining, and nobody was. I
| was kind of surprised.
|
| For me it's like "oh, I didn't know Wallet was an advertising
| app", I thought it was something I paid for with the purchase of
| my phone. But I was wrong. It's just adware. "We'll store your
| boarding pass if you'll let us spam you about movie tickets." Do
| not want. I disabled notifications. Now a year from now, I'll be
| searching for some pass in my wallet. Someone will say "don't you
| get a notification when you get to the venue"? I'll be like "no
| I've never seen that work". Multiply that by everyone, and
| suddenly the buzz is "Apple Wallet doesn't work. Trust my money
| and credit cards with something that doesn't work? No thank you."
| And now people are buying a Garmin watch for Garmin Pay instead
| of an Apple Watch for Apple Pay.
|
| Really dumb. Huge mistake. It makes me sad that they don't care
| about their own brand. "We won the smartphone wars, let's cash
| in!" Winning is temporary, but losing is forever.
| latexr wrote:
| > went on here to see if 1000 people were complaining, and
| nobody was.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44368854
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44371872
|
| > Now a year from now (...) people are buying a Garmin watch
| for Garmin Pay instead of an Apple Watch for Apple Pay.
|
| Talk about a slippery slope fallacy. No, that will not happen.
| At all. There's a better chance that this year will be the year
| of Linux on the Desktop.
| ickelbawd wrote:
| As it so happens I'm using my framework laptop with fedora
| linux almost exclusively at this point. That was not the case
| a year ago. :)
| ksec wrote:
| The problem isn't sending an Ad to Wallet. It is the fact that
| Apple openly attack Ads, condemns Ads, talk about privacy as
| fundamental human rights, and then have targeted Ads, in a place
| / software / services where no body expected it to appear. And
| not everybody has the Ad, so by HN / Reddit / Internet definition
| that Ad is targeted.
|
| The thing I used to like about Apple, even if you disagree with
| some of its decision. It is very coherent. It act as if Apple is
| a single entity even when it was a hundred billion market cap
| company. Compared to companies like Google and Microsoft, every
| product and services are like their own subsidiaries. Now Apple
| has become just another cooperate entity but with design team
| holding sufficient political power.
| latexr wrote:
| > It is the fact that Apple openly attack Ads, condemns Ads
|
| What? No they don't. I wish. Where did you get that idea? Apple
| loves ads. They do a ton of them and sell them to you. You
| can't do an App Store search without seeing an ad right at the
| top, and the bottom, and the sides, and under your pillow. It's
| absolutely littered with them.
|
| What Apple rails against is the tracking and invasion of
| privacy. Which incidentally ads do a lot of. Even Safari
| content blockers are ingrained in that philosophy: it's not
| about blocking ads, it's about blocking things that invade your
| privacy.
| ksec wrote:
| The App Store Search and iCloud Ads are relatively recent
| thing. The focus on tracking and invasion of privacy is also
| a refined version of it. Their whole PR campaign from 2017 to
| 2020 against ads. ( And it was more targeting Facebook Ads
| without saying it. Which Apple plan to destroy ) Somewhere
| between 2019 - 2022 They literally have to come out and said
| to say they are _not_ against ads but only against tracking
| because the whole Ad industry was furious so they have calm
| things down.
|
| Here is another angle. If Apple could successfully destroy
| the In App Ads industry, which they earn nothing from, and
| force those value into subscription, who will benefit most?
| Remember Apple tried iAds and earn a percentage of it but
| failed.
|
| People should at least read PG's Submarine [1] to understand
| how modern PR and media works. Once you have that
| understanding the lens of reading anything about Apple
| becomes a little different.
|
| [1] https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
| rwc wrote:
| I think you've got your timeline mixed up. App Store search
| ads debuted in 2016, prior to your entire narrative.
| latexr wrote:
| > Their whole PR campaign from 2017 to 2020 against ads.
|
| Could you provide specific examples? It is possible that
| I'm misremembering, but in that case you should be able to
| point me to those specific campaigns.
|
| Everything else in your comment has nothing to do with my
| point, though.
| encom wrote:
| Apple is absolutely fine with tracking and privacy invasion,
| as long as they're the ones doing it.
| latexr wrote:
| Which has nothing to do with the point, which is that
| that's what they rail against, not ads. If they are
| hypocrites about it is an orthogonal matter.
| bigyabai wrote:
| It's genuinely getting depressing watching HN try to
| justify Tim Cook's actions ad-hoc. You can't name a
| single ideal Apple values more than money.
| Soon (2028?) "Yes, we know Apple advertises to us and
| backdoors their services for the government. But *at
| least* my personal data isn't being sold, without Apple's
| privacy promise I would be helpless."
| latexr wrote:
| > It's genuinely getting depressing watching HN try to
| justify Tim Cook's actions ad-hoc.
|
| Your comment is absurd. I criticise Tim Cook all the
| time.
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false
| &qu...
|
| Try to understand what people are saying without
| injecting your own preconceived notions and maybe you
| won't get as depressed. Making a correction about a point
| is not the same as defending it.
| bigyabai wrote:
| I am not attacking your character. This is specifically
| aimed at HN's cognitive dissonance surrounding Apple
| doing anything possibly bad. It is pointless to shield
| Tim Cook from ancillary flak, the hypocrisy here is
| exactly why this topic is so important to discuss. The
| comments here confirm that, everyone is saying this isn't
| what they expected. It isn't orthogonal.
|
| > Making a correction about a point is not the same as
| defending it.
|
| That is called astroturfing, and it is a deliberate bad-
| faith discussion tactic. If you _genuinely_ don 't think
| their comment is relevant to your point, then there would
| be no reason to write a reply to it. This is exactly the
| subliminal shit that depresses me, this site is whipped
| by Apple and will do anything except admit it.
| latexr wrote:
| > The comments here confirm that, everyone is saying this
| isn't what they expected.
|
| No, no they are not. That is so simple to disprove.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44414508
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44411237
|
| Again, you're only seeing what you want to see. Your
| opinion on Apple isn't special or rare, it's shared by
| tons of people on HN.
|
| > If you _genuinely_ don 't think their comment is
| relevant to your point, then there would be no reason to
| write a reply to it.
|
| So someone misunderstands or mischaracterises your point,
| and in your mind you should never correct and clarify the
| misconception, because doing so is bad faith? I mean, you
| do that if you want to, but that's not what astroturfing
| is.
| hosteur wrote:
| > The problem isn't sending an Ad to Wallet.
|
| Yes it is
| croes wrote:
| They attack ads they are not getting paid for.
| gyomu wrote:
| > Now Apple has become just another cooperate entity but with
| design team holding sufficient political power.
|
| You'd be surprised to hear how much the political power of the
| design team within Apple has eroded over the last decade.
|
| Here's a little game of insider Apple baseball:
|
| 1) why do you think the chief of design isn't on this page?
| https://www.apple.com/leadership/
|
| 2) from the SVPs on that same page, who do you think the chief
| of design reports to?
| bix6 wrote:
| I didn't have a proper guess for 1 but I was correct on 2.
| The answer to 1 is rather disappointing.
|
| To keep the guessing game going: what percent of Apple is
| owned by institutional investors?
| rsaz wrote:
| what are the answers?
| pratnala wrote:
| What is the answer to 2?
| HenriTEL wrote:
| During Jobs era obviously design was a first order concern.
|
| Then Cook took over but still Jonathan Ive stayed as head of
| design until 2019.
|
| Ive was replaced by Evans Hankey and Alan Dye who were under
| Jeff Williams, the Chief Operating Officer.
|
| Talk about a downgrade!
| danaris wrote:
| Ads and privacy are _not_ fundamentally opposed.
|
| The reason that they so often seem so is because of the massive
| surveillance enabling _targeted_ ads. Ads served based on the
| context they appear in (eg, ads for financial services on the
| WSJ, or ads for diapers on a baby monitor app) do not require
| any surveillance or knowledge of the _person_ they 're going to
| be seen by in order to function.
|
| From what I can tell, this ad was not targeted in the least: it
| just went out to everyone with an iPhone.
|
| (That doesn't make it _good_ , it just means that it doesn't
| _specifically_ violate Apple 's commitment to privacy.)
| rsync wrote:
| "Ads and privacy are not fundamentally opposed"
|
| I agree with this.
|
| There was a (brief) period when website advertisements were
| simple, first party hosted image files. IIRC, the first text
| ads on metafilter (2001 ?) were just strings in the same HTML
| file.
|
| You may like or dislike these things but they were not a
| privacy concern.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| I don't think you have it right here.
|
| Was this a targeted ad? Apple doesn't openly attack Ads - they
| are actively hostile to privacy invasive technology, which I
| don't think this runs foul of.
|
| _The_ problem isn 't that Apple has ads, it's that Apple
| pushed an ad through Wallet. And in the Settings app. And in
| all the other untasteful places they spam with these ads.
| jay_kyburz wrote:
| Yeah, everybody is taking about the Wallet thing, but there is
| a giant ad for F1 in Apple TV right now that says it can only
| be watched in cinemas! WTF
| ctime wrote:
| I didn't see any ads and nobody I know did. This may be a feature
| in ios26 (the next version in beta) that got leaked out to older
| versions? Ie a bug)
|
| Ios26 specifically enables promotions in wallet which is viewed
| as a feature that can be enabled/disabled
| reliablereason wrote:
| Probably depends on where you live, or some other thing apple
| knows about you.
| mbreese wrote:
| I saw the ad. iOS 18.5, in the Midwest, with notifications
| allowed for the Wallet app.
|
| I didn't find it too intrusive, but it was surprising. It's
| probably not a road Apple wants to go further down.
| natch wrote:
| and in the maps widget
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| As I've said for the last ten years about Apple and ads, as soon
| as the momentum slows down, they will put ads everywhere and sell
| your data next if it keeps revenue growth up.
| lobochrome wrote:
| So - the gruber shadowban has been lifted eh?
| Chuzam wrote:
| That's what I thought as well :D
| zbentley wrote:
| What's this referring to? What drama did I miss?
| epaga wrote:
| https://daringfireball.net/2025/03/the_website_hacker_news_i.
| ..
| zbentley wrote:
| Thank you!
| somedude895 wrote:
| Is there any proof for that or just a case of sour blogger?
| codedokode wrote:
| Chinese phones show ad in notifications, obviously Americans see
| it, get jealous (what a difficult spelling!) and want to do the
| same.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Chinese phones are way more aggressive in showing ads. They
| have graduated to showing ads via the Live Activities feature,
| or push notifications with the Time Sensitive bit on to bypass
| Do Not Disturb.
|
| There are a lot that American companies can learn from Chinese
| ones in showing ads creatively. /s
| Zufriedenheit wrote:
| I am probably not the average computer user. I didn't even
| receive this notification, but just reading about this makes me
| reconsider switching my devices from Apple to open source
| software. I have every possible ad blocked and I have been a
| happy user of Apple devices so far. But this behavior feels so
| scammy and cheap, not worthy of a premium brand.
| throwanem wrote:
| This year for the first time I started carrying an Android along
| with my iPhone. I've had Apple phones exclusively since I got my
| first smartphone in 2012, and before now never had a wandering
| eye. But the moves Apple has made lately make me realize it is
| time to make sure I'll have a ripcord to pull if I need one.
|
| It's not so bad. I would rather have an appliance than a computer
| as my primary phone, of course. But if Apple is leaving the
| appliance market, then thank goodness at least I have the skills
| to use a pocket computer safely.
|
| Most don't have such skills. None should be required to. That's
| why it's good there should be a company like Apple around, at
| least as Apple has been. If I need to advise my older relatives
| never to upgrade, and help them source and maintain older
| iPhones, I guess I can do that.
| b0a04gl wrote:
| because it's one of the only apps i've not disabled notifications
| for. you could've muted already tv+ ,mail ,stocks ,news ,fitness
| ,whatever. but not wallet cuz you leave that on for flights
| ,covid passes ,payments ,and some legit actions.
| em500 wrote:
| Apple Wallet is in the App store, and the F1 ad debacle directly
| violates App Store guidelines https://developer.apple.com/app-
| store/review/guidelines/) > 4.5.4 Push
| Notifications must not be required for the app to function, and
| should not be used to send sensitive personal or confidential
| information. Push Notifications should not be used for promotions
| or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly
| opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your
| app's UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt
| out from receiving such messages. Abuse of these services may
| result in revocation of your privileges.
| aqme28 wrote:
| Interesting. I feel like this clause is violated very often by
| major apps:
|
| > Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or
| direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly
| opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your
| app's UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to
| opt out from receiving such messages.
| foooorsyth wrote:
| I've said several times before that notifications should be
| reportable as spam directly to Google/Apple, just like email
| spam reporting.
|
| Google tried to tackle this with notification channels, but
| the onus falls on the developer to actually use them
| honestly. No company trying to draw attention back to their
| app with advertisement notifications will willingly name a
| notification channel "advertisements" or "user re-engagement"
| or similar -- they'll just interleave spam with all the non-
| spam. This API from G hasn't worked.
| remus wrote:
| > Google tried to tackle this with notification channels,
| but the onus falls on the developer to actually use them
| honestly. No company trying to draw attention back to their
| app with advertisement notifications will willingly name a
| notification channel "advertisements" or "user re-
| engagement" or similar -- they'll just interleave spam with
| all the non-spam. This API from G hasn't worked.
|
| Revolut are really annoying for this. I'm sure there's a
| few spare days In their development cycle for someone to
| implement it if they wanted to, but instead they keep
| everything on the same channel which is 50% promo shit,
| because you don't want to miss that notification warning
| you about fraudulent activity on your card.
| drdaeman wrote:
| There should be a public API, open to any user-designated
| program (including self-made, without requiring any special
| hoops to obtain any fancy entitlements), that can act as a
| "firewall" for all notifications (except, possibly, for few
| system-critical ones), allowing it to control and modify
| those as it seems fit.
| mzajc wrote:
| Applications can interact with notifications on the
| user's behalf via the accessibility permission - I do
| this with KDE Connect. I don't know what the limitations
| are.
| drdaeman wrote:
| On iOS?
|
| Last time I've checked, kdeconnect-ios was unable to read
| any third-party notifications, not to mention doing
| anything to them or modifying their text or appearance in
| any way.
|
| Project readme still says "Notification syncing doesn't
| work because iOS applications can't access notifications
| of other apps" (https://github.com/KDE/kdeconnect-
| ios?tab=readme-ov-file#kno...) so I think it's still a
| thing.
| mzajc wrote:
| On Android, I forgot to mention.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| Precisely this. There needs to be an API that all apps
| have to use not only for notifications but also for
| getting your contacts, your phone's location, etc. that
| is spoofable by the user. Or better yet, an AI program
| that runs entirely on the phone and does the spoofing
| automatically and entirely on behalf of the user.
|
| Let the enshittified apps' ads interact with your AI
| agent and steal your fake "data" in the background
| without bothering the user.
|
| Also important: It must be IMPOSSIBLE for any app to
| detect that its requests are being intercepted by your
| agent. (If they can tell, they'll refuse to work until
| you give them direct access.)
|
| This is a real killer app for AI but you'll never get VC
| funding to build it.
| netsharc wrote:
| On Android such a spoof app existed, it can hook into
| seemingly any API call and return things you control:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dt50HWys1k&t=27s
|
| But of course you need a rooted phone, and rooted phones
| can't run banking apps, tap-to-pay, Netflix, Pokemon Go,
| blah blah..
|
| The notification "firewall" is probably not impossible to
| make. I use Pushbullet, it mirrors notifications to my
| computer (to the browser extension to be exact), and I
| can already dismiss notifications coming into my phone
| from the computer. It should be possible to make an app
| that intercepts all notifications, analyzes their
| contents and dismiss them if they're spam...
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Sounds great! Until your grandpa downloads a notification
| filter than really just forwards all his notifications to
| the bad guys so they can hack all his accounts
| miki123211 wrote:
| We also need some kind of (privacy friendly) open rate
| tracking and spam protection.
|
| If many users receive a new kind of notification, using a
| new template, with low open rates, and uncorrelated with
| app activity, somebody at Apple should at least give it a
| 5-second glance and decide between "false positive" and
| "needs to be elevated"
| kccqzy wrote:
| As soon as I see one violation, I turn off the notification
| permission altogether. For example the Amazon shopping app
| can't send me notifications.
| sethops1 wrote:
| I'm at the point where literally only the messages, clock,
| and maps apps can send me notifications.
| ponector wrote:
| That is an awesome idea! To send ads from messages app.
| amendegree wrote:
| Same I think I denied the wallet app the ability to notify
| me after this ad. It's so ingrained in me that I don't
| think about it anymore... if I see an add in a notification
| I just immediately swipe, settings, turn off
| rchaud wrote:
| Why not just use the mobile website then? An app icon is
| itself equivalent to having a billboard on your homescreen.
| What is the app providing besides notifications that
| necessitates its use?
| kortilla wrote:
| Mobile websites are often either non existent or work far
| worse than the app.
| jeffgreco wrote:
| In the case of Uber, they actually have a very deeply
| developed webapp.
| discostrings wrote:
| Uber violates this. At least as of a few years ago, there was
| no way to get notifications about driver arrival without also
| getting special offer and Uber Eats spam notifications
| periodically. Not only was there no opt-in consent, there was
| no way to turn them off without disabling the status updates.
|
| It's particularly bad when apps with legitimate time-
| sensitive functionality do this.
|
| I denied the app the ability to send any notifications on
| principle, and now it's very annoying to have to check the
| app to see the driver status. It makes things worse for both
| me and them and I use it less as a result.
| sneak wrote:
| DoorDash also. I tend to uninstall apps that do this if I
| have any alternative to them.
| bdangubic wrote:
| I uninstall even if I do not have alternatives, I
| install/delete Uber every time I use it. When I need a
| ride with them I install it, when the ride is over I tip
| the driver and delete the app. Every single time, no
| exceptions
| adeelk93 wrote:
| Account > Settings > Communication > Marketing Preferences.
| Uncheck them all. A bit hidden, but it does work.
| discostrings wrote:
| At the point in time when I disabled notifications for
| the app, it did not. I tried that. Even after navigating
| dark patterns, digging into the menus, and turning those
| options off, I still received promotion notifications.
|
| Perhaps they've fixed it since? I don't know because
| they've already burned my trust and they've done nothing
| to earn it back. Publicly acknowledging and apologizing
| for this would have been a way to start getting off my
| list of bad actors.
|
| Even if they've made it possible to successfully turn
| those off deep in the menus now, whatever dreamed-up
| definition of "opted in" it's operating under is a
| tortured legalistic one that undermines the actual
| meaning and spirit of opting in.
| tomComb wrote:
| I can sympathize. I don't know about uber in particular
| but it gets quite tiring trying to find and follow these
| obscure settings.
|
| And what's worse is that the companies always seem to
| find a way to reset it to what they want quite
| frequently. One of their tricks is to reorganize
| permissions frequently so the ones that allow their spam
| to get through are always new.
| rjst01 wrote:
| I had to completely turn off notifications for Instagram
| because none of the provided settings appear to disable
| the almost-daily "for you" and "trending" notifications.
| Now I don't get notified when someone DMs me there, which
| has lead to me missing important messages.
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| Same. And I used to work there, and I raised it with
| them. They have all their career incentives aligned to
| getting people to see spammy notifications. I was
| powerless.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The problem with the user hostility is that, in the long
| term, _people don 't use it._
|
| As a web dev I see so many things that are lights-on-
| nobody-home about Meta. The Meta app on my phone
| generates numerous notifications, when I get one that
| says a game that looks really cool is 50% off, clicking
| on it doesn't send me to the landing page in the their
| app store, it sends me to the senseless home page of the
| app which seems to have the message "move on folks,
| nothing to see here"
|
| The Instagram web application fails to load the first
| time I load it on my computer and I have to always
| reload. On either Facebook or Instagram I am always
| getting harassed by OnlyFans models that want me to
| engage with them... on the same platform where I _engage
| with my sister-in-law._
|
| When they say they are "careless people" I wonder if they
| are not just careless about sexual harassment and
| genocide but careless about making money because we're in
| a postcapitalist hell where Zuck could care less for
| making money for his shareholders but rather gets a squee
| from sitting behind Trump at his inauguration and hires
| people with $100M packages not because he wants them to
| work with him but because he doesn't want them to work
| with someone else.
| aendruk wrote:
| I went through a couple rounds of trying to raise
| specifically this issue with support before simply
| uninstalling the app out of principle. They had their
| chance and burned it.
| surfearth wrote:
| I discovered this a few months ago - it's worth spending
| the 60 seconds to update these settings to get rid of
| Uber's terrible promotion notifications!
| devnullbrain wrote:
| I can do better than that. Uninstall it.
|
| It's a 600 MB app and you can log back in using only the
| iOS password manager. Reinstall it when you need to use
| it.
| CitrusFruits wrote:
| I think the 600MB part actually makes it harder to only
| install again when you need it.
| lxgr wrote:
| So does "Too Good To Go". Missed a pickup notification
| because I didn't remember having angrily turned off all
| notifications one day, since they don't have any more fine-
| grained option.
|
| I let their support know, but they don't care. I guess as
| long as it still brings in more additional sales than it
| costs in lost users, it works for them.
|
| This is something I like better on Android: As far as I
| remember, separate "notification channels" are mandatory
| there, and deactivating a given one is possible purely from
| the OS notification UI, without having to dig through
| inconsistent and hidden in-app options.
| dmurray wrote:
| I definitely get unmutable notifications on Android from
| my first-party phone manufacturer bloatware apps, which
| is the equivalent here. Would I like to see the new
| Themes in the Theme Marketplace?
|
| Pretty sure I've had marketing notifications on third
| party apps I couldn't disable without losing
| functionality, too. Separate notification channels might
| be mandatory in theory, but even if so, the Play Store is
| worse at policing that kind of thing in practice than
| Apple.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| The Boston parking meter app violates this FFS. Love getting
| Nift gift card promotions randomly from the app I'm forced to
| use to pay the meter /s
| miki123211 wrote:
| Tinder and delivery apps definitely don't follow these rules.
| msgodel wrote:
| In fact that's the main selling point for developing an
| iPhone app rather than a web page these days.
| moffkalast wrote:
| I can hardly think of an app that uses notifications and
| doesn't abuse it that way. I pretty much block them as
| standard.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| I hope this impacts current or future lawsuits regarding
| anticompetitive app store practices. It's a clear example of
| the unfair playing field Apple runs.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| For better or worse, Apple doesn't enforce this on third-
| parties either.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| You cannot possibly know that. Regardless of how many
| instances of infractions you know of you cannot know how
| many instances didn't occur because of the rule and you
| cannot know how the known infractions were punished by
| Apple behind closed doors. The very existence of this rule
| is what makes the playing field unfair.
| alwa wrote:
| Lord help us if "what's good for the goose is good for the
| gander," and the remedy (or the portent [0]) is throwing open
| the platform to everyone to advertise this way...
|
| That element of "well it's different when _we_ do it" is
| what's so unclassy here. And, like... so weirdly un-self-
| aware.
|
| And all for a coupon for a garden-variety movie?! The movie
| doesn't have anything to do with Apple, other than being made
| on their dime. What a strange purpose for which to piss away
| your perch above the fray.
|
| At least save this intrusion for when you're pushing a
| magical new self-driving Apple Car or something!
|
| [0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/report-apple-is-
| expl...
| al_borland wrote:
| A lot of companies violate that policy, and it quickly leads me
| to uninstall the app when they do.
|
| I didn't get the F1 ad though (at least not yet).
|
| I have seen Apple abusing notifications in other areas to push
| their subscription services though, and it a problematic trend.
| It makes them look cheap and desperate.
| croes wrote:
| They are for third party developers. Apple can and will do
| whatever they want
| nevitablentropy wrote:
| Never knew this before - OfferUp is a huge violator of this
| where they will push notification containing only
| advertisements with a loud notification that is identical to
| those used when someone makes you an offer. There is also no
| way to disable those promotional notifications without
| disabling all notifications from the app.
| ugh123 wrote:
| >unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via
| consent language displayed in your app's UI
|
| Have we not already agreed to this in one of the million TOS
| prompts that Apple shows us? sad
| valleyjo wrote:
| Uber does this all the time to me. It's so frustrating. I allow
| notifications from uber when I don't from most apps because
| they are useful when a ride is incoming. Yet I get random spam
| notifications. I wish Apple would stand up for their own rules
| and do something about it but since they don't even enforce
| this rule on themselves what hope is there
| burnte wrote:
| > Apple Wallet is in the App store, and the F1 ad debacle
| directly violates App Store guidelines
| https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/)
|
| It would only violate App Store guidelines if Apple forces
| itself to agree to, and be bound by them. I think it's arguable
| that they probably do not, and so they didn't violate the
| guidelines because they're not bound by them.
| kulahan wrote:
| Wouldn't the guidelines apply to anyone using it who doesn't
| have specific, legal, written exemptions? Not to say they
| don't have it, but simply hand-waving "well they wrote it so
| it doesn't have to apply to them" doesn't seem quite as
| simple to me. I could be wrong!
| mlyle wrote:
| The whole point of an agreement is that it sets out what
| parties will do for each other, and what happens if there
| is a breach.
|
| Apple could already do things with the App Store without
| needing to agree to something to get Apple to let Apple do
| App Store things.
|
| Apple is not going to sue themselves for being in breach.
|
| etc.
|
| Just because there's e.g. a license agreement doesn't mean
| you need to agree to something, if you are somehow
| otherwise authorized to do the thing. E.g. fair use, or you
| have a pre-existing right or ownership, or whatever.
| jeffgreco wrote:
| I think the premise is folks at Apple don't have the
| occasion to be prompted to accept the terms.
| brookst wrote:
| No. Apple does not sign up for an Apple Developer account.
| Contracts with oneself aren't even meaningful.
|
| This is a common tech enthusiast fallacy: thinking that law
| is code. So there must be some "if app published, there
| must be a developer account, and if the developer account
| violates the rule the app must be removed". It just doesn't
| work that way.
|
| Apple has contracts with third parties to allow them to
| distribute apps in Apple's App Store. That's it.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| While I am in agreement about the common tech enthusiast,
| or perhaps just dev, mental failings regarding law, I
| feel obligated to point out that App store guidelines
| written by the company running the app store are not law.
| thefounder wrote:
| This is the reason why anti-trust agencies don't like
| this. Apple (with its App Store) is a gatekeeper and in
| Europe at least it should not favor its own apps over the
| others(i.e maps, payments, AI integrations etc). It
| should play fair.
| jiriro wrote:
| The F1 is so good that I don't give a shit about some ad in
| wallet.
| todfox wrote:
| Even if I wanted to see that movie, I would refuse to watch it
| purely because I received an unsolicited ad in the Wallet app.
| nyc_pizzadev wrote:
| I got this ad, and ya, I was truly bewildered to get such an ad
| and then shocked that it came from my Wallet. I then spent the
| next hour searching how to disable this new marketing stream and
| it looks like nothing can be done. Anyway, glad to see I'm not
| alone here.
| manchmalscott wrote:
| They have added an option to disable marketing messages in the
| wallet app..... in the new iOS 26 beta. which uh, really makes
| it look like they were not planning on doing this just this
| once.
| thamer wrote:
| This is what it looks like, the switch is for "Offers &
| Promotions": https://i.imgur.com/wodOoBo.jpeg
|
| From the Wallet app, tap on "..." at the top right, then
| "notifications".
| bfrog wrote:
| I have a fundamental fear that Apple will lose itself the day it
| chases profits with Ads.
|
| If I wanted Ad spam I would've used Google.
| bitpush wrote:
| > Apple will lose itself the day it chases profits with Ads
|
| That shipped sailed many years back. Apple runs a highly
| successful ad network. It is just that most people are slowly
| starting to realize the true colors of the company.
| memset wrote:
| I got this ad too.
|
| I increasingly use wallet for everything - multiple credit cards,
| show tickets, transit tickets.
|
| Is there an alternative? Android?
| surgical_fire wrote:
| I use Google Wallet for some things because I am an Android
| user, and sometimes the most convenient way to pay for shit
| online is using the mobile wallet. I just happen to hate Apple
| more than I hate Google.
|
| That said, both Apple and Google are shit companies that should
| jot be trusted with this. I with there was a third option
|
| Also, please not FB. I have to be careful with what I wish
| sometimes.
| briandw wrote:
| The Apple of old had a deep respect for their users. We paid for
| a product that tried its best to sweat the details and deliver
| the best experience possible. UX was king. Apple made hard
| choices and delivered minimal, thoughtful and delightful
| products. The motto was "less but better".
|
| Today we have an Apple that keeps pushing new poorly thought out
| features. More and more they don't respect the user. Constant
| interruptions that don't serve the user, a ridiculous onboarding
| process with far too many screens, forcing their own products
| like Apple Music on people, not making design choices and making
| the user pick an option. We are so far from less but better and
| it's only getting worse. I wish there was a way forward for
| Apple, but I think it's just going to slowly die.
| pornel wrote:
| Apple has reverted to being a regular company. Everything is a
| potential revenue stream, and decisions are made based on next-
| quarter ROI. They needed the movie investment to meet the
| targets, so they've synergized with the Wallet team.
| komali2 wrote:
| Google too.
|
| I wish the fact that every company enshittifies in the end
| would wake us all up to the fact that rampant unregulated
| capitalism just doesn't work before it's too late to make any
| changes at all.
| _benton wrote:
| Apple wouldn't exist without "rampant unregulated
| capitalism".
| bigyabai wrote:
| Sure they would, they just wouldn't be as profitable.
| croes wrote:
| Why not?
|
| I think Apple wouldn't exist without cheap labor in
| authoritarian countries but that's a prerequisite for
| capitalism
| _benton wrote:
| Because Apple under Steve Jobs worked because Steve had
| full control. Zero chance they become successful run by
| committee or group ownership or whatever. And they also
| needed venture capital in the beginning afaik.
|
| I don't think Apple could have existed as it did under
| Jobs in any other system.
| bigyabai wrote:
| Apple's primary value driver (when it mattered) was
| luxury margins on mediocre tech. Without rampant demand,
| you don't have market stratification. If substantial
| regulation like the DSA existed in 2014, Apple's business
| model would look radically different today.
| FredPret wrote:
| It's rampant unregulated capitalism that feeds the whole
| lifecycle:
|
| - company started in garage
|
| - makes first sales
|
| - gets popular
|
| - gets investors
|
| - becomes _huge_ , changing the world of computing
|
| - enshittifies
|
| - gets replaced by the next company that was started in a
| garage somewhere
|
| A good system is _not_ one that preserves Apple or IBM or
| Xerox.
|
| A good system is one that allows these companies to come
| and go, because in the end we want the consumer to keep
| winning.
|
| Apple enshittifying is bad for everyone in the short term,
| but it opens the door for whatever comes next.
| mypornaccount wrote:
| what regulation exactly would you prefer?
| FredPret wrote:
| The minimum amount needed to ensure the basic spirit of
| the law actually happens.
|
| The less regulation and tax you have, the quicker the
| wheel of innovation above turns.
|
| OTOH, there are some cheap and easy regulations with a
| large societal return, like pollution regs. These low-
| hanging fruit should be picked, as long as the fruit-
| pickers don't redirect the whole economy towards ever-
| taller fruit-picking ladders.
| eviks wrote:
| That's just a myth, they've had way too many obvious flaws with
| conscious self-interested barriers to users' ability to fix bad
| UX for this to be even remotely true
| karel-3d wrote:
| They put U2 album to all iPhone users
| yowzadave wrote:
| This is worse. The U2 thing was a "gift", albeit an
| unsolicited one that many people didn't want and were annoyed
| by. This is just a crappy ad.
| grishka wrote:
| Except the way some system notifications worked on iOS was
| always disrespectful. The kind where you unlock your device
| _with a clear goal in mind_ and a modal alert pops up telling
| you that your battery is low, or that something "important"
| happened to your Apple ID, or that a system update is
| available, or asks you to set up iMessage again, or some other
| shit that of course has no relationship to what you're trying
| to do this very moment. It's rudely diverting your attention,
| interrupting your train of thought. That isn't respectful by
| any stretch of imagination, and they've been doing it since at
| least iOS 6.
|
| Long-time iOS users like to dunk on Android but even Android
| doesn't do this. All these things are notifications on Android,
| so you could deal with them on your own time.
| nexuist wrote:
| This is a legacy design decision all the way back to iOS 1
| before notifications existed. SMS messages used to be
| delivered through the same modal system. I believe the Apple
| ID and update messages are now banner notifications, and the
| battery alert gives you an easy way to turn on Low Power
| Mode, although I agree there should be a way to make that a
| banner notif as well.
| righthand wrote:
| > The perception of privacy is just as important as the technical
| details that make something actually private.
|
| Well at least it's acknowledged Apple privacy is only perception
| and not actually secure or private.
| sneak wrote:
| No, people really believe their nonsense marketing. The whole
| "FBI vs Apple" soap opera they cooked up after the San
| Bernardino shooting thing convinced a lot of people.
|
| Meanwhile Apple preserves a backdoor in the iMessage end to end
| encryption (in the form of non-e2ee iCloud Backups) for the
| FBI.
|
| https://finance.yahoo.com/news/exclusive-apple-dropped-plan-...
|
| (iCloud e2ee availability is irrelevant; nobody has it
| enabled.)
| sneak wrote:
| By default, the home screen of an Apple TV shows video ads for
| Apple subscription content, also.
| binarymax wrote:
| Ads are annoying but I at least understand that on Apple TV
| you'd see ads for entertainment content. Having it show up in
| Wallet is a complete disconnect.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| They did what?
| t8sr wrote:
| I have never said and rarely thought this before, but I really
| hope the person who came up with / approved this idea got fired
| for it. It's rare that you see something so unbelievably stupid
| and destructive of the shared pool of trust, which Apple spent 30
| years building, only for one self-interested PM to blow a chunk
| of it up for no gain.
|
| If the person who came up with this reads this site, I hope they
| see this comment and think about how screwed the industry would
| be if everyone acted the way they did.
| jader201 wrote:
| Then you're in agreement with the article:
|
| > _I try very seldom to call for anyone to be fired, but I
| think whoever authorized this movie ad through Wallet push
| notifications ought to be canned._
| dustbunny wrote:
| I think the person who came up with this shouldn't be fired,
| the person who _approved_ it should be reprimanded.
|
| There's some intersection point between who "owns" the wallet
| and who is coming up with ways to generate marketing revenue.
|
| Whoever lives at that intersection point is the real shot
| caller here aren't they?
|
| Imo you don't fire people for generating bad ideas, that just
| creates a culture of not thinking outside the box. But the
| person who is filtering those ideas is the critical lynch pin.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Why not fire them both?
|
| > _Imo you don 't fire people for generating bad ideas,_
|
| If an idea is _that_ bad, at the very least they should be
| transfered into a role that doesn 't involve coming up with
| good ideas, since obviously that is outside of their skill
| set. And what's the argument for not firing the chain of
| people who approved it? Their job was to stop bad ideas and
| they catastrophically failed.
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| > at the very least they should be transfered into a role
| that doesn't involve coming up with good ideas, since
| obviously that is outside of their skill set.
|
| Proposing one bad idea is not unusual for people whose job
| is idea-driven. When ideas are the primary currency of your
| occupation, you'll necessarily generate some losers. But in
| a company of Apple's size, that's why you rely on
| colleagues and - critically - a more robust approval
| process to move from idea to deliverable.
|
| I hate your idea of firing (from org. or role) the idea
| person based on one bad idea. I don't hate the idea of
| firing (from org. or role) the leaders _accountable_ for
| getting this idea into the world.
| dijit wrote:
| Job security seems to hold higher esteem than prison.
|
| Social norms exist outside of criminal law, and a single
| _extremely poor_ decision is reason enough for people to
| lose their freedom.
|
| Why shouldn't it be possible for people to lose their
| jobs?
| TheBicPen wrote:
| You're seriously comparing a single advertisement to
| crimes like murder? Crimes that land you in prison are
| generally crimes that even children can understand are
| wrong. You're using "extremely poor decision" for 2
| wildly different things, and if you think they're
| remotely equivalent, perhaps you should reflect on why
| you think that.
| dijit wrote:
| I am seriously suggesting that _a single bad decision_
| (like taking some money from the cash register) can land
| you in prison, why do we hold jobs to a higher standard?
|
| Learning from our mistakes is one thing, slip ups happen
| after all, but I'm just drawing a comparison to "a single
| misjudgement".
|
| If you don't know societies values (stealing is wrong) or
| a companies values (tarnishing the brand by looking cheap
| and desperate) the outcome should probably be the same:
| expulsion or exclusion.
|
| Also, don't go to the most extreme negative
| interpretation of what someone says, it's against
| guidelines.
| paulcole wrote:
| > the outcome should probably be the same
|
| Why exactly besides the fact that you like extreme
| solutions?
| dijit wrote:
| Because accountability?
|
| Either you're suggesting jail is too punitive a
| punishment or that being fired should never be a viable
| option.
|
| I'm not saying we should jump to extremes, I'm saying
| that the option should be on the table if you violate the
| core principles of the company, especially in a way that
| causes loss of consumer trust.
|
| Whats the difference between defrauding Ford out of $200M
| and causing $200M in damages because I decided that every
| new Ford will include the word "I solemnly swear I will
| shit on the American flag when requested"?
|
| In essence, in either case I am putting my own needs
| above the needs of the company and above the needs of the
| consumer - in a way that undermines future sales for the
| company too.
| clickety_clack wrote:
| There's bad ideas like "it wasn't possible to execute this
| the way we thought we could", and bad ideas like "this goes
| against the core values of what this company is".
|
| The first is something that might have gone better in
| better circumstances, so it's a learning opportunity. The
| second shows you either don't understand the company and
| decided to carry on despite that, or you just don't care
| about the company, but either way it reflects poorly enough
| on an individual that a firing should be on the table.
| t8sr wrote:
| Yes, but there's nuance. We each assume a version of events
| and nobody really knows. In my experience, big tech companies
| attract a certain type of person (among others) who will not
| only think of stuff like this, but actively fight for it and
| consequences to the long term be damned. VPs who actually
| approve this stuff will have limited time to think about it
| and a lot depends on the proposal.
|
| This looks like a group PM level decision. Bluntly, at that
| level we get paid enough to exercise good judgement.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Imo you don 't fire people for generating bad ideas, that
| just creates a culture of not thinking outside the box._
|
| No, you fire people for generating ideas that are shady and
| against your own policies.
| lurking_swe wrote:
| disagree. brainstorming should never be seen as a negative.
| trying to _promote_ and _act_ on shady ideas is the
| problem.
| kortilla wrote:
| "What if we just charge a bunch of hidden recurring
| fees?"
|
| Some ideas are so bad they indicate that you aren't
| aligned with the goals of the company
| kortilla wrote:
| You definitely fire people for pitching ideas that are
| against the ethos of the company. Otherwise you have no
| culture. It shouldn't come down to one approver on the wallet
| side to see how dumb this was
| partiallypro wrote:
| The thing is, while we care about it here at HN, most people
| don't really care. Apple is a cult among consumers and they
| aren't going to switch even if they started putting in way more
| ads. They know, similar to Windows, that they have an ecosystem
| lock in and people aren't going to escape it.
| al_borland wrote:
| People think they don't care, or they tolerate it, but it
| still has an impact on the experience. It comes in the form
| of fewer glowing reviews, fewer recommendations to friends,
| more complaints and less forgiveness for problems. The
| pressure builds up over time, and then they snap.
|
| Windows is the perfect example against the claim that Apple
| should be comfortable to abuse their users. Windows
| marketshare has been steadily dropping for the last 15 years.
| People are tired of the abuse, and slowly but surely leaving
| the platform. We now have people like PewDiePie making videos
| about switching to Arch Linux and self hosting, large
| companies offering employees a choice of Windows or Mac...
| things that would have sounded extremely unlikely 10+ years
| ago.
|
| I'm pretty deep in the Apple ecosystem, having been in it
| since 2003. I could transition out of it within a week if I
| had to. There are some things I'd miss, for sure, but I'd
| live.
| nixpulvis wrote:
| Exactly. Just because someone says they don't care, or they
| don't even consciously see it, doesn't mean it's not
| internalized in some way. A lot of the time it simply
| degrades the importance of the notification, making them
| more likely to be passively ignored in the future, however
| it probably runs deeper too.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| Tim Cook is in charge. This wasn't decided in a bubble. A
| single person can't do this. It takes a lot of people to do
| this. A culture that allows this. This wasn't a mistake. It
| wasn't malicious. It wasn't even the first time.
|
| Tim Cook did this, and anyone that can't put the blame on him
| is lying to themselves.
| al_borland wrote:
| You'd think he would have learned after that U2 album
| disaster 11 years ago, clearly not. He's been doing this kind
| of stuff since he took over.
|
| It seemed like Jobs used the products and was trying to make
| stuff that he would want to use. Cook seems like he doesn't
| use any of these products, and is willing to sacrifice the
| user experience to try and make a few extra bucks.
|
| It seems time for some new blood leading Apple. A product
| person who can get the company back to the core of trying to
| make insanely great products that people want to use, without
| compromise.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| > destructive of the shared pool of trust
|
| Will there actually be any short, mediumm, or long term
| consequences for Apple? What real, tangible trust has Apple
| lost that could lead to meaningful harm to them?
|
| The only thing I can come up with is people who hold Apple to
| some kind of high-minded ideal, that they constantly run foul
| of for other reasons already.
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| Apple does a lot of things that are not allowed by any of the
| 3p developers. Someone like EU could look at that (for
| instance in this case a direct to consumer marketing channel
| that they are using to favor their own properties) and say it
| violates the DMA.
|
| Google is being forced to take Google Flights links out of
| Search results, for instance.
| croes wrote:
| >if everyone acted the way they did.
|
| Everyone with the power like Apple does
| timewizard wrote:
| Apple should be sued for this. This is their responsibility.
| They built it, left it unsupervised, and allowed the obvious to
| happen.
|
| This is not the fault of ONE low level worker and there is no
| reason to punish them and then walk away like you've
| accomplished /anything/ meaningful in the long term.
|
| These are precisely the types of public cases that should be
| brought against them. It would lend a lot of aid to the anti
| trust efforts against them as well. They clearly privilege
| themselves and see the devices and app store as their asset,
| not something they maintain on behalf of customers and
| developers.
| jonplackett wrote:
| It shows they must be REALLY worried about this movie. All the
| reviews I've read say it sucks. I'm an f1 fan and from what
| I've read it sounds all pretty dumb and fake.
| epolanski wrote:
| This company really is turning into the new IBM or something. No
| innovation whatsoever and more and more money squeezing the
| users.
|
| I'm sad they make the only decent laptop out there, for
| everything else I'm glad to be out their crap wallet garden.
| vitaflo wrote:
| You could say this about all the large tech companies now.
| They're all just boring Megacorps.
| Fade_Dance wrote:
| NVIDIA is fairly unique and interesting.
| supportengineer wrote:
| My fantasy is they create an entirely new product line called
| something like "Chunky" or maybe "Thiccc". The idea is that it
| would have plenty of user replaceable modules. Everything would
| be swappable. The battery, the memory, the drives. Of course,
| this would still be a premium product. It would have expansion
| modules for things nobody has thought of yet. It's a new market
| with unlimited opportunities
| mNovak wrote:
| You should look up Google's Project Ara. I was really excited
| for it at the time (2014), but alas, it never made it to
| market.
| danielschreber wrote:
| Fairphone?
| steveBK123 wrote:
| I think its rather telling about the state of Apple that Gruber
| has posted some fairly negative (for him) posts in the last few
| months.
|
| This is coming from a guy who generally fawned over every new
| iterative release as if it was revelatory for 20 years.
| linhns wrote:
| But admittedly, they still have the only good laptop on the
| market
| dimal wrote:
| I think Apple may be in the process of being enshittified. Stuff
| like this, their complete failure to do anything useful with AI,
| the anti-accessibility of a Liquid Glass, and the simple
| observation of how many things in the Apple ecosystem don't "just
| work" is making me feel like giving up on it.
|
| I spend an enormous amount of money on Apple products, and
| increasingly they lead to frustration and anger at the
| thoughtlessness and plain shittiness of them. I'm really
| wondering why I bother. They clearly don't have my interests in
| mind.
| jcoder wrote:
| I'm trying to remember if anyone complained like this about the
| Apple Card offers in Apple Wallet. For some reason advertising
| their credit card is completely fine, but advertising their movie
| is where people get out the pitchforks? Not defending either, I
| think both are egregious. I just think it's interesting.
| karel-3d wrote:
| Living in Asia for a while, this stuff is so mild... all these
| "super-apps" are always so annoying with cross-promotions that
| are impossible to turn off. It's true that they are usually not
| yet having root level access.
| linhns wrote:
| Asian here, always surprised when these apps keep putting their
| money into those promotions and getting almost nothing back in
| results.
| ericyd wrote:
| > It'd be completely sensible to be spooked by that, and conclude
| that Apple Wallet is tracking you.
|
| Wait, there were/are people who believe Apple Wallet doesn't
| track them in some way?
| Fade_Dance wrote:
| Yes. Apple has a fairly good user security track record.
| linotype wrote:
| If Apple starts putting ads everywhere, I might as well switch to
| Android and save myself a thousand bucks every three years.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| I feel like we need a CAN SPAM act that includes Smartphone
| notifications. And gatekeepers like Apple should probably simply
| be banned from placing any advertisements in push notifications.
|
| The updates Microsoft has been making to add stuff the Windows
| lockscreen and start menu also seem like they should be at the
| least legally questionable.
|
| And of course Google practically invented these things.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _I feel like we need a CAN SPAM act_
|
| I feel like we need a CANT SPAM act.
| usernamed7 wrote:
| This is why i have ALL notifications disabled, no matter the app.
| Companies, including apple, cannot help themselves but abuse it.
| Which is insane because it's a useful part of the phone
| functionality that I have to entirely disable because of greedy
| disrespectful companies. And there are no controls given to put
| us back in control.
|
| Apple has lost their taste and lost their respect for users.
| logic_node wrote:
| Feels like a small thing, but it's definitely a shift in tone.
| Curious if this becomes a trend in Apple's UI decisions moving
| forward.
| conradev wrote:
| I was watching the Phillies game the other day, like I usually
| do, except it was Friday, so Apple owns the rights to the game.
| It's not the usual announcers, but fine, I can watch it on Apple
| TV+.
|
| I remember getting a commercial for Ed Sheeran's new song for
| Apple's new F1 Movie which I can listen to on Apple Music and
| just ask Siri to play it and wanting to throw the remote at the
| TV. Apple just really wants to watch baseball with me. I prefer
| my crappy local OTT ads.
| taylodl wrote:
| The irony is Apple is spending a fortune on their Secure with
| Apple marketing campaign, the one that ends with the Apple logo
| turning into a lock that clicks shut, and they've undone that,
| plus some, with the F1 campaign. This is a blunder of epic
| proportions and is illustrative of a company no longer in touch
| with their core identity and principles.
| tapsboy wrote:
| Microsoft recently pushed Minecraft movie backgrounds for Teams
| users, including Enterprises
| timewizard wrote:
| > That Apple can be trusted in ways that other "big tech"
| companies cannot.
|
| This is pure nonsense. From someone with the experience to know
| better. It's amazing to me that people could say this out loud.
|
| > The perception of privacy is just as important as the technical
| details that make something actually private.
|
| The "perception of privacy" is _all you have_. You don't even
| have access to the technical details!
|
| > I'm 99.9 percent certain this F1 ad was just blasted out to
| zillions of Wallet users indiscriminately
|
| Stop making excuses for the trillion dollar gorilla in the room
| with you. You don't understand it. You've anthropomorphized it to
| a point of pathos. It's going to rip your arms off. It's just a
| matter of time.
| edfletcher_t137 wrote:
| > The perception of privacy is just as important as the technical
| details that make something actually private. I try very seldom
| to call for anyone to be fired, but I think whoever authorized
| this movie ad through Wallet push notifications ought to be
| canned.
|
| Spot on. Look at it this way: would SJ have allowed this to
| happen? Absolutely not. And if it somehow had happened while he
| were still there, he would've unquestionably (and quickly) fired
| the responsible parties.
| burnte wrote:
| Apple also pushed a notification through the AppleTV app. I
| thought I had all notifications turned off (I turn off
| notifications from most apps on all devices, just because you
| think I need to see your messages doesn't mean I think that and
| most apps do not need notifications). Quite irritating. That was
| the point where I decided I would not see F1 in theaters, and if
| I ever do it'll be free streaming.
| tonymet wrote:
| I ended up buying tickets but the Fandango checkout flow had so
| many pitfalls that I doubt this converted very many people .At
| least 10 screens including one saying "sorry you can't use Apple
| Pay to redeem the coupon" (you had to go through a further
| checkout and then choose Apple Pay ).
|
| They burned a lot of goodwill over a low conversion campaign. It
| reminds me of the U2 album that they snuck onto everyone's
| phones, but even tackier .
| DrTung wrote:
| Reminds me of the push of U2's 'Songs Of Innocence" into
| everyone's iPhones maybe 10 years ago.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| C'mon, it's not like they dumped a complete album in your music
| collection!
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