[HN Gopher] You Might Also Like
___________________________________________________________________
You Might Also Like
Author : mgrayson
Score : 210 points
Date : 2022-11-07 18:27 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (basicappleguy.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (basicappleguy.com)
| sebastien_b wrote:
| > _" I willingly paid a tremendous amount for the hardware, and I
| choose to pay nearly $500 annually to access Apple services, but
| seeing ads being further promulgated across the software feels,
| well, gross."_
|
| I stopped paying to see ads when I quit subscription TV. I feel I
| will soon have to quit paying for ads when getting a new phone.
| tristor wrote:
| This infuriates the shit out of me, and I'm a heavy Apple user
| and a Product Manager. The role of PMs is to be tastemakers,
| among other things, and I have no idea which PM wrote the
| PRD/6-pager for adding ads everywhere in iOS, but they should be
| fired immediately. This experience is the epitome of un-premium,
| and is a huge step towards there being no experience
| differentiation in the product between Apple and Android. Apple
| is able to charge significantly more than competitors for its
| products /because/ the experience has a premium look and feel
| compared to the ghetto that is Android. Turning iOS into a ghetto
| too is definitely not a reasonable product vision.
| [deleted]
| spacemadness wrote:
| That's painting PMs with a wide brush. I wish this was always
| the case, but PMs help bring all sorts of terrible things to
| light in the world.
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| As a Marxist (intellectual) for the past 2 decades, this stuff
| simply never surprises me. Rather, it's precisely how I know
| capitalism to work.
|
| In other words, capitalism is very good at adapting to our
| perceptions of its inherent structural mechanisms, but such
| adaptation is as temporary as the perceptions.
|
| This is both why Marx was wrong and why he was right. The man
| deserves so much more credit than he temporarily ;) gets.
|
| Also see:
| https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Tendency_of_the_rate_of_profit_to...
| shmde wrote:
| My brain just melted reading this. I am sorry but this doesn't
| make sense and reads like a GPT-3 prompt. Which part of the
| comment is supposed to be related to the advertisement on app
| store of apple ?
| noduerme wrote:
| As with GPT-3, the production of endless amounts of pseudo-
| academic-sounding gobbledegook is a feature of Marxist
| ideology, not a bug.
| languageserver wrote:
| The day of the AI has already arrived, as online marxists
| fail the Turing test
| thrown_22 wrote:
| That's been the case for quite a while. Especially US
| Marxists:
|
| >The key struggle of workers is that of getting enough
| minority representation in corporate board rooms.
|
| Like the problem with the Irish Potato famine being that
| Queen Victoria wasn't queer enough.
| nopenopenopeno wrote:
| Identity politics are antithetical to Marxism. Marxists
| focus on _class_.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| Yes, I wish someone would explain this to US Marxists. Go
| to any university and see what the Marxists club is like.
|
| >I'm a bi trans demi boy who is disabled due to anxiety
| and also the president of the society. Anyone who doesn't
| sleep with me is transphobic.
|
| >>Ok but what about helping organize the proletariat?
|
| >Ew, they are reactionary bigots who we need to
| deplatformed.
|
| >>...
|
| >You seem problematic. You're not allowed back here until
| you write an apology for the original land owners and
| sleep with me.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Identity politics are antithetical to _marxist theory_
| but not necessarily to the marxist _movements_ as they
| actually existed.
|
| Here, things get more complicated because there were
| marxist movements all over the world, from Africa to Asia
| to Russia, and each had different motivations and often
| different goals.
|
| In Russia, marxism was always about identity first and
| foremost, primarily the identity of various
| outcast/conquered groups: poles, jews, germans,
| lithuanians, etc. that were in the conquered regions in
| the Western part of the Empire - primarily the regions
| that used to be held by Poland. The abstruse economic
| theories served as a type of schelling point for a
| coalition of minorites against the Russian Orthodox
| majority, and after the revolution there was a systematic
| effort to suppress Russian identity and replace it with a
| new "Soviet" identity -- e.g. if you look at the list of
| Soviet general secretaries, only one of them was Russian
| (although there is some debate as several of the
| secretaties had mysterious, and in some cases, clearly
| invented pasts). There were explicit anti-Russian
| policies put in place, for example there were communist
| parties in all the provinces except the Russian province,
| which had no communist party, and thus no road for
| advancement except to join the overall Soviet Communist
| Party, but that preferenced non-Russians for membership.
|
| Similarly when the Soviets drew the borders of various
| provinces, they explicitly made the minority provinces
| much larger, dragging in traditional Russian lands, even
| as they created local minority communist parties that
| barred Russians from participation, effectively meaning
| that 1/3 of Russians were living in an explicitly non-
| Russian province, even though often times they were the
| majority population in that province.
|
| A good book that covers this topic in depth is Terry
| Martin's "Affirmative Action Empire" -
| https://www.amazon.com/Affirmative-Action-Empire-
| Nationalism...
|
| At the same time, Marxism in other areas had a decidedly
| nationalist tone - for example in Africa, Indonesia,
| Vietnam or other nations fighting colonialism. Here, too,
| it was identity and nationalism that was the motivating
| factor and not the economic theories.
|
| Really class-based movements are generally limited to the
| "West" -- e.g. Western Europe and North America. I'm not
| saying that class isn't important elsewhere, but when you
| look at what animates radical movements throughout the
| world, it's almost always race/religion/language that
| plays the dominant role, and this is as true for marxist
| movements as for other types of movements.
| UniverseHacker wrote:
| I remember a friend saying Apple should have bought YouTube
| before Google did, and thinking this person just doesn't get
| Apple. YouTube is/was a chaotic low quality mess, and Apple only
| does high quality, beautiful products, with a top quality
| experience. Now it seems like the idea of Apple owning YouTube
| doesn't seem off-brand at all.
|
| This is really disappointing. I am not willing to see ads at all
| in my daily life, and am willing to pay for the privileged. It
| seems Apple is now making that impossible.
| krono wrote:
| The pushing and pulling was there all along:
|
| The play/pause media key automatically starting the Music app,
| suggestions defaulting to include content from paid services (hey
| that movie is available on Apple TV!), maps links only working
| with Apple Maps, searching for selected text opens Safari and
| disregards your primary browser, permanently enabled share menu
| options for iCloud and Airdrop.
|
| Privacy settings increasingly spread out and opaquely named. No
| more central unique identifier reset button, but individual ones
| for each app placed in different submenus. Completely disabling
| Siri has become some sort of Easter egg hunt. Not that it'll
| actually stop the data outflow, though.
|
| Aggressive surfacing of ecosystem capabilities such as proximity
| unlock by nearby Apple watch, wake on bluetooth or network, etc.
| These features were previously configurable through the GUI, but
| those conveniences have been removed and the features are enabled
| by default.
|
| Local configuration profiles (a free, easy, local, and accessible
| way to configure your system) are being slowly phased out in
| favour of third party remote Mobile Device Management services
| such as Jamf or, of course, the one Apple launched not too long
| ago.
|
| These new advertisements are so prominent and the implementation
| so obviously bad, that I'm almost suspecting them to be merely a
| distraction from the much more insidious tricks they've been
| pulling in the background.
| bound008 wrote:
| > The play/pause media key automatically starting the Music app
|
| $ sudo chmod -x /Applications/Music.app
|
| This was a common complaint I have heard from those coming from
| Windows/Android and even Linux... It's unix.
|
| Also, the play/pause key works with other apps. Other default
| apps can be set.
|
| Many other valid points in this article and thread, but I don't
| know why people expect the default behavior of the play button
| to behave any differently when no media is playing. Music.app
| may have an upsell, but it's still a place to organize your own
| personal music library. No cloud or SaaS required.
| krono wrote:
| Solutions aplenty yes, just not for, say, my mother. Not
| providing a normal way for users to select a an alternative
| default (like competitor Spotify), is disproportionally
| inconvenient relative to the benefits for Apple.
|
| Accidental music app launches by my pinky finger brushing the
| play/pause touchbar control strip button, well.. let's just
| say it happened more then once. Absolutely maddening.
| throwup wrote:
| There are solutions, but on some level this is no different
| from telling Windows users to just tweak some registry keys.
| It all leads to the same place.
| dont__panic wrote:
| Play/pause always starts the Music app, regardless of your
| preferred music player. It's annoying for those of us who
| don't use the built-in Music app at all.
|
| Your command doesn't work. The music app actually lives at
| `/System/Applications/Music.app`. And since Monterey, I
| think, even sudo won't let you modify data in that folder
| because of macOS's built-in protections that cannot be
| disabled: chmod: Unable to change file mode
| on /System/Applications/Music.app: Read-only file system
|
| Even disabling SIP and booting into safe mode doesn't let you
| do this.
| Neff wrote:
| If you haven't seen it yet, NoTunes[1] does a great job of
| fixing the hijacking of the play button or when bluetooth
| headphones are connected or disconnected.
|
| 1: https://github.com/tombonez/noTunes
| karaterobot wrote:
| Until they make ads an OS-level feature, this doesn't bother me
| on a practical level, because I don't use any first party apps of
| theirs. I'm thinking about how this affects, me, and I don't
| think I use any Apple apps on a daily basis. I guess I never
| thought about how none of the best apps (imho) in any category I
| use on iOS are made by Apple. I agree with the premise of the
| article, but I can work around this phase of Apple's heel turn.
| rchaud wrote:
| Depressing to see Apple going toe to toe with Android for the
| worst app store experience possible.
|
| Used to be that people chose MacOS/iOS specifically because it
| wasn't crawling with ads for dumpster-quality apps.
| imoverclocked wrote:
| OTOH, many people have been complaining that the Apple App
| Store is not more like the Android one(s).
| [deleted]
| mikestew wrote:
| As I read TFA, I thought to myself, "if it gets bad enough, I'll
| just load Linux on my Macs." And then it occurred to me how I got
| started using Apple products. So grab a cuppa for story time. It
| was a time that I worked for Microsoft, and mmm, mmm, wasn't that
| uncarbonated company soft drink tasty. But as I dicked with some
| Plays for Sure(tm) device for the last time, I got fed up and
| told the spouse, "get in the car, we're going to BellSquare to
| buy iPods." iPods turned into ditching the Windows Phones for
| iPhones, then a hackintosh to get a feel for OS X Leopard, then
| "fine, I'll get a MacBook if I'm going to do iOS development on
| the side".
|
| Fast-forward fifteen years, and it's a house full of HomeKit,
| Apple Watches (loving that new Ultra), MacBooks, HomePods, etc.
| It all works well together, so it's easy to justify ditching
| $DEVICE for an Apple product. And when Apple Premium (one price
| for all of Apple's services such as TV+, iCloud storage, et. al.)
| came around, well, of course I said "put that on the Apple Card,
| please."
|
| The point I'm driving at is that a household of Apple products
| started with one simple purchase of a couple of music players.
| But keep up the advertising crap to the point that I'm loading a
| non-Apple OS on Apple hardware, and that unravelling thread might
| take the rest with it. "It all works so well together" is a
| blessing and a curse. I'm pretty sure that if, whatever the
| reason, we ditch the iPhones the rest of it goes with them.
| cglong wrote:
| What you're describing was my exact journey.
|
| 1. Have Apple everything 2. Through an internship at Microsoft,
| get a Windows laptop and Windows Phone 3. Fall in love with
| both experiences 4. Switch to Android 5. Decide my next
| computer will be a Linux gaming machine
|
| Over time, I learned that most parts of the ecosystem can be
| swapped out for alternatives that are _almost_ as good, but
| without nearly as much vendor lock-in. As soon as you
| experience this, the value proposition of Apple comes into
| question.
| lancesells wrote:
| I was a very happy Windows user and purchased legit licenses
| for myself and my business. I didn't hate the Mac but I had
| only used it since OS 9 and I felt Windows was much more stable
| and customizable. Years go by and I find myself not being able
| to get a Windows XP license to install because my activation
| code from the box didn't work. I spend 5+ hours talking to all
| kinds of support. No one can help me get past this activation
| code.
|
| And that was it. I switched everything to Apple. Anything
| purchased new for myself or my business was Apple. Windows,
| Microsoft, Xbox, etc. I won't even consider. The only thing
| I've used that's Microsoft in the last 20+ years is Github.
|
| With their present moves, I know my relationship with Apple
| products will end with a similar sentiment.
| bombcar wrote:
| Which is hilariously amusing, because FCKGW probably still
| activates just fine.
| layer8 wrote:
| FCKGW stopped working with XP SP1.
| tacker2000 wrote:
| Haha how does the rest go... RHQQ2 ?
| bombcar wrote:
| I'm not sure what revision of Windows Phone it was (they
| restarted that thing so often) but there was one with Tiles I
| believe (looked like the Windows 7 start menu) that was pretty
| nice. Friend had it; Microsoft really made a HUGE mistake here
| by not just continuing it for years and years, they'd now have
| a solid third place offering that could be very business
| friendly by now if they'd done the standard Microsoft
| incremental improvement.
| mikestew wrote:
| Oh, no, we were still on Windows Phone 6.0 at that point.
| I've still got the device pictured in this article:
|
| https://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-
| communications/mobi...
|
| But ignore the device, and notice how the UI looks at lot
| like a Windows PC desktop of era. Now imagine that against
| even the earliest of iPhones. Ballmer going on about how the
| iPhone was going to fail sure aged well.
|
| Later versions of Windows Phone would improve on it in a big
| way, as you point out, but by then it was way too late.
| Perhaps if they poured more money into it as you suggest, but
| Microsoft was already paying devs to port their apps, and
| there were still big holes in the app lineup.
| guestbest wrote:
| Windows ce 6 phone? They haven't been made since 2009, I
| believe. They topped out at 256meg of ram, if I remember
| correctly with the last models before everyone switched to
| Android 2 point something. Can it do 4g? I know 2g has been
| shut down and 3g is on its last legs if any carriers even
| support it. Those wince models cant even do WPA2 for Wi-Fi.
| How do you set it up as an internet device?
|
| I'm genuinely curious since the software is so out of date
| I can't even get it setup with visual studio 2008 on an xp
| computer to develop apps for it. Their are so many hoops to
| jump through and it maybe that the usb doesn't work with it
| in the end that I gave up.
| mikestew wrote:
| You might be confusing my use of "still <have> the
| device" with "used in the last ten years". I don't even
| know if the thing will boot anymore. I'm not a collector,
| I just don't throw things away anywhere near as quickly
| as I should.
|
| Free to a good home (as in, you won't just tie it in the
| backyard and never pay attention to it) if anyone has a
| hankering for an old HTC Advantage. Great machine in the
| day, I even edited Word docs on it (albeit, painfully),
| but I wouldn't let it anywhere near an Internet
| connection.
| bombcar wrote:
| I think the killer was just how many times they changed
| what "Windows Phone" was, and they were major breaking
| changes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Mobile
|
| My friend had a Windows Phone 7 device, which was 90000%
| different from what you have in every way, and not
| compatible, either.
|
| Then they trashed that and tried something else that looked
| similar but was completely different. Just an entirely
| broken strategy. You can't kill your few supporters every
| single generation!
|
| It would have been like OS X not being able to run
| applications from System 7/8/9 or dropping PPC applications
| entirely on the x86 Macs.
| runjake wrote:
| This was Windows Phone 7 and 7.5 "Mango".
| echelon wrote:
| > But keep up the advertising crap to the point that I'm
| loading a non-Apple OS on Apple hardware, and that unravelling
| thread might take the rest with it.
|
| Not everyone can do this or will do this.
|
| Apple captured way too much power, and now they're free to boil
| us all. They basically own American consumer computing and
| mobile business computing. 51+% of it all, anyway.
|
| By taking moves like this, I think it shows the platform is too
| powerful a market entity and that the government needs to put
| restrictions on what Apple can and cannot do, and lift Apple's
| own restrictions against app developers and competing
| businesses.
| gretch wrote:
| This is an unsupported hypothesis.
|
| I am a big Apple user (iPhone, air tags, air pods, MacBook
| etc) but I definitely don't feel "captured" in any way. If
| their products start sucking then I'm voting with my feet and
| my wallet.
|
| I'd much rather support the market driven approach than to
| assign this responsibility and authority over to the Govt.
| echelon wrote:
| There is little market anymore. You want to reach
| Americans, you bow to Apple or Google and jump through
| absurd hoops.
|
| I vastly prefer the government to keep hands off, but in
| this case we've reached the impenetrable event horizon and
| need a Deus Ex to restore reasonable competition.
|
| Companies should be free to deploy technology to customers
| without being unduly taxed.
| cco wrote:
| > ...I'll just load Linux on my Macs.
|
| Not really an option with M1, no? I know various groups have
| managed to get something running on Apple silicon, but my
| impression is that largely this isn't going to be a viable
| option. I could definitely be wrong.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| The Asahi team have really done a great job, and I get the
| feeling M1 Linux is poised to be suitable as a daily driver.
| mikestew wrote:
| _Not really an option with M1, no?_
|
| I'll let you know when I buy one. :-) Nothing but Intel Macs
| at the moment.
| runjake wrote:
| It's close to being a viable option and it's improving
| rapidly.
| birdyrooster wrote:
| It's hard to see it now but the mobile phone is a dying product
| category. Apple in a way acknowledged this when they started
| their pivot to services and the market acknowledged this when
| they became fixated on whether Apple could maintain revenues
| for iPhone upgrades (they can't). They are capturing the value
| they can from iPhone before its completely unprofitable because
| of new paradigms of computing that Apple themselves will be
| delivering. Nearly every major change or product release in
| Apple is well gamed out and planned for 5-10 years in advance,
| some of these moves longer. Withering the iPhone with Ads is a
| very deliberate decision and done so on a timetable with many
| other priorities and strategies. Part of maintaining relevancy
| is cannibalizing your own business with newer, better ways of
| delivering value. This is a way that Apple can extract the most
| profit from their cannibalization of iPhone.
| system16 wrote:
| Similar story here. 20 years ago I was a Windows user. I had no
| love for Windows, but I put up with it. I had never even
| considered buying a Mac because to me they were just overpriced
| dumbed down PCs for people who were not technical. I didn't
| know anything about them.
|
| Then I bought an iPod with click wheel.
|
| I fell in love with it from the minute I opened the packaging.
| It just felt like a device that a lot of care was put into. I
| loved holding it and it was a pleasure to use. It made me
| rethink Apple.
|
| When it was time to buy a new laptop, I bought the 2006 black
| MacBook. I felt the same thing all over again, but now for my
| primary computing device. I loved OS X.
|
| Fast forward to today and I also have a house full of Apple
| products. Just in my line of sight I have several Mac laptops,
| Magic Keyboard/touchpad, a few iPhones, an iPad, AirPods...
| over the years I've purchased dozens of Apple products. Not to
| mention my subscriptions to Apple TV+, iCloud Storage, Apple
| Music...
|
| But Apple is increasingly a very different company than before.
| I now feel like they are nickel and diming me at every possible
| turn and it's no longer even subtle. When I picked up my iPhone
| 14 Pro at the Apple Store, I was in disbelief at how hard the
| Apple Employee tried to upsell Apple Care using hard sell scare
| tactics.
|
| I doubt anything will ever change under Tim Cook. Maybe some
| day Scott Forstall will return in Jobs-like fashion and correct
| the company's course.
| p0pcult wrote:
| Advertising is a virus that will filter through its hosts until
| the host is killed.
| maupin wrote:
| When I saw ads in the Windows Start menu, I switched to Ubuntu.
| Haven't looked back and life is good. Except that the command
| line command apt-get sometimes displays an ad for Ubuntu Pro...
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| You may be interested in learning we're currently having a
| special deal on Frustration Premium, only $5/month. Use code
| marginalia at checkout.
| TrueSlacker0 wrote:
| Don't forget the fact that you had to see a command line, no
| general user should ever see a command line.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| You don't have to use the command line to update. Ubuntu
| comes with a GUI for apt. I think it's just called Discover.
| mellavora wrote:
| > no general user should ever see a command line.
|
| Gack! Why not?
|
| If the computer is supposed to be a "bicycle for the mind",
| then shouldn't it be designed to enhance our thinking, and
| also to force us to "think differently"?
|
| You have to learn how to ride a bike. It involves some
| scraped knees.
| Johanx64 wrote:
| How does typing cryptic, badly named two-three letter
| commands (with no less idiotic and inconsistent flags)
| enhance your thinking?
|
| The default shell and utter lack of well designed
| autocomplete or hints is a like a bad trip back to tape
| machines, punch codes and weird idiosyncracies from a
| bygone PDP11 era.
|
| It's absolute piss and nobody should be dealing with it
| unless they want to for whatever reason.
| rchaud wrote:
| Imagine a stationary bike that you have in your home.
|
| Do you want to place it smack dab in your living room? Or
| leave it in the garage, out of plain sight, and access it
| only when needed?
| user_ wrote:
| Definitely in the living room.
|
| Tools like the command line and exercise equipment help
| improve capability and personal agency. Hiding either
| away pushes the default toward passive consumption.
| sp1rit wrote:
| Keep in mind that Cannonical Ubuntu used to display
| ads/"recommendations " for Amazon products in their launch
| center thingy.
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| Yep, Cannonical backed down on that advertising/revenue
| stream. Has Google ever backed down on advertising? It
| remains to be seen if Apple does.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| I've never seen such an ad... Maybe it's only an apt-get thing?
| Try using apt.
| 1f60c wrote:
| I _think_ Ubuntu Pro is free for personal use, but whether the
| terminal is the right place to put ads is a different question.
| fsflover wrote:
| Perhaps you could switch to something like PopOS without ads.
| [deleted]
| noduerme wrote:
| I do all my work on Macs, and I love the ergonomics of MacOS, but
| I refuse to use any Apple apps. I hate how Apple broke its own
| Save/Save As paradigm, and the iOS-ification of things like
| iTunes/music on the desktop. I use Little Snitch to block all
| Apple services except in rare instances where I want to download
| something from the App Store.
| doitLP wrote:
| The problem is he incentive to squeeze money out of ads because
| there's less innovation happening elsewhere. Yes they're M* chips
| but I mean big innovation.
|
| how do we ever break the cycle of growth at all costs demanded of
| public companies?
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Karl Marx had the answer, but you're not gonna like it.
| mgaunard wrote:
| I'd download Spread Sheets.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| Apple is a 2+T dollar company. How much is enough? Is is really
| such a priority to introduce ads to keep growing each and every
| damned quarter? And what if people stop buying their hardware
| because of the crap they're doing with their software; will they
| stop ads to refocus on hardware or will they milk the fuck out of
| the people who do keep buying their hardware?
| shmde wrote:
| There is an increase of click baity titles on hn. Titles should
| be like the "Subject" field of Email. Short, crisp, giving a tldr
| of the body.
| JustSomeNobody wrote:
| I thought the rule was they could not be editorialized. I've
| never read anything about them needing to read like an email
| title.
| rchaud wrote:
| What part of "You Might Also Like" is clickbait?
| ianbutler wrote:
| Between Google Search decreasing in usability and accuracy for
| pretty much everyone I know in service of more Ads, Netflix Ad
| tier causing an exodus and now Apple poisoning what was their
| premium brand to squeeze ad revenue I can't help but think these
| businesses are starting to cannibalize their core value to their
| users in service to their shareholders. Companies with Ads are
| like Rats in that experiment with the button and a wire going to
| their pleasure center. Tap the button all day but they won't
| actually do anything useful and everything else wastes away.
|
| For a while I've been thinking about the public markets and each
| time I arrive at the conclusion that the public markets can be
| really bad for consumers and bad for the businesses themselves.
| In the end the pursuit of higher stock value for share holders in
| the short term puts a company at odds with it's customers and
| it's own initial value proposition. Obviously an IPO is a
| desirable goal for founders, and maybe (very obviously?) more so
| their investors because it's a liquidity event and everyone get's
| paid, but I think for any one running a successful company
| thinking about what you shackle you and your company to by going
| public should be a long and hard think, because you're going to
| wind up making choices at the expense of literally every value
| and use your business purported to represent.
|
| This is also why when choosing to make a startup, as defined by a
| high growth company designed to quickly arrive at a liquidity
| event (IPO and publicly traded obviously included) you should
| really understand if you want exactly that. I've watched at least
| one founder realize she didn't want that and that she did want to
| run a business for the customers and the value they were being
| provided and try to get off the train and it basically wrecked
| the business.
|
| When I read stuff like this I'm always reminded of the line in
| Aesop Rock's song "None Shall Pass":
|
| "Fine, sign of the swine in the swarm when a king is a whore who
| comply and conform"
|
| I guess this was a really long winded way of saying, know the
| game you're playing before you choose to play it and know who's
| actually calling the shots.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I think ad driven markets are a trap in themselves, even
| outside the public market itself.
|
| You have a large portion of end users themselves that will
| never pay for the product but gladly use the product 'for
| free'. You have users that would pay for the product, but
| again, why would they pay for the product if it's "free"? This
| leaves the only viable products in the market as free products.
| The only model I know for free service is ad and data
| collection driven.
|
| The business world won't be able to escape this trap
| themselves, it will be driven by consumer protections and data
| privacy making targeted advertising via data collection more
| risky at a legal/compliance level.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Why the hell are they entering this grubby, grubby industry? They
| leave money on the table all the time - they have banged on for
| years about their whole philosophy of saying No to a thousand
| things for everything they say Yes to - why have they said yes to
| this?
|
| Aside from a handful of RPIs, my entire family uses Apple gear.
| But for the first time in 2 decades, I'm wondering what a
| platform change might look like.
|
| Considering my investment in Apple gear, even getting me to the
| "only looking" phase is pretty remarkable.
| p0pcult wrote:
| "If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a
| better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly
| market share, the company's not any more successful.
|
| So the people that can make the company more successful are
| sales and marketing people, and they end up running the
| companies. And the product people get driven out of the
| decision making forums, and the companies forget what it means
| to make great products. The product sensibility and the product
| genius that brought them to that monopolistic position gets
| rotted out by people running these companies that have no
| conception of a good product versus a bad product."
|
| -Steve Jobs
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Yeah - I didn't want to invoke the Ghost of Steve but ... why
| stop with your storefront? Why not start slapping Candy Crush
| Saga stickers on the front of iPhones?
|
| But unlike other products, this advertising will provide zero
| value to Apple customers. We already pay full price for our
| gear. We pay for Apple One. Unlike most other companies where
| advertising offsets the sticker price of things, advertising
| at Apple does not benefit us in any way.
|
| For me, being free of advertising is a key benefit of
| participating in the Apple ecosystem, and one that I assign a
| significant financial value to. I absolutely hate it.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| I'm fully bought in to the Apple ecosystem and I have always been
| puzzled when I hear about Apple perverting their product with the
| taint of advertisements. I recently realized that my puzzlement
| is because I don't use Apple News or Stocks and I do all app
| discovery away from the (cr)Appstore.
|
| Unfortunately, I guess that the advertising infection will spread
| to the point where it is unavoidable. At that point, I will drop
| Apple and pray that there is a functional alternative.
| 369548684892826 wrote:
| What's a good alternative to the Appstore for finding apps?
| jimt1234 wrote:
| Feels like when the App Store first launched and was quickly
| dominated by fart apps, except this isn't being driven by devs
| polluting the App Store, it's being driven by Apple to an already
| polluted App Store.
| [deleted]
| hrbf wrote:
| There used to be a time when Apple hard- and software delighted
| me. It was expensive but the cost could be justified.
|
| Today, Apple hardware gets ever more expensive while adding ever
| less value for me. With the recent push towards growing service
| revenue, I fear Apple is going to betray parts of their original
| DNA.
|
| I usually never invoke this, but in this context it feels
| justified: this would have been impossible with Steve Jobs alive.
| He would have shut this shit down with a vengeance.
|
| Despite being a capitalist with every fibre of his being, he knew
| where not to go, which line not to cross. If done anyway, in
| error, he reversed course immediately. I don't see even a faint
| shadow of this in Tim Cook.
| joshstrange wrote:
| I love my Apple products but I am incredibly worried about
| Apple's future. I hate ads, I never see them, if something is
| showing me ads I pay to remove them or stop using that
| app/service. Currently I'm incessed by Zoom showing me ads after
| calls even though I pay for it monthly, I wish I could drop it.
|
| It's incredibly saddening to see Apple start to put ads in more
| things. It's not the premium experience I'm looking for (and
| paying for). I love linux for servers but I'm sorry, the desktop
| is just not my cup of tea. One things on the mac that I enjoy is
| the quality and style of most 3rd party apps that I use. It's a
| level of polish that I don't see anywhere else, at least at the
| same consistency. Call me vain, call me whatever you want but I
| like looking at pretty UI, I'm staring at my monitors for 8+
| hours a day, I'd like to enjoy what I'm doing. An ugly UI isn't
| unusable but it adds a small subconscious "tax" that is real and
| does add up (at least for me).
| amoghs wrote:
| It's so tough taking stances to defend things of 'intangible'
| (or at least hard to quantify) value like Apple has. I worry
| it's almost 'inevitable' for companies to cave in.
| Terretta wrote:
| > _It 's not the premium experience I'm looking for (and paying
| for)._
|
| This is the only way to feel about it: it's un-premium.
| leokennis wrote:
| I pay Apple $20 a month for Apple One. I refuse to pay and see
| ads at the same time.
|
| If I am going to see only 1 ad in a normal Apple app (Maps,
| Music, Podcasts etc.) Apple can kiss that money goodbye.
|
| For every Apple Service there's a good alternative. I'll turn
| my iPhone into a piece of Apple hardware with minimal
| affiliation to Apple software within the afternoon.
|
| From there on out, I'll start investigating to replace my Apple
| hardware with alternatives at their next renewal cycle.
|
| For Apple end users, Tim Cook is the worst CEO you could
| imagine. A human Excel sheet.
| shikshake wrote:
| Is Tim Cook really the problem? Apple has to answer to the
| shareholders and board of directors first, and Tim Cook can
| only stay CEO as long as he's acting in their interests.
| Maybe it's too easy to blame the system, but I don't see how
| Tim Cook should take the majority blame.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Apple has to answer to the shareholders and board of
| directors first_
|
| First, no. That's a gross oversimplification of the
| situation, and there are thousands of counter-examples.
| It's one of those things people see on HN and then pass
| along as if it was the absolute truth. It isn't.
|
| But, for fun, let's pretend it is true. Then the way Tim
| Cook answers to shareholders is to preserve the long-term
| value of Apple as a brand and a company, and not to sell
| out for short-term gains.
|
| The majority of Apple shareholders are massive corporations
| that invest for the long-haul, not day traders trying to
| make a quick buck.
| deltarholamda wrote:
| If not him, then who? Ultimately he is the one who makes
| the decisions; that's why he has the title of CEO and not
| "Puppet Of The Board."
|
| I suppose we could simply blame the entire customer base of
| Apple, but that seems less than productive.
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| > Apple has to answer to the shareholders and board of
| directors first, and Tim Cook can only stay CEO as long as
| he's acting in their interests.
|
| And it is his job to explain to them that plastering ads
| all over the UI is going to destroy the entire privacy-
| conscious image that Apple has built up over the past
| decade, specially the past five or so years.
|
| You can't just say "There was no alternative but to show
| ads", it's a reductio ad (lol) absurdum by which you can
| excuse _any_ bad decisions that a CEO makes by saying
| "Well, the board made them do it".
| reaperducer wrote:
| _If I am going to see only 1 ad in a normal Apple app (Maps,
| Music, Podcasts etc.) Apple can kiss that money goodbye._
|
| Don't open Settings, then. There's been ads in there for
| three years.
| system16 wrote:
| I miss the days when Jobs would tell shareholders to pound sand
| rather than make product compromises.
|
| Under Tim Cook, there is no possible way things will get
| better, and I suspect they will get much worse. They'll
| continue making whatever comprises to the user experience are
| necessary to obtain quarterly growth. And the more difficult
| that becomes, the more drastic and user hostile the changes
| will be.
|
| It's bizarrely short-sighted, and I can't figure out why. I
| mean there are several videos of Steve Jobs himself warning
| about this exact trajectory, and I'm sure Tim Cook must have
| seen them.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Unfortunately, Tim Cook does not have the force of
| personality to stop it. Nobody does. Only Steve Jobs could do
| it, and that is likely exclusively down to the fact (whether
| you consider it as such or not is beside the point) that he
| saved Apple. The fact is, if you tell the shareholders no too
| frequently, you stop being in charge. And even if the next
| guy shares your vision, will his replacement? How many CEOs
| does it take until you get someone who will pursue short-term
| profit at any long-term cost?
| tomrod wrote:
| CEOs have force, be it personality or investiture by the
| board.
|
| No, if Cook fails to "stop" ads that's pretty clearly
| evidence he's okay with them.
| spacemadness wrote:
| And if everyone is doing it to scrape more profit, then there
| are few options to turn to protest with your consumption
| habits.
| ISL wrote:
| _> Currently I 'm incensed by Zoom showing me ads after calls
| even though I pay for it monthly, I wish I could drop it._
|
| I use Meet extensively across my professional engagements with
| GSuite/Workspace. Works great. No ads.
| baxtr wrote:
| Meet is Google's product right? So you're sure your not
| targeted after you mentioned things in a call?
| bombcar wrote:
| Zoom shows ads now?
| hcarvalhoalves wrote:
| Unlimited greed. As if they needed this ad money.
| shuntress wrote:
| Advertising is not inherently or automatically bad.
|
| Spam is bad. Being overrun by low quality ads is bad.
|
| I don't mind ads when its GOOD advertising.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Advertising isn't neutral. It defaults to bad. It is, by its
| nature, a distraction. It makes the world worse. It
| incentivizes a business model where you attract people's
| attention by any means necessary and then sell off that
| attention.
|
| Sometimes advertising turns out to be helpful. Sometimes you
| learn about something that you wouldn't have known to look for
| that you really care about. Sometimes you're looking for
| something and find out there's a cheaper competitor product
| that's perfect for your needs. Advertisers love pointing these
| situations out because it makes what they do sound helpful. But
| they are by no means the most common case. A giant Pepsi
| billboard is not making anybody's life better in any way.
| shuntress wrote:
| > Advertisers love pointing these situations out because it
| makes what they do sound helpful. But they are by no means
| the most common case.
|
| This is my point.
|
| Advertising is not inherently bad. To explain that further
| for the back of the class, _advertising is not inherently
| good_. Advertising can be _GOOD OR BAD_.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Eh, I guess it really depends on how you define "inherently
| bad." For example, I'd also call "shooting people"
| inherently bad, but there are certainly cases where a
| specific shooting is a net good (self defense, etc). It
| sounds like your definition is different and may require
| any possible instance to be bad.
| shuntress wrote:
| We could spend all day spinning our wheels on
| increasingly pedantic hypotheticals but it's not exactly
| productive discussion.
|
| Non-consensual acts of violence are always inherently bad
| even when they are "provoked" by reprehensible acts
| (three rights make a left and all that).
|
| "shooting people" with X-Rays to image their internal
| structures for medical purposes is generally accepted to
| be good.
| santoshalper wrote:
| Yes, and I'd say the same thing about advertising, though
| obviously on a lesser scale. All advertising is bad. Some
| advertising is merely less bad.
|
| Advertising that appears in Apps or Software I paid for
| is hot garbage 100% of the time.
| shkkmo wrote:
| By your own argument and definition, advertising is
| inherently bad: Advertising being good is a edge case
| that requires specific circumstances.
| SuperCuber wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that is the point GP was trying to make
| bombcar wrote:
| I think it general we can say "advertising is not wanted" -
| bar exceptional side cases like the Super Bowl ads, very
| few people seek out the _advertising that costs big money_.
|
| I love catalogs from the companies I buy from, and I love
| their websites, but those are _marketing_ not advertising.
|
| The vast majority of advertising is at best a "necessary
| bad" (not per se evil, perhaps).
| shuntress wrote:
| I think in general we can say "BAD advertising is not
| wanted".
|
| Good advertising (like, for example, catalogues from the
| companies you love and buy from) is, in general,
| desirable.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's probably not at all the "industry" terms, but I
| would divide "push advertising" (TV, radio, web ads, blah
| blah blah) from "pull advertising" (going to the company
| website, asking for the catalog, etc).
|
| What is sad is how "push advertising" can become
| something actually desired - once you buy into a luxury
| brand, for example, you WANT advertising that reinforces
| just how good and sexy you are for having bought product.
| nehal3m wrote:
| Found the advertiser.
| ketralnis wrote:
| > Advertising is not inherently or automatically bad.
|
| I don't agree.
|
| I don't want to convince you or change your mind but I believe
| that most advertising is default immoral with few exceptions.
| Of course feeling that way myself I believe that it's a valid
| point of view, and I do make purchasing decisions based on it.
| In line with the article's thesis:
|
| > feeling appalled and perplexed why a billion-dollar giant
| tech company would willingly cheapen their flagship product
| merely for a bit more money
|
| I too am surprised that as little as this revenue can be in
| relation to the hardware and app store revenue that they're
| leaning into it this hard.
| shuntress wrote:
| I would agree with you that _" most advertising"_ (your
| words) is currently immoral in that it tends to be a sub-par
| product pushed out the door for reasons based in greed. Or:
| *Spam*
|
| But I don't think that is due to _advertising in general_
| being "default immoral". There is nothing fundamentally
| immoral about accepting payment in exchange for raising
| awareness of something.
|
| As an aside: Accepting money in exchange for promotion
| without making it clear that you have been paid _is_
| certainly immoral.
| ketralnis wrote:
| > tends to be a sub-par product pushed out the door for
| reasons based in greed
|
| I don't think bad products are immoral, just bad.
|
| > There is nothing fundamentally immoral about accepting
| payment in exchange for raising awareness of something.
|
| There's a difference between _paying to get something_, and
| _paying me to do something_. For instance, we can probably
| agree that paying to receive a stolen television and paying
| me to build you a television are different even if the
| buyer-side transaction characteristics are the same.
|
| That's where advertising breaks down in morality. When
| party A pays party B to receive party C's attention without
| party C agreeing to be a part of this transaction at all.
|
| That's why I say "most": sometimes party C is in fact
| knowingly participating. Maybe they get something in
| exchange for their attention (access to a costly-to-run
| website, or a reduced rate on an otherwise costly-to-print
| magazine). Obviously that line is fuzzy for something like
| the App Store where the money is going to Apple's margins
| which are kinda sorta part of the product pricing but
| clearly the price of the hardware isn't going down but
| Apple's clearly within their rights to set their own
| pricing and...? It's fuzzy for sure but I sure didn't
| knowingly agree to be advertised to on a device that I
| bought before they started doing this. And consent is hard
| to talk about in a duopoly environment as well.
|
| Anyway again I'm not here to argue with you about it and I
| don't care one way or the other if you agree with me. I
| just wanted to point out that your axioms about
| "fundamentally immoral" aren't everybody's axioms.
| aussieshibe wrote:
| Nothing is "inherently or automatically bad". Good and bad are
| matters of opinion, not fact.
|
| In my opinion, all ads are bad, and the world would be a better
| place if advertising were strictly limited to publishing
| product details in some kind of directory (think along the
| lines of a phone book).
| technoooooost wrote:
| Is this a way of rationalizing your adtech position?
| mrkeen wrote:
| What would you pay to see a GOOD ad?
| zaik wrote:
| Don't worry, we know exactly what products you might like.
| juliushuijnk wrote:
| Funny, I rather have bad ads that fail to influence me.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| I don't mind magazine advertising, because those are hyper-
| specific to the topic you're actually interested in, because
| you bought a magazine all about it. If I'm reading a
| woodworking magazine and I see an ad for a new type of clamp or
| jig a company is advertising, yeah I'm interested! (Free
| "magazines" are trash, I'm talking about Fine Homebuilding,
| Ontario Out of Doors, etc.)
|
| Online advertising is almost universally trash for me, and I'm
| not sure I've ever spent a cent because of it. It's always
| useless and irrelevant (no I don't need a car, or lipstick,
| alcohol, or iced tea, I'm super not interested in any of
| those). And yet, someone must be clicking those ads. I listened
| to a podcast where the (female) hosts said they had spent
| hundreds of dollars by clicking on Instagram ads for random
| products, and I was floored! Who clicks ads?!
| shuntress wrote:
| I don't understand what point you are trying to make.
|
| Are you just trying to say that advertising only exists
| because _" women be shopping"_?
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| I don't understand your comment. Where did I say that? My
| point is that I don't mind magazine advertising because
| it's hyper-specific to a topic I actively wanted to read,
| but online advertising is so random that none of it is ever
| relevant.
| shuntress wrote:
| > I listened to a podcast where the (female) hosts said
| they had spent hundreds of dollars by clicking on
| Instagram ads for random products
|
| So, you would agree then that when the content and
| relevance of an ad surpasses some threshold, the ad is
| good and that when ads are "useless and irrelevant" they
| are bad?
| rchaud wrote:
| There is no such thing as 'good advertising', least of all on a
| mobile platform that has to fit the maximum possible ads into a
| small phone screen viewport.
|
| As a child, I remember very creative ads for Smirnoff vodka;
| those would not be possible today because marketing budgets
| simply see more ROI in targeted advertising, which tends to be
| bland text search ads or ugly display ads like this.
|
| The days of Mad Men style aspirational, full-page, high
| production quality ads are gone, thanks to Real Time Bidding ad
| networks that made Google and Facebook their fortune. We've
| been living in the RTB world for close to 20 years.
| boxed wrote:
| Ads on A PAGE FOR A SPECIFIC APP in the damn store is 100%
| super bad and evil. Apple should be ashamed.
| fredrikholm wrote:
| This general trend of deteriorating UX in widespread services is
| extremely exhausting and depressing.
|
| The accuracy you could get with Google searches in 2005-2010-ish
| was amazing. Knowing _how_ to Google was a secret weapon of
| computer literacy, you could find _anything_. Now I save links on
| a small server (I work on many machines) unless something is
| posted here on HN, as it 's one of increasingly few places where
| I can search and actually find things.
|
| Same story with YouTube, searching for a video there has become
| an exercise in self flagellation.
|
| I don't know if it was Netflix that started the ball on
| nonsensical, avant garde categories followed by thousands of
| auto-playing calls to action, but combined with intrusive ads and
| obfuscation the day-to-day experience on mainstream internet
| really sucks the joy out of whatever amazing content that lurks
| in the cracks of what is actually a set of amazingly marvelous
| technology.
| dzikimarian wrote:
| That's why open ecosystem is a must, so you can easily migrate.
|
| Constantly repeated argument from Apple users is that
| Appstore/iMessage/iOS is closed/doesn't allow
| sideloading/alternative clients in order to protect the users.
|
| Now you can see what happens if you put company in the position,
| where you have to spend thousands of dollars, multiple hours
| hours and lots of explaining to your friends in order to leave
| their walled garden.
| santoshalper wrote:
| I feel genuine empathy and a little vicarious sadness (not
| sarcastic or ironic) for all the Apple diehards who loyally went
| through thick and thin with Apple, including them nearly going
| out of business, only to discover that Apple is not Different or
| Exceptional and is, in reality, just another large publicly
| traded company with the goal of maximizing shareholder returns.
| DamnInteresting wrote:
| If this is the direction Apple takes, I will be leaving their
| ecosystem. My attention is finite, and advertising is attention
| theft.
| dimva wrote:
| It's funny remembering how people would say stuff like "if you
| aren't paying for the product, you ARE the product", and someone
| even tried to make a Twitter clone where the only differentiator
| was that you'd pay for it to "prevent" ads and tracking.
|
| I thought back then that even if it succeeded in gaining enough
| users to beat Twitter, it would fail because eventually
| investors' demand for growth would force them to add ads anyway.
| You see this happening with cable TV, Roku, and now even Apple.
|
| The only way to prevent this is to have a company motivated by
| something other than growing profits, but that comes with its own
| problems: stagnation, bloated bureaucracy, and capture by special
| interests without profit to keep the organization honest and
| lean.
|
| I don't know what the right solution is, only that in very
| competitive for-profit markets, companies don't dare to worsen
| the user experience with ads lest they lose customers to a
| competitor. Given the barriers to entry for developing a new
| smartphone, including the strong network effect of the app store
| and OS APIs, this is not that type of market. Most androids
| already have ads and bloatware, so Apple isn't facing any
| competitive pressure on this front, sadly.
| [deleted]
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