Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple testing new App Store design that blurs the line between ads and results

9to5mac.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 523 posts

Re: Apple testing new App Store design that blurs the line between ads and results

#71

Post by ragazzina »

atonse wrote: post #8

More and more evidence that the a-holes with spreadsheets are taking over at Apple and they’re completely devoid of any ideas on the software side. I heard someone randomly say that they should replace Tim Cook with Scott Forstall. I chuckled at the idea but this might be a great idea. Apple is having its Ballmer moment. Google did too before AI lit the fire under their feet. Who is going to be Apple’s next Nadella?…

> completely devoid of any ideas on the software side.

Maybe I’m too old, but if Apple fixed every single bug and added absolutely zero features until the day of my death, I would still be a satisfied customer.

The problem is not lack of innovation, the problem is that everything barely works.

Re: Apple testing new App Store design that blurs the line between ads and results

#72

Post by lynndotpy »

madeofpalk wrote: post #49
nikitaga wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is MacOS as enshittified as Windows? It doesn't have ads, doesn't push AI on you, their online services are trivial to ignore once and never think about again, etc. I haven't tried Tahoe, and sure, its new glass UI is shit, but merely incompetent UI design is not "enshittification" and is not in any way equivalent to what Microsoft does in Windows.

macOS absolutely, definitely, 100% has ads. Buy a new Apple Watch and notice that the settings app with have a [1] badge trying to upsell you to buy AppleCare+. They obscure dismissing these by clicking the "Add AppleCare Coverage" button and then having a button that says actually no.

This, on top of the nonstop onslaught of advertisements for F1. It seemed like every one of Apple's services were pushing for that movie. They even put it into maps, wallets, into CarPlay (while people were driving!) It was surprisingly shameless.

It's certainly not as bad _right now_ as what you'll see on Windows 11, but this is something that will almost certainly only get worse over time.

Re: Apple testing new App Store design that blurs the line between ads and results

#73

Post by iwontberude »

madeofpalk wrote: post #49
nikitaga wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is MacOS as enshittified as Windows? It doesn't have ads, doesn't push AI on you, their online services are trivial to ignore once and never think about again, etc. I haven't tried Tahoe, and sure, its new glass UI is shit, but merely incompetent UI design is not "enshittification" and is not in any way equivalent to what Microsoft does in Windows.

macOS absolutely, definitely, 100% has ads. Buy a new Apple Watch and notice that the settings app with have a [1] badge trying to upsell you to buy AppleCare+. They obscure dismissing these by clicking the "Add AppleCare Coverage" button and then having a button that says actually no.

Windows has third party ads and it’s so trash

Re: Apple testing new App Store design that blurs the line between ads and results

#74

Post by KellyCriterion »

atonse wrote: post #8

More and more evidence that the a-holes with spreadsheets are taking over at Apple and they’re completely devoid of any ideas on the software side. I heard someone randomly say that they should replace Tim Cook with Scott Forstall. I chuckled at the idea but this might be a great idea. Apple is having its Ballmer moment. Google did too before AI lit the fire under their feet. Who is going to be Apple’s next Nadella?…

Google was killed when Pichai took over - in his first speech, he said: Everything is AI now.

From moment on, Google search tanked: from a userexperience perspective and a useracquisition-vehicle perspective. Lots of companies could have been built only Google worked 15years ago the way that Google did work. Lots of companies today do not have the same lane anymore, so spending more and more on advertising....

Re: Apple testing new App Store design that blurs the line between ads and results

#75

Post by al_borland »

runjake wrote: post #36
nikitaga wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is MacOS as enshittified as Windows? It doesn't have ads, doesn't push AI on you, their online services are trivial to ignore once and never think about again, etc. I haven't tried Tahoe, and sure, its new glass UI is shit, but merely incompetent UI design is not "enshittification" and is not in any way equivalent to what Microsoft does in Windows.

I've been getting intrusive first-party ads in Apple's OSes for at least the past 3 major OS releases. News+, Fitness+, Music, Apple TV+, etc etc.

News+ also has a ton of articles behind paywalls, even if paying for the premium version. It’s an ugly experience, probably the worst one.

Re: Apple testing new App Store design that blurs the line between ads and results

#76

Post by KellyCriterion »

yieldcrv wrote: post #45
shantara wrote: post #33

It recently occurred to me that it’s been years since it was possible to find some new and interesting app just by browsing the App Store, like it used to be when iPhone and Android were first introduced. Now I open the store knowing in advance what exactly I’m looking for and take care not to accidentally click on a lookalike.

Discovery is social If you’re optimizing for searchers (SEO) you’ve been out of the loop for a decade or catering almost exclusively to the elderly

Then whats all this "Appstore Optimization" about? :-D ;-)

Re: Apple testing new App Store design that blurs the line between ads and results

#77

Post by Noaidi »

Y-bar wrote: post #61
Noaidi wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple annual gross profit for 2025 was $195.201B, a 8.04% increase from 2024. Apple annual gross profit for 2024 was $180.683B, a 6.82% increase from 2023. Apple annual gross profit for 2023 was $169.148B, a 0.96% decline from 2022. Seems like this is just plain old greed...

It seems a significant amount of that revenue is now from services (App Store, in-app purchases, subscriptions,…).

Yes! And these are very easy to boycott! I don’t understand why this didn’t happen after Tim Cook shove that gold bar right up Trump’s ass.

Re: Apple testing new App Store design that blurs the line between ads and results

#78

Post by echelon »

hu3 wrote: post #48
echelon wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same on Android. Except on Android when you search for something and you get the big "match found" with "install" button, it's an ad and the real result is hidden like a search result. This practice ought to be illegal. These are trademarks, and monopolies are injecting themselves as market makers in a bidding war they created. This isn't enshittification. This is Roman Empire collapse. It doesn't work anymore.

At least in Android you can use F-Droid which is Play Store for open-source apps. I installed a regex powered notification blocker yesterday. Works as a charm.

For now, and only but a tiny fraction of you.

99.99% of users never visit the settings. For those that do, they won't get past scare wall #1 of enabling APKs and scare walls #2, #3, and #4 of downloading, installing, and enabling the app.

Google knows this.

Tyranny of defaults, trained user behaviors, ecosystem, scare tactics, and even SERPs manipulation to make this nigh undiscoverable.

But they weren't content with some number of you slipping through the cracks! They're starting to close the ability to release unsigned and self-signed code. You can only imagine what's after that.

Re: Apple testing new App Store design that blurs the line between ads and results

#79

Post by 3eb7988a1663 »

mdasen wrote: post #21

This is what basically everyone else has done over the past decade. Google used to put a different background behind ads in its search ( https://www.fsedigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Google... ). It made it really easy to tell what was an ad and skip over it quickly. Now it's a lot harder to quickly notice what's an ad and what isn't. Sites used to have banner ads. Now they show posts that look exactly like t…

I am suddenly realizing how silly it is that I have put up with this for decades. Are GreaseMonkey or similar tools still around that would let me customize the CSS of sites? I am thinking I should be able to run my own styling to make the ads nearly invisible. Or do the big players do all sorts of tricks to make identifying the ad content so dynamic that it would require constant vigilance to maintain? I have heard that Facebook does insane rendering tricks to prevent people from scraping their sites, not impossible to imagine some companies obfuscate the ad selection.

Probably a few dozen lines of CSS could give me a much better browsing experience.

Re: Apple testing new App Store design that blurs the line between ads and results

#80

Post by geooff_ »

shantara wrote: post #33

It recently occurred to me that it’s been years since it was possible to find some new and interesting app just by browsing the App Store, like it used to be when iPhone and Android were first introduced. Now I open the store knowing in advance what exactly I’m looking for and take care not to accidentally click on a lookalike.

It's only getting worse with the amount of AI Slop being poured into the store.

I'm relatively new to the space, but it feels like more and more of the time of indie devs / bootstrappers needs to get allocated towards marketing.

Post reply on HN