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

9to5mac.com

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

#211

Post by greatgib »

jesterson wrote: post #210
greatgib wrote: post #203

It's crazy to think that even if you buy the phone with the highest price premium your are still forced to navigate between ads for basic feature and have a shitty experience. Despite Apple not needing more money has they have already can reserves more then they can know how to use it

Two things - browsing appstore is not a "basic feature". It's an entertainment and folks gotta pay for it. I have never browsed Appstore in my life - all i got were either direct links or search by title. On the "highest price premium" - they can charge it simply because there is no alternative. I have tried android several times and it was was a huge eye opener how shitty and unworkable it is, even in 2025. Boy, the…

What you say doesn't make any sense.

The ad appears in search result. So "search by title". Not like having fun "wandering randomly" in the app store...

Probably not the best place to troll iphone vs android, but you are probably mind fucked by apple coolaid because so far there are both good and bad sides of both android and iOS. But iOS has a lot of things really fucked and missing or broken features compared to Android.

Just recently you had this nice "liquid glass" making apps unreadable/unusable with semi transparent buttons on top of random UI elements...

Still they clearly can charge whatever they want, that is not the question, the point is that nowadays you can buy the product with the highest margin and still not expect an experience without ad and fucked up interface dark patterns.

In the same way, whatever price you pay for a tv set, it is becoming harder and harder to get one from a major brand that we not screw you with hidden telemetry or forced ads or unwanted features...

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

#212

Post by calf »

caminanteblanco wrote: post #125
yomismoaqui wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we use "ensheetification" to describe this phenomeon? (sure I'm not the first to use this word)

I think the other replies are missing your 'sheet' pun, from my knowledge and a quick search, I think you coined it

For a second I thought it meant the novel sheets UI Steve Jobs showed off in the original Mac OS X.

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

#213

Post by faust201 »

aucisson_masque wrote: post #108
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…

> It's shocking that Apple hasn't done this trick yet when everyone else started doing it years ago. I pay Apple premium price for their phones. If they become as bad as the other, what’s the point to pay so much ?

> I pay Apple premium price for their phones. If they become as bad as the other, what’s the point to pay so much ?

No choice. Most Apple users usually defend by telling... they are not as bad a Google or now it is impossible to escape ecosystem.

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

#214

Post by asdff »

celsius1414 wrote: post #86
ragazzina wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Doing your job and doing your job well are two different things, of course. The innovation is going to have to be in how to return to the latter when they’ve lost their way. Or, perhaps more accurately, been led astray by conflicting priorities. They’ve done it recently with their hardware. Past time for the other side of the house to refocus.

I'm still waiting on the iphone to get the macbook pro treatment: a return to thickness, more ports, and of course touchID.

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

#216

Post by asdff »

k2enemy wrote: post #148
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?…

I could not agree more. It probably doesn't help that I just spend an hour trying to figure out how to update to 18.7.3 on my iphone. It turns out you can't. The only way to get security updates now is to upgrade to iOS 26. Apple no longer supports security updates to old major versions if the device is capable of running the new major release. Apple is no longer making choices that benefit customers, but ones that b…

Wow, I just checked and looks like I'm stuck on 18.7 for the rest of the life of this iPhone I guess. That being said it looks like I can opt into ios 18 beta. I wonder if that would include security patches? Actually maybe I don't want security patches. It would be nice to have a jailbroken iphone again one day...

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

#217

Post by mlhpdx »

This is an interesting left hand vs right hand thing. Apple is making it more difficult for find a particular app while coding assistance is making it easier to build one. At some point those curves intersect and the App Store becomes irrelevant.

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

#218

Post by asdff »

mvdtnz wrote: post #178
rgovostes wrote: post #104

This makes no difference, because I can’t remember the last time I installed an app other than for the occasional airline. From 2008-12 it was genuinely exciting to see what new apps were being released every day. Mobile games from that era had cultural impact. I bought $2 apps without a thought. But Apple incentivized monetization above all else and killed that excitement. Now you can’t find a tip calculator that do…

I get where you're coming from and your examples are egregiously expensive, but do we really want to live in a world where software is valued at a $2 one-time payment? We shouldn't be engaging in a race to the bottom like that.

Well, in this present world where it isn't valued at a one-time payment, OP is no longer a customer. Myself as well. Likewise probably a lot of people on HN. Like OP, I don't scroll through the app store anymore. I used to actually do that for fun! So the developer of that would be $2 app is getting nothing today. They release their app and get no one downloading it because it is comingled with the bullshit. Best they can hope for is a 6 year old steals their parents CC and signs them up for a recurring subscription they miss between the rest of their bills. This is the world we live in instead of the $2 software world.

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

#219

Post by Hammershaft »

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…

Amazon is particularly wild because you can use the site without realizing %70 of your results are ads.

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

#220

Post by asdff »

ilikecakeandpie wrote: post #162
galenko wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. My wife’s mother keeps buying crap in game using my card and I have no reasonable way of blocking her from doing so if I want to keep app purchase sharing. It’s insane. Does no one at apple have senile in laws? Or is this acceptable?

Can you not just make her a separate account and make her put her own card on there?

> if I want to keep app purchase sharing.
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