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

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

#231
post #230

What if we all Venmo'd Tim Apple 5 bucks so he wouldn't be forced to do this?

Apple wouldn’t exactly go broke without this, maximising profits is the only goal and any ‘good’ behaviours and ethos will erode over time.

Apple might take user privacy seriously now, but don’t assume that will be the case forever.

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

#232
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?…

> Who is going to be Apple’s next Nadella? Steve Jobs was the original.

Nadella is a budget Larry Ellison.

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

#233
post #228

I read the title then looked at the screenshots and thought what? It still says "ad."

Paragraph two of the article is: > This means the only differentiator between organic results and the promoted ad is the presence of the small ‘Ad’ banner next to the app icon. If it's that easy to fail to notice a paragraph, how much easier would it be to miss just the word 'Ad'?

I wasn't there to read the text, the screenshots say everything. Thought I was looking at the wrong pic cause it seemed obvious.

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

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And every single one of those ways to get in touch still exists. Advertising is, and always has been, optional. But of course those companies that pay for it get more customers. So in practice, almost everyone pays for it. That's not rent extraction. Paying for advertising is paying for attention. And you are in absolutely no circumstance ever entitled to anyone's attention. The only difference with Google is that yo…

If I want to get in touch with a company, I go through Google. It's not the brand's choice, it's not my choice. The brand has to pay for that. I, ultimately, also have to pay for that. This is NOT okay. Google is using monopoly power to do this. They have inserted themselves as parasitic middle men. No different than a cymothoa exigua eating away at the tongue. This is not advertising. It's a road bump. It's getting…

Typing in URLs by hand is a choice you can make. Scrolling down to organic results (for brands you like) is another choice you can make. Paying for a search engine service is a great choice.

Brands can ask you to add them to your contacts with their website in their vcard. They can prompt you to bookmark them. They could publish a feed for you.

Sure Google can get us to routed in a way we’re all conditioned to depend on, but there are plenty of other ways to get to your destination. There must be 50 ways to leave…

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

#235
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?…

Has Nadella had one original thought? He simply passes through whatever the board orders.

Does he?

Remember Nadella doesn't read emails (he gets AI to summarise them all), he doesn't pay attention in meetings (he claims to get the minutes and then AI summerise them), what makes you think he even really knows the nuances of what the board want?

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

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't impinge on freedom of speech. Nothing would be prohibited from being said. It would require conflicts of interest to be disclosed clearly. I.e. labelling speech incentivized by someone else (ad buyer) clearly, as not organic speech (the search engine results). That is pro-transparency and ethics, not anti-speech.

> It would require conflicts of interest to be disclosed clearly. I.e. labelling speech incentivized by someone else (ad buyer) clearly, as not organic speech (the search engine results). That's specifically what I'm proposing in the post you replied to?

Ha! You are correct, that you were correct.

Thanks. I misread a sentence, missed your nuance, and then off to the races.

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

#237
post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iMessage and RCS have some very different affordances, and apple keeps it that way to keep people walled into the system. Most notably, a single non-iMessage member in a group chat will degrade the experience for everyone significantly. It's very much an issue in the US.

By "degrade the experience" you mean you get a text that says "TheDong liked $message." The horror! Maybe people will go back to just sending a thumbs up emoji.

By "degrade the experience" I mean:

1. Unable to remove members, or change member's phone-numbers without recreating the entire chat and losing continuity / bothering everyone with noise about these changes.

2. Green bubbles, so if your teenage child talks in the group chat at school and one of their classmates sees the green bubble, they'll be bullied for the rest of the time in school.

3. Unable to send high quality photos or videos

4. Just plain failure to deliver messages with shocking frequency for a supposedly modern messaging system.

5. RCS still isn't supported by carriers in a bunch of countries, so when one member of the group chat travels, roams to a foreign network that doesn't support RCS, and chats the group chat can split into one for MMS and one for RCS, and then it's a total crapshoot based on network conditions as to which one the messages go to in the future, with messages having now an even higher chance of vanishing into the void.

Basically, it's a subpar experience. Every other group messaging app (signal, whatsapp, etc) works fine on iOS and android, Apple really should be publishing iMessage for Android to solve this. But, due to reason 2 where green bubbles result in becoming a social outcast and being bullied, they of course won't.

Like, signal, a company running on donations iirc, is able to build a messaging app for windows/linux/iOS/android, and yet Apple isn't capable of that? Come on.

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

#238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is what's expected when you put a glorified accountant in charge and he decides Wall St. is the real customer and the stock price is the real product and users and consumer technology are an afterthought.

He’s been in charge for a while, even during some good times. I dunno. It definitely seems like the company is trending in a bad direction, though—maybe he was able to extrapolate from the good points well enough. But now that they are far past those points, the higher order terms are going bad…

Big ships are hard to turn, even in the backwards direction.

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

#239
How do you test for ad effectiveness vs annoyance? Especially so for a captive audience where they can’t leave and go elsewhere?

It seems like every market leader that gets ads eventually “optimises” towards making them look like not ads. Obviously they will be more effective if people don’t realise what they are, so how do they account for annoyance (and the other negatives a user experiences) while doing these a/b tests?

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

#240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

iMessage and RCS have some very different affordances, and apple keeps it that way to keep people walled into the system. Most notably, a single non-iMessage member in a group chat will degrade the experience for everyone significantly. It's very much an issue in the US.

Then use a vendor-agnostic platform instead for group chats like Signal or Matrix.

I do with anyone I can. Unfortunately some people I want to chat with (i.e. family) are too scared to install any third-party apps from the app store because each time they tried, they clicked on an app store ad and get garbage instead.
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