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Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

crystalapp.co

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Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#41

Post by beggi »

jd3 wrote: post #36
lstamour wrote: post #13

Just bought and tried (in this order): Crystal, Purify and Peace. Each has features to like. Crystal has a great price and is the only one to let you report an ad not blocked or broken page so that the ad block list can be updated. Purify lets you block scripts and images on top of font-blocking options also in Peace. Crystal missed an ad that Purify (and Peace) caught, but Peace was the only one that seriously remov…

Cool technology, but I don't understand why every tiny little feature or program costs money on mobile. The price of convenience?

The prices are usually tiny as well. Peace is $2.99.

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#42

Post by lstamour »

pvg wrote: post #34
lstamour wrote: post #13

Just bought and tried (in this order): Crystal, Purify and Peace. Each has features to like. Crystal has a great price and is the only one to let you report an ad not blocked or broken page so that the ad block list can be updated. Purify lets you block scripts and images on top of font-blocking options also in Peace. Crystal missed an ad that Purify (and Peace) caught, but Peace was the only one that seriously remov…

Keep in mind that there will be zillions of these in short order and many will also be free. Since they all use the same Apple-provided matching/blocking engine, there isn't going to be much in the way of innovation there - there won't be a content blocker that is 3 times faster and uses a quarter of the memory of some other content blocker. It'll be down to config UI and the quality of their rules - the rules are al…

I would add to that responsiveness in updating rulesets, ability to add your own rules (especially graphical) or customize rule sets by country, and security features like noscript or phishing warnings as possible ways others could stand out in future. We might end up seeing special purpose Content Blockers, site-specific ones...

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#43

Post by stephenr »

bbayer wrote: post #40

I am curious how this will impact the web. Ads are the only revenue stream for most of the sites. Blocking ads is good for user experience but when you think from publishers site how will they survive? "I like ads because I can support people I like without even spending a dime" said one of my friends. I cannot agree more because there are plenty of people on mid and small scale try to earn living with the content th…

So use an ad network that doesn't unnecessarily track me across the entire web, destroy my battery life, and make reading content (particularly on mobile) a game of 'find the article' amongst the shit storm of ads.

The number of things that everyday sites embed in their pages is phenomenal. The Ghostery extension gives a good idea about how much crap gets loaded.

In an article about content blockers, http://www.imore.com/and-hour-safari-content-blockers-and-im... has 13 separate, third-party scripts/etc trying to load.

6 tagged as 'analytics', 4 tagged as 'advertising', 3 tagged as 'social widgets'

That is a ridiculous amount of extra requests, extra data, and of course, tracking.

The advertising (and since the obsession with 'cloud' or 'SAAS', analytics too) industry has been fucking end-users for YEARS. Now users have a credible way to fight back, and suddenly it's "not fair?".

If you want advertising to fund your site/blog/whatever, use an ad network that doesn't try to digitally fuck me every time I visit your site.

edit: grammar

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#44

Post by stephenr »

jd3 wrote: post #36
lstamour wrote: post #13

Just bought and tried (in this order): Crystal, Purify and Peace. Each has features to like. Crystal has a great price and is the only one to let you report an ad not blocked or broken page so that the ad block list can be updated. Purify lets you block scripts and images on top of font-blocking options also in Peace. Crystal missed an ad that Purify (and Peace) caught, but Peace was the only one that seriously remov…

Cool technology, but I don't understand why every tiny little feature or program costs money on mobile. The price of convenience?

Because software developers are people who like to eat too?

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#45

Post by ytch »

jamestnz wrote: post #39
heinrich5991 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Why is that?

According to the release notes for Safari 9 [1], it's because of performance concerns: "Apps containing content blocking extensions for Safari on iOS are available only on 64-bit devices, due to performance limitations of 32-bit devices" I imagine there's no real reason that content blocking shouldn't work on 32-bit devices, but that Apple are trying to hit certain minimum performance numbers (for marketing/brand pur…

Maybe 32/64 bit isn't the issue, Apple just choose it as a flag to exclude slow CPU?

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#46

Post by Armand_Grillet »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #27
heinrich5991 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. Why is that?

Ask Apple :) See this tweet: https://twitter.com/awfulben/status/638510622167052288 Apparently, content blockers work on 32-bit CPUs, but Apple is restricting them on the store to 64-bit only. So you can go the BlockParty + EasyList route: https://github.com/krishkumar/BlockParty It works very well.

Another open-source iOS 9 content blocker here, using EasyList and EasyPrivacy: https://github.com/ArmandGrillet/Adios (I'm the guy behind this project).

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#47

Post by stephenr »

LargeCompanies wrote: post #38

Is it just me or does it seem Apple is trying to put a hurt on Google and in turn hurt the web simultaneously. Safari has so many awful bugs that it's reminding me of the days of when you had to develop specifically for IE6. Such tactics are reminiscent of when Microsoft ruled the land and well that didnt turn out so great for MS.

Apple is continuing it's now well-publicised push for enhanced/improved privacy for users of it's devices and services.

Apple don't provide any content blocking out of the box, they provide the ability for users to install a plugin/extension of their own choosing if they wish.

You don't have to use this to block google ads, or google analytics if you don't want to. But many people will, because the amount of data Google collects (or attempts to collect) every day is fucking scary to a lot of people.

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#50

Post by Frqy3 »

stephenr wrote: post #43
bbayer wrote: post #40

I am curious how this will impact the web. Ads are the only revenue stream for most of the sites. Blocking ads is good for user experience but when you think from publishers site how will they survive? "I like ads because I can support people I like without even spending a dime" said one of my friends. I cannot agree more because there are plenty of people on mid and small scale try to earn living with the content th…

So use an ad network that doesn't unnecessarily track me across the entire web, destroy my battery life, and make reading content (particularly on mobile) a game of 'find the article' amongst the shit storm of ads. The number of things that everyday sites embed in their pages is phenomenal. The Ghostery extension gives a good idea about how much crap gets loaded. In an article about content blockers, http://www.imore…

Also, lagging page loading to allow the auctioning of ad space a bit longer to run to hopefully extract a slightly higher price.
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