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Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

crystalapp.co

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Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#51

Post by fredsir »

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…

I guess that a fart app should probably not cost anything since it's quite useless, but I do believe that it's a problem that on day one of a whole new App Store category, the first app launched, Crystal (it appeared hours before Purify and Peace for me anyways) is a free app. That's how you make mobile apps an unsustainable business.

I don't know how much work has gone into making these content blocker apps, but I bet it has taken some time - time that in any "normal" business would be charged for, and I think mobile apps creators should charge more for their apps too. In my experience, there are two types of mobile apps consumers. Those that won't pay for an app, whether it costs $1, $10 or $20, and those that will, and I think it would be healthier for the ecosystem to cater at least as much to the latter group as the former, but I don't think that's currently the case.

It's a race to the bottom, folks.

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#52

Post by tdkl »

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 also doesn't invest in the web like Google does because :

- the majority of its revenue ain't ads, search, services, - they actually have a desktop platform.

Google is trying to make the web as a panacea for specially this reason. I remember reading this comment on Grubers site (http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/09/15/ppk-stop-pushing...) and personally I agree with him and Koch.

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#53

Post by choppaface »

ytch wrote: post #45
jamestnz wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The 64-bit CPUs have a wider (and thus effectively faster) bus, and content blocking is probably rather strenuous on CPU cache (lots of string/pattern matching?). While the 64-bit cutoff is likely mostly a marketing artifact, content blocking on 32-bit CPUs could actually be 2x slower or worse than 64-bit CPUs and thus make page rendering times very painful for some sites.

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#54

Post by mokkol »

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?

I don't understand when I hire a painter that they ask for money either :/

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#55

Post by fredsir »

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…

John Gruber of Daring Fireball said it aptly:

"The coming reckoning for publishers is not “because of Apple”. It’s because of the choices the publishers themselves made, years ago, to allow themselves to become dependent on user-hostile ad networks that slow down the web, waste precious device battery life, and invade our privacy. Apple has simply enabled us, the users who are fed up with this crap, to do something about it. If aggressive content blocking were enabled out of the box, by default, I could see saying the result is “because of Apple”. But it’s not. What’s about to happen is thus because of us, the users."

http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/09/16/because-of-apple

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#56

Post by bbayer »

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…

You are absolutely right. Abusing clients is not acceptable. I just wanted to start discussion from publisher's point of view. I am just trying to ask if it is fair to punish people for bad attitude of ad networks. If it is than another solution shall be proposed and forcing people to create native apps is not one of them. edit: additional comment

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#57

Post by cynix »

LeoNatan25 wrote: post #17
Someone wrote: post #15

"This app is not compatible with your device" iPad (first generation with retina screen, I think), running iOS 9. What gives?

Content blocking requires a 64-bit CPU.

This is really annoying. I don't want to update my phone to iOS 9 until a jailbreak is out, and my old phone is an iPhone 4S so I can't try out ad blockers on it.

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#59

Post by kalleboo »

fredsir wrote: post #51
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…

I guess that a fart app should probably not cost anything since it's quite useless, but I do believe that it's a problem that on day one of a whole new App Store category, the first app launched, Crystal (it appeared hours before Purify and Peace for me anyways) is a free app. That's how you make mobile apps an unsustainable business. I don't know how much work has gone into making these content blocker apps, but I b…

App developers should just go on tour - that's where they make most of their money anyways, right? Or maybe sell some T-shirts...

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#60

Post by mtgx »

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…

It will be interesting to see if Adblock Fast can be faster. It says it only uses 7 "rules", that I think someone said must be machine compiled, and it's arriving today on iOS9 as well. It may not have a great database, though.

https://www.producthunt.com/tech/adblock-fast

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