Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker • Hacker News Board

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#71

Post by Drakim » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 9:13 AM UTC

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…

You assume that every app developer is out to make money. This is not more true than that every PC application developer is out to make money. Some people make free software and gives it away for free. That's not a race to the bottom, unless you think Linux being free is a race to the bottom against Windows.

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#72

Post by pvg » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 9:14 AM UTC

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…

Only one of these apps is free - Crystal. And it says it's temporary right on the App Store page and why. The author is making an entirely conscious, clear-eyed business decision. Here's a bit from the email he sent to his testers:

A big thank you to all 1200 of the testers who have helped shape Crystal into a solid application. I'm sorry to everyone else who didn't get a spot to test it, but the good news is, you can try it now for free!

Why Free? I want everyone to experience Crystal for themselves so as a thank you to my early adopters, I've decided to make it free for a very limited time.

Whats the catch? No catch, but I would like to request you help me out with Rating, Sharing, a quick survey or donating a little money below, I do have a wife & 2 kids to feed

Perhaps there's a race to the bottom in mobile apps but it probably produces more useful things than the race to tut-tut the decisions or generosity of others.

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#73

Post by graystevens » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 9:19 AM UTC

Received their 'Out Now' email yesterday, after signing up from the post here on HN regarding the app and its beta testing phase. Don't have a problem with what I received, in fact it was something I was hoping to play with after installing the iOS9 GM, so was very happy to be notified very shortly after its release. What I wasn't keen on however, was the use of emoji's in the subject. This instantly got deleted by myself due to their appearance at the beginning of the subject line. It was only a split second after I'd hit delete that I thought I caught a glimpse of 'Crystal' or at least a word of interest.

Is this now a thing, emoji's in email subjects?

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#74

Post by klausa » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 9:23 AM UTC

graystevens wrote: post #73

Received their 'Out Now' email yesterday, after signing up from the post here on HN regarding the app and its beta testing phase. Don't have a problem with what I received, in fact it was something I was hoping to play with after installing the iOS9 GM, so was very happy to be notified very shortly after its release. What I wasn't keen on however, was the use of emoji's in the subject. This instantly got deleted by m…

Yes.

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#75

Post by qubex » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 9:23 AM UTC

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…

Personally I expect that the main thrust of the (inevitable) push-back will be a mechanism whereby cookies and ads are pushed from within the content site's actual domain. How that will occur and what exact from the back-end will need to take is something I am not sure about but I am sure far more intelligent and able people than I are hot on the topic.

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#76

Post by alkonaut » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 9:23 AM UTC

Just wow. I have used Adblock on desktop before and didn't realize how much difference it does on mobile. On desktop it just removes clutter but on mobile it truly changes the whole browsing experience. This will be huge. Almost none of my non-techie friends use Adblock on desktop but everyone will be using an iOS blocker. This will hurt sites big time, and I feel sorry for sites that weren't using the big bad ad networks but still get blocked (whether that happens I'm not sure). The question is -- is it too late to go back and make advertising "right" now? Will sites that use non-intrusive and non-tracking ads be just as blocked as those who do, or does these blockers give no incentive to improve, only to circumvent?

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#77

Post by rimantas » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 9:29 AM UTC

LoSboccacc wrote: post #67

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…

data already exists. apple is very late to the game and has a relatively tiny market share when compared all browser usage among all platform when including desktop.

Care to provide your figures?

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#78

Post by stephenr » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 9:29 AM UTC

tomtang0514 wrote: post #68

stephenr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 have no idea about ad network at all. "unnecessarily track"? Tracking is the only way to make the ad relevant to you and increase the ad's value so you actually see fewer ads and those ads fund better content. Without any tracking, you gonna see at least tripled amount of ads on the most popular websites today in order to generate same amount of revenue. And BTW, everything between "you land on a webpage" and "ad…

If your site has recipes, cooking tips etc, you don't need to track my activity across the web, to know that I'm interested in cooking, and may want to buy cooking related items. Magazine based advertising has worked on this concept for literally decades.

As for your little quip about WSJ links. Do you mean this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10015496 ?

> I can't read the article because its paywalled

I never asked for a "workaround". Honestly the only reason I wanted to see the article is to identify if the article is as ridiculous as the title implied, so why would I buy a subscription for a publisher that puts out shit like that?

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#79

Post by giovannibajo1 » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 9:30 AM UTC

Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #16

ratfacemcgee wrote: post #8

its not Crystals fault, but its disappointing that this kind of ad blocking is unavailable for 32bit devices, like iPhone 5/5c (and below).

Indeed. I find it curious that it's not available for "performance reasons" - surely rendering an ad takes more CPU than blocking one?

It should be true, but the reality is that most ad blockers have such a complex ruleset to match that they can actually go slower and use more RAM than not running them.

The graphs that uBlock shows are very compelling: https://github.com/chrisaljoudi/uBlock

I'm not saying that Apple tried hard enough; the content blockers on iOS are JIT-compiled to native ARM 64-bit code, so maybe they didn't have the codepath ready for 32-bit and/or they didn't bother. But it's surely not just a technical excuse.

Re: Crystal – iOS 9 ad blocker

#80

Post by Ntrails » Thu, Sep 17, 2015, 9:52 AM UTC

tomtang0514 wrote: post #68

stephenr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 have no idea about ad network at all. "unnecessarily track"? Tracking is the only way to make the ad relevant to you and increase the ad's value so you actually see fewer ads and those ads fund better content. Without any tracking, you gonna see at least tripled amount of ads on the most popular websites today in order to generate same amount of revenue. And BTW, everything between "you land on a webpage" and "ad…

How about you consider the possibility that there are zero ads relevant to me. For as long as I can remember the only times I have clicked on an ad (on mobile) have been mistakes.

If ads make money based on click-throughs and purchases, then my blocking them has zero change in revenue generated. If they are simply displaying for brand awareness (less common on the web) then sure I'm having a minor impact but given that ads often ruin content enough to close the window (recent example being a floating banner covering half my screen and thus making article unreadable) I doubt there is positive brand impact anyway.