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2026 Apple introducing more ads to increase opportunity in search results

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Re: 2026 Apple introducing more ads to increase opportunity in search results

#91

Post by wolvesechoes »

godelski wrote: post #82
ee64a4a wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple managed to become the most valuable company in the world without ads. Yeah, but what about next quarter? Jokes aside, they're not the most valuable company anymore. Nvidia is ahead, I think MS has jockeyed with them on that position a few times and is still on their heels, and Google is ascendant (even ahead of MS as of end of close) after the antitrust clouds started to recede and Gemini started to match Cla…

> Yeah, but what about next quarter? Apple was the first $1T company, the first $2T company, and the first $3T company. Okay, they weren't the first $4T company, but also Nvidia is an admittedly freak situation and isn't in direct competition with Apple. Point being, why fuck with a strategy that is working? Is being #1 so important that you'll throw it all away because of an unpredictable and outlier event that isn'…

> and isn't in direct competition with Apple.

Of course they are, they are on the same stock market.

What, are you one of those that believe competition is still about capturing markets and appeasing customers?

Re: 2026 Apple introducing more ads to increase opportunity in search results

#92

Post by bigyabai »

dd8601fn wrote: post #21
bee_rider wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple hasn’t been much of an innovator for decades. They take an idea that’s already been worked out (like MP3 players) and then just out-execute the competition. It is possible they won’t pull it off for “AI,” of course. But we won’t know until when somebody finds a profitable consumer-facing application for these models.

> They take an idea that’s already been worked out (like MP3 players) and then just out-execute the competition. I’m inclined to think of that as innovation. To your point, not a single, earth shattering kind (inventing the first mp3 player), but by 100 lesser improvements in a single product. But yeah, all their stuff is that way. They didn’t invent smartphones, or satellite messaging in a phone, or rich mobile mess…

Rhetorical question, though; does Apple execute better? Or do they just sell it better?

Because there are many entirely-feasible things that Apple failed to execute well. Xserve, Airpower, Apple Car, all dead and buried in one way or another. Today, all their tentpole successes are difficult to distinguish from pervasive marketing influence. We can't logically use sales, customer satisfaction or user retention as metrics to measure how successful services iCloud or the App Store are. And, with integrated products like Airpods and Apple Watch, the iPhone nearly reaches similar levels of arbitrary lock-in.

Re: 2026 Apple introducing more ads to increase opportunity in search results

#94

Post by al_borland »

WD-42 wrote: post #78
hhoorzad wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’d rather pay an extra $100 for the phone than have ads all over it. In all likelihood, we will pay an extra $100 AND have ads.

Apple is just admitting like everyone else that not having ads is just money left on the table. Where are people going to go? So yea they’ll keep adding more ads, keep charging more for their phones and there’s nothing anyone can really do about it.

It’s not just money left on the table, it’s a way to differentiate from the competition. When someone is trying to decide iPhones vs Android for their next purchase, being able to say “our OS doesn’t have ads” is big. I hear people complain about ads more than just about anything else.

I think users should have 0 tolerance for ads in the OS. It’s the broken window theory. Once they start, if the users don’t revolt, they will keep pushing them.

I find I don’t use the App Store much anymore. I used to browse it all the time, but it feels like one giant advertisement now.

Re: 2026 Apple introducing more ads to increase opportunity in search results

#95

Post by zx8080 »

al_borland wrote: post #3

I’m really not a fan of this direction for Apple. One of the differentiators between iOS and Google was a lack of ads, which make the experience feel more premium. Increasing ads, or having them at all, really erodes the user experience. Apple managed to become the most valuable company in the world without ads. Adding them after hitting that milestone feels either greedy or desperate, maybe a little of both. I know…

AI needs more personal info (like iCloud is not enough yet). Ads provide more insights to user real needs than anything else, and there's inescapable sharing of user behaviour (otherwise ads business model does not work) that allows Apple to collect and process the user behaviour for its own AI training and to sell it to others.

Sitting on a tons of value (even though backed by users trust) gives no rest to Apple's managers who just does not connect the dots between users trust and profits.

Or they think they are a monopoly. Maybe Apple is?

Re: 2026 Apple introducing more ads to increase opportunity in search results

#96

Post by matwood »

Someone wrote: post #42
al_borland wrote: post #3

I’m really not a fan of this direction for Apple. One of the differentiators between iOS and Google was a lack of ads, which make the experience feel more premium. Increasing ads, or having them at all, really erodes the user experience. Apple managed to become the most valuable company in the world without ads. Adding them after hitting that milestone feels either greedy or desperate, maybe a little of both. I know…

I think that, on the App Store, ads may be the least worse solution. Currently, some developers try to get into your view by creating multiple similar apps, as that gets them screen space for free. Given developers the ability to pay to have their app show above the sea of (almost) clones may revert that trend, as such developers would either have to pay for multiple adverts or to put all their money on one horse. (I…

Yeah. It’s hard for me to get worked up about ads in a store.

Re: 2026 Apple introducing more ads to increase opportunity in search results

#97

Post by thomassmith65 »

nottorp wrote: post #61
thomassmith65 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably the person who wrote this comment is too young to have used Apple products prior to 2010?

They do have a point though, because you can't continue to use a phone made by Apple in 2010.

I would if I could!

Apple has been a mess since they lost Steve Jobs.

Re: 2026 Apple introducing more ads to increase opportunity in search results

#98

Post by charcircuit »

dangus wrote: post #49
user2722 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He/She meant _searching_ for apps for a functionality in App Store is a sure way to get gobbledygooky apps. He/She probably searches them on $SEARCH_ENGINE and uses the AppStore just for the download.

Ah, so using a different advertisement platform instead of this one. Let me put this another way: if you want to manually kick off app updates, you literally have to see ads. App Store > Today tab (the default view) has ads. Then you hit your profile button to escape the ad center and there is your app update interface. This has been normalized by basically all commercial OS platforms, but imagine how insanely negati…

>but imagine how insanely negatively received it would be if apt upgrade

So what already happens when you ssh into an Ubuntu server to run apt upgrade to manually update it. It turns out people don't care that much.

Re: 2026 Apple introducing more ads to increase opportunity in search results

#100

Post by mrweasel »

sgentle wrote: post #19

Only time I've ever been successfully phished was the App Store. I have an Android phone but I wanted to try the ChatGPT app on my iPad and naively clicked the first result, which was of course a scummy clone. I have since wised up and understand the App Store search results to be roughly torrent search levels of trustworthy. I guess the bar for user trust has now dropped enough across the board to sell more off with…

Your experience illustrates precisely why the ads in the ad store should be worthless. I have never clicked on the ad in the app store. Regardless of how legitimate it looks, I will never click it. The vast majority for ads are clearly either scams or they are at least attempting to piggy back on the popularity of others, and I'll support neither of those cases.

I don't know what it is with Apple, maybe they aren't sufficiently exposed to scams, but they seem to not understand it's an issue, or their metrics are solely based on revenue. Because even if something is a borderline scam, Apple probably gets their 30%.

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