alt Hacker NewsEven the 'own stickers' joke doesn't really apply anymore. I recently saw ads for Apple Fitness+ and Apple Intelligence in the system settings (!, I'll forgive the ads for Apple Care). Apple Creator Studio ads in the former iWork Apps (including abusing toolbar icons for it). Finally (luckily I haven't experienced it), ads for their F1 movie in Apple Wallet.
It is gross and destroys what Apple stood for.
Their introduction of more and more ads shows that they want to optimize the Services category at all cost. Hardware hasn't grown as much as historically and they haven't been able to start new categories in recent history (e.g. AVP failure), plus Services is high-margin. Since they are now on this gravy train, they will increasingly use behavioral data to target ads, etc.
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It looks like Apple is literally copying Samsung, and not only in hardware (upcoming foldable iPhone), but in the services and in advertising them inside the UI. Even the names are similar.
This is not a good thing. Not for Apple, and not for Android, as in terms of exerting gravity on the market, Apple is a supermassive black hole. Anything they do instantly becomes normalized as a business practice.
It's an opinion that always gets downvoted but...
Using an Apple device these days is to be spoken to in a weird language that invites you become one of those people who lives at the genius bar, if you are so lucky to live within range of one. Like the touch id failed on my iPad and I got some really strange messages. I also get weird dialogs about failing things on my Mac (like some "widget" having to do with Find My) that usually center Apple brand names. It just makes those brands sound shoddy. [1]
I was delighted with my iPhone when I first got it but about six months later I was always getting important phone calls... and it wouldn't ring, I was getting important texts... some of which would appear on my iPhone, some of which would appear on my Ipad, some of which would never appear at all, I was getting important notifications... and I couldn't find them, or they would disappear before I could tap on them, it was like my phone was possessed by the devil.
I turned off filtering and grouping for notifications and went through the menus, deleted every app that I didn't use, turned off notifications for apps unless I absolutely needed them, etc. After spending an hour digging through the settings my phone now rings when people call.
And don't get me started on AirPods; like they sorta kinda work if you stay in the Apple ecosystem, but if you pair them with Windows they will do everything in their power to punish you, including force you to reboot your phone so you can talk on the microphones.
The most amusing thing is that so many of the ads and nags in MacOS use the Liquid Glass refresh of the 2001 Mac OS X version of the dialog box from the 1984 Mac Classic. Microsoft nags are based on web technology and look kinda appealing, but Apple nags are a blast from the past.
[1] ... if only your XBOX could show a Playstation logo when it is acting like an ADHD kid rather than an XBOX logo!
The really annoying thing to me about the "Ads" in the system settings for various things like Apple Music, iCloud, Fitness, etc (other than the fact they're there in the first place) is that they appear after a bit of a delay (around 500 ms?), so other items I actually want have to slide down to make space as I'm about to click something.
Old Apple would never have done that I don't think.