This is what basically everyone else has done over the past decade. Google used to put a different background behind ads in its search (https://www.fsedigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Google...). It made it really easy to tell what was an ad and skip over it quickly. Now it's a lot harder to quickly notice what's an ad and what isn't.
Sites used to have banner ads. Now they show posts that look exactly like the organic posts in your feed, just with a small "sponsored", "promoted", or "ad" mark somewhere. Half the time the post is large enough that it takes up my entire screen and the "sponsored" mark is below and off-screen.
If you go on Amazon, the "sponsored" text is much smaller and light gray rgb(87,89,89) while the product text is near-black rgb(15,17,17). They want to make the sponsored text less visible. Sometimes it's even unclear if the sponsored tag applies to a single product or a group of products.
It's shocking that Apple hasn't done this trick yet when everyone else started doing it years ago.
What’s interesting to me is that no matter how “hidden” the AD indicator may be, my brain always seems to very quickly train itself to swiftly skip such posts when scrolling/browsing.
Or I could simply be another clueless victim of advertising. If only I could know the number of sponsored posts I never consciously acknowledge and am influenced by on the daily.
If the vast majority of people recognized ads and skipped them as more technically minded people, they'd either not do that or step up a notch and made them even harder to spot. The reality is that these dark patterns do work for a large part of the users.
Amazon has gotten "good" at it. If I search for, say, AirPods, I get ads from Apple followed by the regular listings that look identical sans gray "sponsored" text. It helps that in this rare case the ads are actually relevant.
I am suddenly realizing how silly it is that I have put up with this for decades. Are GreaseMonkey or similar tools still around that would let me customize the CSS of sites? I am thinking I should be able to run my own styling to make the ads nearly invisible. Or do the big players do all sorts of tricks to make identifying the ad content so dynamic that it would require constant vigilance to maintain? I have heard that Facebook does insane rendering tricks to prevent people from scraping their sites, not impossible to imagine some companies obfuscate the ad selection.
Probably a few dozen lines of CSS could give me a much better browsing experience.
I use the Stylus extension for site-specific CSS in Chrome. Usually end up with a big comma-separated list of selectors getting the { display: none !important; visibility: hidden !important } treatment.
Funny enough, even iOS Safari has a “hide distracting items” button you can sorta use for this kind of thing. I guess it won’t work on the App Store though.
Sure enough, this looks great. Found a blog post where someone did the exact same thing. Unlike the Firefox mechanism of usercontent.css which requires a reboot after every change(?) this works dynamically on a page reload. Now trivial to restyle some content which would otherwise not hit a blocklist.
> It's shocking that Apple hasn't done this trick yet when everyone else started doing it years ago.
It's not that shocking — them not doing that is part of why I keep buying their products. I believed their leadership understood that.
Looking at the article, the kind interpretation is that this is the same wrong-headed shift towards uniformity at all costs we've seen elsewhere in their products. The less kind interpretation is that they're deliberately blurring the lines with ads. Either way, it erodes away some of the trust that has been their lifeblood for the better part of maybe two decades.
Apple's whole selling point is they aren't pulling the same crap that the everyone else is. It's not a defense of Apple to say they're just doing what everyone else has already been doing. Think different?
Yes, this is part of what is supposed to justify the premium prices, is that they can have a different business model.
But it seems Tim Cook can’t leave anything on the table. I’m really going to be irritated if we end up with a premium Siri. It’s going to undermine the privacy aspect, the hardware innovation, and everything else they have going for themselves despite missing the boat on AI
It ought to be illegal to host ads for registered trademarks (+/- some edit distance).
Especially if you have a marketplace monopoly.
Especially if you used overwhelming force to turn the "URL Bar" into a search product and then bought up 90% market share where you can tax every single brand on the planet.
Google is the most egregious with this with respect to Google Search. It ought to be illegal, frankly.
Google Android is a runner up. Half the time I try to install an app, I get bamboozled into installing an ad placement app (and immediately undo it). Seems like Apple is following in the same footsteps.
Amazon isn't blameless here, either.
So much of our economy is being taxed by gatekeepers that installed themselves into a place that is impossible to dislodge. And the systems they built were not how the web originally worked. They dismantled the user-friendly behavior brick by brick, decade by decade.
Google "Pokemon" -> Ad.
Google "AWS" -> Amazon competitively bidding for their own trademark
Google "Thinkpad" -> Lots of ads.
Google "Anthropic" or "ChatGPT" -> I bet Google is happy to bleed its direct competitors like this.
What the fuck is this, and why did we let it happen?
Companies own these trademarks. Google turned the URL bar into a 100% Google search shakedown.
I'm thinking about a grassroots movement to stop these shenanigans.
> It ought to be illegal to host ads for registered trademarks (+/- some edit distance).
This makes me a bit uncomfortable because of how close it comes to infringing on freedom of speech, and how specific a rule it would for search engines (and chat bots) - i.e. there's no real analogy of "can't target trademarked terms" for any ad format other than search engines.
I think my preference would be to simply enforce laws around fraud. If you're a business and you intentionally mislead people, that's fraud, pure and simple. Bring the enforcement hammer down so that companies don't dare make an ad that granny might mistake for not being an ad. Make them err far on the side of making ads look unmistakably like ads for fear of ruinous fines.
It wouldn't impinge on freedom of speech. Nothing would be prohibited from being said.
It would require conflicts of interest to be disclosed clearly. I.e. labelling speech incentivized by someone else (ad buyer) clearly, as not organic speech (the search engine results).
That is pro-transparency and ethics, not anti-speech.
> It would require conflicts of interest to be disclosed clearly. I.e. labelling speech incentivized by someone else (ad buyer) clearly, as not organic speech (the search engine results).
That's specifically what I'm proposing in the post you replied to?
You're not allowed to use Pikachu commercially. Why should Google? They're taking advantage of every trademark to make money.
Googling a trademark should activate a "no bids" mode.
If Google wants to defend this action, then they should explain why they turned the URL bar into a search product and bought up 90% of the real estate. They've been incredibly heavy handed in search, web, and ads.
Let’s remember it’s not new: Back in 2005, gannies (and 20yo non-nerds too) would install all sorts of viruses by clicking on popups thinking it’s the real thing. I personally switched to Firefox then Mac which didn’t have this problem. It’s like browsing a torrent website without an adblocker: There is absolutely no way to hit the right button, it’s URL changes between mousedown and mouseup.
That is what's expected when you put a glorified accountant in charge and he decides Wall St. is the real customer and the stock price is the real product and users and consumer technology are an afterthought.
He’s been in charge for a while, even during some good times. I dunno. It definitely seems like the company is trending in a bad direction, though—maybe he was able to extrapolate from the good points well enough. But now that they are far past those points, the higher order terms are going bad…
What does it imply that the other term does not? Enshitification is the inevitable result of the tendency of profit to revert to zero. This is basic schumpeter (not to mention marx).
> completely devoid of any ideas on the software side.
Maybe I’m too old, but if Apple fixed every single bug and added absolutely zero features until the day of my death, I would still be a satisfied customer.
The problem is not lack of innovation, the problem is that everything barely works.
Doing your job and doing your job well are two different things, of course. The innovation is going to have to be in how to return to the latter when they’ve lost their way. Or, perhaps more accurately, been led astray by conflicting priorities.
They’ve done it recently with their hardware. Past time for the other side of the house to refocus.
Google was killed when Pichai took over - in his first speech, he said: Everything is AI now.
From moment on, Google search tanked: from a userexperience perspective and a useracquisition-vehicle perspective. Lots of companies could have been built only Google worked 15years ago the way that Google did work. Lots of companies today do not have the same lane anymore, so spending more and more on advertising....
I heard someone randomly say that they should replace Tim Cook with Scott Forstall. I chuckled at the idea but this might be a great idea.
Fadell might also be a good choice. Either way it should be someone currently outside Apple. The company needs an external eye to review its processes and cruft that built up under Cook (nothing negative against the guy, but what worked 5-10 years ago won’t necessarily work 5-10 years down the road).
Nadella turned Microsoft completely around. Before Nadella, for about 2 decades, Microsoft’s entire purpose seemed to be to stuff Windows into everything. Changing this was a massive undertaking that was largely unimaginable within MS.
Unfortunately now under Nadella AI is taking the role Windows used to play, but even there he understood the importance of AI before most of his competitors did which is what allowed Microsoft to gain such a substantial footing in OpenAI.
What has Nadella done for Windows users? It appears to me that Windows is becoming every bit as enshittified as macOS, if not more so. And isn't Microsoft experimenting with advertisements in Windows?
Microsoft doesn’t care about Windows. It’s been clear for years that their focus is on Azure, Office, and enterprise sales.
The enterprise is going to choose Windows regardless for the masses and even if consumers make a mass exodus to Apple (not going to happen because of price) or Linux (even less likely) they are out of $30 they charge OEMs.
How is MacOS as enshittified as Windows? It doesn't have ads, doesn't push AI on you, their online services are trivial to ignore once and never think about again, etc. I haven't tried Tahoe, and sure, its new glass UI is shit, but merely incompetent UI design is not "enshittification" and is not in any way equivalent to what Microsoft does in Windows.
> their online services are trivial to ignore once and never think about again
The workarounds to get rid of the nag to log into your icloud account on macOS are far more difficult than the workarounds to avoid using an MS account in Windows.
Buy a new Apple Watch and notice that the settings app with have a [1] badge trying to upsell you to buy AppleCare+. They obscure dismissing these by clicking the "Add AppleCare Coverage" button and then having a button that says actually no.
The undissmissable badges in settings irk me to no end. Using language like “finish setting up” in iOS to describe me opting out of Apple Intelligence by choice as leaving MY device in some sort of “unfinished state” is user hostile too. With the amount of effort it takes me to push back constantly on these dark patterns, I know for a fact all my less tech savvy friends and family just aren’t bothering and that’s what they count on.
Not as egregious as what windows is doing with copilot everywhere or sneakily flipping user-toggled options during updates, but it’s all some degree of gross.
This, on top of the nonstop onslaught of advertisements for F1. It seemed like every one of Apple's services were pushing for that movie. They even put it into maps, wallets, into CarPlay (while people were driving!) It was surprisingly shameless.
It's certainly not as bad _right now_ as what you'll see on Windows 11, but this is something that will almost certainly only get worse over time.
Surely we can distinguish MacOS – the operating system – from the online services provided by Apple that happen to have a native app?
If you are choosing to use Apple online services, sure, you'll get upsells I guess, as with any other online service. I don't use any of Apple's online services, and never see those ads.
macOS does have ads, their online services are worse than Windows, and installing basic software like Homebrew and Git is like having teeth pulled.
Windows is absolutely miserable, but with WSL installed it's far and away the better dev environment. I say that as someone who dailies Linux and hates all three OSes.
Strange take. Apple Maps was a new product. It's expected it would be behind Google Maps, maybe even forever given all the headstart and resources Google gives it.
In any case, Apple Maps (a NEW then product, in an entirely new space for Apple) being bad, is not at all related to "enshittification".
Apple Maps is absolutely the wrong thing to judge Forstall on.
Not to mention that its main problem is coverage i.e. data quality. Regarding software engineering it's fine, even better than Google Maps in lots of aspects.
This makes no difference, because I can’t remember the last time I installed an app other than for the occasional airline.
From 2008-12 it was genuinely exciting to see what new apps were being released every day. Mobile games from that era had cultural impact. I bought $2 apps without a thought.
But Apple incentivized monetization above all else and killed that excitement. Now you can’t find a tip calculator that doesn’t charge a monthly subscription. A popular flight tracker is $60/year (or a $300 purchase). A flash card app costs the same. Apple’s curated list of “essential utilities” includes a birthday countdown that costs $5/wk.
I know every app will cost me hundreds over the span of just a few years for marginal utility so I simply stopped buying them. And I wonder if Apple’s push for more ad revenue is a symptom of that trend.
It’s because no one bothers with pay once apps anymore the only way to get customers is free app and tricking them into a subscription. Entire system raced the price people would pay for iOS software to 0
It recently occurred to me that it’s been years since it was possible to find some new and interesting app just by browsing the App Store, like it used to be when iPhone and Android were first introduced. Now I open the store knowing in advance what exactly I’m looking for and take care not to accidentally click on a lookalike.
I've had success finding games in the Apple Arcade by just browsing. The bonus is that the games are all included with Apple+ and don't have any ads or microtransactions.
That said, I completely agree that you cannot find any interesting apps by just browsing the App Store as a whole.
Yes. My wife’s mother keeps buying crap in game using my card and I have no reasonable way of blocking her from doing so if I want to keep app purchase sharing.
It’s insane. Does no one at apple have senile in laws? Or is this acceptable?
I still do this but with F-Droid (or one of the nice frontends like Droidify).
Will some new player come and give us some golden years of VC handouts and pre-enshittification decency? I hope so, but the barriers to entry are mighty.
Except on Android when you search for something and you get the big "match found" with "install" button, it's an ad and the real result is hidden like a search result.
This practice ought to be illegal. These are trademarks, and monopolies are injecting themselves as market makers in a bidding war they created.
This isn't enshittification. This is Roman Empire collapse. It doesn't work anymore.
99.99% of users never visit the settings. For those that do, they won't get past scare wall #1 of enabling APKs and scare walls #2, #3, and #4 of downloading, installing, and enabling the app.
Google knows this.
Tyranny of defaults, trained user behaviors, ecosystem, scare tactics, and even SERPs manipulation to make this nigh undiscoverable.
But they weren't content with some number of you slipping through the cracks! They're starting to close the ability to release unsigned and self-signed code. You can only imagine what's after that.
This is very unfortunate. To me Apple was the last corporate standing that is not doing ads nefariously. If this is changing what is next? I’m aware it is a slippery slope argument, but this has to do with trust. Apple’s advertised stance on privacy and security and ads always has been believable (to me) because of their business model and that they made it the distinguishing feature.
Now, what is left? iPads are great, MacBook with Apple silicon are unmatched in refinement, iPhones are awesome but getting a bit stale. Apple Watch is awesome, but for sports Garmin are better. It is the integrated ecosystem with iCloud that makes the total system powerful.
Where to go? I love Linux with CachyOS on my desktop. Anything similar for tablets and laptops? I think KDE has something like connect that aims to do what iCloud does.
Not only are Apple's services bad, they've becoming inescapable. It's rumored that they'll add ads to maps as soon as next year.
Music.app is simply an ad for Apple Music, Books.app is like reading in a Barnes and Noble while someone from marketing looks over your shoulder and their TV app features their own shows to an overbearing degree — everything else is becoming more of an afterthought.
If you use iTunes Match or load your own MP3s every time you open the app the search field is set to “Apple Music” and the search fails until you toggle it, every time.
Services business is a slippery slope, everyone succumbs to the YoY revenue growth push and they all gravitate towards the same dirty tactics. They even tried turning the hardware into a subscription model but I guess it didn’t gain much traction.
Apple annual gross profit for 2025 was $195.201B, a 8.04% increase from 2024.
Apple annual gross profit for 2024 was $180.683B, a 6.82% increase from 2023.
Apple annual gross profit for 2023 was $169.148B, a 0.96% decline from 2022.
the change is more subtle than I expected but this does seem like a step in the wrong direction
a bigger older problem is the number of copycat applications allowed in the app store. for example the listing for the official microsoft authenticator app (free and used in many corporate environments) is surrounded by results with similar looking icons and titles. these look a likes also work for MFA but charge a monthly subscription. not exactly a scam since they do work, but its obvious they are only there to confuse users into paying for something thats free.
Wont make a difference. People are already in the Walled Prison and moms/teens/lower-middle class people are shamed for not being able to afford the $50/mo to buy an iphone. They had numerous privacy and security issues that caused literal deaths of VIPs. Their quality is always 2nd best if we are being generous.
If they haven't switched yet, its not going to happen. Apple knows this. Late users are always punished like my parents who still have a landline and cable tv.
Quality is 2nd best to what? And people haven't switched to what? Android? The situation is no better on Google OS.
Apple's App Store ad initiatives have always been woeful, and doubt it makes enough revenue to warrant a separate line item on their public accounting reports. Some executive has seen yet another overfunded company potentially making bank with an ad-based business model (OpenAI, et al.), and has thought they could extract Google-level ad revenue due to the App Store's exclusivity. It could also be a response to potentially competing App Stores given their rocky relationship with the EU.
It will have little effect, on revenue or user experience. The greater tragedy is the organisational decay that led to this being greenlit in the first place.
> And people haven't switched to what? Android? The situation is no better on Google OS
Agree. Even GrapheneOS is hell to use. I tried both PixelOS and GrapheneOS on a Pixel 9 and ended up returning it. If I was not homeless I would switch to a flip phone and just use a Linux desktop.
Every now and then, normally while I’m bored before departing on a plane, I’ll scroll the App Store. It’s all ads at this point. Lists and lists of “top [x]” most of which are clearly just paid lists.
I never visit the App Store outside of that. If I need an app, I search for it and go directly to its listing page (yes, technically the App Store) or install it directly from my Home Screen.
Oh, so the Google playstore since... forever. Or at least as long as I can remember. If you have a "search" feature on your <anything app> it should filter down to exactly what you would expect, no sponsored positions, no irrelevant apps as ads, etc.
Shame apple is going towards the dark pattern of ads as results.
Not obvious to me that this is worse or as user-hostile as many seem to presume.
Previously the blue background made the ad result look more highlighted and more prominent.
Now it is just like the other results - not special or better.
Yes, the HN audience knows the visual convention indicates that the blue background represents an ad. Does your everyday user know that or do they assume the blue results are better?
This will always be a thing, the click metrics dictate it and to justify the costs to the company advertising and the low # of clicks, something has to be done to save the new revenue Ads give. They might as well add modal (psudeo popup) ads, because they will be there in 15yrs.
The lines where pretty blurred already. If you search for the exact name of an app, I think that needs to go first in the results, the ads can be the third or forth. Having ads show up before the "correct" app is incredibly dangerous in a world where so much of our digital life is in various apps. Often the people see is actively trying to trick people into installing the wrong thing, making the ad less visible is going to get a lot of people scammed.
How the hell Apple does not see this is beyond me. All of their fancy security in iOS is worthless if they allow people to be tricked into installing scam-ware.
You mean the same Apple who will remove an app like Tumblr for a little consensual nudity posted by people and is too afraid of what Trump might say to remove X which is allowing none consensual undressing of women just by posting a picture and telling Grok to remove clothes - including CSAM?
It's been like this for a while, the top results for a lot of known apps are scam impersonators.
So much for the so called "safety" of the appstore.
In fact, they had so many ChatGPT fake apps showing as top results that they had to do something as users couldn't find the real one and it reached the news.
Capitalism pretty much demands it. Some companies can delay it for awhile, but the numbers must go up and eventually expansion because of a better product reaches it's natural limit.
Corporations always operate at the lowest morality level of any member of the company. Lots of executives can say no to dark patterns, but it only takes one to say yes. Then that exec gets to report the successful revenue boosting metrics. They will tend to get promoted and soon the entire leadership team is filled with people with the lowest ethical standards.
> Lots of executives can say no to dark patterns, but it only takes one to say yes.
I think the situation is a lot more stark than this. Unless they're desperate, the board of directors of corporations will install an MBA as CEO. In most cases, the only time this doesn't happen is at the founding of the company, when a founder is CEO. But if the founder doesn't maintain controlling interest, the founder can be replaced.
The promotion of Steve Jobs to interim CEO of Apple in 1997 was a rare exception. Apple fired its CEO, and the company was in danger of bankruptcy. They were running out of options and feeling the aforemention desperation. Note how the situation was very different in 1985, when the board of directors chose John Sculley over Steve Jobs in a power struggle. At the time, they weren't financially desperate.
App Store's UX has always been a show of excrement, and its search is wonky as hell. I can't imagine myself use that to discover apps, after having been shoved tons of dreck results up my behind the last time I've tried it.
I'd rather ask for app recommendations on 4chan or Reddit than browse App Store.
This feels like a conversation about irrelevant matters the App Store ad design at the advent of AI integration? I see the future being AI suggesting or responding with an app or extension to add specific abilities or features based on stated objectives, i.e., just a package manager behind the scenes. I don’t see myself going to some App Store. I haven’t even “browsed” one in years because they all seem extremely static, having reached a peak saturation and static state.
Frankly, Apple could have probably just totally replaced the App Store a long time ago if they were not slaves to financial reports by simply integrating app search into spotlight more closely or prominently… pull down, search “ai app” (or whatever) and you’re provided with a list of app results that includes an install button.
App updating could and should have been integrated into the settings app.
These kinds of things will only increasingly start biting the Apple as Google has been forced to face the abyss of the death of the common search they’ve dominated for decades now. I don’t think Apple has faced that existential Grim-reaper yet… what do you do when the app ecosystem, OS UI/UX advantages, and even hardware quality has vanished through the cascading integration of AI? I don’t know that Apple has faced that yet or at least has been left blindsided, considering what I’ve been seeing from them.
This is what basically everyone else has done over the past decade. Google used to put a different background behind ads in its search (https://www.fsedigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Google...). It made it really easy to tell what was an ad and skip over it quickly. Now it's a lot harder to quickly notice what's an ad and what isn't.
Sites used to have banner ads. Now they show posts that look exactly like the organic posts in your feed, just with a small "sponsored", "promoted", or "ad" mark somewhere. Half the time the post is large enough that it takes up my entire screen and the "sponsored" mark is below and off-screen.
If you go on Amazon, the "sponsored" text is much smaller and light gray rgb(87,89,89) while the product text is near-black rgb(15,17,17). They want to make the sponsored text less visible. Sometimes it's even unclear if the sponsored tag applies to a single product or a group of products.
It's shocking that Apple hasn't done this trick yet when everyone else started doing it years ago.
What’s interesting to me is that no matter how “hidden” the AD indicator may be, my brain always seems to very quickly train itself to swiftly skip such posts when scrolling/browsing.
Or I could simply be another clueless victim of advertising. If only I could know the number of sponsored posts I never consciously acknowledge and am influenced by on the daily.
If the vast majority of people recognized ads and skipped them as more technically minded people, they'd either not do that or step up a notch and made them even harder to spot. The reality is that these dark patterns do work for a large part of the users.
Amazon has gotten "good" at it. If I search for, say, AirPods, I get ads from Apple followed by the regular listings that look identical sans gray "sponsored" text. It helps that in this rare case the ads are actually relevant.
I am suddenly realizing how silly it is that I have put up with this for decades. Are GreaseMonkey or similar tools still around that would let me customize the CSS of sites? I am thinking I should be able to run my own styling to make the ads nearly invisible. Or do the big players do all sorts of tricks to make identifying the ad content so dynamic that it would require constant vigilance to maintain? I have heard that Facebook does insane rendering tricks to prevent people from scraping their sites, not impossible to imagine some companies obfuscate the ad selection.
Probably a few dozen lines of CSS could give me a much better browsing experience.
Yes, Greasemonkey still exists. Also there are ad blockers, you know? Such as the oft recommended uBlock Origin[0].
[0]: https://ublockorigin.com/
I use the Stylus extension for site-specific CSS in Chrome. Usually end up with a big comma-separated list of selectors getting the { display: none !important; visibility: hidden !important } treatment.
> GreaseMonkey or similar tools still around that would let me customize the CSS of sites
That's default firefox behavior.
Funny enough, even iOS Safari has a “hide distracting items” button you can sorta use for this kind of thing. I guess it won’t work on the App Store though.
ublock origin does wonders. I use it to give HN a dark mode
Sure enough, this looks great. Found a blog post where someone did the exact same thing. Unlike the Firefox mechanism of usercontent.css which requires a reboot after every change(?) this works dynamically on a page reload. Now trivial to restyle some content which would otherwise not hit a blocklist.
https://darekkay.com/blog/ublock-website-themes/
Use an adblocker, like the FBI recommends.
> It's shocking that Apple hasn't done this trick yet when everyone else started doing it years ago.
It's not that shocking — them not doing that is part of why I keep buying their products. I believed their leadership understood that.
Looking at the article, the kind interpretation is that this is the same wrong-headed shift towards uniformity at all costs we've seen elsewhere in their products. The less kind interpretation is that they're deliberately blurring the lines with ads. Either way, it erodes away some of the trust that has been their lifeblood for the better part of maybe two decades.
> It's shocking that Apple hasn't done this trick yet when everyone else started doing it years ago.
I pay Apple premium price for their phones. If they become as bad as the other, what’s the point to pay so much ?
Conspicuous consumption? Like always?
Apple's whole selling point is they aren't pulling the same crap that the everyone else is. It's not a defense of Apple to say they're just doing what everyone else has already been doing. Think different?
Yes, this is part of what is supposed to justify the premium prices, is that they can have a different business model.
But it seems Tim Cook can’t leave anything on the table. I’m really going to be irritated if we end up with a premium Siri. It’s going to undermine the privacy aspect, the hardware innovation, and everything else they have going for themselves despite missing the boat on AI
If they ever actually manage to make Siri competitive you can bet it will be another subscription and bundled with Apple One.
Even the CPU. Windows users lose probably 25% of their machine power to ads, telemetry and OEM spyware and spamware, back to Oracle’s Ask Bar in 2005.
It ought to be illegal to host ads for registered trademarks (+/- some edit distance).
Especially if you have a marketplace monopoly.
Especially if you used overwhelming force to turn the "URL Bar" into a search product and then bought up 90% market share where you can tax every single brand on the planet.
Google is the most egregious with this with respect to Google Search. It ought to be illegal, frankly.
Google Android is a runner up. Half the time I try to install an app, I get bamboozled into installing an ad placement app (and immediately undo it). Seems like Apple is following in the same footsteps.
Amazon isn't blameless here, either.
So much of our economy is being taxed by gatekeepers that installed themselves into a place that is impossible to dislodge. And the systems they built were not how the web originally worked. They dismantled the user-friendly behavior brick by brick, decade by decade.
Google "Pokemon" -> Ad.
Google "AWS" -> Amazon competitively bidding for their own trademark
Google "Thinkpad" -> Lots of ads.
Google "Anthropic" or "ChatGPT" -> I bet Google is happy to bleed its direct competitors like this.
What the fuck is this, and why did we let it happen?
Companies own these trademarks. Google turned the URL bar into a 100% Google search shakedown.
I'm thinking about a grassroots movement to stop these shenanigans.
> It ought to be illegal to host ads for registered trademarks (+/- some edit distance).
This makes me a bit uncomfortable because of how close it comes to infringing on freedom of speech, and how specific a rule it would for search engines (and chat bots) - i.e. there's no real analogy of "can't target trademarked terms" for any ad format other than search engines.
I think my preference would be to simply enforce laws around fraud. If you're a business and you intentionally mislead people, that's fraud, pure and simple. Bring the enforcement hammer down so that companies don't dare make an ad that granny might mistake for not being an ad. Make them err far on the side of making ads look unmistakably like ads for fear of ruinous fines.
It wouldn't impinge on freedom of speech. Nothing would be prohibited from being said.
It would require conflicts of interest to be disclosed clearly. I.e. labelling speech incentivized by someone else (ad buyer) clearly, as not organic speech (the search engine results).
That is pro-transparency and ethics, not anti-speech.
> It would require conflicts of interest to be disclosed clearly. I.e. labelling speech incentivized by someone else (ad buyer) clearly, as not organic speech (the search engine results).
That's specifically what I'm proposing in the post you replied to?
>This makes me a bit uncomfortable because of how close it comes to infringing on freedom of speech,
That's fine, ads should be downright forbidden and get no "freedom of speech".
You're not allowed to use Pikachu commercially. Why should Google? They're taking advantage of every trademark to make money.
Googling a trademark should activate a "no bids" mode.
If Google wants to defend this action, then they should explain why they turned the URL bar into a search product and bought up 90% of the real estate. They've been incredibly heavy handed in search, web, and ads.
Let’s remember it’s not new: Back in 2005, gannies (and 20yo non-nerds too) would install all sorts of viruses by clicking on popups thinking it’s the real thing. I personally switched to Firefox then Mac which didn’t have this problem. It’s like browsing a torrent website without an adblocker: There is absolutely no way to hit the right button, it’s URL changes between mousedown and mouseup.
More and more evidence that the a-holes with spreadsheets are taking over at Apple and they’re completely devoid of any ideas on the software side.
I heard someone randomly say that they should replace Tim Cook with Scott Forstall. I chuckled at the idea but this might be a great idea.
Apple is having its Ballmer moment. Google did too before AI lit the fire under their feet.
Who is going to be Apple’s next Nadella? Steve Jobs was the original.
That is what's expected when you put a glorified accountant in charge and he decides Wall St. is the real customer and the stock price is the real product and users and consumer technology are an afterthought.
He’s been in charge for a while, even during some good times. I dunno. It definitely seems like the company is trending in a bad direction, though—maybe he was able to extrapolate from the good points well enough. But now that they are far past those points, the higher order terms are going bad…
Can we use "ensheetification" to describe this phenomeon? (sure I'm not the first to use this word)
I think the other replies are missing your 'sheet' pun, from my knowledge and a quick search, I think you coined it
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/offline-with-jon-favre...
Yes, https://pluralistic.net/2025/02/26/ursula-franklin/
What does it imply that the other term does not? Enshitification is the inevitable result of the tendency of profit to revert to zero. This is basic schumpeter (not to mention marx).
> completely devoid of any ideas on the software side.
Maybe I’m too old, but if Apple fixed every single bug and added absolutely zero features until the day of my death, I would still be a satisfied customer.
The problem is not lack of innovation, the problem is that everything barely works.
Doing your job and doing your job well are two different things, of course. The innovation is going to have to be in how to return to the latter when they’ve lost their way. Or, perhaps more accurately, been led astray by conflicting priorities.
They’ve done it recently with their hardware. Past time for the other side of the house to refocus.
Google was killed when Pichai took over - in his first speech, he said: Everything is AI now.
From moment on, Google search tanked: from a userexperience perspective and a useracquisition-vehicle perspective. Lots of companies could have been built only Google worked 15years ago the way that Google did work. Lots of companies today do not have the same lane anymore, so spending more and more on advertising....
I heard someone randomly say that they should replace Tim Cook with Scott Forstall. I chuckled at the idea but this might be a great idea.
Fadell might also be a good choice. Either way it should be someone currently outside Apple. The company needs an external eye to review its processes and cruft that built up under Cook (nothing negative against the guy, but what worked 5-10 years ago won’t necessarily work 5-10 years down the road).
Has Nadella had one original thought? He simply passes through whatever the board orders.
Nadella turned Microsoft completely around. Before Nadella, for about 2 decades, Microsoft’s entire purpose seemed to be to stuff Windows into everything. Changing this was a massive undertaking that was largely unimaginable within MS.
Unfortunately now under Nadella AI is taking the role Windows used to play, but even there he understood the importance of AI before most of his competitors did which is what allowed Microsoft to gain such a substantial footing in OpenAI.
> Has Nadella had one original thought? He simply passes through whatever the board orders.
No.
But for mega-tech CEO salary, I’d probably do exactly the same.
It takes a person with massive personality disorder to do this kind of stuff. I'm glad I'm not doing it, whatever the amounts of money in play.
a-holes with spreadsheets = MBA
Same thing that killed Intel, Microslop, pretty much every american company.
The MBA was designed for those who did not want to study or could not master economics.(/jk or isn't)
What has Nadella done for Windows users? It appears to me that Windows is becoming every bit as enshittified as macOS, if not more so. And isn't Microsoft experimenting with advertisements in Windows?
Microsoft doesn’t care about Windows. It’s been clear for years that their focus is on Azure, Office, and enterprise sales.
The enterprise is going to choose Windows regardless for the masses and even if consumers make a mass exodus to Apple (not going to happen because of price) or Linux (even less likely) they are out of $30 they charge OEMs.
So, yea, the latest IOS and MacOS are pretty terrible and user hostile, but they are miles from the issues with the latest Windows OS.
How is MacOS as enshittified as Windows? It doesn't have ads, doesn't push AI on you, their online services are trivial to ignore once and never think about again, etc. I haven't tried Tahoe, and sure, its new glass UI is shit, but merely incompetent UI design is not "enshittification" and is not in any way equivalent to what Microsoft does in Windows.
> their online services are trivial to ignore once and never think about again
The workarounds to get rid of the nag to log into your icloud account on macOS are far more difficult than the workarounds to avoid using an MS account in Windows.
macOS absolutely, definitely, 100% has ads.
Buy a new Apple Watch and notice that the settings app with have a [1] badge trying to upsell you to buy AppleCare+. They obscure dismissing these by clicking the "Add AppleCare Coverage" button and then having a button that says actually no.
My MacOS "100%" does not have any ads. But I don't use Apple watch or Apple online services, so that's the difference I guess.
You don't need to buy a Windows Watch to get ads on Windows though. They'll be right there anyway, and more of them.
The undissmissable badges in settings irk me to no end. Using language like “finish setting up” in iOS to describe me opting out of Apple Intelligence by choice as leaving MY device in some sort of “unfinished state” is user hostile too. With the amount of effort it takes me to push back constantly on these dark patterns, I know for a fact all my less tech savvy friends and family just aren’t bothering and that’s what they count on.
Not as egregious as what windows is doing with copilot everywhere or sneakily flipping user-toggled options during updates, but it’s all some degree of gross.
This, on top of the nonstop onslaught of advertisements for F1. It seemed like every one of Apple's services were pushing for that movie. They even put it into maps, wallets, into CarPlay (while people were driving!) It was surprisingly shameless.
It's certainly not as bad _right now_ as what you'll see on Windows 11, but this is something that will almost certainly only get worse over time.
Agreed. And don't press the play/pause button on your Bluetooth headset, or Apple Music will fire up and ask you to agree to their terms.
Windows has third party ads and it’s so trash
I've been getting intrusive first-party ads in Apple's OSes for at least the past 3 major OS releases. News+, Fitness+, Music, Apple TV+, etc etc.
Surely we can distinguish MacOS – the operating system – from the online services provided by Apple that happen to have a native app?
If you are choosing to use Apple online services, sure, you'll get upsells I guess, as with any other online service. I don't use any of Apple's online services, and never see those ads.
News+ also has a ton of articles behind paywalls, even if paying for the premium version. It’s an ugly experience, probably the worst one.
macOS does have ads, their online services are worse than Windows, and installing basic software like Homebrew and Git is like having teeth pulled.
Windows is absolutely miserable, but with WSL installed it's far and away the better dev environment. I say that as someone who dailies Linux and hates all three OSes.
While macOS has gown down over time, installing Homebrew and Git on macOS is trivial, a 30 second affair.
Forstall was an enshittefier too. Apple Maps was exactly what we are talking about.
Strange take. Apple Maps was a new product. It's expected it would be behind Google Maps, maybe even forever given all the headstart and resources Google gives it.
In any case, Apple Maps (a NEW then product, in an entirely new space for Apple) being bad, is not at all related to "enshittification".
Apple Maps is absolutely the wrong thing to judge Forstall on.
Not to mention that its main problem is coverage i.e. data quality. Regarding software engineering it's fine, even better than Google Maps in lots of aspects.
This makes no difference, because I can’t remember the last time I installed an app other than for the occasional airline.
From 2008-12 it was genuinely exciting to see what new apps were being released every day. Mobile games from that era had cultural impact. I bought $2 apps without a thought.
But Apple incentivized monetization above all else and killed that excitement. Now you can’t find a tip calculator that doesn’t charge a monthly subscription. A popular flight tracker is $60/year (or a $300 purchase). A flash card app costs the same. Apple’s curated list of “essential utilities” includes a birthday countdown that costs $5/wk.
I know every app will cost me hundreds over the span of just a few years for marginal utility so I simply stopped buying them. And I wonder if Apple’s push for more ad revenue is a symptom of that trend.
We are a dying breed.
A whole new generation has never known an App Store without ads.
To them this is the norm.
The same thing is happening on the Android side.
If you've made a game, it doesn't matter how high quality it is, how many awards it has won, etc.
The only thing that matters is that it's live service, that it doesn't "have an end", that it can drive engagement and perpetual revenue.
Quite a few testimonies from game devs: according to them, Google representatives pretty much told them this.
See also: the requirements to constantly update your app/game even if it's a "finished product" that does not inherently require any updates.
It’s because no one bothers with pay once apps anymore the only way to get customers is free app and tricking them into a subscription. Entire system raced the price people would pay for iOS software to 0
It recently occurred to me that it’s been years since it was possible to find some new and interesting app just by browsing the App Store, like it used to be when iPhone and Android were first introduced. Now I open the store knowing in advance what exactly I’m looking for and take care not to accidentally click on a lookalike.
I've had success finding games in the Apple Arcade by just browsing. The bonus is that the games are all included with Apple+ and don't have any ads or microtransactions.
That said, I completely agree that you cannot find any interesting apps by just browsing the App Store as a whole.
Not only that, it’s dangerous too specially if you have a family account with a single credit card.
Apple doesn’t care about quality.
Yes. My wife’s mother keeps buying crap in game using my card and I have no reasonable way of blocking her from doing so if I want to keep app purchase sharing.
It’s insane. Does no one at apple have senile in laws? Or is this acceptable?
Discovery is social
If you’re optimizing for searchers (SEO) you’ve been out of the loop for a decade or catering almost exclusively to the elderly
Then whats all this "Appstore Optimization" about? :-D ;-)
It's only getting worse with the amount of AI Slop being poured into the store.
I'm relatively new to the space, but it feels like more and more of the time of indie devs / bootstrappers needs to get allocated towards marketing.
I still do this but with F-Droid (or one of the nice frontends like Droidify).
Will some new player come and give us some golden years of VC handouts and pre-enshittification decency? I hope so, but the barriers to entry are mighty.
Same on Android.
Except on Android when you search for something and you get the big "match found" with "install" button, it's an ad and the real result is hidden like a search result.
This practice ought to be illegal. These are trademarks, and monopolies are injecting themselves as market makers in a bidding war they created.
This isn't enshittification. This is Roman Empire collapse. It doesn't work anymore.
At least in Android you can use F-Droid which is Play Store for open-source apps.
I installed a regex powered notification blocker yesterday. Works as a charm.
For now, and only but a tiny fraction of you.
99.99% of users never visit the settings. For those that do, they won't get past scare wall #1 of enabling APKs and scare walls #2, #3, and #4 of downloading, installing, and enabling the app.
Google knows this.
Tyranny of defaults, trained user behaviors, ecosystem, scare tactics, and even SERPs manipulation to make this nigh undiscoverable.
But they weren't content with some number of you slipping through the cracks! They're starting to close the ability to release unsigned and self-signed code. You can only imagine what's after that.
Agreed. Far from enough. But at least there's an option for tech savvy folks.
This is very unfortunate. To me Apple was the last corporate standing that is not doing ads nefariously. If this is changing what is next? I’m aware it is a slippery slope argument, but this has to do with trust. Apple’s advertised stance on privacy and security and ads always has been believable (to me) because of their business model and that they made it the distinguishing feature.
Now, what is left? iPads are great, MacBook with Apple silicon are unmatched in refinement, iPhones are awesome but getting a bit stale. Apple Watch is awesome, but for sports Garmin are better. It is the integrated ecosystem with iCloud that makes the total system powerful.
Where to go? I love Linux with CachyOS on my desktop. Anything similar for tablets and laptops? I think KDE has something like connect that aims to do what iCloud does.
Not only are Apple's services bad, they've becoming inescapable. It's rumored that they'll add ads to maps as soon as next year.
Music.app is simply an ad for Apple Music, Books.app is like reading in a Barnes and Noble while someone from marketing looks over your shoulder and their TV app features their own shows to an overbearing degree — everything else is becoming more of an afterthought.
> Music.app is simply an ad for Apple Music,
If you use iTunes Match or load your own MP3s every time you open the app the search field is set to “Apple Music” and the search fails until you toggle it, every time.
Been like that for 2+ years
Services business is a slippery slope, everyone succumbs to the YoY revenue growth push and they all gravitate towards the same dirty tactics. They even tried turning the hardware into a subscription model but I guess it didn’t gain much traction.
Apple annual gross profit for 2025 was $195.201B, a 8.04% increase from 2024. Apple annual gross profit for 2024 was $180.683B, a 6.82% increase from 2023. Apple annual gross profit for 2023 was $169.148B, a 0.96% decline from 2022.
Seems like this is just plain old greed...
It seems a significant amount of that revenue is now from services (App Store, in-app purchases, subscriptions,…).
Yes! And these are very easy to boycott! I don’t understand why this didn’t happen after Tim Cook shove that gold bar right up Trump’s ass.
the change is more subtle than I expected but this does seem like a step in the wrong direction
a bigger older problem is the number of copycat applications allowed in the app store. for example the listing for the official microsoft authenticator app (free and used in many corporate environments) is surrounded by results with similar looking icons and titles. these look a likes also work for MFA but charge a monthly subscription. not exactly a scam since they do work, but its obvious they are only there to confuse users into paying for something thats free.
With stuff like this, this is just a really bad idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46323041
You can't tell family to search for things in the app store anymore, I always provide direct links. It's just to dangerous otherwise.
Wont make a difference. People are already in the Walled Prison and moms/teens/lower-middle class people are shamed for not being able to afford the $50/mo to buy an iphone. They had numerous privacy and security issues that caused literal deaths of VIPs. Their quality is always 2nd best if we are being generous.
If they haven't switched yet, its not going to happen. Apple knows this. Late users are always punished like my parents who still have a landline and cable tv.
Quality is 2nd best to what? And people haven't switched to what? Android? The situation is no better on Google OS.
Apple's App Store ad initiatives have always been woeful, and doubt it makes enough revenue to warrant a separate line item on their public accounting reports. Some executive has seen yet another overfunded company potentially making bank with an ad-based business model (OpenAI, et al.), and has thought they could extract Google-level ad revenue due to the App Store's exclusivity. It could also be a response to potentially competing App Stores given their rocky relationship with the EU.
It will have little effect, on revenue or user experience. The greater tragedy is the organisational decay that led to this being greenlit in the first place.
> And people haven't switched to what? Android? The situation is no better on Google OS
Agree. Even GrapheneOS is hell to use. I tried both PixelOS and GrapheneOS on a Pixel 9 and ended up returning it. If I was not homeless I would switch to a flip phone and just use a Linux desktop.
> The greater tragedy is the organisational decay that led to this being greenlit in the first place.
Is it? I feel like that would only be tragic if you expected the App Store monopoly company to care about users instead of profits.
For most of us on the sidelines this is a real "told you so" moment.
>it probably helps increase click-through rates which ultimately boosts Apple’s revenue in its ads business
I assume that means it increases the number of times users install the wrong app (possibly with serious consequences)?
Why should Apple give a shit? Companies like Apple are sociopathic profit-maximizers, and users are cattle to be milked and slaughtered.
I find that's the case already. They also force you to go through their ad-splattered gauntlet, every time you reopen the app.
It's pretty much worthless, to me. I always use direct app links, from the developers' sites.
I shudder to think of it getting worse.
Every now and then, normally while I’m bored before departing on a plane, I’ll scroll the App Store. It’s all ads at this point. Lists and lists of “top [x]” most of which are clearly just paid lists.
I never visit the App Store outside of that. If I need an app, I search for it and go directly to its listing page (yes, technically the App Store) or install it directly from my Home Screen.
If an iPhone is going to be as bad as an Android like that then what's the point. The "premium" feeling is eroded like this.
Oh, so the Google playstore since... forever. Or at least as long as I can remember. If you have a "search" feature on your <anything app> it should filter down to exactly what you would expect, no sponsored positions, no irrelevant apps as ads, etc.
Shame apple is going towards the dark pattern of ads as results.
Not obvious to me that this is worse or as user-hostile as many seem to presume.
Previously the blue background made the ad result look more highlighted and more prominent.
Now it is just like the other results - not special or better.
Yes, the HN audience knows the visual convention indicates that the blue background represents an ad. Does your everyday user know that or do they assume the blue results are better?
> Does your everyday user know that or do they assume the blue results are better?
Deceptive UI is the issue. By removing distinctions between ads and normal results, you're going from a frying pan situation straight into the fire.
This will always be a thing, the click metrics dictate it and to justify the costs to the company advertising and the low # of clicks, something has to be done to save the new revenue Ads give. They might as well add modal (psudeo popup) ads, because they will be there in 15yrs.
Feels short sighted. Every such change gets me closer to ditching the ecosystem altogether.
Liquid Glass was always about blurring the line.
En-something-ification…
En-adification. Or just adification. Can also use adified.
The lines where pretty blurred already. If you search for the exact name of an app, I think that needs to go first in the results, the ads can be the third or forth. Having ads show up before the "correct" app is incredibly dangerous in a world where so much of our digital life is in various apps. Often the people see is actively trying to trick people into installing the wrong thing, making the ad less visible is going to get a lot of people scammed.
How the hell Apple does not see this is beyond me. All of their fancy security in iOS is worthless if they allow people to be tricked into installing scam-ware.
What cant i search for paid apps
One of the reasons ChatGPT is taking over google searches for a lot of people is that they also did this kind of shit.
These companies are overconfident.
Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.
i don't remember last time i was in the app store.
Google does the same where an ad is the first result. :(
This is the Apple I've always worried would emerge.
You mean the same Apple who will remove an app like Tumblr for a little consensual nudity posted by people and is too afraid of what Trump might say to remove X which is allowing none consensual undressing of women just by posting a picture and telling Grok to remove clothes - including CSAM?
It's been like this for a while, the top results for a lot of known apps are scam impersonators.
So much for the so called "safety" of the appstore.
In fact, they had so many ChatGPT fake apps showing as top results that they had to do something as users couldn't find the real one and it reached the news.
Capitalism pretty much demands it. Some companies can delay it for awhile, but the numbers must go up and eventually expansion because of a better product reaches it's natural limit.
Corporations always operate at the lowest morality level of any member of the company. Lots of executives can say no to dark patterns, but it only takes one to say yes. Then that exec gets to report the successful revenue boosting metrics. They will tend to get promoted and soon the entire leadership team is filled with people with the lowest ethical standards.
> Lots of executives can say no to dark patterns, but it only takes one to say yes.
I think the situation is a lot more stark than this. Unless they're desperate, the board of directors of corporations will install an MBA as CEO. In most cases, the only time this doesn't happen is at the founding of the company, when a founder is CEO. But if the founder doesn't maintain controlling interest, the founder can be replaced.
The promotion of Steve Jobs to interim CEO of Apple in 1997 was a rare exception. Apple fired its CEO, and the company was in danger of bankruptcy. They were running out of options and feeling the aforemention desperation. Note how the situation was very different in 1985, when the board of directors chose John Sculley over Steve Jobs in a power struggle. At the time, they weren't financially desperate.
Basically, yes.
With compensation so completely tied to "did our stock go up since you joined?", it's a whole thing.
Why must Apple do this?
They're already rolling in profits that dwarf the national budgets of most countries. And I say this as a shameless Apple fanboy.
Maybe it's time to stop being shameless. The App Store monopoly has a direct impact on the quality of first-party services you consume.
It's a bit silly to call it a monopoly.
No one is forced to choose an iPhone over the many many Android alternatives.
Just a reminder that paid for gaming of the search results on Amazon is around a $60bn business for them.
Wow, how much greed will we all tolerate?
Apple annual gross profit for 2025 was $195.201B, a 8.04% increase from 2024.
And still, they feel they can do this? I have never seen a better sign of a monopoly in my life.
App Store's UX has always been a show of excrement, and its search is wonky as hell. I can't imagine myself use that to discover apps, after having been shoved tons of dreck results up my behind the last time I've tried it.
I'd rather ask for app recommendations on 4chan or Reddit than browse App Store.
This feels like a conversation about irrelevant matters the App Store ad design at the advent of AI integration? I see the future being AI suggesting or responding with an app or extension to add specific abilities or features based on stated objectives, i.e., just a package manager behind the scenes. I don’t see myself going to some App Store. I haven’t even “browsed” one in years because they all seem extremely static, having reached a peak saturation and static state.
Frankly, Apple could have probably just totally replaced the App Store a long time ago if they were not slaves to financial reports by simply integrating app search into spotlight more closely or prominently… pull down, search “ai app” (or whatever) and you’re provided with a list of app results that includes an install button.
App updating could and should have been integrated into the settings app.
These kinds of things will only increasingly start biting the Apple as Google has been forced to face the abyss of the death of the common search they’ve dominated for decades now. I don’t think Apple has faced that existential Grim-reaper yet… what do you do when the app ecosystem, OS UI/UX advantages, and even hardware quality has vanished through the cascading integration of AI? I don’t know that Apple has faced that yet or at least has been left blindsided, considering what I’ve been seeing from them.
Wow! They force you to use their app store, and now they have the gall to trick users into installing ads—and there will be multiple ads.
Enshittification, the sequel.