Thread

Apple has added persistent 'ads' to iOS, and it's driving users crazy

822 points · 601 comments · MC995

AnonC · 1790088825 · focus · HN ↗
I doubt John Ternus will change direction anytime soon, since it will look like he’s reversing the plethora of eyesore ads that Tim Cook added over his tenure.
But the Apple with ads is not the Apple that had some taste and discernment in the past. For a long time I’ve visited the App Store’s app update page directly (tap and hold on App Store icon to see the context menu option). Anytime I inadvertently go to the App Store home page or the few times I search, it’s an ad filled disaster!
From this article
> repeatedly attempting to prod customers towards even more of the company’s products might seem cheap, even distasteful.
From a recent post by John Gruber:
> Steve Jobs in 2011: 'We Build Products That We Want for Ourselves, Too, and We Just Don't Want Ads' [1]
Looks like Tim Cook, John Ternus and Eddy Cue really enjoy being swamped with ads in their products. Will there soon be a time when Apple executives start carrying some other brand’s devices with them to avoid having a rotten experience?
[1]: We don’t want ads <a href="https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/07/28/jobs-we-dont-want-ads" rel="nofollow">https://daringfireball.net/linked/2026/07/28/jobs-we-dont-wa...
1. GuinansEyebrows · 1790089791 · focus · HN ↗
  > Looks like Tim Cook, John Ternus and Eddy Cue really enjoy being swamped with ads in their products. Will there soon be a time when Apple executives start carrying some other brand’s devices with them to avoid having a rotten experience?
  There's no chance these guys don't already have the full suite of Apple services (whether or not they use them) tied to their iCloud accounts. They've probably never even seen the nagware.
  1. benoau · 1790090116 · focus · HN ↗
    I would also guess they practically never use the App Store. In fact I would guess there's virtually no dogfooding of it at all internally, because they have 100k+ employees but need blogs to tell them when a sanctioned Russian bank's stealth submission is topping the free charts.
    lotsofpulp · 1790101455 · focus · HN ↗
    Does anyone use the App Store other than to search for an already known app name? I probably have not in over a decade, and I can't see a reason I ever would.
    eptcyka · 1790102674 · focus · HN ↗
    Best part of searching the App Store for something you know is that even though the hamming distance between the search term and the thing you want is 0, the thing you want will not be at the top of results anyway.
    PhageGenerator · 1790113207 · focus · HN ↗
    This causes me so many issues. Rolling out multi-factor authentication and having some no-name random app show up as the first result for "microsoft authenticator" is downright malicious behavior on the part of the app store.
    colejohnson66 · 1790104519 · focus · HN ↗
    I used to. In the "golden days" of "there's an app for that", I would peruse the App Store looking for new games. I spend hundreds of dollars on games doing that. Now, the only games you see really are shovelware or subscription garbage.

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