Forced iAds Coming To OS X?

mario_grgic writes "Apple insider brings a story about expansion and renewal of a current 'Advertisement in Operating System' patent that Apple's Steve Jobs and other contributors have. The patent describes in detail (with OS X screen shots) how the forced ads would work (they would disable some OS functionality until the ad is viewed), but apparently it also applies to any device with a UI, including phones, TVs, set top boxes, etc. With Apple's recent entry into the mobile ad business, and its ambition to own half of all the mobile ads served during the second half of this year, it certainly makes one wonder if Apple would dare and put something like this in its desktop OS. I wonder if this would push more people to open source alternatives?"

If its in the OS kernel you're stuffed otherwise..

[Viol8]

... its probably nothing that kill -9 couldn't solve.

I suspect it'll be some background daemon that kicks off some process every now and then and disables
some portion of the GUI while its at it.

Re:Interesting Spin in the Summary

[VolciMaster]

What airports do you fly through? Several I use frequently have freely-available wifi (BDL, LEX, ALB to name three)

Re:Interesting Spin in the Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

1. If you go from selling 1 computer to 2 computers, you have just increased your sales by 100%. Apples volume to very low compared to Dell or HP, so woopdy doo..

2. You got that right. Apple tax! Enjoy!
3. Point 2 answered that one, this is redundant.
4. Yes they have high phone sales, so which vendors do they have higher sales on combined? The Kin and the nexus??
5. well duh, too obvious of a point.
6. Different products for different markets, iPads don't eat into netbook sales. Even without the iPon on the market, netbook sales would slow any way (market saturation).

Re:If its in the OS kernel you're stuffed otherwis

[betterunixthanunix]

Keep in mind that Apple has, in the past, crippled the ability of users to debug certain processes in Mac OS X -- processes like iTunes -- presumably because they had a vested interest in thwarting those users. What makes you think that they would allow you to run kill on a process that makes them money?

Personally, I want to say that this is just FUD. Much as I disagree with Apple's tactics, I do not think they would bother shoving iAds in Mac OS X; I think it is more likely that they will just shove iOS (with iAds) onto more product lines, and reserve OS X for their most expensive workstations.

So did subby even read the article?

[SilverJets]

First line in the linked article (and it is even in bold):

Apple could be creating an operating system supported by advertisements, allowing users to obtain the software at a reduced price, or for free, in exchange for being required to view ads.

Subby's summary:

Forced iAds Coming To OS X?

Sure, forced ads for those that bought the subsidized copy of the OS. You get what you pay for.

Re:Prior art

[linebackn]

Don't forget Microsoft IE4's "desktop enhancements" from back in 1997 that just stuck glorified little ads, promoted as a "hot bar" or something like that. The Channel screen saver qualifies as well. IE 5.5 and later dropped

Arrag, and all these years I was trying to erase that from my memory. The real purpose of the channel bar and channel screen saver was to promote Microsoft Internet Explorer 4. With the "enhanced" desktop IE 4 logos were also plastered all over other places in the user interface and used the IE document viewer shell in place of the previous Windows Explorer file manager.

They didn't prevent you from using the OS if you didn't view the channel bar ads (they DID try to prevent you from using the OS if IE was not installed) but the average person probably never turned off the channel bar or active desktop. So those graphics for MSN, MSNBC, Disney, etc probably burned themselves in to many CRTs.

Even today browser vendors take money for prominently placing default browser bookmarks, but at least those aren't usually as intrusive.

Re:Pot, Kettle

[liquidsin]

can you give me some examples? when i lost my ipod, i had no troubles switching to using my blackberry as a media player. i've moved firefox profiles and photoshop/illustrator files (with all supporting fonts, images, etc) from my macbook to a windows machine and opened them with no issues. i just haven't seen this alleged vendor lock-in that i keep hearing so much about, and i have to wonder what i'm missing.

Re:Interesting Spin in the Summary

[VGPowerlord]

1, 2, 3. According to the Q2 2010 statistics, Apple is 4th place in the US with 9.8% of the market. Ahead of them are (3rd) Acer with 11.3%, (2nd) Dell with 23.7%, and (1st) HP with 25.7%.

Apple doesn't even make the top 6 world-wide; number 6 has 5.1%, so it's less than that.

6.

"The consumer PC market registered double-digit shipment growth, but consumer mobile shipment growth slowed. This was due in part to slower growth of mini-notebooks," Ms. Kitagawa said. "Surging popularity of Apple's iPad temporarily cannibalized mini-notebooks, as well as consumer notebook sales to some degree. It is not certain at this stage if the cannibalization will continue with the current price point of media tablets."

-- Gartner, talking about the US computer market

What does this mean? It means that (in the US market), the iPad has stolen some of the mini-notebook (AKA Netbook) growth, but it is still a growing market segment.

Source: Gartner Says Worldwide PC Shipments Increased 21 Percent in Second Quarter of 2010 [gartner.com]

Re:Interesting Spin in the Summary

[CoffeeDog]

If you RTFA:

"According to the patent application, users could also choose to access the advertisements when they choose, delaying an ad by 10 minutes, or choosing to watch one immediately. This would help to ensure that the ad is not overly intrusive, appearing while the user was in the middle of an important task."

You're right they aren't "randomly bombarding users with ads" they are "regularly bombarding users with ads".

Re:Interesting Spin in the Summary

[Nixoloco]

There are a large number of things that I hate Apple products for, the desktop environment that does not lend itself to heavy multitasking (from a user perspective), ... the poorly organized layout which makes Spotlight the main way to access your files and programs. iAds will go a long way to adding to the annoyance that is the Apple experience.

Bring on the enforced ad watching.

What are you talking about? OSX lends itself wonderfully to multitasking from all perspectives. Expose + Spaces are phenomenal for running multiple applications even supporting multiple desktops to break up tasks which is all well supported by the underlying Unix based OS. Also, what is so hard about accessing files and programs? You have a home directory for your data and an applications directory for programs? If you want something even better, install Quicksilver or Launchbar.

Re:Interesting Spin in the Summary

[GweeDo]

Music Editor - nothing bundled with Win7 there
Video Editor - Movie Maker
DVD Video Authoring App - Movie Maker
Photo Manager - Photo Gallery
Backup Solution - Backup and Restore
Media Organizer - Windows Media Player

So...what was your point again?

Re:Interesting

[shutdown -p now]

GP is a known troll around here, and intended to provoke people not fond of Apple into posting such comments. Never mind him.

Re:Interesting Spin in the Summary

[thesandtiger]

And full-on developer tools for free. Not an incentive for 99% of the Mac userbase, but I find it really nice.

Re:Stuck at 5%

[phantomfive]

[Citation needed]

I got my numbers from Apple themselves, in the investor conference call on Tuesday, and the precise number is 33% increase in sales year-over-year from the same quarter last year. You can listen to the call yourself on Apple's website, or here is a summary [theappleblog.com] of some of the biggest stuff. Apple's numbers are more accurate than Gartner's, unless you think Apple is outright lying about their numbers and foresee jailtime for their executives in the near future. Also of note is that sales in Asia are up 71%, and sales in Europe are up 46%; although that's not as impressive as it sounds because they had a smaller marketshare to begin with in Asia, it is still a number not many vendors would complain about.

Re:Stuck at 5%

[phantomfive]

Those figures are worldwide, and include places like China where OSX has little hold (and Microsoft doesn't really either since most people pirate Windows). And yet they are still growing. If you look at US marketshare, it's above 10%. If you look at consumer marketshare (and remove business computers), it's even higher. And it's growing. Mac sales in Asia grew 71% year-over-year. You can talk about 'quick turnover of the existing base,' but that doesn't take into account that half of the sales growth this quarter was from first-time buyers. That means 16.5% of their Mac sales came from switchers. And that was in the last quarter: your graph doesn't take into account the last quarter. It also doesn't take into account earlier than 2009; if it did, you would see that market-share has nearly doubled since 2004. In other words, your assertion doesn't make a very careful analysis of reality and goes astray. Macintosh is growing in popularity. (and while we're talking, the evidence I've heard is that Apple has a slower turnover of the existing base than Windows. I'd be interested in seeing some statistics though, if you have some to drag out).

I agree with your other point.

Re:Interesting Spin in the Summary

[exomondo]

Apple had [url=http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2008/04/01/analyst-apples-us-consumer-market-share-now-21-percent/]21% share in 2008[/url]. Plus the increases that have been reported since equals to about 30%. It is some estimation on my part because the real numbers have not been released since 2008, unfortunately. Either way, it is significantly more than 8% in the consumer market.

There doesn't seem to be much actual info in that article and it only relates to the consumer market, which has been vaguely estimated without citation. It also assumes that no sales of apple computers were to enterprise. Better to look at more solid statistics [arstechnica.com] that relate to the whole market.