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IOS Businesses The Almighty Buck Apple

'The Paywalled Garden: iOS is Adware' (stevestreza.com) 87

Posted by msmash from the my-way-or-highway dept.
Software developer Steve Streza: Over the years, Apple has built up a portfolio of services and add-ons that you pay for. Starting with AppleCare extended warranties and iCloud data subscriptions, they expanded to Apple Music a few years ago, only to dramatically ramp up their offerings last year with TV+, News+, Arcade, and Card. [...] If you don't subscribe to these services, you'll be forced to look at these ads constantly, either in the apps you use or the push notifications they have turned on by default. The pervasiveness of ads in iOS is a topic largely unexplored, perhaps due to these services having a lot of adoption among the early adopter crowd that tends to discuss Apple and their design. This isn't a value call on the services themselves, but a look at how aggressively Apple pushes you to pay for them, and how that growth-hack-style design comes at the expense of the user experience. In this post, I'll break down all of the places in iOS that I've found that have Apple-manufactured ads.
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'The Paywalled Garden: iOS is Adware' More

'The Paywalled Garden: iOS is Adware'

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  • Nobody cares.

    • Re:Everybody knows (Score:4, Insightful)

      by davebarnes ( 158106 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @11:59AM (#59739760)

      Exactly.
      I never see any of these ads on my iOS devices.

      • Most of these however are disable-able, and what's more, some of those services come for free with a new device for a whole year. I don't subscribe to Apple Arcade, and I haven't seen an ad for it yet.

        My only qualm is iCloud storage in iOS/MacOS. I wish I could use my own storage provider.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          My only qualm is iCloud storage in iOS/MacOS. I wish I could use my own storage provider.

          Wait, I don't understand. iOS has a rep for being highly-constrained crap, but I happen to use MacOS and it has no problem storing anything however you want to. MacOS can even use NFS and SMB. MacOS works.

          Good god, I'm not wrong, am I? I'm using MacOS 10.11. They didn't take away all its connectivity in a later release, did they?

          • I know what you're saying, yes I agree, you absolutely could store files wherever or to whatever you want.

            I personally don't use Apple devices, so I'm not entirely sure exactly how iCloud works. But my assumption is data on one Apple device you own, is probably accessible on other Apple devices you own. I thought what he was implying, is that is a feature you would use or you wouldn't, it's not like you could just configure it to use a different service instead of iCloud.

            I don't think this is a problem ex

            • I meant the way it syncs your profile folders. If you put something in your documents folder on your Mac, your files app will have the same file in iOS. Really convenient. You could use Google Drive or even your own Next Cloud instance to accomplish the same thing, they are even built into the same apps. But the default profile folders that sync your desktop, etc only work through iCloud. Same goes for iOS backup space.

              • OK yea, that's kind of what I thought you meant. Again, I don't use Apple devices personally, but it's similar on my android devices. I don't often use cloud storage for my own personal data, I "sync" everything to a RAID in my home. I mostly use the cloud service I do subscribe too (OneDrive, because it's included in my office subscription) for moving really large files or to share something temporarily with a client. My 1TB "cloud storage" sits at about zero bytes most of the time. =)

                While I do find t

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by tsa ( 15680 )

            iCloud data is most important for iDevices. For instance you can store your pictures in iCloud and see them on all your other devices, including the Mac. Handy, but if you have loads of data you have to hire storage space from Apple. IDevices can’t dump your data anywhere else but in iCloud.

        • Most of these however are disable-able, and what's more, some of those services come for free with a new device for a whole year.

          AKA it does cost and you'll pay next year. I wish people would stop pretending that 3 month trials are "free" they're not free. They're delayed cost. what do I do after the 3 months buy a new phone?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by beckett ( 27524 )

          iCloud storage

          No mention of this in the article but this is the only nagware i see regularly (sometimes multiple times a day). i've disabled apple music+, the music store, avoid their News app, and don't use their TV partially because of the persistence of those nags.

          I've found good alternatives for things like third party cloud file storage (e.g. Owncloud), and Overcast has been a great replacement for whatever apple is doing for podcasts these days, but i have to use icloud storage for apple's me

          • I can't speak for the Mac side of things, but iTunes on Windows nags you endlessly to download and install iCloud, including having to uncheck it every single time iTunes wants to update itself, with no way to disable the popups from what I can tell.

            I certainly can't imagine buying a computer from a company that makes such lousy software.

      • Same.

        I was gonna make a sarcastic post saying "welp, I better fucking go to Android then, created by an ad company!" But, not necessary, bc no one fucking cares lol.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jimbo ( 1370 )

        Indeed, me neither.

        I use third party services for email/calendar, notes, cloud storage, etc. anyway (though I do use the iCloud free tier for device backup) - which is also why it's been very easy switching back and forth between Android and iOS. I haven't noticed any ads for Apple services.

    • Serves the dumb noobs right I say. iOS is the new BonziBuddy.

    • People care, because who wants ads on everything? I mean maybe Apple users are that brainwashed but I doubt it. But as an Android user, now I just have Youtube constantly try to shove a half dozen subscription options down my throat plus a couple ads everytime I watch a video. Same difference really.

  • Ads on mobile platforms (Score:3)

    by Arthur, KBE ( 6444066 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @11:55AM (#59739746)
    I don't want to open the Android vs Apple can of worms, but I've never seen any ads on my Android devices. The play store let's you know if an app is ad-supported and when I see this, I just move on. Same with the web. It's too easy to install something like uMatrix and not have to deal with any of that. I think the last time I saw advertising on the web was in the mid-2000's.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      You can use DNS66 to block ads in apps as well. It's DNS based as the name suggests so not as good as uBlock, but it does work pretty well anyway.

    • You missed the point. Try to use an Android phone and not see any ads for google services (maps, gmail, etc). It takes a lot of effort to kill those notifications and to use something else

      • I use an Adroid phone and I've never seen any ads for Google services nor have I seen any in-app advertising? The only ad-blocker I have is in the browser.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by q4Fry ( 1322209 )

          You have clearly never used the YouTube app.

          Hey Arthur, have you heard of YouTube Red? Remember yesterday when we asked you about signing up, and you declined? We just wanted to check in and see if you'd changed your mind.

          • You have clearly never used the YouTube app. Fair enough, I've never used the Youtube app. I use Youtube in the browser.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by tepples ( 727027 )

              Fair enough, I've never used the Youtube app. I use Youtube in the browser.

              When I use YouTube in the browser, I see ads for YouTube Premium (formerly YouTube Red) and YouTube TV (Google's counterpart to Sling).

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by taustin ( 171655 )

                Which has nothing to do with the OS, and everything to do with YouTube, and will be the same in any browser on any OS.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sosume ( 680416 )

          Depends on the brand. Some phones are preloaded with all kinds of junk, some are very clean. But nearly any Android phone preinstalls Google Music and Youtube, both contain ads for subscriptions. But what TFA shows shocked me, sort of. I never realized Apple users see so many ads for the Apple subscriptions on their premium phones.

      • The only time I've seen that is when they shuttered Google Now and rolled the features into Google Assistant. Then I got a notification that Google Assistant was combining features of several Google apps including Now, and that I should upgrade because they were dropping support for Now.

        I changed my default Android browser from Chrome to Firefox two phones ago. I've never seen an ad telling me to switch back to Chrome.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        No it doesn't. You can kill all notifications for an app in a couple of taps right from the notification bar. And even if your phone doesn't let you uninstall Google apps you can completely disable them easily.

        The way Android works any app can completely replace the Google ones. They have no special status. For example there are open source replacements for everything Google offers on Android.

    • Re:Ads on mobile platforms (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Arkham ( 10779 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @12:35PM (#59739864)

      I can't get a Pixel to stop annoying me with "Google this google that? What if I turn this on without your permission? Hey I started reading your email and adding stuff to your calendar without your permission. Hey I read your email without your permission and saw you had a hotel in another state so I added a trip to your google account without your permission. It's creepy.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      I don’t see ads on iOS device, and most apps work as or better with Dropbox as with iCloud. iCloud is free for limited storage. The only place I see overt advertising is the music app, which is annoyware and will regularly hold the user hostage until they decline the music service, even if you find the switch to disable it. Tye Apple stuff is much more subtle. They want your credit card information. They want you to pay $1 a month rather than $10 a year, even though they would make more money on the l

    • I don't want to open the Android vs Apple can of worms, but I've never seen any ads on my Android devices.

      That's ok - I've never seen any ads on my iPad either but, like you, I don't tend to download bloated ad-ware. I suspect this is more dependent on the user than the OS.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • I don't want to open the Android vs Apple can of worms, but I've never seen any ads on my Android devices. The play store let's you know if an app is ad-supported and when I see this, I just move on. Same with the web. It's too easy to install something like uMatrix and not have to deal with any of that. I think the last time I saw advertising on the web was in the mid-2000's.

      If there really are such ads in iOS they are so unobtrusive that I have not noticed a single one in the 10 years that I have been an on/off iOS user. (I've been Apple exclusive for about the last 5 years).

      But why would Google want to put any ads like that in Android anyway? You do realize that the entire purpose of Google owning Android is to track your location, your phone/shopping habits, etc in order to increase its income on advertising, right? I'd rather sit through AppleCare ads (which again, I've n

  • So Apple also has ads in the OS? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by iampiti ( 1059688 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @12:02PM (#59739772)
    So Apple also has ads in the OS? I thought that feature was an exclusive of Windows 10. /s
    • Apple integrates the OS with their own services. It's a stretch to say that Apple "pushes" anyone to pay for anything. I've used an iPhone for years with just a free iCloud account and can't recall ever being pestered to subscribe to one of Apple's services.
      • Lucky you. Read the article to see where they DO pester you.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          Lucky you. Read the article to see where they DO pester you.

          Wow, amazing since I had my iPhone 10 XS since release day and I didn't see any of those things until it was mentioned.

          I don't even recall getting Apple Music plus things. Never tapped on it I guess, and I've used the App Store a ton and never got pestered into getting Apple Arcade.

          So I'm guessing the article is saying "It's adware because Apple makes it too easy to run across these things and sign up for". Whereas, if I actually did pay for these

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by AHuxley ( 892839 )
        The ad to buy the product and keep using the service worked the first time :)

  • My aunt showed me once a Jitterbug Smartphone that always displayed ads when it is unused for a few minutes... this never happens on my iPhone.

  • The iSheep will remain committed. Or uncommitted, when they really should.

  • ....but so is Android.
    What is a modern mobile user to do?

  • Alternate summary (Score:4, Informative)

    by tippen ( 704534 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @12:20PM (#59739824)
    If you go into apps for subscription-based services (Apple Music, Apple TV, etc.) and you don't have a subscription, you get prompted to subscribe. Crazy ad-infested OS!!!1!11!
  • ...it is entirely possible to distribute iOS software without going through the app store, although it's probably not recommended on any sort of large scale. Beside the fact that it requires that the person installing the app have access to an iMac and possess a nominal amount of technical skill, the mechanism could very easily be exploited by a bad actor to install a trojan on the phone, so in practice, it is probably only viable for distribution of software to parties that you otherwise already have som
    • You forget you also have to reinstall everything every week. It is not at all practical., and to suggest so is very misguided.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mark-t ( 151149 )

        I never suggested it was eminently practical, only that it was possible.

        While the technical skill required is not high, and in fact could be learned by probably nearly anyone who was willing to spend the half hour or so it might take to learn the technique from scratch (and after that, mere minutes to repeat), it is still somewhat more involved than simply clicking an install button on the app store.

        And you don't have to reinstall every week. It can continue to work just fine on the device for as long

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mark-t ( 151149 )

          Correction.... xcode does *NOT* allow the creation of free provision profiles that last a year... those do only last a week, as the above poster noted.

          But $99 a year is not unaffordable... depending on the usefulness of the software, it could be considered part of the cost of ownership.

  • Either through ads or directly via paywall?? How dare they! Everything should be free for me!!!!

  • There really is a movement to get programmers to be part of big vendors rather than one man operations... the expense of Visual Studio Subscriptions (formerly MSDN) plus .net's code uploading and signing requirements leads to less viruses and more control by the OS makers.

    • What are you talking about? Visual Studio is free for small developers (businesses with five or fewer developers). Code signing doesn't exactly cost an arm and a leg either. Or were you being sarcastic? I can't tell.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tepples ( 727027 )

        Code signing doesn't exactly cost an arm and a leg either.

        Code signing can run into the hundreds of dollars per year for a hobbyist distributing software on multiple platforms, even if the software is distributed under a free software license.

  • Bad summary or something? Only thing I've seen is a "music" ad when I clicked the wrong tab. I think I shut that off. Is the complaint that people are using a paid service free and it's ad-supported or something?

    I use a *lot* of Apple hardware and not a lof of paid stuff. I get movies from Vudu sales and only if they're movies anywhere, which works with apple - it's a pricing thing. The fact that they threw Apple Care, something with a real tangible real world benefit is just plain ridiculous. Back w

  • No technically aware person (Score:3)

    by jabberw0k ( 62554 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @01:11PM (#59740010) Homepage Journal
    should want a computer they do not, and cannot, control, but yet even "geeks" who should know better have somehow been brainwashed into buying allegedly "smart" computers euphemistically called "telephones" ... how did this happen?
  • The sun rose this morning.

  • The examples are in-app (Score:4, Informative)

    by stevez67 ( 2374822 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @01:57PM (#59740190)

    Sheesh, mindless click-bait articles hits a new high (or is it low). What is described are reminders that certain services are subscription based. Imagine that! What isn't described are ads for pills to make body parts larger/smaller/perkier, scam ads about debt reduction, sponsored content (love that play on words) and pop-up/pop-over/pop-under ads with screaming audio.

  • Trash article (Score:3)

    by Dog-Cow ( 21281 ) on Tuesday February 18, 2020 @01:59PM (#59740202)

    I use iOS and macOS every day. I don't get notifications, and I don't see ads. The only service I subscribe to is additional iCloud storage.

  • As a person who have apple products but does not use Apple "Music, TV, News, Card, Arcade", I disagree. I haven't seen a single apple related add in my life.

  • I avoid ads for Apple services on my iPhone by not using Apple services on my iPhone.

    The only unavoidable service is the App store, which is such a confusing mess that adds are the least of its problems.

  • I haven't been running it for long, but I haven't seen any ads on the phone, it seems to be pretty benign in that regard. The only "ads" I have gotten are the same texts and email spam I get no matter what OS I use.

  • Every so often, my iPhone will remind me about Apple Music or the existence of the Apple Card. I tap past it and go on about my day.

    I have my MP3/M4A music collection (I still rip CDs and buy individual songs). I have my own credit card. I don't want to get suckered into using Apple's ecosystem for these and then having them pull the carpet up from under me like they have with software and devices:

    Apple already communicated to me loud and clear that when they want to kill a program I've paid for, t
  • I was about to falter and consider it for my work.

  • This author seems to have taken a haphazard approach to his analysis. Every Apple app bearing the + icon denotes a paid-service app. He opens up two, plus the Arcade icon in the App store (which we know to be the Apple Arcade service). He's also lumping in 3rd party app advertising (done via Apple's advertising platform, of course) in the App Store, in spite of his article's declared focus on Apple services advertising. Overall, this advertising is declared an "insidious tactic". The analysis feels lik

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

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