I think that's what Palm, Nokia, Windows Phone and Blackberry thought, too. Well maybe not Windows Phone, those were never more than niche. But the others, they all OWNED the market like 100-ish percent, at their time.
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App Store Search Results to Show More Ads Next Year, Says Apple
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Tbh i was surprised that this word gets censored. It's funny that we aren't allowed to use the s-word here, which is a common term for describing platforms going down. Probably someone might get severely harmed when reading strong language, but of course it's ok to throw meaningless ads towards their faces.I like that I could read this without having to guess at all what was censored.
The corporate world is really going into the wrong direction. They are no longer suppliers, but try to form and enforce the world in which we have to live.
It's better than just doing things without saying anything. I've been a long-time prime user and have been using amazon prime music for many years - lately they have been pushing the unlimited subscription more and more in increasingly obnoxious ways, to the point where it has made the user experience abysmal - whether you are listening on an alexa device or via the app, incessant ads for their unlimited subscription or alexa+.
Never saw any disclosure or announcement of these changes, the prime music experience used to be excellent with truly ad free listening, no pop-ups or banners, no voice over ads for unlimited or alexa+ or anything. Of course prime music itself was even better before they introduced unlimited and changed how prime music works as well.
It's amazing anyone is against intense regulation of these entities.
They're all out of control, including Apple.
How could they possible have more ads? When you access the App Store that's all you see! Even when you search for a specific app, you are first presented with a paid app!
The entire experience is horrendous in there.
It's just a minefield of garbage Apps and ADs.
I honestly feel sorry for anyone browsing around in hopes of finding anything good.
I know there are ads (and I'm annoyed by them). I was simply asking for a specific example where search didn't work to find the app you're looking for. The other original commenter was bemoaning the decline in the App Store search functioning.
For example, if I search for "Zoom", Zoom Workplace comes up. There is an ad for Google Gemini above that but Zoom is right in the middle of the screen, which is where I tend to look first. Again, I have issues with ad placement (although in the middle of the screen would be worse [don't get any ideas Apple employees!]) and I generally dislike ads in general (you should see how robust my ad blocking is at home), but the search function worked perfectly to help me find the app I was looking for.
If I search for "PUBG" (used to play it occasionally years ago), it's comes up with a Fortnite ad placed above it (the top spot in blue is the ad placement). Then other potentially relevant apps come up in the list.
What I was asking about is specific search failures commenters have seen. There's way too much, "It's bad!" without any specifics about what's wrong and what could be better. There's also little to no differentiation between the accuracy of searches and ads. Those are different issues. I'm wondering what could be improved about the search capabilities rather than just get rid of ads.
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I don't have a great example for you as I don't use the iOS App Store for much of anything, but I do recall many developers over the years being extremely frustrated about searching for their OWN App and getting multiple ADs and other Apps above exactly what they were searching for.
It's been a mixed bag of hurt on this front.
(that's a fun micro reference from Steve .. he was talking about Blu-Ray 😂)
Ad Store Search Results to Show Fewer Apps Next Year, Says Apple
This is kinda a nothing problem. Who ever looks around in App Store? The ads are for the ten global huge apps like tiktok, some games and dating apps. All of which I never look for.
App Store is solely used to update my current apps. Sometimes I hear about an app that directly links to it, i.e here on MacRumours articles.
App Store is solely used to update my current apps. Sometimes I hear about an app that directly links to it, i.e here on MacRumours articles.
You're describing most of us here, but I don't think this is the case for the mass of normal users.
They are doing this because it makes more money, which would only be true if somebody is using the App Store and seeing the ADs and clicking on them.
Apple is one of the top most valuable company in the world.
They have so much cash they don't know what to do with it.
This is just pure greed and nothing else.
They have so much cash they don't know what to do with it.
This is just pure greed and nothing else.
"The ads are for the ten global huge apps"
Next year you'll have even more of those.
"App Store is solely used to update my current apps."
That only makes this a "nothing problem" for you.
A lot of us use a lot more than that with the app store.
Urgh. Is the harm to the user experience really worth the extra pennies? Bearing in mind that Apple are swimming in money - and got to that position by prioritising the user experience. As another poster said, search in the App Store already sucks and even searching for specific apps somehow does not return them as the first result. I’m exhausted by everything sucking; Apple was meant to be the one place where things didn’t suck.
That ship has sailed and folks are finally starting to realize it.
Yep. I went to the app store and did a search for Grok. The first result to come up was a ad placement for ChatGPT. If I wanted that trash, I would have typed it in. Apple has stooped to Amazon's embarassing levels of ******tification when it comes to search usefulness.
I don't understand how folks are defending where Apple has gone here over the last few years.
More ads. Ads. When you hear that word, of course it's a financially driven decision.
Such is life under Cook.
Honestly, I stopped buying anything off the app store because the process was frustrating. If the exact thing I typed in isn't the first search result, it's likely a scam. I've been this many times where someone intentionally names their app to confuse or mislead people into downloading something they didn't intend to.
It's one of the reasons why I haven't bothered updating my iPhone 13 Pro Max. The app store has become user hostile, iOS 26's UI has become user hostile, and the Pro Max colour schemes are uninspiring and boring (iPhone 18 grape and brown and dark red.. really?!).
Agreed.
Apple business incentives have completely taken over at the expense of the user experience.
We are the product now.
My best guess is Apple knows their 30% take in App sales is inevitably going to go down. They are preemptively looking for ways to replace that income.