Apple Pauses Gambling Ads in App Store Pages After Developers Complain [Updated]

[MacBH928]

non-relevant ads suck

Capitalism corrupts. Steve Jobs was one of a kind. He was willing to give up maximum profit for maximum user experience. Thats why he is a legend.

I use App Store only when I need it. The rankings are fake, the ratings are fake, the reviews are fake, and now the ads are fake, why should people use it to find a good app?

How do you know this? I thought Apple accounts are authenticated? where do you look for apps?

 

[HiVolt]

How about Apple give a percentage of the ad revenue to the app store developer whose pages they appear on, eh?

Oh no, can't have that.

 

[FriendlyMackle]

Maybe Apple could open a marijuana dispensary too. Apple Weed. Available with Apple Pay at a reasonable cost (but more than the competitors).

All apps aren't morally equal.

Even setting aside morals, for those who only consider financial matters:
addictive behaviors and substances destroy careers (workers), families (workers and the next generations of workers), mental capacity, and health; these behaviors and substances erode the very fabric of our society. This is a race to extract as much wealth as possible from the masses…for the masters, even as that ‘extraction’ undermines everything that keeps our society functioning.

I’m sure the next thing to come after the gambling apps will be payday lender ads, to ensure that people’s lives are ruined with no hope of recovery. But someone will profit off of this suffering they will have had a hand in cultivating.

To be clear—although I personally find this development inappropriate, distasteful, and dangerous, my objections are not ‘moral’—because human ’morality’ has proven over the centuries to be mostly illusory, with the true purpose of societally-enforced morals being societal control and uncontested rule of the population.

So, ‘shame’ and ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’ aren’t a real part of the lexicon of the financial leaders of the world. Despite the gleaming interviews and TED Talks: Psychopaths and sociopaths don’t even understand what these terms mean. They’ll certainly never feel regret at the destruction ‘just a little more profit’ can reap in human damage.

 

[jdawgnoonan]

Does Apple not realize that a lot of us pay the Apple Tax specifically to avoid this kind of stuff?

 

[turbineseaplane]

How about Apple give a percentage of the ad revenue to the app store developer whose pages they appear on, eh?

Oh no, can't have that.

"give" and "share" aren't in modern Apple's vocabulary

 

[FriendlyMackle]

Tim The Beancounter is at it once again. The sooner he's gone the sooner Apple can get back to being about computers & customers and not thinking about how fast they can gouge their loyal fanbase

Unfortunately, I fear what kind of leader might come AFTER Tim Cook leaves Apple. He’s mercenary, sure, we know that. But as they say, ‘better the devil you know…’ — whoever succeeds Cook will probably be worse.

 

[NY Guitarist]

In my opinion , ads of any kind degrade the Apple product experience.

 

[MyOwnDrummer]

The “legal expert” they continue to quote obviously is wrong — developers aren’t being forced to advertise on their own app pages. Does he have any evidence of this happening? Any “legal expert” would not make this claim unless they had evidence.

If developers are allowed to advertise in any category, with no regard for the user interests, what is the point of this section? Apple knows what apps a user has downloaded, so this section should be a simple algorithm of category and previous apps downloaded. Either way, I rarely scroll down to the bottom section, so I wouldn’t see these apps anyways.

The legal expert? Pfffft. I skimmed his twitter. What a pompous little shmuck.

 

[MyOwnDrummer]

Facebook ads bad. Apple ads good. Me MacRumors user. Argh.

Except no one is saying that.

 

[SFjohn]

Jobs hand picked Cook

We don’t really know what happened. It’s possible Tim Cook was caught totally off guard with this and is the person to have these adds immediately removed. I don’t know. Apple isn’t an add based company, so I suspect this is a hard lesson for them to learn. Personally I’d like to see Apple remove all the gambling and cryptocurrency apps from it’s platform.

 

[mikethemartian]

Why is anyone surprised about this? For the past several years Apple has made changes to their products to limit the options their customers have available to them to increase revenue. Most Apple users were OK with the changes and so Apple is going to continue to squeeze every penny out of them it can.

 

[MyOwnDrummer]

I remember back in 2010-2012, i would be excited about getting a new app (both free/paid) and spent so much time browsing in the app store.

Today, I cant remember the last time I downloaded an app. or even opened the app store. (probably around 2017ish). My perception of the app store? a toxic hell stew of subscriptions and in-app purchase-infested freemium apps.

EDIT: Looks like my last purchase was Apr 5th, 2016.

I used to have an app that featured apps! I’m so far beyond that. I haven’t browsed the App Store in years. If I need something I research on the internet then go to the App Store and get it.

 

[cbaca51]

This been a bad year for Apple lol

 

[atomic.flip]

Proof Apple has hit hard times.

Apple went into the proverbial "dust bin" eventually after Steve Jobs was ousted from the company in the 90's. When he returned Steve Jobs brought talent and vision with him that turned the company around in a way that was previously unseen in any industry and under his leadership the company went on to set "STANDARDS" for many, many now defined "consumer expectations".

Since his death, it's been a slow and steady march away from his ideals. (Of course there will be many sycophants that will reply insisting it isn't true, but the facts speak for themselves.)

The competition is nipping at their heels. And if they aren't careful all it will take are for App Developers to be enticed to invest more heavily in other platforms (like Android).

Frankly, the fact they are selling ad space within the App Store is just gross. It really lowers the bar significantly and starts to really blur the line between the experience you get on iOS vs Android.

I hope they steer away from this practice.

 

[Quu]

This is why we pay such a premium to Apple guys, to see ads.

 

[atomic.flip]

How about Apple give a percentage of the ad revenue to the app store developer whose pages they appear on, eh?

Oh no, can't have that.

This, quite literally, is an excellent idea and should have been offered to existing developers.

But that would require a completely different set of ethics than those being employed today. LOL

 

[koelsh]

Jobs hand picked Cook

Every human being (including Steve Jobs) makes mistakes.

Every human being (including Tim Cook) changes over time

Every company focus (Design over Operations) eventually alters (Operations over Design?)

 

[atomic.flip]

Every human being (including Steve Jobs) makes mistakes.

Every human being (including Tim Cook) changes over time

Every company focus (Design over Operations) eventually alters (Operations over Design?)

Indeed... And honestly Cook was good at his original charter. Steve Jobs was genuinely one of a kind. Certainly not a perfect human being, but he had the right combination of elements at the right time to make a significant difference.

Adding to your statements:

- Every company will eventually adapt to changing market conditions...

I think the genuine dilemma that Apple has to content with is just how much market share they really want vs how much brand loyalty they want.

Brand loyalty had always been a major point of interest to Apple as they had relatively little market share in highly competitive areas.

Now that they have such a hefty foot print in some key areas, they are starting to buckle under the pressure of their own weight.

Steve Jobs was not afraid to cannibalize a product (line) in order to facilitate the growth of another.

The idea of an iPad mini and a regular iPad and an iPhone Mini, Pro, Pro Max, SE... all being sold at the same time? Absolutely not.... never would have happened.

I remember attending an Executive Briefing at Apple HQ well over a decade ago. The presenter (who shall remain nameless) gave us a great opening introduction to the company. "Hi... I'm ----- at Apple. I believe some of you may have heard of us? But did you know we only make 16 things? That's right, we only have 16 unique skews in our product database. But we make those 16 things very, very well..."

That was the point. Focusing on quality over quantity. Experience over excess. People sometimes make fun of Johnny Ive's design choices... faulting him for minimalism... but the truth is it takes a HELL of a lot of mental effort to make efficient use of space in any design. It's easy to cram everything and the kitchen sink into something... and scattering Ads about in the App Store is easy money sure.... but you will end up pissing off and turning off a lot of people. And eventually the perception of quality for your product will suffer for it. Once a brand becomes associated with a negative experience it takes AGES to turn around customer perception.

Trust me, if it was easy then you wouldn't have some of the colloquialisms we do.... (Think car company's and the quality associated with each brand. The prestige that comes from owning one of each brand. And how many of those, truly perceived to be bottom tier, brands ever lifted themselves entirely out of the consumer perception gutter?

 

[Digital Dude]

I don’t say this often, but Steve really wouldn’t have allowed this. I don’t think Apple has the internal sensibility to know how scummy this is anymore.

Took the words right out of my mouth. It wasn’t long after Steve Jobs passed away when things went from ‘nice and tidy’ to ‘wild and loose’.

 

[duervo]

How about Apple give a percentage of the ad revenue to the app store developer whose pages they appear on, eh?

Oh no, can't have that.

Apple should let devs opt-in to having ads show up on their app page. If they opt-in, then they should get a percentage of the ad revenue.

 

[koelsh]

Unfortunately, I fear what kind of leader might come AFTER Tim Cook leaves Apple. He’s mercenary, sure, we know that. But as they say, ‘better the devil you know…’ — whoever succeeds Cook will probably be worse.

Is there someone you might suggest? I used to think Craig would be a good candidate but seeing his… influence… over iPadOS in the last few years suggests that while he’s charismatic, his taste in user experience might not be the greatest.

We need someone to start saying NO at Apple (more specifically to say NO to the terrible things)

Indeed... And honestly Cook was good at his original charter. Steve Jobs was genuinely one of a kind. Certainly not a perfect human being, but he had the right combination of elements at the right time to make a significant difference.

Adding to your statements:

- Every company will eventually adapt to changing market conditions...

I think the genuine dilemma that Apple has to content with is just how much market share they really want vs how much brand loyalty they want.

Brand loyalty had always been a major point of interest to Apple as they had relatively little market share in highly competitive areas.

Now that they have such a hefty foot print in some key areas, they are starting to buckle under the pressure of their own weight.

Steve Jobs was not afraid to cannibalize a product (line) in order to facilitate the growth of another.

The idea of an iPad mini and a regular iPad and an iPhone Mini, Pro, Pro Max, SE... all being sold at the same time? Absolutely not.... never would have happened.

I remember attending an Executive Briefing at Apple HQ well over a decade ago. The presenter (who shall remain nameless) gave us a great opening introduction to the company. "Hi... I'm ----- at Apple. I believe some of you may have heard of us? But did you know we only make 16 things? That's right, we only have 16 unique skews in our product database. But we make those 16 things very, very well..."

That was the point. Focusing on quality over quantity. Experience over excess. People sometimes make fun of Johnny Ive's design choices... faulting him for minimalism... but the truth is it takes a HELL of a lot of mental effort to make efficient use of space in any design. It's easy to cram everything and the kitchen sink into something... and scattering Ads about in the App Store is easy money sure.... but you will end up pissing off and turning off a lot of people. And eventually the perception of quality for your product will suffer for it. Once a brand becomes associated with a negative experience it takes AGES to turn around customer perception.

Trust me, if it was easy then you wouldn't have some of the colloquialisms we do.... (Think car company's and the quality associated with each brand. The prestige that comes from owning one of each brand. And how many of those, truly perceived to be bottom tier, brands ever lifted themselves entirely out of the consumer perception gutter?

True that every company has to adapt to changing market conditions but as the universe is not infinite each company has to decide when they’ve grown big enough. Much of Apple’s decisions in recent years comes down to ensuring they still beat the previous year’s record in terms of revenue/profit because that’s all they’ve known since the mid 2000’s

I like what you said about “we only have 16 unique skews” because they have almost that many in just phones… there’s 8 different models of phone they’re actively selling right now, nevermind colors, nevermind storage options. 6 different iPads, nevermind colors, nevermind storage, 4 laptops, 4 desktops, 4 headphones, 3 watches, and I’m not going to count the accessories that go with any of that and again not counting storage and color options. That’s 29 “mainline” product sku’s

I’m just (sarcastically) concerned that in the next decade Apple will be a 5 trillion dollar company with 20 models of iPhone, 15 models of iPad, 2 Macs, 83 watches, and anyone over 18 reminiscing about the times we used to write our own code to run on them.

 

[Cole82]

I keep waiting for someone to comment that they did build one… it’s called Cydia and Can be found on jail broken iPhones.

 

[DEMinSoCAL]

My head spins with the opinions here of so many people that say ads are bad in the App Store, shame on Apple, we don't pay Apple tax for ad, etc., yet on other topics (like Apple's cut on in-app purchases), people feel so strongly that Apple can do whatever they want since it's their App Store and if you don't like it, go away (to Android). Pick a side!

So Apple should be allowed to do anything they want in their own store, but...not really? Confused.

 

[msackey]

No one at Apple thought this was a bad idea until developers complained about it on social media? 😐

Oh no there was apparently strong internal opposition by Apple’s own employees, but apparently upper management didn’t care.

See: https://appleinsider.com/articles/2...y-in-app-store-ads-shot-down-early-resistance

 

[Bustycat]

How do you know this? I thought Apple accounts are authenticated? where do you look for apps?

Lots scamming gaming publishers registered hundreds (or even thousands?) of accounts to give fake ratings and fake reviews, so the ranking of those scamming apps would be at Top 10 for a while.

Just read comments elsewhere rather than in App Store.