Even the 'own stickers' joke doesn't really apply anymore. I recently saw ads for Apple Fitness+ and Apple Intelligence in the system settings (!, I'll forgive the ads for Apple Care). Apple Creator Studio ads in the former iWork Apps (including abusing toolbar icons for it). Finally (luckily I haven't experienced it), ads for their F1 movie in Apple Wallet.
It is gross and destroys what Apple stood for.
Their introduction of more and more ads shows that they want to optimize the Services category at all cost. Hardware hasn't grown as much as historically and they haven't been able to start new categories in recent history (e.g. AVP failure), plus Services is high-margin. Since they are now on this gravy train, they will increasingly use behavioral data to target ads, etc.
The really annoying thing to me about the "Ads" in the system settings for various things like Apple Music, iCloud, Fitness, etc (other than the fact they're there in the first place) is that they appear after a bit of a delay (around 500 ms?), so other items I actually want have to slide down to make space as I'm about to click something.
Old Apple would never have done that I don't think.
My massive Apple annoyance at the moment is how there's an unremovable nag screen for an Apple Music subscription on the iOS app, when all I ever want to do is sync local music to an iphone like it's an ipod in 2006. They just can't take 'no' for an answer, I'm happy with my current streaming service and I'll never want the hassle of migration.
In my view there really needs to be some 'no means no, not maybe later' legislation against this burdensome dark pattern.
I think a lot of people don't really understand consent. Tech companies don't because to understand is to lose money.
No they would not. This is probably biggest betrayal of Apple users I have experienced. Apple should never confuse their OS's as ad delivery systems.
Not even if it means an exec can get the yacht with a helipad?
That is the point. They used to hold the user experience in higher regard than their need for a helipad.
IS THERE a name for the phenomenon? You are about to tap / click when the UI changes underneath you. You can end up tapping the wrong thing! I call it bait and switch and I am not sure how to fix it.
Google calls it "layout shift" in its web tools.
It is the most infuriating thing when I'm in a hurry and know what to click. Windows itself doesn't do this much, but, do websites love it. I bet its called hydration or something, that causes the layout shift.
This is something that I find extremely annoying about pretty much everything on computers these days. I have noticed recently that play buttons on pretty much every music player do not work consistently and often show the wrong play/pause state (showing a pause button when there is nothing playing, showing play buttons when something is playing) and obviously that doesn't break any real functionality, but it's just annoying and shows a complete disregard for the quality of the user experience across the board. I honestly don't know of a single audio only app that has a play button that works properly.
It looks like Apple is literally copying Samsung, and not only in hardware (upcoming foldable iPhone), but in the services and in advertising them inside the UI. Even the names are similar.
This is not a good thing. Not for Apple, and not for Android, as in terms of exerting gravity on the market, Apple is a supermassive black hole. Anything they do instantly becomes normalized as a business practice.
Definitely. But at least on Samsung phones, you can uninstall the packages from the user partition and in that way rip most of that stuff out (like the McAfee scanner in security, Bixby, Gemini, OneDrive, etc.).
So, yeah, they are copying, but by virtue of the ecosystem being less open, you are mostly stuck with it.
You can disable Samsung's system apps using adb as well. The command is `adb uninstall --user 0 com.package.name`
That is what I was alluding to, though I recommend people to use UAD-ng, since it explains what each package is and they are separated in safety-based categories.
One note though: removal of system apps with adb is blocked in Android 17. You can only disable system apps on Android 17:
https://github.com/Universal-Debloater-Alliance/universal-an...
It's an opinion that always gets downvoted but...
Using an Apple device these days is to be spoken to in a weird language that invites you become one of those people who lives at the genius bar, if you are so lucky to live within range of one. Like the touch id failed on my iPad and I got some really strange messages. I also get weird dialogs about failing things on my Mac (like some "widget" having to do with Find My) that usually center Apple brand names. It just makes those brands sound shoddy. [1]
I was delighted with my iPhone when I first got it but about six months later I was always getting important phone calls... and it wouldn't ring, I was getting important texts... some of which would appear on my iPhone, some of which would appear on my Ipad, some of which would never appear at all, I was getting important notifications... and I couldn't find them, or they would disappear before I could tap on them, it was like my phone was possessed by the devil.
I turned off filtering and grouping for notifications and went through the menus, deleted every app that I didn't use, turned off notifications for apps unless I absolutely needed them, etc. After spending an hour digging through the settings my phone now rings when people call.
And don't get me started on AirPods; like they sorta kinda work if you stay in the Apple ecosystem, but if you pair them with Windows they will do everything in their power to punish you, including force you to reboot your phone so you can talk on the microphones.
The most amusing thing is that so many of the ads and nags in MacOS use the Liquid Glass refresh of the 2001 Mac OS X version of the dialog box from the 1984 Mac Classic. Microsoft nags are based on web technology and look kinda appealing, but Apple nags are a blast from the past.
[1] ... if only your XBOX could show a Playstation logo when it is acting like an ADHD kid rather than an XBOX logo!