macOS absolutely, definitely, 100% has ads.

Buy a new Apple Watch and notice that the settings app with have a [1] badge trying to upsell you to buy AppleCare+. They obscure dismissing these by clicking the "Add AppleCare Coverage" button and then having a button that says actually no.

The undissmissable badges in settings irk me to no end. Using language like “finish setting up” in iOS to describe me opting out of Apple Intelligence by choice as leaving MY device in some sort of “unfinished state” is user hostile too. With the amount of effort it takes me to push back constantly on these dark patterns, I know for a fact all my less tech savvy friends and family just aren’t bothering and that’s what they count on.

Not as egregious as what windows is doing with copilot everywhere or sneakily flipping user-toggled options during updates, but it’s all some degree of gross.

This, on top of the nonstop onslaught of advertisements for F1. It seemed like every one of Apple's services were pushing for that movie. They even put it into maps, wallets, into CarPlay (while people were driving!) It was surprisingly shameless.

It's certainly not as bad _right now_ as what you'll see on Windows 11, but this is something that will almost certainly only get worse over time.

My MacOS "100%" does not have any ads. But I don't use Apple watch or Apple online services, so that's the difference I guess.

You don't need to buy a Windows Watch to get ads on Windows though. They'll be right there anyway, and more of them.

Agreed. And don't press the play/pause button on your Bluetooth headset, or Apple Music will fire up and ask you to agree to their terms.

Windows has third party ads and it’s so trash