Ever since Apple moved to Services Strategy in 2014 it has been like this. Services were not there so they could provide a better experience for its "customers". I use the word "customer" here which is what Apple / Steve Jobs used to call their loyal fans, and not user. But to further growth their Revenue pie because they foresee iPhone one day will stagnant.

You now have Apple Fitness+, Apple TV, News, Music, Arcade. None of these are of any quality of what Apple used to be. It is really sad.

Oh and the most iconic thing? Apple was the one who tried to kill internet ads between 2017 - 2020.

In fairness Apple did come up with a custom JSON format for articles:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/applenewsformat

The problem is that people don't use it. I imagine it's a chicken/egg thing, the audience on News isn't big so it isn't worth the publishers time catering to an entirely new format, the News experience is crappy so the audience doesn't grow.

They could have insisted that everyone use their format but I suspect publishers would just refuse. It's not exactly in a publishers interest to help boost a middleman between their content and readers.

I'd be really interested to see what Apple's approach would be if they used more web technologies (since that's what publishers are using today anyway). Even just a webview with disabled JavaScript would get a ton of the way there in terms of performance. They have WebKit engineers in house that could probably tweak it even further.

They also bought and killed texture, a fantastic cross-platform magazine subscription service, to somehow further Apple News. I subscribed to Texture on Android. I wouldn't give a dollar to Apple News even if I was in the Apple ecosystem.

Contrast with Apple TV+ which has insanely high quality shows. I feel like they arent advertising it enough and investing in it enough. One of my favorite shows that my daughter watches is on Apple TV+ the other on Amazon (If You Give a Mouse a Cookie).

Apple is really messing up in my eyes they have so much potential they are throwing away.

At what point did the old Apple cross the threshold to "modern" Apple?

I agree with your point I just find the distinction hard to pinpoint.

It's like the (incorrect) analogy of the boiled frog, I know it's a cliché but I really feel things started downhill in overall quality and wow factor with the advent of Tim Cook.

SJ had failures like Ping and MobileMe, but they seemed to pick up on the criticism back then and execute correctly quickly after.

Now because of the penny-pinching and success of Apple nobody makes a big deal out of anything, the momentum is so strong that stuff like liquid glass can come through unpolished/unfinished/unrefined.

It seems to me that Apple University failed its mission completely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_University

For Apple to really win this space I believe they would need to release a cross platform Publisher tool and complete in the AMP space. Some kind of magazine design / web design software that publishes articles to a standard format and applies a layout over the top. Then the News app becomes a renderer/aggregator that does things better than the standard web browser.

FYI it would be "Icing on the cake" or "cherry on top"

I like using it to listen to narrated versions of New Yorker articles.

Except I can’t tell it “I like narrated versions of New Yorker articles”. I can search by publisher, or I can browse narrated stories that are selected “for you” (none of which are of interest to me), but I can’t just search for “narrated stories AND New Yorker”.

And when I do finally find one, if I don’t finish in one session, there is zero context from the previous session when I return to the app—it has forgotten that I ever started listening to the story. I then need to go through the process of finding it again and trying to remember where I left off.

Yet another Apple app designed by idealists and tested and refined by nobody who actually uses the app.

Why can't they build their own ad network for control instead of partnering with 3rd parties?

It's not a revenue generating service.

I looked a lot into the "universal paywall" business model where one subscription buys you access to articles from a wide range of news outlets. It's close to impossible to execute because the most prestigious outlets (ahem... The New York Times) won't give you the time of the day, even if you are startup royalty. That Apple has accomplished anything in this space is remarkable.

Apple News unironically would have been better if they had just made an RSS reader with a way to subscription gate feeds and a rule that you have to do provide the full text of the article. They could have just put their energy into just polishing up a known and weathered and broadly adopted technology but nooooo, they needed something with platform lock-in so they could book more “services revenue.”

They didn’t need to do like half the work they did, and a lot of what they did do in order to make the news feeds prettier are seldom adopted because Apple doesn’t want to do the hard partnership work to drive and support it.

I ignore Apple News these days. I had high hopes when Apple bought the company that eventually became their News app. Alas…

Of course I hate that I can't block ads, but at the same time, I wonder if the unblockable ads are not, in fact, a help for that "struggling industry".

Generally if all the ads you see are scammy, it means you probably are using some form of tracking/privacy protection.

When an ad network has a strong profile on you, legitimate companies pay good money for those ad slots. When they don't really know who you are, only bottom feeders bid on the ad slots you see.

In a way, it almost acts as retribution for not submitting to the anti-privacy machine.

> We should assume that all ads in general are scams. The noise to signal ratio is too large to care.

Completely agree.

> Word of mouth and maybe trusted communities like HN is the only way to reliably discover new things.

There is no evidence that HN is not being actively astroturfed though. Sadly community filtering cannot replace trust in individuals.

The only way out of this is to make ad platforms liable for scam ads. At the moment it's simply too profitable to print lies.

I can't say the AI scripted AI voiced "my wife bet my abs vs. a trip to Paris" and "I ordered this and was going to throw it away but then the heavens opened and angels descended and gave me this Alibaba tchotchke" are harbingers of the idiocracy. Because it's already here.

// Adblock at DNS used to kill these Apple News ads. They're no longer suppressed. Free with their Plus all the things and aggregated my content subs but I quit using it. Had loved Texture, this now sucks.

That, unfortunately has pushed advertisers into guerrilla marketing tactics like posts and comments disguised as genuine user behaviour. It means we now need to parse whether what we're looking at is an ad or not.

Maybe they would have done that anyway though.

> maybe trusted communities like HN

Emphasis on maybe. HN is large enough that scammers will try to slip in. The moderation mechanisms probably catch a lot of it but not all.

My trust in anything online or in an app is very low and must be earned.

There’s plenty of scams on HN, people don’t notice the successful ones

In practice I mostly ignore ads too but it feels like an ecosystem-level tragedy

I have not had ads in my life in any form for two decades.

I don’t have a TV, don’t listen to the radio or read newspapers or magazines. I live in a small town with no metro, no billboards. I buy things I need like milk and vegetables, I don’t buy things that require ads for me to know about.

I Adblock the web aggressively.

> maybe trusted communities like HN

Especially on this site I would be very careful with trusting any recommendations. Probably more often than not it's the product/service of the person talking about it, so basically an ad.

> It works because everyone in the game has something to gain from it

It's reminiscent of triangulation fraud in that regard. The incentive is for everyone involved to keep their mouths shut because you buy something for below-market prices on sites like eBay, the "seller" places orders using stolen credit and debit cards with legitimate retailers, and the product ships directly to you. Everyone wins...as long as the account holder doesn't pay attention to their statements.

Of all the ways to treat the cancer that is advertising, I think encouraging stricter moderation by the payment providers is the one with the scariest side effects.

Yes. Facebook is especially bad about letting outright scammers buy ad slots.

What's annoying is they do have tons of scam detection crap, which seems to only trigger on legitimate advertising (insofar as any advertising is legitimate) - the problem is there are millions of people willing to work on getting scams through for pennies a day, and it doesn't cost them anything.

I do not have that filter, but I have been using ad blockers for so long that my tolerance for ads is near zero. Being interrupted by an ad is enough for me to close the tab or turn the device off.

I can't imagine what it's like to access modern websites unfiltered.

Possibly an instance of banner blindness

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banner_blindness

Who doesn't think this about themselves. It's like when people say they're immune to propaganda. Isn't this thinking what makes people think their smart devices are listening to conversations rather than targeted ads you only notice after it's had the effect on you.

Same here. What's worse is that some pages "highlight" content in a similar fashion to an ad in the middle and I'm a bit unaware of that content. Only when something doesn't add up I'll scroll back and see the missing content.

Gamecopyworld… now there’s a name I have not heard in a long time.

I feel the same though. My only complaint when Adblockers fail is that I have to scroll so much to read some articles on some sites. Sure, there may be some level of subconscious registration occurring in my brain for maybe the company logo, but it’s usually minimal.

For me, it depends on how well-disguised the ad is. Ads quietly sitting there, informing? Those I blank out. The big flashy animations? Those make me switch to reader mode, or leave the domain entirely.

I do sometimes find I'm accidentally clicking on the ads at the top of search engine results, though for this case it's extra ironic as the ad is for the real thing I'm searching for which is 2 results further down the list, and I only realise I clicked on an ad when the link goes via an ad-tracking domain that I block.

I've recently been fooled by an ad in reddit that was pretending to be news, which took me to a fake BBC website. First hint, I also block the BBC domain (nothing wrong with them, it's just a habit I want to get out of given I don't live in the UK any more).

Yea I'm with you there. I honestly don't even see ads. Even YouTube ads that start playing, my brain switches off till I can skip. I also don't read the news at all anywhere, so that helps.

I think a lot of people who grew up on the early web have that reflex

Apple stocks app has a similar obnoxious pattern. It’s a genius UX. Why is this stock up/down today? Conveniently a bunch of articles are displayed that explain it. But there’s no way to block news sources that are paywalled. But there was a workaround in which you could individually block each news source. But then Apple gave themselves a way out. If “Apple editors” choose to highlight an article then you’ll be forced to see it regardless of your preferences. Coincidentally they do love to highlight paywalled articles.

I attempted to find a stocks app replacement but nothing else has such a slick interface and wasn’t also crammed full of ads.

I am surprised you could look at that page and expect to receive a quality product. The images all look like really low grade AI-generated renderings. The mug in the cupholder and the giftbox image in particular don't stand up to even casual scrutiny.

Not trying to make your situation worse, I just find it interesting what these sites are able to get away with to get people to part with their money.

Are you saying that something about this product is suspect? But it has "Beautiful Craftsamnship"!

https://img-va.myshopline.com/image/store/1731468034215/1dd4...

Just as there's a cottage industry for "I made the game the scam ads show" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRDhiN50Vo0 I think there will soon be a cottage industry for "the scam ad was good, let's make it for real".

That mug is amusing but it should't be too hard for China to make something similar - but real (at least without the weird piston).

Maggie Mcguagh on Instagram's whole schtick is buying and reviewing these fake AI generated products. Its pretty hilarious

[1]https://www.instagram.com/maggiemcgaugh

I am very curious what the product really looked like.

Wtf. How could you fall for such an obvious scam? Are you under 5 years old? Or over 60?

so you're saying this is a real product and the ad you saw(then purchased from) was a fake?

I'm genuinely haunted by these TurboTax ads, I see that download app popup at least 3 times a day when I use Apple News. Truly cannot believe someone at Apple though that was an acceptable user experience for ads.

Because the sets of people who would give money to this and people who notice the Gemini logo are disjoint.

> Somehow, he or she was still convinced and put it up.

It is intentional. People who will not notice, are the least likely to complain later.

Do you know why all these “Nigerian prince” emails are of a very specific style?

You're famous now. The author noticed your comment and updated the article pointing it out.

It actually says "L am retiring". Maybe a 419 scam kinda thing, the intentional typos.

On top of that, that thing takes a bunch of fiddling in their own GUI to disable. I want a search bar for my home page. Nothing else. Then every once and awhile it will 'forget' its settings and put it all back. Edge/Chrome makes no difference to me it is the same code. But that first tab experience with edge is garbage. Probably why I mostly use Firefox still.

Why does it even exist, this MSN page, which is ridden with nonsense...? I don't get it.

It's even on the base install of Windows Server. Fuck off Microsoft.

At least one can quicly hide that filth. Unbearable, in every language...

Sadly we are going to get more ads (Apple Maps is next). If it goes much further people will start questioning whether Apple products are worth the premium price.

I would be willing to consider paying for vetted ads - in other words, you pay for the NYT and you get a guarantee that you're only seeing ads that have been personally vetted by the NYT for correctness, appropriateness, etc.

Advertising is speech and it used to be that if a magazine/newspaper printed a scam ad, it was horribly damaging to their business, both legally and morally.

uBlockOrigin and Pihole. I refuse to use the internet without them. Ads are a cancer. Not just on the internet, but in general.

In the 1980's TV ads in Uruguay were really simple. Some were just a static bi-colour image of a shoe or a coat, some text, and a voice would say "buy shoes at such shop at such address".

I guess that was at the same time the low point of marketing and also its most honest stage.

Most people consider that an extreme take, but I agree completely. They're an active drain on the environments they're placed in - both physical and digital. They're a drain on the mental energy of the people who are forced to see or hear them. They make the entire world feel artificial and fake - a place not made for humans.

Personally I ignore most ads but I have also bought some really good products based on ads and there are companies I wish would advertise more, for example relvant conferences that I only find out about because someone posted about their experiences being there.

I agree.

I clicked on the daring fireball link and immediately saw an intrusive ad.

They are just everywhere, the web was never like this in the beginning.

A complete scourge.

Huh? With millions of pieces of content to choose from a day some kind of curation is inevitable.

Every now and then there's a post on Reddit like "I ordered this thing from UNARFI and it is nothing like the pictures" and I'm like, what do you expect when ordering from a site named after an incorrect guess on wordle?

Right, unless we're talking ads for a brand I already know and trust, I just assume that all ads are scams. Even Googles ads, which was previous very good at finding me the products I wanted, from good sources, a now overrun by scams (or borderline scams).

The online adverting industry is raking in billions on scamming people, while providing questionable value for actual good brands. Even if your company is honest and makes good products, you're competing with the scammers for ad space and that pushes up your cost.

I've said this on multiple occasions, but I do not believe that the honest companies are able to fund the tech industry in it's current form. Meta, Google, Apple and everyone else, expects increasing revenue, year on year, most of which is suppose to be delivered by ads, bought by other companies. Those companies just aren't see the same level of growth, nor do they see enough value from ads to increase their advertising. So the big websites take in more and more questionable ads to pad their numbers. So what if consumers get scammed? They should have been more critical.

Very witty

Which is why I never us a phone that requires me to have certain apps installed.

> around 40% of users in the West use ad-blockers at least some of the time

And doubtless many of them use intentionally use TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, etc, where "influencers" subtly (or not-so subtly) advertise to them in the native format of the platform.

I am glad I am not the only one. Why do I see it like 50 times a day?

There is a new trick a lot of them are using on YT. Basically it will be a person doing a 'vlog'. But it is mostly just kind of feel good stuff. But in the middle they will mention some product that made whatever they are blathering about feel better with the coinvent link in the description. Then they finish the video.

I have seen a bunch of these. It is a wildly subtle way to get referral points. As the AI part is making it supper easy to mill these things out.

The most wild one I have seen is the 'ai scott adams'. The tone is in the right ballpark. Still a little odd but looking better after their first few attempts. I expect soon it will drop random adverts here and there. With the long con being getting people to watch it, then farm them.

The best are the one trick doctors don’t tell you or the thing THEY don’t want you to know about.

A lot of scams and cons are deliberately stupid looking and absurd to pre-select for gullible marks.

It’s also why goofy conspiritainment shows are loaded with ads for quack medicines. Anyone who thinks we didn’t go to the moon will probably buy herbal dick pills.

I unsubscribed from the News app subscription over their decision to bake in ads.

I own multiple personal Mac computers, an iPhone, an Apple Watch, iPad Pro, a few HomePods, and a few Apple TV devices. I’ve already proven that I’m willing to pay for a product even when there are cheaper alternatives. Why they decided to make News a paid subscription with ads — especially low-quality ads is beyond me.

I’ve gotten to the point where I’ve deleted the News, Stocks, and Weather apps, and will just remove any additional apps they decide to chuck in. It’s a real shame their aggressive pursuit of services revenue is destroying what is a great hardware ecosystem.

"Services Revenue must go up! If one ad network pays us 2% more use it!"

-- Tim "Apple" Cook (paraphrased)

Actual quote from a few days ago:

> “Services also achieved an all-time revenue record, up 14 percent from a year ago [...] a testament to incredible customer satisfaction for the very best products and services in the world.”

I’m kind of (un)surprised to see it just be Taboola’s slop from the ages past. I forgot Taboola even still pushes that garbage.

> legitimate advertisers

Those two words definitely don't belong together.

Doesn't make it any better.

Then what do i move to? No linux laptop feels as good to touch as the aluminum macbooks, and in terms of phones it can't get any worse than the ads-and-trackers shitshow that is android...

I'd agree that ads can be useful for some things. However many major online platforms are flooded with scams to the extent that ads for anything that aren't obvious scams are suspect.

Also there is the converse proposition that: "all clicks are click fraud", that is, many web sites try to trick you into clicking on ads by making pop-ups that are hard to close, by making the layout shift so you click on an ad when you were trying to click a link, etc.

While I understand the sentiment, most ads for a long time were fairly reputable? Like in the news papers, most ads were to make you aware of a brand (next car I buy I'll feel safe buying X because I've seen it in the papers), or to notify you about a local store having a sale etc. And disabling my ad blocker and going to a page I see ads for house listings nearby, offers to buy sports gear in a store in my city, and ads for a well known telecom company. All things I would trust.

What I don't understand is why high-value brands sell their screen estate to straight up scams or low quality ads.

Exactly. Why did the article author think ads weren't scams before they were "AI" generated?

I see an ad for a product I bought and it makes me worried I got scammed. The usual offender is Peak Design.

Yes, of course. These exist because they work. If no one fell for these scams, they wouldn’t continue to exist.

I mean I remember when Penny Arcade Ram ads for games and such and they only ran the ads if the approved of the game. The ads were worth clicking into. They sold a real product for a cost approximating its value.

Now ads are just scams

> Are there any ads that people do trust?

What? Yes, of course. Are you so terminally online that you assume all advertising is the fake AI chum that we see on the web?

HN users are mostly 1980s levels of institutional and media trust. Not sure why.

Apple News is a paid subscription. Facebook and Google are not. Apple is supposedly the premium brand that provides a curated experience (isn't that their reasoning behind the closed nature of the App Store?).

That could make sense as a criticism if Apple were some tiny struggling company. But they have the resources to do better. And a brand identity that definitely sets it apart from the rest of the internet.

Still a bit of a bummer that with Apple, you pay a premium to escape the ad-based ecosystem^W cesspool, both for the hardware and then here for Apple News itself, and then still not only get served ads, but tasteless scam ads.

I’m an Apple cultist but it is somewhat comical that Apple has their own content blocking format built into their own browser but somehow thinks I’d ever want to pay for a subscription to read ad-encumbered news in a separate webview app