“Gurman warned that the move risks some amount of consumer backlash.”
The frogs don’t have to wait and see if the pot is boiling, they have a pot named Android right next to them for a direct temperature comparison and other Maps apps available. If I lose screen space to ads in my native Apple apps then I’m out. How is the money they are getting from hardware sales and their developer fees not enough? I don’t see how the execs can’t tell how damaging this is to their brand image.
Apple used to be something you accepted because you were filled with rage at Microsoft. Then Apple was something that cost extra money but it had good software and cross device integration. Then Apple’s software quality went down noticeably, but I stuck with them because at least I figured my data was slightly safer on an Apple device. But now if they’re using my data to sell ads they don’t even have a privacy angle. Apple now lags Android flagships in features, costs at least as much, and also sells my data.
> If I lose screen space to ads in my native Apple apps then I’m out.
The article says "The project will apparently give restaurants and other businesses the option to pay to have their details featured more prominently in search."
It doesn't sound like it will affect screen space of the map view in any way.
And software needs to make money. Their map data is hugely expensive to purchase and produce -- Maps isn't just a little app like Notes, it costs $$$$$ to develop and keep current. Apple isn't a charity. If you're out, who are you going to switch to? Are there OSM apps that are free without ads with the same level of functionality?
Apple make so much money on the hardware (and subscription) I buy from them, they can easily allocate a small fraction to features that convinced me to pay for said hardware in the first place.
If I want to go to (for example) Buffalo Wild Wings and it shows up second in my search instead of second because some other chicken company paid for a sponsored spot then I’ve lost screen space.
I’m not talking about switching apps, I’m talking about switching phones, and I’ll save on the price of an Apple One subscription and give it to other companies. If all the options are doing the same thing, what differentiates Apple? It’s not their software quality anymore. It’s not their privacy stance anymore. It’s not camera quality. It’s not screen quality. It’s not price. I might as well shop around.
I was under the impression that the extra 20-50% Apple charged for just about everything is intended to cover these costs, in order to retain consumers.
A business needs to make money. Apple, as a business, makes money. They might want to make more money by increasing advertising, but surely they, of all businesses, don’t need to.
Each and every piece of software from Apple needs to make money? I just checked here, last year they made $391.035B in revenue. Is there any software from Apple that NEEDS to make money? Is this really a fair and honest take?
Wouldn't mind if they are not intrusive in user flow while using the app, unless the user intentionally search for it, they should not be shown unsolicited. It could also be a cool feature if businesses show deals to get customers in the door, turning the experience like a treasure hunt.
Google Maps sometimes shows ads while searching for a bike route, which can be dangerous when on the move. These are unsolicited. Hope Apple can design advertising the right way without violating user experience.
An effective targeted ad platform is also expensive to develop and keep current.
They either build something as effective and invasive as what Google and Meta have, and prioritise ad revenue as much as those companies do.
Or they stay closer to the ineffective ad network they already have in News, App Store, etc, neither putting their money where their cultural mouth is nor becoming an ad revenue behemoth.
"Enough" is not even a real word, when it comes to corporations and rich people. They have zero concept of "enough." It doesn't even register. This is a world where "perpetually increasing growth rate" is seen as a reasonable, achievable goal.
Sure- so if Apple is doing the same thing Google does but hasn’t had a significant feature update in years, why should I stick with them? They’ve lost their differentiation.
This will destroy a lot of trust and between Apple and me.
When I buy Apple, I pay a premium price for a premium product.
I would rather you simple charge me more for my product.
The ways ads work, is that the ad revenue shows up in the company’s revenue, and very quickly the company has to increase ad load across every surface to meet earnings expectations. The user experience deteriorates, getting worse each year.
When I buy Apple, it’s based on my expectation that Apple will remain a premium, ad-free experience for the life of the device. When, after my purchase, Apple make the product worse, like with the recent iOS update that rolled back usability, it destroys a lot of trust.
Stuff like this (lets wring more money out of our existing stuff even if it erodes the customer experience) smacks of a culture that’s losing a spirit of innovation.
This is the kind of thing some jackass worked out in a spreadsheet and then decided the profit outweighs whatever customer backlash.
Stuff like this is a huge red flag for the future direction of Apple.
Has lost. Tim Cook chose the path a decade ago. He’s a guy you can call Tim Apple to his face in front of everybody and he’ll sit there and take it. He is the wrong person for the job.
“Future direction of Apple” is red flag for more than a decade already. Vision Pro, releasing iPhone N every year, doing incremental improvement in CPU and then selling it as “innovation”, making it impossible to repair the devices customers bought with their own money, just to name a few.
Of course Tim is only concerned whether you bought an iPhone to your mom.
I encourage you to read Walter Isaacson's book about Steve Jobs, I think he would've absolutely hated this because it would've degraded the user experience.
Why can’t Apple work on a nicer reviews implementation? Linking out to crap like yelp is such a B-grade experience. I wish they’d just build their own and use some LLM/sentiment analysis to help filter any spam, but even then, submissions would be tied to Apple IDs and they have a pretty good handle on the legitimacy of devices associated with an account
Maybe it's the same sort of deal as Google where they sell the traffic to Yelp and agree not to compete? So they can sell your privacy without it looking like they're selling your privacy. If they did what you're suggesting they'd either do it in a privacy-respecting way and leave money on the table, or else directly profit from the sale of privacy and lose the ability to claim they respect your privacy. They don't like either of those options, so they go this indirect route.
Again, I have no idea if they have this relationship with Yelp, I'm just speculating if it's like the Google deal.
> Maybe it's the same sort of deal as Google where they sell the traffic to Yelp and agree not to compete?
I mean they already do this with preferred apps in the App Store (e.g. preferred revenue sharing for apps like Uber), so why wouldn't they do this in maps? The Apple "privacy" brand has been a sales pitch of questionable validity since it started. Apple only cares about privacy enough to keep its users from being a front page headline, nothing more.
This will destroy a lot of trust and between Apple and me.
When I buy Apple, I pay a premium price for a premium product.
The ways ads work, is that the ad revenue shows up in the company’s quarterly earnings, and very quickly the company has to increase ad load across every surface to meet earnings expectations. The user experience deteriorates, getting worse each year.
When I buy Apple, it’s based on my expectation that Apple will remain a premium, mostly ad-free experience for the life of the device. When, after my purchase, they make the product worse, like with the recent iOS update that rolled back usability, it destroys a lot of trust.
Even brilliant companies sometimes make stupid moves and shoot off their legs with literal shotgun. Past performance is not an indication of future and all that.
I'd say this is testing waters, seeing how big backlash will be. The sad part may be they may be right and limited loss with power users will be outweighed by ads income. After all, ads are the sole revenue stream for giants like Google or Meta, too juicy to ignore where no other breakthrough is in sight.
Brilliant people exist, maybe brilliant group of people, say 30-50, beyond that, it doesn’t exist in my view. Apple is a behemoth, with its faire share of slop, just like all behemoths.
People keep expecting Apple to be something else than a profit oriented company.
So far, the proportion of their revenue coming from ads is still lower than google by far, hence statistically I have less chances of being the product with them, hence I choose them.
I definitely don’t choose them because their products are better. The hardware and its software support duration, maybe, but the software is definitely worse than google’s, especially assistant and maps.
I don’t like this direction that Apple has taken over the last several years that it needs to provide more services and that all its services need to be monetized with an aim of a 70% plus profit margin. This greed to capture every penny is creating poorer and worse experiences for users of its platforms.
As for ads on Apple Maps itself, it may generate some revenue in the US and a few other countries. Elsewhere (like in India and many other countries), Apple has practically neglected Apple Maps and it sucks terribly even in large cities. Google, with all its tracking and other issues (including map accuracy issues), keeps moving at breakneck speed on Google Maps.
Apple’s single minded focus on the US with severe lethargy in other countries is why in most countries where (some/many) people use Apple devices, they use Google’s services. Both Eddy Cue and Tim Cook are squarely to be blamed for this greed, laziness and lack of vision or strategy.
This is the real issue.
Before they can think about putting Ads, they should try to make a competitive product.
I used to use Apple Maps but I just don't bother anymore. It's alright for navigation but pretty bad for discovery and finding stuff.
In France it's just so much worse that it is a bit of a joke. When you search for stuff, not only is the information not necessarily correct but the way the information is displayed is not as good/useful and feels extremely neutered like an asepticized listing with no qualities. There are rarely pictures (both outside/inside), opening hours and distance are poorly displayed (when they exist in the first place) and functionally it is harder to use.
The whole thing reeks of rigid/psychotic thinking. It feels like a bureaucrat was tasked to fill in a form and he is not doing it with much enthusiasm.
Apple was supposedly the company for creatives, yet most of their software feels like you are operating in some modernized version of a Soviet system. It's not beautiful, it's barely functional and it's inefficient. They spend a ton of space on oversized UI buttons and useless informations that has to fit in dedicated box without overflowing.
Apple Maps is the perfect example of how bad Apple has become and their inability to build software for the most common use case of today's computing devices: organizing and accessing information.
Google is winning not just because of the monopoly; they became monopoly because the competitors got complacent and Apple is one of the few who could truly compete, yet they refuse to do so.
Considering money isn't the problem, puttings Ads to get more money will only make thing worse.
Readit News
The frogs don’t have to wait and see if the pot is boiling, they have a pot named Android right next to them for a direct temperature comparison and other Maps apps available. If I lose screen space to ads in my native Apple apps then I’m out. How is the money they are getting from hardware sales and their developer fees not enough? I don’t see how the execs can’t tell how damaging this is to their brand image.
Apple used to be something you accepted because you were filled with rage at Microsoft. Then Apple was something that cost extra money but it had good software and cross device integration. Then Apple’s software quality went down noticeably, but I stuck with them because at least I figured my data was slightly safer on an Apple device. But now if they’re using my data to sell ads they don’t even have a privacy angle. Apple now lags Android flagships in features, costs at least as much, and also sells my data.
I’m out.
The article says "The project will apparently give restaurants and other businesses the option to pay to have their details featured more prominently in search."
It doesn't sound like it will affect screen space of the map view in any way.
And software needs to make money. Their map data is hugely expensive to purchase and produce -- Maps isn't just a little app like Notes, it costs $$$$$ to develop and keep current. Apple isn't a charity. If you're out, who are you going to switch to? Are there OSM apps that are free without ads with the same level of functionality?
I’m not talking about switching apps, I’m talking about switching phones, and I’ll save on the price of an Apple One subscription and give it to other companies. If all the options are doing the same thing, what differentiates Apple? It’s not their software quality anymore. It’s not their privacy stance anymore. It’s not camera quality. It’s not screen quality. It’s not price. I might as well shop around.
A business needs to make money. Apple, as a business, makes money. They might want to make more money by increasing advertising, but surely they, of all businesses, don’t need to.
Each and every piece of software from Apple needs to make money? I just checked here, last year they made $391.035B in revenue. Is there any software from Apple that NEEDS to make money? Is this really a fair and honest take?
The main killer would be lack of real time traffic data. I don't think there's any open source maps that provides this.
Google Maps sometimes shows ads while searching for a bike route, which can be dangerous when on the move. These are unsolicited. Hope Apple can design advertising the right way without violating user experience.
They either build something as effective and invasive as what Google and Meta have, and prioritise ad revenue as much as those companies do.
Or they stay closer to the ineffective ad network they already have in News, App Store, etc, neither putting their money where their cultural mouth is nor becoming an ad revenue behemoth.
Deleted Comment
Because it's never enough.
Even with 180b USD in profit last year.
Where are you going? See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261
Android phones have some neat features, the hardest part is deciding which phone to pick.
Deleted Comment
Deleted Comment
When I buy Apple, I pay a premium price for a premium product.
I would rather you simple charge me more for my product.
The ways ads work, is that the ad revenue shows up in the company’s revenue, and very quickly the company has to increase ad load across every surface to meet earnings expectations. The user experience deteriorates, getting worse each year.
When I buy Apple, it’s based on my expectation that Apple will remain a premium, ad-free experience for the life of the device. When, after my purchase, Apple make the product worse, like with the recent iOS update that rolled back usability, it destroys a lot of trust.
I will leave the ecosystem.
This is not in Apple’s long term best interests.
This is the kind of thing some jackass worked out in a spreadsheet and then decided the profit outweighs whatever customer backlash.
Stuff like this is a huge red flag for the future direction of Apple.
Of course Tim is only concerned whether you bought an iPhone to your mom.
Deleted Comment
RIP, Steve.
I wonder if there will be fewer ads in countries they know that Apple Maps is worse than Google Maps?
Again, I have no idea if they have this relationship with Yelp, I'm just speculating if it's like the Google deal.
I mean they already do this with preferred apps in the App Store (e.g. preferred revenue sharing for apps like Uber), so why wouldn't they do this in maps? The Apple "privacy" brand has been a sales pitch of questionable validity since it started. Apple only cares about privacy enough to keep its users from being a front page headline, nothing more.
When I buy Apple, I pay a premium price for a premium product.
The ways ads work, is that the ad revenue shows up in the company’s quarterly earnings, and very quickly the company has to increase ad load across every surface to meet earnings expectations. The user experience deteriorates, getting worse each year.
When I buy Apple, it’s based on my expectation that Apple will remain a premium, mostly ad-free experience for the life of the device. When, after my purchase, they make the product worse, like with the recent iOS update that rolled back usability, it destroys a lot of trust.
I will leave the ecosystem.
This is not in Apple’s long term best interests.
Apple is not stupid, so I guess their research shows that this is not a common enough sentiment that adding ads will measurably hamper sales.
To someone who loathes ads (like me), this is a tragedy.
I'd say this is testing waters, seeing how big backlash will be. The sad part may be they may be right and limited loss with power users will be outweighed by ads income. After all, ads are the sole revenue stream for giants like Google or Meta, too juicy to ignore where no other breakthrough is in sight.
People keep expecting Apple to be something else than a profit oriented company.
So far, the proportion of their revenue coming from ads is still lower than google by far, hence statistically I have less chances of being the product with them, hence I choose them.
I definitely don’t choose them because their products are better. The hardware and its software support duration, maybe, but the software is definitely worse than google’s, especially assistant and maps.
As for ads on Apple Maps itself, it may generate some revenue in the US and a few other countries. Elsewhere (like in India and many other countries), Apple has practically neglected Apple Maps and it sucks terribly even in large cities. Google, with all its tracking and other issues (including map accuracy issues), keeps moving at breakneck speed on Google Maps.
Apple’s single minded focus on the US with severe lethargy in other countries is why in most countries where (some/many) people use Apple devices, they use Google’s services. Both Eddy Cue and Tim Cook are squarely to be blamed for this greed, laziness and lack of vision or strategy.
In France it's just so much worse that it is a bit of a joke. When you search for stuff, not only is the information not necessarily correct but the way the information is displayed is not as good/useful and feels extremely neutered like an asepticized listing with no qualities. There are rarely pictures (both outside/inside), opening hours and distance are poorly displayed (when they exist in the first place) and functionally it is harder to use.
The whole thing reeks of rigid/psychotic thinking. It feels like a bureaucrat was tasked to fill in a form and he is not doing it with much enthusiasm.
Apple was supposedly the company for creatives, yet most of their software feels like you are operating in some modernized version of a Soviet system. It's not beautiful, it's barely functional and it's inefficient. They spend a ton of space on oversized UI buttons and useless informations that has to fit in dedicated box without overflowing.
Apple Maps is the perfect example of how bad Apple has become and their inability to build software for the most common use case of today's computing devices: organizing and accessing information.
Google is winning not just because of the monopoly; they became monopoly because the competitors got complacent and Apple is one of the few who could truly compete, yet they refuse to do so. Considering money isn't the problem, puttings Ads to get more money will only make thing worse.