Apple now allows iOS developers to send ads using push notifications
developer-tech.com
developer-tech.com
There are some bad apps which will abuse it and use only one category for the important things and ads. But mostly - it's ok. Enforcing a channel for ads would be even better.
You don't want ads from Uber but still want a push when your ride arrives? Just block the ads channel in settings.
As you said I'm sure there's some bad apps out there that only have one channel, but I haven't noticed any. The big apps seem to support this quite well.
With the ample data we have so far it most probably will lead to dark UI patterns with dysfunctional opt-outs and/or blanket consents at most if someone takes it seriously at all.
These apps could have been removed long ago, per the guidelines.
If so, now that they are introducing this new functionality they might start looking more carefully at notification system abuse.
They seem to enforce the guidelines purely based on politics (whether the publisher has friends at Apple and how important the app is to the ecosystem).
I do wish they'd be legally bound to treat everyone the same way (EU?).
Not only that, but now Apple is probably going to be very aggressive about kicking apps off the app store if they find even a single notification in the non add stream that they, in their sole estimation, consider to be an ad.
This might be a trap feature. I could easily see it being used to allow apple a reason to get rid of you.
I’m excited for Apple to enforce this policy. Yet another example of Apple being pro user.
I welcome the change but I’ve also seen Apple be a bully.
This argument could be used for any decision that Apple makes regarding the AppStore. While I dislike some of the policy decisions being made in the AppStore, I don't see any downsides with this specific case. Developers just have to clearly label promotional notifications going forward, no harm done. Users will be much better off with more fine grained control over what kind of notifications they receive. What's the big deal here?
Now the potential loss for the app maker for being annoying is far lower.
I don’t let any app get my contacts or my phone number anymore. They are too greedy with mine and others now.
If I could choose a subset of my social graph based on context I would.
Menu > Settings > Privacy > Notifications Preferences > Discounts and News : Off
For Uber, it's similar: Menu > Settings > Privacy > Notifications > Discounts and News > Off
A built-in/centralized way in iOS to accomplish this (that's more discoverable) would be much better.
That would rely on the senders tagging the pushes correctly, as "ad" vs. "not-ad", which would ultimately fall back to App Store review enforcement anyways.
Apple’s APIs are really good about exposing specific use-cases as separate functions and enums.
There are tons of issues in the App Store off the top of my head that I would rather Apple solve first (“making advertising easier” is #67422 on the list). And incidentally, their changes to search have made it incredibly hard to find apps I want, while adding...advertising!
Now, every day at least, when I open an app because I want to do something immediately, at least one will instead disrespect my time by popping up some modal first. “New features!” ”Promotional offer!” “Don’t you want to give us your E-mail first!?!?” Actually, no: I launched your app because I wanted to get something done, and your ad has made it slower.
Same with notifications, especially if you have secured your lock screen so that the subject of the notification is not immediately apparent. I want useful things, and I want everything else to go away. This seems like another step sideways or backwards from useful software.
On Android, you can create apps for free in your spare time and distribute them however you want. The lower barrier to entry means a lot more open source hobby projects.
Distribution is another big issue. Even if you found an open source iOS app, how are you going to run it on your own device? You can only run apps blessed by apple or pay the developer fees to compile it yourself.
Apple severely restricts the hobby/ open source market from both ends.
If Apple had a mythical developer mode/SEP disengage button (like Macs and Chromebooks do) that voided the warranty, disabled the secure enclave (therefore Apple Pay and system-wide encryption), and put a big warning on the lockscreen in exchange for sideloading access to make development easier/cheaper, I think more people would do it.
Or if they let you build and compile apps on the iPad Pro that is super powerful but still can't be used for anything more taxing than word processing, but I've ranted about that on hn too much.
[0] https://i.imgur.com/442C7Ij.jpg (slide from an ancient WWDC)
Are you talking about engineers within Apple? What is your source for this information?
Only if consumers refuse to accept these annoyances it will stop.
So far I've never put up with it and always either switched to a competitor or abandoned the whole thing.
> The new rules will only permit sending push advertisements to users if they agree to it. Users must also be able to opt-out of the ads whenever they want.
With their growing policy on advertising, tracking and privacy I think they will move towards not allowing advertorial push notifications unless an user allows.
It comes with a gotcha though, as i sometimes check some chat apps awaiting for response, but the good thing is when that happens i notice it, and it is not the norm.
I'm an iPhone user, I have a lot of apps on it, I receive a lot of notifications and I get no promotional notifications. I hope the "almost entirely useless" line was hyperbole :)
If you have the possibility ditch them, because promotional crap in the context of a payed service, with no way to easily turn it off, is an abuse IMO.
I see no unwanted ones as a result, because I only let well-behaved apps use notifications.
There is no scenario where this is a benefit to the consumer.
However, this doesn't mean there is no gain for Apple in it as Apple is investing in Uber. That, and not having Uber could make users move to Android devices.
I agree that such large apps are treated somewhat differently than smaller ones—anyone smaller than Uber would have been banned outright. That’s due to demand from Apple’s customers, though, and not Uber directly paying Apple.
But Uber still had to rush and submit a new version of its app. They didn’t seem to believe Apple was making hollow threats, nor do Facebook and Google and all the other big players adhering to Apple’s policies.
Even if Apple wanted to allow larger apps breaking the rules, they couldn’t. It would be very obvious if some apps were allowed to send ads and others weren’t, and it would lead to all kinds of problems in the court of public opinion and possibly a real one.
It's like email updates from online retailers. I unsubscribe from the majority of them, but I allow a couple of retailers I like to send me promotions.
Notifications are for when you need to know about something immediately and it's okay to interrupt you for it. How many of these retailers do you want that from? What's the benefit for the end-user over an email?
In London the biggest private hire cab firm that isn't Uber is Addison Lee. They sometimes send out a notification along the lines of "It's the weekend, enjoy it with us: £5 off your next 4 trips". Perfect. In the past I've changed my plans around that sort of advertising.
In an email, I'd miss it. It's timely, context aware advertising from a brand I'm happy to use and hear from, particularly in that moment.
The key here is that I can opt out of them, not that they appear everywhere no matter what: I can tell companies if I want to hear more from them in this manner.
I subscribe to a "price alert" for a product in my sellers app. The price gets triggered, and because there's a lot of demand for this item, I have to be fast.
This, for me, would justify the "push notification".
But, would this also be considered an "ad"? From the definition of the word "advertisement"[1], which says it's "a notice, picture or film telling people about a product, job or service", it would qualify as an ad.
[1]: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...
Don't fall for the tricks. Think about the systems your are engaging with all the way to the end, and consider if you are being manipulated. This is an environment where it pays to be paranoid, because big companies are devoting a huge amount of resources to trick you.
I would say, treat this stuff as one should treat nutrition. Simple is better for your health. If you don't understand how something is made, or what its purpose is, you should probably avoid it.
There are also plenty of annoying things developers can do with it. I'll turn those off, or more likely uninstall the app.
1: App knows your location - most likely is profiting from that
2: App can see how often you visit $place, all for the cost of a few 'sale' items.
3: More extensive profiling can possibly occur, depending on what data the OS allows you to access.
As apposed to:
1: Walk to shop, no smartphone, see discounts inside shop.
There's 0 reason this information needs to be presented via any form of 'notification'. It could literally be done by $shop.com/discounteditems.txt.
They probably don't care if the app is tracking their location to tell how often they visit the shop.
In exchange for this inconsequential sacrifice to their privacy they get easy and convenient discounts, tailored to them, when they go about their daily routine.
I'm privacy-conscious and technologically literate, and even I wouldn't have much issue with this example if it would save me some money.
Also, let's not ignore that the headline is backwards: Apps can send ads via notifications right now, what Apple has done is made it a separate permission, so that users can turn off ads and keep other notifications.
This is a strict improvement.
Or: walk into the store, open the app of your own volition, and peruse the sale items.
If apple forces ad-notifications to its own category and limits their rate and volume?
Furthermore, if apple enables users to disallow ad-notifications via permissions system?
I'd love to block promotional notifications of some applications which I have to use at the end of the day (e.g. airlines, network carrier, etc.)
This can be a Very Good Thing (TM) in the end.
From what I can see, you will have to opt in to see these alerts, so that's pretty beneficial if companies start separating junk alerts out.
At any rate anything that puts an ad in my notifications is as good as uninstalled. I'm already unsure how to turn off the news push notifications that I'm getting now.
Google introduced Google Cloud Messaging [0] in 2007 and Apple introduced Apple Push Notification service in 2008 [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Cloud_Messaging
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Push_Notification_servic...
The news notifications you're getting are the same push notifications that other apps have had for over a decade.
The most unfortunate thing is that, if you configure settings inside an app, half the time it's disrespected and that setting is changed later. It's safer to change in the Notifications center in iOS (eg, in the phone preferences, rather than in the app preferences).
Personally, any app that insists on spamming me with adds is not worth my time, and i replace it with "something" else that fits the bill.
The same goes for apps that have subscription models, apps that require access to gps/microphone/etc without an explicit need for it.
I've replaced about 20 such apps in the past couple of years.
I understand that not everybody is willing to make that move, but everybody has the option to do so.
There are of course apps/services where it's not practical, like facebook which seems to have become the worlds social life agenda, and even my kids school posts arrangements through facebook.
That doesn't mean that Facebook has the run of my phone, in fact i don't even have the app. I use the web interface along with content blockers (1Blocker) and PiHole/PFBlockerNG on my network.
Almost every service has some option to at least limit your exposure.
If an app prompts the user for permission to send notifications as soon as it starts up, then it's the app's fault. It's been known to be bad practice (and counter-productive) for many years.
There are a lot of apps that are basically made of notifications. When I install Signal I want it to immediately ask me if sending notifications is ok so that I can say yes.
So this wasn’t allowed before? But those “check out this stupid post from that random stranger” push notifications were allowed (maybe not on paper but definitely in practice)? Seems only fair then.
Whether they succeed is debatable, but the reasoning (although perhaps unfair) is understandable.
And indeed, the plan seems to separate ads and genuine notifications into two channels, similar to what Android apparently currently has (not an Android user).
You can then decide which channel should be enabled.
(they have been showing me dominos ads every time I go to the grocery store, even when I pay with cash and have location turned off)
I’m done with this. Now I need to get iMessage working in qemu...
The idea of having finer grained permissions for that kind of notification seems reasonable to me.