The Paywalled Garden: iOS is Adware (2020)

> Ever since then, I've been getting notifications on the settings app about how my iCloud storage is almost out of space because somehow my iPhone backup takes nearly 4.8gb, even though I have disabled the vast majority of app backup permissions.

iCloud backup does a really bad job of reclaiming space, back when I was on the free tier every once in a while I'd clear the backup (I think by disabling it?) and then re-doing the backup.

Some friends have set a NAS up, and I'm doing the same, but most people seem to replace the cloud with a NAS while ignoring a crucial point that cloud providers do for you: replication. Are you handling that in yours?

It's an upcoming disaster waiting to occur, having their own private NAS but not backing it up somewhere else, only relying on the RAID reconstruction abilities of whatever they bought (and that's for those who bought the much more expensive units with 2 or 3 disk bays... don't get me started with those cheaper single-disk Synology ones)

> Rules for thee, not for me.

As an iOS developer, this is very true indeed. Apple specifically bars developers from using push notifications for ad purposes yet Apple itself does it to push their own Apple Music ads as the article shows.

The CSAM stuff also made me decide to never buy a brand new apple product again and I will basically buy used devices for my development work so less of my money is going towards them. I also got myself an Android phone and a windows Dell laptop recently which I will be putting linux on for non-work purposes.

This issue with the backups happened to me as well. I managed to solve it by disabling iCloud Backup which deletes all the backups, then re-enabling it. I think essentially what happens is some stuff gets backed up, and even if you delete that stuff from your phone it's still retained in backups for some period of time.

Go to settings -> iCloud -> storage -> manage storage -> backups.

You can delete the old backups there. It does keep backups of old devices for some reason.

I tend to use this feature though as intended. I dropped my XR off down the front of Stanage Edge. When recovered it was badly damaged. Following Monday in an apple store I recovered the backup onto a new 12 and it was exactly as I’d left the XR configuration wise. Saved me hours of futzing.

Dark patterns.

An unfortunate side effect of the free market.

> With Apple TV +, if you cancel your subscription to avoid autorenew, it immediately cancels your access to the service.

My understanding is that if you cancel the trial you lose immediate access. But if you were paying for it and canceled, you’d retain access to the end of your billing period.

I'm not sure I would consider the Netflix ones ads? They're not trying to convince you to buy additional things or otherwise give them money; they're telling you about shows you've already paid for that they think you might enjoy watching.

> Torrents for Netflix rips are the same great quality and great content and you can even watch them from USB on a fully offline

I end up paying for content and torrenting it anyway in order to get the full HD, no ads, no buffering, no BS experience. Torrenting feels like the 1990s for music (but faster obviously): You bought a tape or CD, you went home and played it, it played, THE END.

Where are the ads in appletv and iOS? Could you provide some examples?

I use both and am not sure I’m seeing ads. The appletv is behind a pi-hole so that may be a reason - but don’t think I see ads even at a friend’s house.

I switched to Fedora some 4-6 years back -- and that was the first thing I noticed -- no ads.

I don't have this notification. I disabled iCloud backup when setting up phone first time.

iCloud backup is actually quite a handy thing to have had when your phone gets lost / stolen. If you just remove photos from the list of things it's backing up the the rest usually fits in the free 5gb they give you.

I don’t have this and I have iCloud backup off for most things and so the 5gb free plan is more than enough.

Is it possible you’re interpreting the reminder to use the free tier of iCloud to back up essential iPhone data as an ad?

If you don’t back up photos video and email you can likely remain on the free plan indefinitely. I don’t consider this an ad.

It’s kind of ironic that the same is true for Google and Android.

Except Apple’s business isn’t built on advertising revenue.

I think deleting wallet will have the unintended side effect that you now cannot use Apple Pay with a 3rd party credit card . So even with an iPhone you would have to take out your credit cards to pay in store and cannot use touch or Face ID to pay in apps.

>Almost every other scene contains an apple product.

Gasp. It's almost like it's paid for by apple.

I mean I’m not a fan of advertisements myself but I don’t find the whole Apple products in Ted Lasso overwhelming compared to most other shows and movies. I mean any time someone is on a phone or laptop obviously it’s gonna be an Apple product. Other shows and movies always find a way to more awkwardly shoehorn something in and call attention to it other than just being a prop. Or the new trend to advertise is to make a joke out of the product as if that wasn’t the plan all along, like Ryan Reynolds hocking his liquor in Free Man or daytime tv shows joking about products.

Overall I agree with you, however on that last note: iOS has let you delete pretty much whatever you want for a while now. I just deleted the news app from my iPhone to test this out, successfully deleted. Not just removed from the home screen, removed from the phone.

I bought a new iPhone and it had the 1 year of Apple TV.

I wanted to trial it but was busy. It reminded me 2 months later and I tried it then. Been using it ever since and even bought an appletv because android tv boxes are such junk.

Sometimes being reminded is good.

Sometimes.

That did not happen to me. Windows installs some promoted apps when I installed it, I removed those and since then Windows did not install a single app.

The "ads" aren't even nearly as intrusive as the author (who works for Microsoft - a company whose operating system basically spies on you non-stop, including sending binaries you run to MS, command line commands, etc) suggests. They make it sound like using an iPhone means being constantly assailed with ads. That's not even remotely true.

I switched to iOS over a year ago. I don't use any of Apple's paid services. I tried Apple Music under their free three month trial; I was totally unimpressed with the featureset and deactivated it. I think in 6 months I've gotten two, maybe three notifications with offers to re-subscribe. The offers were more and more generous.

I use iTunes and Apple Pay, and I can't remember the last time I saw an ad. When I added my cards to Apple Pay, I saw the "sign up for Apple Card" button. I didn't give it more than a second thought, and Apple hasn't "said a word" about Apple Card since. That card, by the way, has one of the strictest personal-data-usage policies of any credit card in the US. They also do something no other CC company does: automatically rotate the CCV code every time the card is used in Apple Pay.

If Apple is so hell-bent on selling their services, why do they have the world's least-painful instant sharing tool that works without even a network connection or any additional apps? I can instantly send a contact, photo, file, whatever to someone else with an iPhone.

If Apple is so hell-bent on selling their services, why do they make it possible to, with one click, automatically and completely painlessly sync your music, photos, videos, and do complete device backups, over WiFi to a Mac or PC, no iCloud subscription required? You don't get pestered in any way when you click that button, by the way.

I use Nextcloud for file sync. It's very tightly integrated into Apple Files; I don't need iCloud for anything. Never get pestered to subscribe to it. Haven't seen an ad for iCloud, ever.

My phone does dictation offline, and if I were on a newer model, Siri would work offline too. The Photos app does some magic like showing me how many Damn Cat Photos I take, but it happens entirely on-device.

Apple lets you turn off all sorts of data collection that Android doesn't. You'll never see a screen like this in Android: https://support.apple.com/library/content/dam/edam/applecare...

Every single Apple-provided App has the same privacy controls as third party apps. Don't want Notes to use your location? Done. Don't want Maps using cellular data, for some reason? Done.

There's also stuff that's just straight-up bullshit. I've never seen an ad in the settings pages. When I bought my phone and synced it for the first time, my music was immediately visible, not "hidden" or blank like they suggest. iTunes isn't even "open" most of the time; I get in the car, iTunes starts playing, I interact with it via steering wheel controls or the lock screen controls.

The article is so bizarre. The author is a senior iOS developer for MS so they damn well know everything I just said; this blog entry seems to be purposefully misrepresenting how the OS behaves.

> The attempts at upselling sure are a bit icky but calling it "Adware", when all it's advertising are company own services, is a bit weird.

If a major purpose of the software is to show me ads, then it's adware. As a consumer, it doesn't make my experience any less crappy if those ads are for products from the same company that made the software.

I'll be frank: the whole thing reads like bullshit.

The author is imploring you to ignore you personal experience with the platform to accept his interpretation which is purposely devoid of context.

Advertising falls into many categories some of these are useful, some of these are annoying. Useful advertising is a feature. If I search for boots on Google and get an ad for a nearby boot store - that's useful, informative advertising - the fact that payment was made for this to happen is irrelevant: I'm still able to choose something else.

If I visit a store and there are seasonal decorations, again that's useful, informative/educational advertising. It doesn't force me to buy a turkey or a tree.

However if I switch on my phone to find Facebook is preinstalled and difficult or impossible to remove(Samsung devices) - then that is invasive and unwanted advertising. It takes something away from me: storage space, my time, my attention, my patience, my choice.

Apple's advertising aligns with providing services that are useful for whatever the user is doing. In a music app: here's a way to get more music, before Apple Music it was the iTunes store. In the news app? it's premium magazine/news services. In your storage settings, it's cloud storage. Like the boots example, it's irrelevant that these are pay for services, these are merely shortcuts to getting more of what you already want in an app which still functions without payment. (There are also plenty of example where such extensions are entirely free, such as additional desktop backgrounds.)

That's not adware. A good example of adware is packaging a bunch of games into your OS that have no function unless purchased (Windows), adware is including predatory credit providers inside a web browser (Edge).

I haven’t updated past iOS 12 so maybe things are different now, but at least there—while you can technically uninstall music, iOS will routinely ask if I want to restore it when e.g. someone airdrops me an mp3 file. And of course, I can’t change the default app.

Imagine it was Verizon Music, Verizon News and Verizon TV+ that came pre-installed. Would you feel the same then? A big selling point of Apple products has been the lack of bloatware found in other platforms.

it is also really bad if you're looking for, say a function, and not a certain app. i have to google it and then go to the app store directly with its name.

It's aggravating, sure, but ads serve multiple purpose. Sometimes people are entertained by ads, seeing it as a way to sample what's available in the world. Showing ads help establish branding for a company or product. By seeing multiple ads for the same thing, familiarity increases, and with that, the chance of the person choosing the thing in the future. Also companies compete on available ad spots. Sometimes buying an ad space means that your competitor has not bought that ad space.

With that said, I block advertisements everywhere I can, and honestly, I feel like this should be the norm. Barely legal psychological warfare.

Edit: I'd like to also add something about "I already know what I want". People feel like they do, but they have a lot more going on in their heads than they think. For example, a more attractive alternative might exist that you don't know about. Or you could spot a discount on something that's not urgent, but important - with a limited budget, you might prioritize that instead of your original goal.

It is less shitty than spotify, but still shitty. I removed Music when at one point I was in the gym which is in a basement and wanted to bring up music on the treadmill. The overlay-ad for Apple Music blocked the UI, and because receiption was bad it took 10s+ to load that ad screen without allowing me to close it until it was there.

I am now using VLC for iOS and am not looking back.

Let me tell you another way in which the app is dangerously horrible. When you add a stocks widget to the home screen, the ticker value of the stock actually takes some time to update. Sometimes you gotta click it to see the updated value and then when you come back to the home screen, the widget has the same value. There were instances where I wondered how the price stayed the same for so many hours - turns out the value in the widget was not getting refreshed.

This was my only source of truth doing intraday trading (when i was not near a computer) until i figured out the bug

Sounds to me like you're the victim of a whole load of shitty services. When I get a notification, it's usually something I've set up like a calendar event or an actual message. The only exception that comes to mind is Netflix, but I just haven't bothered disabling that in the Netflix settings yet. I make it a point to purge any app that sends me ads through the notifications, because nobody wants that bullshit.

It could be my Pihole at work, but I haven't seen ad popups either. I thought the internet as a whole has moved past DNS redirects but I guess some shitty ISPs still use them. AFAIK, you can change the DNS in your router to point to one that doesn't do the hijacking in most cases.

Even email spam seems to have gone down over the years. Using the built-in unsubscribe button in Gmail has made getting out of these stupid mailing lists completely painless.

You should invest a little time into a good ad blocker and spam filter, I feel like it would improve your experience online dramatically. Most ad and marketing companies are the scum of the earth but technology has evolved to the point that they're getting easier to get rid of as well.

I really wish iOS would have a setting like "Only allow notifications when I've opened the app in the last hour".

What do you mean “after”? Wasn’t this the plan from the start?

I think both can be valid at the same time. I mean, hating the upsell / ads, while liking the services themselves. For a long time I skipped a lot of Youtube videos because their thumbnails turned me off, but I found that I like the content itself, while not liking some of the youtuberisms that go along with it.

When you open Settings on an iPhone, are you actively seeking out Apple TV+?