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Comment by leokennis | Hacker News Reader

I pay Apple $20 a month for Apple One. I refuse to pay and see ads at the same time.

If I am going to see only 1 ad in a normal Apple app (Maps, Music, Podcasts etc.) Apple can kiss that money goodbye.

For every Apple Service there’s a good alternative. I’ll turn my iPhone into a piece of Apple hardware with minimal affiliation to Apple software within the afternoon.

From there on out, I’ll start investigating to replace my Apple hardware with alternatives at their next renewal cycle.

For Apple end users, Tim Cook is the worst CEO you could imagine. A human Excel sheet.

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Is Tim Cook really the problem? Apple has to answer to the shareholders and board of directors first, and Tim Cook can only stay CEO as long as he's acting in their interests. Maybe it's too easy to blame the system, but I don't see how Tim Cook should take the majority blame.

If not him, then who? Ultimately he is the one who makes the decisions; that's why he has the title of CEO and not "Puppet Of The Board."

I suppose we could simply blame the entire customer base of Apple, but that seems less than productive.

> Apple has to answer to the shareholders and board of directors first, and Tim Cook can only stay CEO as long as he's acting in their interests.

And it is his job to explain to them that plastering ads all over the UI is going to destroy the entire privacy-conscious image that Apple has built up over the past decade, specially the past five or so years.

You can't just say "There was no alternative but to show ads", it's a reductio ad (lol) absurdum by which you can excuse any bad decisions that a CEO makes by saying "Well, the board made them do it".

Apple has to answer to the shareholders and board of directors first

First, no. That's a gross oversimplification of the situation, and there are thousands of counter-examples. It's one of those things people see on HN and then pass along as if it was the absolute truth. It isn't.

But, for fun, let's pretend it is true. Then the way Tim Cook answers to shareholders is to preserve the long-term value of Apple as a brand and a company, and not to sell out for short-term gains.

The majority of Apple shareholders are massive corporations that invest for the long-haul, not day traders trying to make a quick buck.

The problem goes deeper and is one we see everywhere- the stock price has to always go up. This is only good for shareholders, for everyone else it is usually bad. How does humanity solve this feedback loop? The free market dream doesn't seem to be working.

If I am going to see only 1 ad in a normal Apple app (Maps, Music, Podcasts etc.) Apple can kiss that money goodbye.

Don't open Settings, then. There's been ads in there for three years.

Only one I've seen for a while is the one trying to get me to try Apple Arcade for free for 3 months. I don't know how long I have to ignore it before they get the message that I barely game on my phone and tablets, don't want to game on them more than I do, and have no interest whatsoever in the service.

But yeah, it's an ad. At least you can dismiss it. Dunno how long it'll stay gone (this just prompted me to go tell it "not now", so we'll see).

This new “not now” rhetoric is annoying me so much. It is so user-unfriendly to deny them the definitive in their decision. These dark patterns creep in anywhere that I get the impression that every eco-system and operating system becomes actively hostile to the user.

"A human Excel sheet" is the phrase I need but cannot find for some people I know. Thanks (:

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