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Comment by atonse | Hacker News Reader

What exactly did they do?? I’m very curious.

I have this sick feeling that in the past year, Apple is experiencing a brain drain and again the assholes with the spreadsheets (the bozos as Steve Jobs called them) are showing up and starting to chip away at things like privacy or in-app purchases for an extra .5% of profit.

My son was surprised to see an ad or in app purchase in an Apple Arcade game. But I still have to verify whether that’s what he saw.

But the rest of the games on the App Store are so disgustingly sly in how they prey on their users to buy more more more.

And Tim Cook doesn’t do anything while talking about curation. Where’s the curation?

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Yes, they do this! I called support and they agreed that it was in opposition to their website description of Apple Arcade, but that there was nothing they could do.

It pops up on the top of the screen every time you open the game.

They were very cagy about it, but their excuse seemed to be that it was up to the game publisher whether to include it, and that I should complain to them (even though it was sent as an Apple Arcade notification).

https://imgur.com/a/KOYSyTm

So it seems, there is a market right now, for quality adfree phones, since Apple has given up on that? Or rather they feel too secure in their entrenched space. I hope they are wrong about it.

It's the same market at adfree cities, ad free news sites and ad free movies.

The niche is well established and commercial entities proved viability at some scale. But there's a wall that stops it from ever becoming a prominent model.

IMO going past that wall won't happen organically. Perhaps if ad exposure (including brand and product placements) could be accepted as social level health issue we might see more realistic progress. The same way some districts just banned billboards and ad panels by decree.

People who can afford to pay for stuff to not see ads are the type of people advertisers would love to advertise to.

This is a recommendation for another Apple Arcade game. The only gain for Apple if you click this notification is if you get the game, like it, and continue to pay for Arcade. This is like taking a screenshot of Netflix's "Top Picks for You" list and saying they are ads. This notification is not from the game you're playing but directly from Apple. There's no way to ship a game for Apple Arcade if it includes ads, interstitials or in-app purchases, that's the whole point.

Apple failed to “obtain the consent of French iPhone users (iOS 14.6 version) before depositing and/or writing identifiers used for advertising purposes on their terminals,” the CNIL said in a statement.

Apple claims they were using a previously approved process and their search ads on the AppStore prioritizes user privacy and will appeal.

"a previously approved process" is a nice claim.

we reserve the right to change the terms and conditions... blah, blah, fucking blah.

I'm very firmly of the opinion that an ad on the street, a billboard, or in a newspaper or magazine, or even a website (under certain conditions) is public and not private (as much as they are annoying), inasmuch as you can be filmed in public - it's a public space.

An ad on your phone is* private as it is 'yours', your number, your unique id, your puk etc. It is sent only to you, as the owner of the phone.

Unless you share your phone with several (quantity/ number to be debated) persons, which would have to be declared. But if Jenny or Jimmy from finance are looking at spicy underwear and I get the ad for more of the same when I'm on duty - then so be it! It would have had to have been declared a public phone (for such behavior to be acceptable/ accepted).

There was never a thing like "privacy" in Apple roadmap. All that buzz was to take users' private data away from Facebook and Google and bank on it exclusively.

> was never a thing like "privacy" in Apple roadmap

Uh [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI–Apple_encryption_dispute

Sure, since they made most of their money from paid products, they had the advantage of telling consumers we won't collect your data, and it was a powerful attack on FB and Google's business models. It was a powerful differentiator, and it worked with people like me.

It's a case where a business motivations line up with their customers (like how FB and Google's motivations to collect data lined up with their customers motivations to get free stuff).

But if they're breaking that now, that's a huge problem.

?? They've always taken data to sell ads, although they usually try to sell things from within their own ecosystem. Don't drink the koolaid

"Ecosystem" can and will expand.

> My son was surprised to see an ad or in app purchase in an Apple Arcade game. But I still have to verify whether that’s what he saw.

What game was this? I assumed Apple Arcade games would not have the ability to do in app purchases.

> Apple is experiencing a brain drain and again the assholes with the spreadsheets (...) are showing up

> And Tim Cook doesn’t do anything while talking about curation.

Tim Cook is THE asshole with the spreadsheets. He's shown time and again that he's an accountant with absolutely no vision other than "squeeze more money from users".

This video by Mysk shows it in action. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JxvH80Rrcw

> My son was surprised to see an ad or in app purchase in an Apple Arcade game.

They probably call it "included promotions" instead of ads, and pretend it’s okay.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34301509

It seems to be much less serious than the headline implies, as is common

I checked what "Apple’s Personalized Advertising privacy setting" actually means and this is the data that is collected to target ads:

- account information like name/address

- app downloads and subscriptions in App Store

- what news articles you looked at in Apple News/Stocks

- podcasts/movies/books/etc you downloaded via iTunes/TV

- which ads you clicked on previously

https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertisin...

"With iPhones running iOS 14.6 and below, Apple’s Personalized Advertising privacy setting was turned on by default, leaving users to seek out the control on their own if they wanted to protect their information. That violates EU privacy law, according to the CNIL. It doesn’t cross the Europe’s GDPR, though; the violation falls under the more obscure ePrivacy Directive of 2002."

They had the wrong default setting. They changed it after 14.6

So everyone is collecting and using data ... boy am I surprised.

Tim is the chief bozo to be frank…

I don't think so. Yes, he led Apple to become a $1T company, but making money doesn't make someone a bozo alone.

If anything compromises Apple products, in 90% of cases it's Apple's design philosophy or (stubborn?) ideals. Not a push from the spreadsheet bozos.

For better or worse, I think Tim managed to keep the product side of the company very close to what Steve wanted.

One of the concerns I have, and I believe Steve shared, is the dilution of their offerings. I'm frankly having a hard time navigating their iPad and Mac offerings. It isn't clear where each of their products sit, and it's certainly going to be very confusing to non-enthusiasts who have the grit to swim thru it all. Similarly, someone explain the 13in Macbook Pro? Why is it still here and getting updates? It seems to me that they are just making all possible combinations of their products, and Steve hated that.

I'm with you on that, but it's very far from how bad it could be - just take a look at the other computer manufacturers.

And the trend of making the product lineup more convoluted doesn't seem to be steep (it happens slowly and over time), so I'm not too worried. It seems there is time to steer it back before it gets too ridiculous.

It seems to be mostly a case of, as various product sets evolve, you sometimes end up with adjacent products that are probably too similar. This has happened with the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro at various times. In general, Apple seems a lot more guilty of being slow to upgrade niche segments (smaller laptops, high-end desktops, smaller phones) than the other way around.

iPhone 14 Pro Max sounds anti-Apple to me for some reason. Like a tamer version of "Mountain Dew Ultimate Extreme"

I'm not sure personally what a better name scheme would be to differentiate it but "Pro" and "Max" together sounds funny.

MKBHD perfectly describes Apple's product strategy and why it has been so profitable for them.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XeDPwpIFs-I

Thanks, this does seem right to me.

Steve repeatedly vetoed any kind of expandability on the original Mac[0]. And he tried to sabotage the memory layout because he thought it looked ugly[1].

There was never any "good" Apple, it was rotten from the very core. And that's just from a user perspective, nevermind what a toxic and abusive employer he has been shown to be over the years.

[0]: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...

[1]: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&stor...

I think Tim seems like the type that would be a bozo but he is really admirable in that he recognizes what he’s good at and what he isn’t. And has been willing to change the leadership to find the right people.

There have definitely been product missteps and the typical nickle and diming of storage but it hasn’t seemed like the quality has suffered too much as you’d expect if he was a true bozo.

From what I read about him, he's more like the supply chain guy.

have you interacted directly with him? (I have, and he was not a bozo.)

Why would this be downvoted? It’s genuine personal testimony about his character — certainly more reputable and meaningful to hear than what the news says about him.

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