Apple Maps really needs to up their POI game. They have some native data, but I’m still regularly seeing images from 3rd party sites and get prompted to download the app. I understood it in year 1, but we’re 13 years in now. This is the primary reason I keep Google Maps around.
I’m not so sure about this. Tapping around to some random businesses around me, I see photos being pulled in from Yelp, OpenTable, and Foursquare.
When I try to view the photos full screen, OpenTable and Foursquare images work seamlessly. Yelp prompts for an app download to jump me over to their world, which is a horrible user experience.
I submitted a few minor location edits to make the markers more accurate. Occasionally I’ll get an email telling me how often my new location change has been used. It’s not enough to be annoying, I’m always just shocked at the impact. Back in July I got an email that one of my updates was viewed 500k times, for a little boat rental shop on the Great Lakes. It had been really hard to find with the former location of the marker. Another one edit in a more populated area had 1.7m views.
I’ve only made 3 edits, but I can where feedback like this could get a person make map updates as a hobby, especially if the map data still needs a lot of work. One person with some free time could have a massive impact on the maps data in their community.
Which means the only other option is to hopefully be able to pay Apple even more to not have to see ads. Maybe buy more Apple shares to share in this "advancement".
Under Jobs they tried iAds. The idea was to make ads so high quality that people would want to interact with them, and they had to go through a vetting process to ensure there were no dark patterns that would make people scared to tap an iAd. After a while, it was decided it didn’t work and they pulled it.
A company is under no obligation to continue bad ideas.
I've used Google Maps for two decades and have 1000s of saved pins. I could have been a customer for life. Haven't used it since.
If you buy the 'iPhone Max' for $1500, you get ads, and if you buy the 'iPhone Max ad-free' for $3800, you don't get any ads in the app store, apple maps, apple news, or the various other apple services you use on only that one device. Similarly, you need to buy the ad-free edition of the iPad to not get ads there, and the ad-free version of the macbook for no ads there, and each of them can cost ~2.5x the cost.
I think that would be better than a monthly subscription since you'd just pay it once and then never think about it again.
- Gradually "make the line go up" by ramping up ad volume until the product is terrible (thereby ruining Apple's reputation among the 50-90% of users who aren't paying the ad-free prices).
- Periodically nerfing the premium ad-free tiers and putting ads into tiers that were previously ad-free.
- Purposefully making the lower tiers worse and worse in order to squeeze out marginal increases in conversion rates to the premium tiers.
YouTube’s who platform is built to show ads and run by an ad company. They are likely going to be much more profitable than a few ads in the App Store and Maps, and I’ve read Premium users are more profitable than ad-supported users. They are charging $160/year after a recent price increase. The fee you’re suggesting would be over 14 years worth of payments.
Amazon lets users remove ads on Kindle for a 1 time fee of $20, and people keep Kindles a long time.
The goodwill alone would be worth more than $20, considering iPhones already have margin (unlike most Amazon hardware).
Apple has been using security as the tent pole feature to try and differentiate themselves from everyone else. One of the reasons all the other platforms feel insecure is that ads imply data collection. If they really want to “think different” they need to stop following the crowd and operate a system that doesn’t create the compromised incentives that ads tend to come with.