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Comment by eropple | Hacker News Reader

Newsstand is spam if you want nothing to do with it. It is an imposition upon the device I own. With Android, I can disable any app I want, even built-in ones (for example, Samsung includes a bookmark provider that adds Samsung bookmarks, which I don't want).

Here's a thought: when all you can do is rail against the "haters", you are in a bad state of mind.

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Is the phone app spam if I want nothing to do with it? The music app if I don't listen to music? Get real. There's a difference between Newsstand, which exists because it's very common for touch-device users to consolidate their reading subscriptions (as there is one for music and videos), and bloatware, which third parties pay companies to add to the OS and which detract from the experience.

> Is the phone app spam if I want nothing to do with it? The music app if I don't listen to music?

Yes. This is quite real of me, I assure you. If I can't make it Go Away if I have no use for it, it's spam. As it happens, I've consolidated my reading. It isn't in Newsstand. It should not trouble me if I don't want it, and having a "junk" drawer is a sad non-solution.

The common definition of spam is something that most people consider junk but a few people might use, thus justifying inflicting it upon everyone. Your definition is almost the opposite: something that most people find useful but that you happen not to need. This is an abuse if not outright misuse of the term.

Haha, many people just find it too painful to admit they were ever wrong. So once they say they support a given team, party, church, company they start ignoring all evidence against it.

Interesting how after your original argument (the difference between app and bookmark) was defeated you came up with a new one (percentage of people liking).

I don't think anybody made the claim that no app is spam, only, from what I can tell, that no iOS built-in app is spam. Which is more than lots of Android phones can say about their built-in apps.

Many people enjoy getting political news emailed to them. Many, many people. Yet it infuriates me when it gets forwarded to me because it is--wait for it--spam. It is annoying crap I don't want.

Spam is defined as whether it annoys the receiver, not the sender's intentions. And there's no 'unsubscribe' in iOS.

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