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Comment by pierrefar | Hacker News Reader

This is the opening line in the abstract: "Among other disclosures, an operating system presents one or more advertisements to a user and disables one or more functions while the advertisement is being presented. At the end of the advertisement, the operating system again enables the function(s)."

To rephrase it: the operating system of a machine you paid good money for will disable your ability to use it while it force-feeds you ads.

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Then to continue that paragraph it says 'The presentation of the advertisement(s) can be made as part of an approach where the user obtains a good or service, such as the operating system, for free or at a reduced cost'.

I assume their logic is somewhat like we have ad-subsidized web sites (i.e. most of them), so why not ad subsidized devices? Shown on page 4 as part of the 'Advertising Control' components is 'Buy Ad Free Version'.

My guess is that this would be tied into a reduced cost iPhone. If you look down the page though, they show plans for how it would be integrated into desktop MacOS.

I think the point is that you would not have "paid good money" for the operating system itself.

Isn't that jumping the gun a bit? It's really hard to predict what context this was designed for, but I very much doubt it will apply to the existing hardware/software model.

In what context is disabling a device for ads considered a good thing? It's terrible in terms of user friendliness, especially when you're very likely to have paid money for the device.

Unless Apple is about to start giving ad-supported devices for free, a conjecture that would be jumping the gun.

I feel like it wouldn't be the worst way to operate a free cyber cafe. Overall not a fan of the idea, but I just don't see Apple doing this to all computers.

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