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Comment by vilmosi | Hacker News Reader

The overall article is of good quality but it reeks of Apple bias I personally find distasteful.

>>> User experience is what Apple puts above pretty much everything else, and they’ve decided that they don’t like it the experience available through the ad-supported web, and so they’re going to do something about it.

The reason Apple does this is to push content creators away from the Web and into native apps. Apple gets a cut on any money made from apps but not from Web ads. It's a strategic move that's not fueled by wanting better UX for users. I'll bet Apple won't consider "Install from Apple Store" type messages as ads.

>>>That also plays into Apple’s other general message, about how it doesn’t track what you do when you’re using its products

Bullshit. They have their own advertising network they want to push. That's the whole reason they're allowing Web ads to be blocked. So you'll see more of iAds. Nothing to do about "caring for your privacy".

View on HN

> I'll bet Apple won't consider "Install from Apple Store" type messages as ads.

Apple won't consider anything as ads. What they provided was the hooks for developers to implement "Content Blocking Safari Extensions" [1]. To quote the docs:

"Your app extension is responsible for supplying a JSON file to Safari. The JSON consists of an array of rules (triggers and actions) for blocking specified content. Safari converts the JSON to bytecode, which it applies efficiently to all resource loads without leaking information about the user’s browsing back to the app extension."

There will be competing AdBlocking extensions just like on Firefox, for instance. It will be up to the developers to create the rules of what should be blocked and what should be allowed.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/releaseno...

Apple provides hooks so that a web page can display an official, system supported "there is an app for this web site, tap here to download it" banner. I will bet $5 that Apple does not provide a way to block those.

I did a few minutes of research into this. The app banners are triggered by a meta tag, so there won't be a way to block those.

But is that really an ad? If I go to CNN, and CNN tells me I can use the same site in a native app, I'm not sure that quite counts. Now if CNN carries (for a fee) a download link for an app for something different, a brokerage house, or Ford, or something, now that would be interesting to see if they block it.

My guess is that they would initially, then relax the blocking. Seems to be the preferred way to manipulate the populace these days (unless you have fear as a tool- fear is way better).

Why wouldn't it be an ad? They didn't spend a bunch of money developing a native app for no reason. They did it because it provides some sort of advantage for them. One advantage is that it lets them get on your home screen rather than just being another web site you visit, which probably increases the chances that you'll return.

You might disagree, which is fine. Whether something is an "ad" is somewhat in the eye of the beholder. Which is why this stuff ought to be configurable.

Regardless of whether they are ads or not, they

  a) do not track you
  b) do not take up disproportionate amount of network bandwidth and CPU/battery
  c) do not interrupt your viewing after the initial scroll down

which is why I personally would be fine with not blocking those. That being said, I can understand why others might be annoyed by these 'reminders' and want to block them.

His point wasn't that they are ads, it's that they will still be allowed so that users can be funneled into native apps, where there will still be ads. Since they can't make ad impressions on iOS users, maybe some of those sites will start offering a limited experience to iOS web users, inclining them to click that popup and install the app, where they will see ads that make Apple money.

Of course not. Apple wants to add support for blocking ads on mobile web to encourage companies to write native apps that can contain unblockable ads. That way Apple gets more content on its platform and potentially a piece of the ad revenue with iAd.

That's too simple. Apple (and others) have relentlessly tried to optimize power saving. People like phones with a good battery time, plus I assume that there can be significant cost saving if you can use smaller capacity batteries.

They have probably come to a point where a significant amount of power use during mobile browsing is caused by ads (both rendering and the extra network use that it incurs). Blocking ads could be a welcome power saver.

I would venture to say that the relentless push to move as much as possible to the client has much more impact on battery life than the handful of ads we typically see.

Definitely. A modern octa-core Exynos shouldn't be chugging along to render a blog post. It's absurd.

No matter how many cores are in your phone, web browsing will always be able to use only a single thread. JS is inherently multi-threaded, the only thing that could use multiple threads is the IndexedDB bullcrap (which ain't properly supported by iOS anyway), and background loading of async resources (which is network constrained on mobile, so MT doesn't help).

This is totally untrue. Layout can run off the main thread if engineered properly. Painting and compositing already do in some browsers. Layout, painting, and compositing are inherently parallel problems, so any one of these tasks can saturate all your cores if done carefully. Iframe JS can run in multiple threads if engineered right.

What do you base this on?

Every measurement (not many) I've seen suggest that screen (size/resolution) and network are the main culprits, outside of very intense CPU/GPU client (e.g. games). I don't think I've seen a really good analysis, though, so would be interested if you've got a reference.

number one killer of my battery with last 2 phones? Wifi enabled. Doesn't matter that much if actually used. Turn it off completely, phone lasts 2-3x more.

Without wifi it might make the phone kind of useless, especially if you are using it outside of your home country.

While this pay be true, at some point profit trumps UX.

Look at how the iPod+iTunes morphed as soon as Apple realized how much money could be generated by adding DRM and a store.

Come on, Apple didn't want DRM, labels insisted on it.

https://web.archive.org/web/20080107121341/http://www.apple....

>> Come on, Apple didn't want DRM, labels insisted on it.
https://web.archive.org/web/20080107121341/http://www.apple....
> The third alternative is to abolish DRMs entirely. Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

"Thoughts on Music" | Steve Jobs | February 6, 2007

-----------

And I've got a bridge in Alaska to sell you. Taking Jobs 100% at his word (i.e. Apple was dedicated to DRM-free music, was in continual negotiation with the labels to strip it, and was contractually obligated to continue to use it despite their reluctance), here's how the timeline ultimately turned out:

* October 23, 2001 - First iPod introduced

* April 28, 2003 - iTunes Store w/ Fairplay introduced

* February 6, 2007 - Job's "Thoughts on Music" letter

* April 2, 2007 - EMI agrees to sell iTunes catalog DRM free (initially for slightly higher price)

* ~ August, 2007(?) - Universal sells DRM-free tracks on iTunes Store competitors

* January-April 2009 - Apple completely(?) removes Fairplay from all iTunes Store tracks

Now, you can dig up a few different charts concerning Apple's iTunes music sales. Presumably, they're all compiled from SEC filings, so they track fairly closely. Let's use these two: http://www.asymco.com/2014/02/10/fortune-130/ or https://musicindustryblog.wordpress.com/tag/app-store/ (both offer absolute sales, not % breakdown)

The most notable thing to me is that around mid-'07 to '09, you start to see music sales no longer experiencing the same growth. Incidentally, app and video sales begin in approximately the same period and fill in to maintain total growth -- no one ever accused Apple of being stupid. Point being, by the time Apple removed DRM (and debatable in terms of Jobs' letter's timing depending on how their higher-fidelity internal numbers were looking), music was on the decline.

End result: Apple had 4 years of first mover advantage, then did away with DRM at a time when music sales were no longer experiencing growth.

Are savvy business / PR decisions and coincidence from an altruistic Apple both explanations for the above? Yes. Do I personally believe Apple was pushing tooth and nail to undermine a key business strength of their platform the entire time? No.

(Feel free to correct my timeline or numbers if I'm off on something. This isn't exhaustively researched!)

I'm not sure what you think this timeline says but it absolutely doesn't say that doing away with DRM on ITMS was something Apple resisted.

Then we can agree to disagree on our interpretations of the facts. :)

Except your facts are incomplete[1] and you've mixed them in with straw men.[2]

[1] Your original claim ("as soon as Apple realized how much money could be generated by adding DRM") that Apple is the one that wanted DRM on music ignores the facts of (a) every other music store that opened at the time also had DRM and (b) the fairly common knowledge that Apple's money business was selling devices and that, in the time frame we're talking about ($0.99 songs), Apple made very little profit on music sales once you factor in the cuts to the label, artist, publisher, credit card fees and store costs (some discussion at http://ask.metafilter.com/23257/Show-me-their-money).

[2] No one said that Apple didn't want DRM for 'altruistic reasons' or that 'Apple fought tooth and nail to remove DRM', these are straw men you injected. I just made the obvious claim that DRM was a label requirement. Apple would have loved to give away the music for free, they would have sold a lot more ipods. Why would Steve Jobs write a letter about DRM at all if Apple secretly wanted to keep DRM?

[1] You don't believe that there's a direct correlation between (I buy an iPod) -> (I buy even a fraction of my music that only plays on iPods) -> (I'm more likely to buy another iPod in the future)? I figured that business strategy was pretty self-evident when I said "first mover advantage," so didn't explicitly spell it out.

[2] "Apple would have loved to give away the music for free, they would have sold a lot more ipods." This is where we disagree. I believe that they would have sold fewer iPods, as the incentives for purchasing another iPod over the an alternative player in [1] would no longer be present.

Per that belief, I consider the statements "Apple didn't want DRM for altruistic reasons" and "Apple would have loved to give away the music for free, they would have sold a lot more ipods" to be equivalent. If you don't accept the premise that Fairplay was vendor lock-in (as both Realplayer and a few lawsuits alleged), then obviously that wouldn't be altruism.

"Apple fought tooth and nail to remove DRM" is a question of motive and effort. The fact is they eventually did away with DRM because the market dictated it. The question is whether they did away with it (a) as soon as possible, (b) purely as a market response, or (c) as late as possible.

The statement that "Apple didn't want DRM, the labels insisted on it" is largely irrelevant. What matters is whether they made financial gain from employing DRM, and, if so, whether that impacted their timeline and dedication to removing it.

"Why would Steve Jobs write a letter about DRM at all if Apple secretly wanted to keep DRM?" That's where I thought the timeline was interesting. To me, it wasn't that Steve Jobs wrote a letter about DRM, it's that Steve Jobs wrote a letter about DRM after the growth portion of music sales was finished.

*Again, if you don't feel Apple benefited financially from the vendor lock-in provided by Fairplay, all of this is a moot point as we're going to arrive at radically different conclusions anyway.

So iTunes sales slowed down when music streaming started to get traction. Apple did away with DRM when the majority of the record companies agreed to. I don't doubt for a second that Universal might have sold music without DRM elsewhere, why denying iTunes the same. The record industry were always afraid of the monopoly situation iTunes was becoming.

Another HN front page story compares Power usage of the worlds most popular websites calculated on different browsers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9974615

While the article isn't about mobile versions of these browsers, it speaks both to the importance of this issue as well adds to the debate about whether "User experience is what Apple puts above pretty much everything else."

Power usage is interesting. I wonder if there's a case where an ad script consumes more $ in electricity per view than it generates in $ for the advertiser.

Honestly, aren't your comments as much an example of Apple bias as what you're commenting on, but with the sign reversed?

So looking at facts is a bias now?

How about all the different ways Apple breaks the web for its own sake? Things like the HTTP Protocol are fundamentally broken by Apple, and this is not ok.

They are a despicable company, a dragon only interested in increasing its cash reserves. I do not understand the support they are getting from the developer community, they shit on them constantly, make their life difficult, and forces them to buy Apple.

This latest move is even more despicable as its pushed as positive for the user, landing them good PR, when in fact its all about levering Apple's stronghold on users to push iAds. They are a company for profit, and their history shows they don't do anything for users, they do it for them.

They should be criticized and hounded as a toxic company for the web.

> Things like the HTTP Protocol are fundamentally broken by Apple, and this is not ok.

What do you mean?

An odd statement given it's Google who's been doing this the most recently (QUIC, SPDY).

How have either of those broken HTTP?

For example things like Content-Range are not respected by iOS, or it completely ignores Cache directives. That breaks HTTP, big time.

Do you have more information? I can't find anything, and articles like this don't mention any specific issues https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/ios-network-caching-ht...

Wow some people really have short memories. - Webkit - Thoughts on flash and the promotion of HTML 5 - Canvas - CSS animations - Web video etc etc

It seems to me that Google has been a better influence with Webkit than Apple has. In my day-to-day work the only time Safari comes up is on iOS, and only then because we have no other choice.

The only time recently I've opened Safari on the desktop is to debug some obscure Javascript deficiency that only existed on that browser that also happened to exist in iOS.

Please remember that Apple created Webkit from KHTML, without them Chrome would have been way behind where they are now, both in terms of technology and pushing a new rendering engine. They may well have purchased Opera...

Toady Google have more resources invested in Blink than Apple do in Safari, but don't forget how we got here.

I know all that and I believe there has been controversy over Apple and KHTML. But, I see it as a matter that Apple started playing but dropped the ball for Google to pick up to move forward.

There's no telling where things would be if Google had gone a different route. What if they bought Opera? What if they forked KHTML themselves? It could have been better, it could have been worse. I don't speculate on that, I just react to what I see. Right now, to me, Google has been better about moving things forward with Webkit than Apple has in quite a while.

I've never understood this.

Safari is just a wrapper around WebKit which is an open source project with many contributors. Yes the engine may be deficient in some areas or make choices not supported by other engines but I have never seen any malicious intent to destroy the web or undermine the standards.

"So looking at facts is a bias now?"

No, but making up your own facts, like you have, is.

"Things like the HTTP Protocol are fundamentally broken by Apple"

[Citation Needed]

"They are a company for profit"

As opposed to whom? Google?

>[Citation Needed]

Content-Range does not work, Cache directive are ignored to speed up user experience on Safari.

If you look at moves made by Apple in the iPhone era it becomes quite clear and does not require bias.

- Ban flash. Biggest competition to native apps.

- Cripple the iOS web browser just enough that web apps trying to have native style performance will struggle.

- Release their own map to push Google out of their ecosystem. When that didn't work now they are trying this.

Apple's business model is pretty simple. Aquire a user through very aggressive marketing converted into a device purchase. Use that device purchase a an entry point to take over all points of monetary action of that user. That means nothing(web, flash, credit card) should go through anything but them. You don't need bias to see something as obvious as this now is.

> "Cripple the iOS web browser just enough that web apps trying to have native style performance will struggle."

Are you saying that web apps run on android browser smoother than on iOs Safari? I don't think so...

> "Ban Flash. Biggest competition for apps".

I think Flash was banned because it's crap in terms of security and battery drainer, not much because its a competition to apps.

You seem to be pretty bias in your comments...

The statement of discussion was

> User experience is what Apple puts above pretty much everything else, and they’ve decided that they don’t like it the experience available through the ad-supported web, and so they’re going to do something about it.

My points were evidence to the contrary of that statement. I was not discussing the motivations of Google in regards to their users.

My point is that Apple's business model is about expansive control of a highly profitable user base. It uses an expensive device purchase(which increases the pain point of a user leaving) through aggressive marketing to attempt to be the primary source of as many monetary behaviors of that user as possible.

Flash(and upcoming AIR) was at the time a true contender for becoming the cross platform desktop/native type application interface. Once Apple banned Flash, companies moved away from the platform and it withered.

Since you brought up the Android browser, we can use it as an example of a company who would prefer to increase the use of the web. Google actively tries to increase adoption of the mobile Chrome browser as it cannot control the the updating schedules of phone vendors. Bases upon browser statistics it appears Google is having some success.

http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-US-monthly-201406-...

Google is not any better, but we can look at the difference in their behavior as an example of a difference in business model. Google and Facebook are somewhat dependent(at this time) on some attributes of the web. This difference in these companies(including Apple) can be shown in their support for deep linking.

http://www.adweek.com/socialtimes/james-turner-urx-deep-link...

And to prove I am not picking on Apple directly, part of Google's business model is to leverage their search results to expand into other monetary behaviors of their users as well.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/15/8613839/google-adding-buy-...

Technology implementations by large tech companies are typically more indicative of their business intentions as opposed to their abilities. I'm not saying that Apple is any worse than any other company. Only that their particular business model at this time is, in my opinion, the most dangerous to the overall ecosystem and tech economy.

Your points offered absolutely no evidence, except to your own bias.

"Flash(and upcoming AIR) was at the time a true contender for becoming the cross platform desktop/native type application interface. Once Apple banned Flash, companies moved away from the platform and it withered."

Simply not true. Flash continued to be made available for Android, and Adobe boasted of the number of installs it would have (200m by the end of 2011, it claimed [1]). Apple had, and has, a small share of the mobile and desktop market. But nobody could get Flash to work well on mobile. That is why it died.

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/blog/2011/feb/14/mobil... (disclosure: by me. I was there.)

Will you accuse Google, Mozilla of the same?

Google, Mozilla disable Flash over security concerns http://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-mozilla-disable-flas...

Even this Flash proponent admits, "Jobs was slightly ahead of his time" in You don't have to be a villain to say Flash must die* http://www.macworld.com/article/2948131/software-web/you-don...

Banning Flash has been a boon to HTML5 uptake.

YouTube Switches to the HTML5 Player in Chrome http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2014/05/youtube-switches-to...

RIP Flash: Why HTML5 will finally take over video and the Web this year http://thenextweb.com/dd/2014/04/19/rip-flash-html5-will-tak...

How Adobe Is Moving on From Flash to Embrace HTML5 http://www.cio.com/article/2376661/internet/how-adobe-is-mov...

In other words Apple has helped HTML5. Intentionally crippling the iOS web browser? What usaphp said.

As to Maps, Google pushed themselves out: Apple ditched Google Maps over turn-by-turn navigation spat http://news.yahoo.com/apple-ditched-google-maps-over-turn-tu...

> Google, Mozilla disable Flash over security concerns

That was a version of flash, and after the bug was fixed, it was reenabled. How is that in any way comparable?

> Ban flash. Biggest competition to native apps

That's not why that happened. Flash wasn't "banned," Apple chose not to allow support for it in Mobile Safari from the beginning. It was never removed or banned.

Flash was a dog. Power hungry, slow, inefficient. I recently had to touch the codebase for an Adobe Air iOS app and the runtime is pretty horrific. Adobe never got flash good enough for mobile, and Apple was right to call them out on it.

Flash was never any good on Android either. Otherwise it'd still be around.

> Cripple the iOS web browser just enough that web apps trying to have native style performance will struggle.

Mobile Safari is a good browser. It's fast and is not crippled. It consistently beats browsers on other mobile platforms despite running on often slower hardware. A great mobile web browser is what made the iPhone a great product.

> Release their own map to push Google out of their ecosystem. When that didn't work now they are trying this.

This is because Apple's contract with Google expired and they had to renew on terms that they could not agree to. My recollection of this is that Google wanted a bigger branding presence on the iOS home screen and refused to license mapping data for turn-by-turn navigation (I believe they wanted the Apple-developed Google Maps application to be branded "Google Maps" rather than just "Maps"). Apple saw no way out aside from investing in their own mapping data and infrastructure.

Flash was not slow, it's just that flash ads were ahead of their time in abusing the system's resources. The supposed slowness of flash relative to browser api's was a myth, although flash content was bloated, in much the same way that modern web pages are bloated. When flash was killed by Jobs I knew it was just a matter of time until people did the same bad things with JavaScript and CSS as they did with flash, and lo it came to pass.

As much as I didn't like installing Adobe's plugin, I have to defend Flash. JavaScript is just recently getting to the speed Flash had years ago. Flash probably still does vector animations better [citation unavailable].

> and lo it came to pass. Yes! Ha!

Flash was slow on mobile. Adobe Air is still slow on iOS compared to UIKit or OpenGL.

Apple wanted turn-by-turn, and Google wanted branding and some influence over the app in exchange. Apple wanted turn-by-turn, but apparently wasn't willing to give up much of anything to get it.

So Apple jettisoned Google to do it themselves. Then Apple discovered that mapping isn't nearly as easy as Google made it look when their users were unhappy with a decidedly inferior product.

Right, Apple and Google really didn't have much of a choice.

There is no way Apple was going to brand iOS, which is understandable — that would be like seeing an "Intel Inside" sticker on a MacBook.

And there was no way Google would just "hand over" a differentiating feature of Android to their biggest competitor.

> Ban flash. Biggest competition to native apps.

Well, except native apps didn't exist when the iPhone launched and Steve Jobs was famously opposed to them.

> Cripple the iOS web browser just enough that web apps trying to have native style performance will struggle.

If you think that, you should watch this https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2015/?id=501

It's worth noting what Steve Jobs said at the introduction of the iPhone:

"The full Safari engine is inside of iPhone. And so, you can write amazing Web 2.0 and Ajax apps that look exactly and behave exactly like apps on the iPhone. And these apps can integrate perfectly with iPhone services. They can make a call, they can send an email, they can look up a location on Google Maps.

And guess what? There’s no SDK that you need! You’ve got everything you need if you know how to write apps using the most modern web standards to write amazing apps for the iPhone today. So developers, we think we’ve got a very sweet story for you. You can begin building your iPhone apps today."

There was no SDK initially. Webapps were the _only_ way to put your app on the iPhone. My understanding is that developers demanded an SDK, though.

It seems that part of the reason for not wanting native Apps is because Jobs felt that policing an app store would be too difficult. As to whether the current browser is purposely crippled for the sake of directing people to native apps, I think that might be a bit difficult to prove. Is it perhaps instead that native apps naturally provide better performance, developers demanded it, and so Apple focuses its resources there? Shrug.

Some more detail here: http://www.cultofmac.com/125180/steve-jobs-was-originally-de...

No, it really does require bias.

"Ban flash."

Because Flash was buggy as all hell, and ran like absolute shit on mobile. Remember the short time it was available for Android? Remember how no one really used it, because it was crap? Remember how Adobe gave up because they couldn't do it worth a damn?

"- Cripple the iOS web browser just enough that web apps trying to have native style performance will struggle."

You're gonna need a citation for that one.

"Release their own map to push Google out of their ecosystem. When that didn't work now they are trying this."

Yeah, no. Apple and Google had a dispute over licensing. They were unable to resolve their differences, and so they parted ways amicably. Google Maps is still freely available for iOS, and developers are still able to use it in their apps.

"You don't need bias to see something as obvious as this now is."

No, but apparently you need a tinfoil hat.

No, he made well-reasoned points. You, on the other hand, have yet to.

> The reason Apple does this is to push content creators away from the Web and into native apps.

This is baloney, Apple hosts free apps at a loss. The idea that Apple wants you to have an app for every website is absolutely ridiculous. Safari is one of the most used iOS apps today and will be so for at least the better part of the next decade.

> Bullshit. They have their own advertising network they want to push.

iAds is a rounding error on Apple's business. In all likelihood Apple sees a competitive browser advantage: people like X, Google will not do X on Android. They'll load up The Verge during the keynote and show that it takes 1/X the time that the top of the line Android phones do and 11 year olds will walk around telling each other that Safari is X times faster than Chrome.

iAds is a rounding error on Apple's business.

It may be now, but I'll bet they don't think it will be in the future.

Optional, download-it-yourself ad blockers aren't likely to move the needle on iAd growth.

This is the problem with many of the comments here. 90% of iOS users won't use it.

I doubt it will be around in the future. Apple introduced iAds because they wanted better (i.e., less tacky) mobile ads. Recall their initial messaging around iAds: we design your ads, extremely costly initial ad buys, only big brands. They even enabled WebGL just for iAd.

Unfortunately banner ads are tacky no matter what.

iAds was all about making the rising-in-popularity (at the time) free, ad-supported apps less horrid. Increasing the perceived quality of their platform, and selling more hardware.

Yes, it is not a coincidence that Apple introduced ad blockers at the same time as their own News app that doesn't allow you to block ads.

Bingo!!!

That's the real and legitimate conspiracy here. They are trying to leverage their ... qualitative ... market dominance to "urge" news content providers to shift their content to the News app where the Apple ad network is king.

I would also like to point out that Apple is not only strong-arming the news content sector, but they are also actively damaging if not destroying various other app companies that are in that space with their unfair advantage. The unfair advantage basically comes into play because they are the effective governmental regulatory body of the Apple ecosystem and therefore have disproportionate leverage and power over those in their ecosystem.

You may say, so what, it's their ecosystem, but that is inherently contradictory to having a fair and level playing-field where you compete based on merits, value, and worth.

It's quite odd that Apple really doesn't like to compete and is rather lazy when it comes to competing. They would rather strong-arm people to extract profits, which really isn't all that different than a protection racket ... "Oh, you want ad revenue? It would be a shame if you didn't get any ad revenue because something happened to your shitty little store and all the ads were stripped out. But we here at Apple would like to offer you a brand new opportunity to protect your ad revenue with Apple News."

It's a revolution though! Apple finally enabled users of their gimped mobile OS to do something that they've been able to do for 20 years on desktop computers.

That move might backfire, though. If Apple devices offer an ad-free web but not ad-free apps, then users will drift toward the web, just as content creators drift toward apps.

But that specific content going into the apps won't be available on the web. Users who want that content won't find it there. It will be in the apps, where the ads can't be easily blocked (without reverse engineering and altering on an app-by-app basis).

Well, if there's a decent shift in behavior and expectations then it would be possible for that content to shift as well. Once upon a time all that content was in web apps, now it is in native apps, and it's possible for it go back.

> Apple gets a cut on any money made from apps but not from Web ads.

Not if those apps are free and using non-Apple advertising networks like AdMob.

Then they still get the $100 the dev paid to publish the app in the first place.

$100 per year and per company, for unlimited Mac, iOS and Apple Watch apps.

Sorry wasn't saying it was anywhere near as much as a cut of ad revenue. Just that they are still getting something from you as a developer.

They give you value for your $100.

You get two technical support incidents per year: an Apple engineer will assist with code issues. They handle all necessary tax withholding in countries which require it. This is something you had to do yourself with Google Play (unsure if this is still the case). You also get access to CloudKit and various other Apple-hosted services which can be used within your apps.

I don't doubt that they make a profit on your developer enrolment fee, but it's almost nothing in the scheme of things, and you are actually paying for something.

$100 minus the reviewer salary, bandwidth, support, etc etc

At the scale they are operating, those costs are a drop in the bucket.

As is the $100....

Having apps locks you in to the ecosystem. If you're installing one app from the app store you're very likely to install others.

Buying an iPhone locks you into the ecosystem. There can't be many people who own one who've never installed any apps from the app store.

There may be some switching cost, but not much, depending on: - whether the apps are free - whether the same or similar apps are available on Android - whether those apps are critical to you in day to day use

Everything that Apple releases is a "revolution" according to Apple fans. I had guessed it was going to be about Safari from the title.

"Everything that Apple releases is a 'revolution' according to Apple fans" according to Apple haters. See Artie MacStrawman[1].

The article isn't saying that Apple enabling ad blocking in Safari is a "revolutionary" new feature; it's saying that bringing ad blocking into the mainstream could cause a serious disruption in existing online advertising business models.

[1]http://crazyapplerumors.com/2006/08/21/everybody-tired-of-on...

because everyone who doesn't worship Apple is a "hater".

While the article may have a pro Apple bias this comment exudes a negative Apple bias. Equally distasteful.

It can be both. If people find the ad supported web unpleasant, doing the right thing for the user experience is also something that benefits their bottom line.

I wholeheartedly agree. A convincing argument can be made that the reason Apple is so successful is precisely because Apple business goals are in alignment with their customers' and users' interest.

If people incorrectly assume that the alternative to "free with ads" is "free with no ads" then we will have a market failure.

I think "free with ads" is being done backwards most of the time. It's all about analysing the user to algorithmically determine the best pre-designed ad to serve them. It's tacky and people are extremely good at ignoring it, even without ad blockers.

"Free with ads" should be that my favourite authors get paid to use a product or service and then write about it if they like it. I don't want to see ads for things that a computer predicts I will like, I want to see ads for things that someone I enjoy reading, and share similar tastes with, likes.

How in the hell would that work for some dinky little mobile game?

Yeah I don't think ad-supported is good for mobile games. What are we doing at the moment? Forcing players to watch videos to earn coins, sticking ads in user's faces. No one wants this. It just dilutes the value of advertisements and annoys users.

Just because it generates money doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

Aren't people already paying out the ass just for the privilege of having an i-device or being in Apple's ecosystem?

Luckily, all market research shows that iOS users buy more apps and content.

You are spot on. Apple's obvious point of view is this: random websites not affiliated with Apple are using our devices to advertize to the user. That must be stopped! We own the device, after all, and if the user is going to be advertized to, we give the permission for that and want a cut. Plus the wild and wooly ads are obnoxious. We can decide what is acceptable to our users and how it is presented, for a better (though not ad-free) experience.

Imagine LG doing something like this with their TVs...

Adblocking? I'd buy it in a heartbeat!

>I'll bet Apple won't consider "Install from Apple Store" type messages as ads."

Which for me, is the worst kind. When you accidentally click an ad (sometimes unbeknownst to you) and suddenly the browser is closing and iTunes is opening, trying to get you to install Game of War...

That said, if ad-blocking works on iOS, I think much of what he writes comes true. It will be interesting.

Please remember that Apple has only said they will support plugins for Safari, no direct mention of ad blocking.

If there is ad blocking it will be provided by a third party.

If it is then it will be up to the third party if they want to block this kind of advert. By their nature however "install banners" are typically part of the content (if it's for the site's own application) so a typical ad blocker wouldn't catch them. If however it's a third party advert showing an app install dialogue/overlay it will likely be blocked, by the fact it will likely come from an ad providing domain.

Apple has at least mentioned ad blocking to developers - the example given on the Apple Developer website for how to make a Safari plugin is called "Declarative Ad Blocker":

https://developer.apple.com/library/prerelease/ios/releaseno...

"I stand corrected" said the man in the orthopedic shoe!

Thanks

Install banners are built in to the browser, and just show metadata provided by the site. I strongly doubt they will be blockable.

You could ban a scrip loaded from an "ad" domain that modified the host pages HTML to add that metadata.

However I was referring to the pop up, tap intercepting redirects to the App Store.

The worst are pop up ads that occur in the middle of rapid tapping. Multiple taps can register be the OS responds. At least on Android, it will launch a new tab for each tap on the ad with each tab attempting to launch the Play Store. This is mostly confined to mobile games, but it can also happen when trying to quickly scroll.

Apple was clear when announcing this that their goal was NOT to block ads. It was to block stuff that a) tracked you and b) caused your surfing to slow down. This is what they're aiming for.

I'm an Android user and I didn't really get bias from the article, save a bias against ads and a compliment to Apple for allowing Adblocking.

I block "in-app" ads the same way I block "web" ads.

Most ads use the same third party DNS services which makes blocking even easier.

How do you block them?

Hosts file, I assume

But Apple users (who do not "jailbreak") are prevented from accessing their own device's files, e.g., the HOSTS file.

Apple denies the user reasonable control of the device they purchased. (Denying access to the HOSTS file is unreasonble in my opinion.)

But Apple does not (yet) exercise control over the network(s) that the user has joined.

As long as the user can still control at least some aspects of her own network (yes, she still can), then the user can block ads.

In my case, I use DNS to block ads. It is remarkably effective. But there are certainly other ways to do it.

Apps can be written to refuse to run if they can't fetch their ads. This can be baked into compiled code.

Apps can be written to download and cache ads periodically as part of their "update" process, and display these ads even when you don't have an internet connection. If they are not able to update these ads for some time (say 60 days), they can then refuse to run: "the application has expired and needs an update; please connect to the Internet". New ads are fetched when the user connects and lets the app update.

Have not encountered any apps like you describe. Examples?

I can also not use these kinda apps lol. Whats the point of putting in all these features to stop people if it merely results in an uninstall?

The point is that you may have a really good app that users want/need, and which presents ads, but in some unobtrusive way that users don't mind.

If you don't put in "anti-ad-circumvention" methods, then the ads will fall victim to some simple blanket blocking scheme that users set up before they even installed your app, not targetting your app specifically.

Analogy: a website with great content and very unobtrusive ads has them filtered by AdBlock anyway.

Currently the people who block in-app ads are people who have taken the effort to root / jailbreak their device. I find it hard to believe that they would put up with the ads.

90% of users won't uninstall.

> The overall article is of good quality but it reeks of Apple bias I personally find distasteful

Your entire comment is just anti-apple biased assumptions. How are you any better than the article?

Advertisers hate iAd because it doesn't let you harvest nearly as much users data as most platforms. Advertisers can go suck a lemon as far as I am concerned. It is hard for some people to see past their own Apple hate but success speaks for itself. It doesn't hurt that the competition keeps shooting themselves in the foot.

> success speaks for itself

Our experience as developers should tell us that this isn't true. Success often implies popularity, and popularity is not a very good indicator for quality.

That is true but they consistently are at the top of user satisfaction surveys. I suppose you could argue they were all tricked with marketing, but that doesn't really hold water in the long run. No one even bothers debating who has the best hardware build quality.

If what you were saying had any merit, then Google would be doing the same. Because, in case you forgot, they also have a popular mobile app store.

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