Apple managed to become the most valuable company in the world without ads. Adding them after hitting that milestone feels either greedy or desperate, maybe a little of both. I know the ads themselves aren’t new, but the steady increase is a worrying trend.

I’d rather pay an extra $100 for the phone than have ads all over it.

This is misleading - does it mean people are searching for an app that they already know about and want to download - chatgpt, samsung, gmail etc. Or searching for a topic or problem and see what apps are available - LLM, camera, running etc.

I rarely do the latter - using web search to find reviews or asking an LLM to give me a list comparing the features and then search for the apps in the appstore (trying to ignore the ads)

https://www.macrumors.com/2025/12/18/altstore-japan-launch/

Still an unfortunate development though.

I wrote an app for my company and put it on Apple's app store. It was basically IMPOSSIBLE to find. You could search for the company's exact name (it was the publisher of the app), and it did not appear in the top 300 results (which is where I gave up).

What I caught Apple doing was essentially hijacking the company's (trademarked) name and not showing it, but rather any and every alternate spelling of a similar word... or listings that had no part of the string in their name or description at all. The search string was not present in ANY part of the vast majority of search "hits."

I complained to Apple, and after being blown off once with a bullshit boilerplate response, I mentioned legal action in defense of our trademark. Then they addressed my case with a lie: They claimed that the publisher name is one of the top three search criteria. That is utter bullshit, in practice.

One thing I've noticed with the Play Store is that top-level advertised app results are, more often than not, totally unrelated to what I searched for, and therefore completely useless as both a suggestion to the user and an 'opportunity' for the app creator. In fact, it usually invokes a 'this app must be a scam' response from me.

Thank you, Apple, for increasing the number of opportunities for getting scammed and manipulated on your platform. I will be telling my friends.

I guess the bar for user trust has now dropped enough across the board to sell more off without losing customers? Pretty sorry state of affairs.

I immediately lost some respect for Apple “so this is the expensive luxury platform people talk about?”

I hate that “we” focus on the second derivative to determine value (not just growth but speed of growth). It’s just for the shareholders, meanwhile us customers are looking at a company that is rich beyond believe thinking: “Seriously??”

Apple was the one vendor you could buy stuff from to be able to look down on the peasants bombarded by ads all the time. Now, when I specifically search for an app in the App Store, the result is barely on the screen because it is filled with an ad for another. You get deeply embedded ads and nudges for iCloud pretty often. It already sucks. It‘s like they hate USPs.

As an app developer, I used to have to outbid everyone to get the one and only spot. Now I need only outbid the top 3 bidders (or however many slots there are).

I advertised for many months back when App Store ads first started, and it was worth the expense because of higher sales. I no longer advertise because the one and only slot is far outbid what that slot is worth to me, and that I can recoup without spending a lot or raising the price for the app.

So I chose not to advertise and keep the app price lower.

One would think it's good search that helps users find what they want. But noooo! It's ads!

Ads help users! One has to love this kind of orwellian language. And one has to wonder if it's ever written in good faith? Or is everyone lying as a matter of course, to people who know perfectly well they're being lied to.

Is it even lying if you know they know you're lying?

Let's hope alternative App Stores take off. I have very low hopes but hope dies last.

As someone who works in tech for a career it's honestly a bit of an existential crisis. I actively work on a SaaS product but would never even consider paying for SaaS any more myself.

Apps are addictive but not enriching our lives like we once thought.

Now you want to add advertising?

If a new product comes along and hits the right notes—maybe the e-ink variety, or Cat’s Android with thermal camera. I have the four previous, so I don’t imagine it as a trauma to step off the merry-go-round for my next phone.

A good example of this is my app Bit.

This would be like if Disney put a press release out bragging about how Mickey Mouse was going to help sell alcohol sales inside their theme parks.

Anything for money.