- This is what basically everyone else has done over the past decade. Google used to put a different background behind ads in its search (https://www.fsedigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Google...). It made it really easy to tell what was an ad and skip over it quickly. Now it's a lot harder to quickly notice what's an ad and what isn't.
Sites used to have banner ads. Now they show posts that look exactly like the organic posts in your feed, just with a small "sponsored", "promoted", or "ad" mark somewhere. Half the time the post is large enough that it takes up my entire screen and the "sponsored" mark is below and off-screen.
If you go on Amazon, the "sponsored" text is much smaller and light gray rgb(87,89,89) while the product text is near-black rgb(15,17,17). They want to make the sponsored text less visible. Sometimes it's even unclear if the sponsored tag applies to a single product or a group of products.
It's shocking that Apple hasn't done this trick yet when everyone else started doing it years ago.
- More and more evidence that the a-holes with spreadsheets are taking over at Apple and they’re completely devoid of any ideas on the software side.
I heard someone randomly say that they should replace Tim Cook with Scott Forstall. I chuckled at the idea but this might be a great idea.
Apple is having its Ballmer moment. Google did too before AI lit the fire under their feet.
Who is going to be Apple’s next Nadella? Steve Jobs was the original.
by rgovostes
11 subcomments
- This makes no difference, because I can’t remember the last time I installed an app other than for the occasional airline.
From 2008-12 it was genuinely exciting to see what new apps were being released every day. Mobile games from that era had cultural impact. I bought $2 apps without a thought.
But Apple incentivized monetization above all else and killed that excitement. Now you can’t find a tip calculator that doesn’t charge a monthly subscription. A popular flight tracker is $60/year (or a $300 purchase). A flash card app costs the same. Apple’s curated list of “essential utilities” includes a birthday countdown that costs $5/wk.
I know every app will cost me hundreds over the span of just a few years for marginal utility so I simply stopped buying them. And I wonder if Apple’s push for more ad revenue is a symptom of that trend.
by apparent
11 subcomments
- The search results in the App Store are ridiculous. Sometimes I search for an app by name and have to scroll through dozens of other apps before finding the one I had searched for.
App Store search is as broken as Apple Mail search, if not worse.
- It recently occurred to me that it’s been years since it was possible to find some new and interesting app just by browsing the App Store, like it used to be when iPhone and Android were first introduced. Now I open the store knowing in advance what exactly I’m looking for and take care not to accidentally click on a lookalike.
- Not only are Apple's services bad, they've becoming inescapable. It's rumored that they'll add ads to maps as soon as next year.
Music.app is simply an ad for Apple Music, Books.app is like reading in a Barnes and Noble while someone from marketing looks over your shoulder and their TV app features their own shows to an overbearing degree — everything else is becoming more of an afterthought.
- This is very unfortunate. To me Apple was the last corporate standing that is not doing ads nefariously. If this is changing what is next? I’m aware it is a slippery slope argument, but this has to do with trust. Apple’s advertised stance on privacy and security and ads always has been believable (to me) because of their business model and that they made it the distinguishing feature.
Now, what is left? iPads are great, MacBook with Apple silicon are unmatched in refinement, iPhones are awesome but getting a bit stale. Apple Watch is awesome, but for sports Garmin are better. It is the integrated ecosystem with iCloud that makes the total system powerful.
Where to go? I love Linux with CachyOS on my desktop. Anything similar for tablets and laptops? I think KDE has something like connect that aims to do what iCloud does.
by PlatoIsADisease
2 subcomments
- Wont make a difference. People are already in the Walled Prison and moms/teens/lower-middle class people are shamed for not being able to afford the $50/mo to buy an iphone. They had numerous privacy and security issues that caused literal deaths of VIPs. Their quality is always 2nd best if we are being generous.
If they haven't switched yet, its not going to happen. Apple knows this. Late users are always punished like my parents who still have a landline and cable tv.
- there are already regulations in the EU which say
- ADs need to be clearly recognizable as such
- bunch of other things related to deceiving users and customer protection
- the risk this enables in combination with target ads to trick a user into installing a look alike malware makes such designs IMHO negligent, and in the EU you are responsible for (your) negligence no matter what you put in some TOS
so why do we tolerate sites systematically blending the lines between ads and content in a way which makes it unclear what is and isn't an ad and is designed to deceive the user into clicking on an ad instead of the content they are looking for. Which to make it worse also has lead to absurd market practices where competitors can semi-hide your product by buying ads which puts their look alike products above your product every time a user looks for your product.
- Services business is a slippery slope, everyone succumbs to the YoY revenue growth push and they all gravitate towards the same dirty tactics. They even tried turning the hardware into a subscription model but I guess it didn’t gain much traction.
by willtemperley
2 subcomments
- It still says AD in big blue letters on the new version. Not really a big deal from my point of view.
Still there does seem to be a pattern of ignoring their hardcore fanbase: using Gemini, making ads less obvious, making free apps part of paid bundles. I suspect Apple are getting a lot of pressure from shareholders, given their recent growth has been far lower than e.g. Google.
This is not a trend I like and I'm definitely looking for a Linux boat to jump on, to future proof app distribution, but there just doesn't seem to be an obvious candidate right now.
- It's crazy to think that even if you buy the phone with the highest price premium your are still forced to navigate between ads for basic feature and have a shitty experience.
Despite Apple not needing more money has they have already can reserves more then they can know how to use it
by Loudergood
0 subcomment
- This is what happens when companies start selling advertising.
Inevitably the incentives for making that advertising "succeed" infect the quality of the other products they sell.
by ChrisMarshallNY
1 subcomments
- I find that's the case already. They also force you to go through their ad-splattered gauntlet, every time you reopen the app.
It's pretty much worthless, to me. I always use direct app links, from the developers' sites.
I shudder to think of it getting worse.
- I can remember, or perhaps imagine a time when the FTC would knowingly not look kindly on a situation like this, so Apple with its huge market share and revenue wouldn’t consider it. I imagine now it’s likely not a concern for the agency, and if it were, a political contribution would go a long way towards resolving any concerns.
- With stuff like this, this is just a really bad idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46323041
You can't tell family to search for things in the app store anymore, I always provide direct links. It's just to dangerous otherwise.
- >it probably helps increase click-through rates which ultimately boosts Apple’s revenue in its ads business
I assume that means it increases the number of times users install the wrong app (possibly with serious consequences)?
- the change is more subtle than I expected but this does seem like a step in the wrong direction
a bigger older problem is the number of copycat applications allowed in the app store. for example the listing for the official microsoft authenticator app (free and used in many corporate environments) is surrounded by results with similar looking icons and titles. these look a likes also work for MFA but charge a monthly subscription. not exactly a scam since they do work, but its obvious they are only there to confuse users into paying for something thats free.
- Oh, so the Google playstore since... forever. Or at least as long as I can remember. If you have a "search" feature on your <anything app> it should filter down to exactly what you would expect, no sponsored positions, no irrelevant apps as ads, etc.
Shame apple is going towards the dark pattern of ads as results.
- This sounds horrible for user experience. That used to be Apple's claimed Raison d'être. It's sad how far they are willing to debase themselves to chase a few extra nickels. They are already one of the richest companies in the world.
Surely they should focus on improving the actual quality of their products (particularly software), and developer experience and documentation, rather than further watering down their quality.
This is going to leave a black stain on Tim Cook's legacy. Sure apple may be more profitable and bigger than ever, but its betrayed its legacy, and its users.
- I feel these practices contribute to the post-truth society where a user looks for a fact and gets a paid-for opinion shoved in the face instead. It should be easy for the user to discern the factual relevance of search query results, and it does not bode well if the provider of the search functionality is in on the deceit.
- In related news, 10% of Meta ads are malicious, and they have Meta seems to have little incentive to stop it.
https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortu...
by LandenLove
0 subcomment
- The most insulting aspect of these kinds of changes is the fact that Apple is generally sold as the "premium" brand. You are still paying a premium price, but you are getting the "freemium" experience anyways. And don't forget the additional 30% they take on every sale on the app store.
- Etsy is probably the worst I have seen. Almost impossible to see. Doubt it is even legal in EU.
https://imgur.com/a/ntnNVZF
- Does anyone know when it started to be "ok" to disguise ads as search results? And I don't mean making them look more similar, but including them at all, even as the top results. I'm genuinely wondering how this started because it feels like such a bad idea, but everyone is now doing it anyway because we got used to it by adding it to our list of noise to filter out when interacting with anything connected to the internet.
by DonHopkins
0 subcomment
- Liquid Glass was always about blurring the line.
- Do people actually browse the App Store to discover what’s new? I personally only open it when I already know exactly what I want to download, for example Obsidian or Firefox. I search, install, and I am done. I never scroll around or browse for inspiration.
I am genuinely curious how others use it. Is App Store browsing a real behavior, or is discovery mostly being forced because search no longer reliably gets you to the thing you already know you want?
- At a glance I don’t really see how this is meaningfully worse at differentiating.
If you saw more than 2 apps on the screen at a time the blue background might serve to distinguish ads from organic results, but when it’s the only thing in your screen-view with a few pixels of the next result peeking out from the bottom, then it just looks like they’re alternating colors from one row to the next.
by supermatt
2 subcomments
- How do you test for ad effectiveness vs annoyance? Especially so for a captive audience where they can’t leave and go elsewhere?
It seems like every market leader that gets ads eventually “optimises” towards making them look like not ads. Obviously they will be more effective if people don’t realise what they are, so how do they account for annoyance (and the other negatives a user experiences) while doing these a/b tests?
- Wow, how much greed will we all tolerate?
Apple annual gross profit for 2025 was $195.201B, a 8.04% increase from 2024.
And still, they feel they can do this? I have never seen a better sign of a monopoly in my life.
by VerifiedReports
0 subcomment
- Apple's app-store "results" have long been absolute bullshit. Apple lied to judges, developers, and the public about the app store. I wrote an application for a popular company; and even if you searched for the company's exact name, the application didn't show up in the top 300 results (which is where I gave up scrolling).
Instead, Apple delivered results with misspellings of the company name or applications that didn't contain any portion or variant of the search string AT ALL. Not in the app name, description, publisher name... anywhere.
I complained to Apple and got a boilerplate bullshit response. Then I raised a threat of legal action for Apple's hijacking and perversion of our trademark in their search results. This at least provoked a specific response, where Apple claimed that publisher name is "one of the top three" criteria for app-store search.
BULLSHIT.
- Apple have enough customer behaviour data at hand to fully understand that there is very little they can't get away with.
So why not maximize profit?
- Google Play - at least on tablets - makes ads vs not ads much clearer and, if you're searching for one app very obviously (like "Kindle") puts that above the ads.
Companies good at selling and distributing ads have the confidence to not be annoying about them.
- We really need more competition in the smartphone space. I think everyone hates this stuff.
by WesolyKubeczek
0 subcomment
- App Store's UX has always been a show of excrement, and its search is wonky as hell. I can't imagine myself use that to discover apps, after having been shoved tons of dreck results up my behind the last time I've tried it.
I'd rather ask for app recommendations on 4chan or Reddit than browse App Store.
- This is an interesting left hand vs right hand thing. Apple is making it more difficult for find a particular app while coding assistance is making it easier to build one. At some point those curves intersect and the App Store becomes irrelevant.
- To be be honest, the worst Google-like thing about the before and after is how you have to scroll down to see actual results. On my iPhone, I get half of an app showing below the full sponsored app.
Just makes me want to find iOS apps through other means than the App Store.
by JKCalhoun
1 subcomments
- En-something-ification…
- This will always be a thing, the click metrics dictate it and to justify the costs to the company advertising and the low # of clicks, something has to be done to save the new revenue Ads give. They might as well add modal (psudeo popup) ads, because they will be there in 15yrs.
by SaaSasaurus
0 subcomment
- "Blurs the line" between ads and results is generous. In 5 years from now, showing up high on the app store will require big $$$ 99 times out of 100, IMO.
- I download new apps maybe once or twice per year. Every time I already know the app I want to download. I haven't browsed an app store casually in almost a decade.
- The next obvious step is to shrink the 'Ad' label, remove its background altogether and make the text a faded gray, or completely transparent "glass."
by self_awareness
0 subcomment
- This is funny, since clear separation of ads and not ads is one of the requirements of apps that are admitted to AppStore. If there is no clear separation, the app is rejected.
- Ah, great, they're copying the worst part of the Play Store. I use Android, and avoid opening the Play Store unless I already know exactly what I'm looking for, it has been enshitified to within a centimeter of its life.
I would actually spend more money through the Play Store if it wasn't such an awful user experience.
- This feels like a conversation about irrelevant matters the App Store ad design at the advent of AI integration? I see the future being AI suggesting or responding with an app or extension to add specific abilities or features based on stated objectives, i.e., just a package manager behind the scenes. I don’t see myself going to some App Store. I haven’t even “browsed” one in years because they all seem extremely static, having reached a peak saturation and static state.
Frankly, Apple could have probably just totally replaced the App Store a long time ago if they were not slaves to financial reports by simply integrating app search into spotlight more closely or prominently… pull down, search “ai app” (or whatever) and you’re provided with a list of app results that includes an install button.
App updating could and should have been integrated into the settings app.
These kinds of things will only increasingly start biting the Apple as Google has been forced to face the abyss of the death of the common search they’ve dominated for decades now. I don’t think Apple has faced that existential Grim-reaper yet… what do you do when the app ecosystem, OS UI/UX advantages, and even hardware quality has vanished through the cascading integration of AI? I don’t know that Apple has faced that yet or at least has been left blindsided, considering what I’ve been seeing from them.
by darkteflon
1 subcomments
- Ffs. Alright, what’s the best way for me to run Silverblue on Mac hardware these days with a full GPU-accelerated desktop experience? Is UTM any good? Any alternatives? I used to run Win 10 in Parallels on MacOS and it was excellent - that’s the level of virtualisation polish I’m going for.
After 25+ years, I see the direction of travel - I’m done with this bullshit. Yesterday my MacBook started ringing loudly in the middle of the cafe where I was working when a call came in. I switched off Handoff years ago, but a recent update has obviously silently re-enabled it.
I cannot have Apple just arbitrarily switching shit up for their own benefit on the machines I use to get my work done. And they are now unquestionably succumbing to increasingly baldfaced enshittification.
Do we need an “Ask HN” for developers stuck on / preferring Mac hardware, unwilling / unable to run Asahi on bare metal, but wanting a GPU-accelerated Linux desktop experience?
by solarkraft
0 subcomment
- The old App Store is already terrible.
If this is the blueprint for their planned platform endhittification I may as well go back to Android.
by stalfosknight
3 subcomments
- Why must Apple do this?
They're already rolling in profits that dwarf the national budgets of most countries. And I say this as a shameless Apple fanboy.
by MarginalGainz
0 subcomment
- It’s the final stage of 'Search Enshittification'.
The core utility of a search engine is Relevance (finding the best match for user intent). The core utility of an Ad engine is Yield (finding the highest bidder).
When you blur the visual distinction between the two, you aren't just 'optimizing monetization', you are actively degrading the product's primary function.
From a UX perspective, this trains users to develop 'banner blindness' for the entire top half of the viewport. They stop trusting that the first result is the best result. It’s a short-term revenue extraction hack that burns long-term trust in the platform's neutrality.
by andsoitis
1 subcomments
- Apple’s Ads business is around 8-10 billion dollars in revenue. Thats a tiny fraction of their overall revenue.
by morshu9001
3 subcomments
- I read the title then looked at the screenshots and thought what? It still says "ad."
- What if we all Venmo'd Tim Apple 5 bucks so he wouldn't be forced to do this?
- The lines where pretty blurred already. If you search for the exact name of an app, I think that needs to go first in the results, the ads can be the third or forth. Having ads show up before the "correct" app is incredibly dangerous in a world where so much of our digital life is in various apps. Often the people see is actively trying to trick people into installing the wrong thing, making the ad less visible is going to get a lot of people scammed.
How the hell Apple does not see this is beyond me. All of their fancy security in iOS is worthless if they allow people to be tricked into installing scam-ware.
- Feels short sighted. Every such change gets me closer to ditching the ecosystem altogether.
- I remember when it was a news headline that Apple showed ads _at all_ in App Store. It's sad that they're straying even further into scummy ways to nickel-and-dime every ounce of profit they can get out of everyone using their products and services.
(Check out nice and simple it was in 2008: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xo9cKe_Fch8 )
by workfromspace
1 subcomments
- Apple, do you want to lose customers? Because that's how you lose customers.
But seriously, one of the reasons why I got iPhone for my parents to replace their Androids is it's relatively safer environment. But this change increases potential spam and attack surface.
by everdimension
0 subcomment
- They've been blurring a lot lately
by sergiotapia
0 subcomment
- Google does the same where an ad is the first result. :(
- This is the Apple I've always worried would emerge.
- 26.3 ß 2 still shows the blue background on my iPad.
by CGMthrowaway
1 subcomments
- Do people actually use the app store? Are we not all just searching in spotlight and clicking the first app that comes up (as long as it has 100K/1mil+ downloads) ?
by thisislife2
0 subcomment
- Is anyone really surprised over this?
by NamlchakKhandro
0 subcomment
- Normal hn post: 50 comments
A hn post about Apple: the entire clergy and the clandestine cell network of Apple devotees emerges to hug hn to death.
by UqWBcuFx6NV4r
0 subcomment
- Alright. Directly into the bin.
- If an iPhone is going to be as bad as an Android like that then what's the point. The "premium" feeling is eroded like this.
- What cant i search for paid apps
by MiddleEndian
0 subcomment
- One of the main reasons I used to like Macs instead of Windows machines was because Apple did not do this kind of bullshit lol. Although showing ads on the app store above your searches at all is terrible behavior that both iOS and Android are guilty. They already get a cut of all the sales.
- They already blurred the line between bad design and utter insanity with liquid glass. This feels like the natural progression.
- One of the reasons ChatGPT is taking over google searches for a lot of people is that they also did this kind of shit.
These companies are overconfident.
Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.
by akimbostrawman
0 subcomment
- but HN told me apple isn't a advertisement company?
- Wow! They force you to use their app store, and now they have the gall to trick users into installing ads—and there will be multiple ads.
- Apple's App Store has been a stinking dumpster fire for many years now, and I've been avoiding it like the plague. I'm not surprised that Apple works on making it even worse.
- i don't remember last time i was in the app store.
- Why such outrage? Businesses need to make money afterall.
- Sighs,
points to Best Books of 2025 table,
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittificatio...
- Seriously? Already the only thing that makes ads distinguishable from results is that you search for "microsoft authenticator" and the first result is ... something else.
They do have an unnoticeable "this is an ad" tiny text somewhere. Are they talking about removing even that?
by KolibriFly
0 subcomment
- This feels like the same old dark-pattern playbook, just dressed up more subtly. When the only difference between an ad and an organic result is a tiny "Ad" label, you're no longer informing users
- Enshittification, the sequel.
- Enshittification of Apple has been sad to watch.
- Honestly, I use iOS purely as anti-Facebook guardrails
I trust there's granular permissions so that Zuckerberg can't scrape contacts
I understand there's corruption, and that annoys me. I wish Apple remained pure. But you still have to do this. Zuck is malicious as hell and we need sandboxes
by ljflkajslkejr
0 subcomment
- Enshitification
Anyone who has used the most ios or macos updates knows Apple has run out of good ideas
- Just a reminder that paid for gaming of the search results on Amazon is around a $60bn business for them.
- Enshittification of Apple continues. I was quite dedicated to Apple for years but I'm glad I just bought Google Pixel (degoogled with GrapheneOS).
- the enshitification continues
by junglistguy
0 subcomment
- [dead]
by worksonmine
0 subcomment
- Apple must be aiming for innovations in the renewables sector. They're trying to get Steve Jobs spinning fast enough to harness the energy.
/s
- The masters of UI design are showing us how to build an app store. /s
- I'm a pretty liberal guy, I like democracy I like captialism but its stuff like this that is blackpilling me on private enterprise. No matter how much they have they continue to push the boundary and squeeze the customer. My cope at the moment is that its only americans and its due to a failure of culture. But im starting to the same greed in companies in my own country. I dont think worker owned enterprise is any better as they still have the same incentives.
- Not obvious to me that this is worse or as user-hostile as many seem to presume.
Previously the blue background made the ad result look more highlighted and more prominent.
Now it is just like the other results - not special or better.
Yes, the HN audience knows the visual convention indicates that the blue background represents an ad. Does your everyday user know that or do they assume the blue results are better?
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