Apple is so right about the user experience, often very important aspects like user security. However, there are still some things that go comically wrong.
You can complain about Siri and you can complain about autocorrect, but for the Macalope’s money, there’s nothing that contradicts the platonic ideal of the Apple user experience more than ads.
We roundly mock Windows PCs and Android devices – and rightly so! – because they’re so stuffed with crapware you’d expect them to look like a broken tin of cookies.
Customer: “Why is this laptop bursting at the seams?”
Salesman: “Um, it’s full of fluffy computer goodness?”
You paid for these devices, why are they full of garbage slowing down your device and spying on you? Because someone decided the company could make more money at the expense of your user experience, that’s why.
Well, ads are definitely the crapware of Apple devices.
It’s baffling how Apple thinks it’s okay for notifications to default to saying there are games or apps you could download! What? Can this mobile computer run apps from some kind of store? Fascinating. Tell me about it repeatedly until I can find the setting to turn it off. Which, even if you succeed, has its own pitfalls.
And speaking of the App Store, what would be great is that when you search for something on the store, an ad could be pushed up the top for something that is probably A) designed to confuse you into downloading it instead of the thing that they were looking for, or B) some kind of virtual coin gambling because everyone loves to gamble with virtual coins.
App Store ads certainly don’t benefit users, and even for app makers they create a hostile environment for search results. If you don’t buy ads for searches for your own app, then a competitor or online casino could. It’s the poster child for the phrase “This is a nice app you have here. It would be a shame if something happened to it.”
However, the worst thing lately is ads on Apple TV+. Start an episode of a TV+ program and you will get an ad for another TV+ program. Is that what the “+” in Apple TV+ is for? You may also get an ad for a premium TV+ feature such as Major League Soccer. At least that’s an upsell. The first is an ad for another show you could watch for free, preventing you from watching the show you were actually trying to watch. You already have the money from the Macalope. What exactly are you trying to sell him?
Admittedly, it’s not as bad as when the Macalope used the CW app to watch some shows and he often got an ad for the show he was already watching. Watching Legends of Tomorrow? You might also like… [sound of gears turning, algorithm chunking, a cat hissing, and DING!]… ‘Legends of tomorrow’!”
Success.
IDG
The advertising experience on Apple platforms is like having coin locks on the bathroom cubicles in a fancy restaurant. From top to bottom they are unnecessary, detrimental to the user experience and seem so un-Apple.
While the company collects a decent amount of user data itself, it certainly doesn’t sell it to third parties like so many of its competitors. It could make even more money doing that, but it doesn’t. Likewise, it could simply choose not to run ads, including so-called “home ads” (which are not ads for the show “Home” but ads for its own products). TV+ pre-roll ads may seem less blatant because they’re like what you get when you go to the cinema, but they’re still ads (and unlike what you might see for a movie, they don’t give you an idea of the many amenities available in the lobby).
Apple makes a lot of money and likes to claim that it does this simply by providing a superior user experience. That’s largely true, but the Macalope wishes the company would completely stick to its throat and drop the ads.