Advertising Cognitive Dissonance

Yeah,I had decided over a year ago I wouldn't ever buy another Apple product. Way to make me feel even more certain about that decision, Apple.

Yeah Apple are so far down the slippery advertising slope already there's no way they're going to start clambering back up. Such a shame as they could really have set themselves up as the no-ads Operating System.

Google and Microsoft are even worse, of course, so Apple have that fact to help them justify their own step down in quality - but their actions prove that 'customer satisfaction' is way down the list of their priorities.

Consumer good will takes years to build up and can be lost in an instant. I think some / many Apple executives don't fully appreciate this danger as they chase greater and yet greater profit.

Hope this link is posted:

https://www.cultofmac.com/news/apple-store-app-ai-shopping-assistant

Quote just in case:

"The Apple Store app’s privacy policy just got a new section titled “Virtual Shopping Assistant.” The company says the feature will use your account information, device identifiers, carrier details, and chat history to personalize responses. And if you allow location access, that gets factored in too."

SERIOUSLY???

So much for "privacy first", and everything else that may go along with positive changes with Apple like what is discussed in this post. The first comment (yeah, a different Dave) said something I'm still hoping to avoid... never buying another Apple product. Retired at 68 I'm too old to get acclimated to something like Linux (help, anyone?) much less going back to FireFox with yet more CONSTANT updates. I have what choices? HELP.

> The work Apple ships is what makes the brand what it is. But now they’re stricken with the mindset that it’s the Apple brand that makes something a high-quality superior experience.

How naive Gruber is? Why does he think that Tim hired Angela Ahrendts for?

Apple is brand driven since a decade at least.

I think Gruber is over thinking the process behind Apple accepting ads in their services.

I think the only thought that went into it was how to make more money.

No one at the top is thinking about user experiences any more. It's all about making number go up

@Kristoffer I think your thinking that Gruber over-thought the process behind Apple accepting ads is probably an over-simplification of what transpired.

Apple hasn't rushed into mixing commercially useful content with the overarching Apple Maps experience. They've been working at this for a long time. Apple is striving to get the balance right when it comes to helping mom and pop stores expose their businesses to a discerning audience of billions of consumers.

If money was the motivating factor, Apple would have rushed right in and stuffed the Maps app experience with ads and promos - prontissimo.

Everyone I know at Apple is driven by an empiric desire to deliver rich and meaningful user experience across all their hardware and software platforms. This ethos is the secret sauce that defines the very essence of what Apple is as a company - working for the good of humanity.

"This ethos is the secret sauce that defines the very essence of what Apple is as a company - working for the good of humanity."

Please tell me that this is Poe's Law in action

"Apple is striving to get the balance right when it comes to helping mom and pop stores"

Seeing how little they care for mom and pop developers, I doubt they give a second thought to min and pop stores.

But you are right that the downward spiral started long ago when they first let ads in.

Now they must top last quarters revenue.

@Jax_Maihov:

> "Everyone I know at Apple is driven by an empiric desire to deliver rich and meaningful user experience across all their hardware and software platforms."

I respectfully disagree. Starting from the top of the Apple pyramid... Liquid Glass, SwiftUI, planned obsolescence of Intel-based Macs... now let's go with further down the food ladder (which is definitely what seems to be everyone you know at Apple)... they may wish to deliver this rich and meaningful user experience, but seriously, they need to earn a rich and meaningful living for themselves first.

Everyone, from The soon-retiring CEO, the board, all the way down to the everyone you know is in it to make a living or at a level you clearly have no exposure to is in it for profits. Okay, I'll give you this - branding. As in an "empiric desire to deliver rich and meaningful" hardware and software, but even you can agree, (I hope) while maintaining extremely high profit margins.

@ Dave

>So much for "privacy first",

Apple's definition of privacy meant every info from their user belongs to Apple and Apple only. And not to third parties. Unfortunately most people still don't understand this.

Remember, Apple said Privacy is a fundamental human right. And they didn't just say it as marketing speak, they also said it in multiple court cases.

"Apple is striving to get the balance right when it comes to helping mom and pop stores expose their businesses to a discerning audience of billions of consumers."

Of all the things happening right now, this is not one of them. What is happening here is neither surprising nor new. Manton predicted it 16 years ago.

Once you generate revenue from ads, it will be somebody's job to make that revenue go up, and once you have people whose job it is to make ad revenue go up, it's over.

"working for the good of humanity."

...???

Jax is capping.

Premium experience and advertising are mutually exclusive. Apple's ads are worse than Google or Facebook because there's no good way to block them.

Apple shit-up OS push notifications and System Settings to advertise Apple Music and Apple TV. They shit up App Store search. Every other day they push me to update my OS and my only choice is "Remind me later" not "Never bother me again".

This is deeper than privacy -- Apple doesn't respect user choice or agency. Apple views customers as cattle who'll pay a premium for a polished block of aluminum then accept whatever slop they force on you.

After Apple Maps gets shitted up, why shouldn't Spotlight be the next ad frontier? Why not Desktop and Springboard? Why not put a little ad in every NS/UITextField? Why not make users watch a 5 second bumper before sending an iMessage? Why not change Mail's default signature of "Sent from my iPhone" to whoever bids highest next month? Shareholder value, guys!

@Ksec: Please help me out - what is *your* definition of "privacy"?

Me, this would be mostly personal, as in "what happens in my own 4 walls is private". But okay, let's go with legal. Again, your rights end with my nose. Are you telling me that the moment I purchase a music CD (or a movie DVD) I give up some rights? Oh yeah, guess so (think ("... broadcast rights to rebroadcast this event without express permissions...").

Nowadays people who have been living in the USA for 35 years are dead because (according to ICE) because they carried salt granulars in their vehicle. Slippery slopes...

> "Apple's definition of privacy meant every info from their user belongs to Apple and Apple only. And not to third parties."

Um, no. I never agreed to this. Not expressly, not in any way. I get it - price of buying Apple products. And yeah, they are (generally) better than most billion dollar market cap companies. Not to get off topic, but do you like this new partnership Apple has with Ford to use Apple Maps to help autonomously drive their EVs? Does this mean in a few years I need to add autonomously (read: hands-off) drivers to distracted drivers? Yep, now instead of speed limit signs being merely "guidance on how fast is safe" I'll be sure to add this.

Apple will add to their PROFITS with this. (Quick - will that 14 inch touchscreen in your vehicle that has Apple Maps - and Share, Connect, iPhone, Siri, etc.) have the ads they are padding their profits with? I have no clue. But where does ceding of YOUR privacy end?

I dislike ads as much as the next person, and I use ad blockers.

That said, if there are going to be ads, I’d rather Apple do them in a privacy-protecting, anonymous way than Google or Facebook, with their traceable click-through conversion tracking, or with any number of marketing trackers as found on almost all websites and apps.

Why did iAd fail? Perhaps becuase they refused to break that privacy rule (and perhaps concentrating on big ads and big spenders, rather than intent-focused search terms like Google did)

> I’d rather Apple do them in a privacy-protecting, anonymous way

You're mistaken. It's all marketing.

There's no anonymity to your App Store and service purchases with Apple (tied to your Apple ID, tied to your address). Your iPhone isn't magically immune to pinging networks that derive your location. They know a lot about you and have the elements to form a better ad network than the others by leveraging the trust people misplaced in them.

Apple is a PRISM company. They tried to rush CSAM on device. They work with governments to share your data when compelled (unlike some companies that turn over an actual blank page). Chinese users' iCloud encryption keys are stored on servers operated by a Chinese state-owned company. Etc.

Marketing trackers -- they have them. The recent Mysk disclosure about the App Store logging every intermediate search string as you type.

Anyone looks like a Privacy King when standing next to Google and Facebook, but it doesn't mean they are.

@Hammer Yes, and besides the keylogging, here is an older Mysk report about how Apple News sends information to a third-party data broker.

People concerned about Apple (lack of) privacy should have a look at how the Podcasts app works.

Even if you load shows into it obtained from non-Apple sources, using a non-Apple app like iMazing to transfer the files, even if you have never subscribed to a podcast via Apple's directory, or service, even if you have explicitly turned off all the iCloud sync options for podcasts, the Podcasts.app uploads your listening history to Apple, and it matches the individual shows you put on your device by their ID3 tags to those in Apple's own hosted feeds, and then it fetches Apple's version of the show art (which can be metadata isolated to your identity), which it shows in place of the art the show's creator embedded in the file.

If you change the file's ID3 tag to that of a different show, then copy it to your iOS device, it will adopt the artwork of the show matching the ID3 tag.

This idea that Apple is filled with "nice people, who just want to do good things" is the same excuse the functionaries behind every one of history's horrors trots out. EVERYONE in an organisation is responsible, and culpable for EVERYTHING that happens while they choose to remain there.

There are no "good people" at Apple, there are only "people whose personal ethical standards encompass the worst things Apple does".

Wow, you guys are something else.

> "Wow, you guys are something else."

Thinking to myself now... nothing to see here, just a drive-by comment that adds absolutely nothing to this post or comments. Starting with @Someone_else, no mention of who (are we talking an old geezer like me), what (it's called context), where (is this person from), but mostly - why. As in why "us guys" are something else.

Consider this my invitation to add something constructive. Even if I do not agree with you - it is *still* constructive. This world could definitely use some constructiveness right now.

@Dave, you’re fine.

> Wow, you guys are something else.

"Am I so out of touch? No, it's everybody else who is wrong."

> "Am I so out of touch? No, it's everybody else who is wrong."

Old man yells at cloud.

That’s the vibe here. Look, folks. If you like it the old way, don’t upgrade. Switch to Linux. Put an onion on your belt. You have choices.

I'm pretty sure Zoomers hate this tech devolution even more than we do. The question is, though, what your deal is. Every time Apple screws its customers, you find an increasingly unconvincing excuse. Why? Why do you feel compelled to defend the hostile behavior of one of the world's largest corporations?

Although I guess to be fair, in this thread, you're no longer really defending them; you're just trying to insult the people who disagree with you.

Manton Reece should put a ten year delay on his posts. He would sound insightful, as it is he sounds crazy, even though he’s right…

Dude, i think zoomers are annoyed you’re boiling the ocean with your LLM use.

Also, what happened to you? You’re less froth-at-the-mouthy than you used to be a few months ago. Where’s the fire for Revolution I used to see…The huge onion on your belt, worn like a badge of honor?

Is it the LLM I’m talking to here? Well, whatever. Apple isn’t perfect, and I’m realistic about a corporation, but some of you go way overboard and really just need to stop upgrading.

Don’t like the iPhone’s business model? Don’t buy one.

>> I'm pretty sure Zoomers hate this tech devolution even more than we do.
> Dude, i think zoomers are annoyed you’re boiling the ocean with your LLM use.

So you agree.

> You’re less froth-at-the-mouthy than you used to be a few months ago

See above: "you're no longer really defending them; you're just trying to insult the people who disagree with you"

> Don’t like the iPhone’s business model? Don’t buy one.

You've said this at least half a dozen times, and people give you the same response each time, which you then ignore.

"The whole thing is funny because at a fundamental level we all just know in our bones that Apple never even considered putting “Intel Inside” stickers on Macs."

I remember when Keefe asked that question and everybody in the Macosphere had an absolute meltdown, with people like Gruber and Welch and "The Macalope" attacking that guy in the most absurd ways. It's funny to me that his question ended up being so relevant that twenty years later, we still refer back to Jobs' answer. I don't know what Keefe is doing today and if he's aware of this, but I do hope he gets some satisfaction out of it.

Steve put Apple's ethos of the time very succinctly: "You know, we put ourselves in the customers’ shoes, and we say, what do we want stuck on our product when we take it out of the box? And the answer is, nothing."

I think that's the difference to today's Apple.

The second thought I had when thinking back to this is that I miss a lot of the outlets from back then, like Matt Deatherage's writing.

The only cognitive dissonance here is imagining that Apple's perpetual growth is compatible with a respect for the customer experience.

So, yeah. If your share portfolio, pension pot, whatever, depends on the fortunes of Apple, and you were hoping that maybe Apple would just leave some of that sweet, sweet wonga on the table … well, calling you naive would be a kindness.

Too kind, honestly.

Advertising is also the subject of an article this week on the TidBITS blog / Talk: [Apple’s Q3 2026 Earnings—Record Revenue and Marketing to the Street - Article Comments - TidBITS Talk](https://talk.tidbits.com/t/apple-s-q3-2026-earnings-record-revenue-and-marketing-to-the-street/33906/19) where I wrote

As the developer of mySleepButton and Hookmark Pal iPhone/iPad apps, I still find it obscene that Apple has advertisements in App Store. How many sales has CogSci Apps (my dev company) lost because a deep-pocketed competitor capitalizes on the brand recognition of mySleepButton. The cognitive shuffle sleep technique that I invented and which is at the heart of mySleepButton app. This year again, the technique was covered a lot: in Time Magazine, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, BBC etc. This is generating traffic to the App Store; however App Store ads from competitors are stealing our sales. Calm and Headspace all received over $100 million in VC and seem to have advertised for the "mySleepButton" keyword. Give users what they search for is what I say. If they search for mySleepButton that for should be the top result with CogSci Apps needing to pay for that.

> Old man yells at cloud.
> That’s the vibe here. Look, folks. If you like it the old way, don’t upgrade. Switch to Linux. Put an onion on your belt. You have choices.

And yet, there is a trend amongst zoomers buying dumb phone because they are tired of Apps, attention seeking and all this garbage.

So much for the old man yelling.