“Gurman warned that the move risks some amount of consumer backlash.”
The frogs don’t have to wait and see if the pot is boiling, they have a pot named Android right next to them for a direct temperature comparison and other Maps apps available. If I lose screen space to ads in my native Apple apps then I’m out. How is the money they are getting from hardware sales and their developer fees not enough? I don’t see how the execs can’t tell how damaging this is to their brand image.
Apple used to be something you accepted because you were filled with rage at Microsoft. Then Apple was something that cost extra money but it had good software and cross device integration. Then Apple’s software quality went down noticeably, but I stuck with them because at least I figured my data was slightly safer on an Apple device. But now if they’re using my data to sell ads they don’t even have a privacy angle. Apple now lags Android flagships in features, costs at least as much, and also sells my data.
> If I lose screen space to ads in my native Apple apps then I’m out.
The article says "The project will apparently give restaurants and other businesses the option to pay to have their details featured more prominently in search."
It doesn't sound like it will affect screen space of the map view in any way.
And software needs to make money. Their map data is hugely expensive to purchase and produce -- Maps isn't just a little app like Notes, it costs $$$$$ to develop and keep current. Apple isn't a charity. If you're out, who are you going to switch to? Are there OSM apps that are free without ads with the same level of functionality?
Apple make so much money on the hardware (and subscription) I buy from them, they can easily allocate a small fraction to features that convinced me to pay for said hardware in the first place.
They already do allocate that fraction. They have tons of software that is 100% free on their devices, and without ads.
But Maps is orders of magnitude more expensive than other apps because of the data. Maps isn't just a feature, it's an ongoing service. It's not unreasonable that they recoup some of the money with more prominence given to paid search results.
I don't hear people complaining much about the advertising that has been on Google Maps since forever. So I don't understand what's working people up here. These aren't banner ads. Apple is a business. And you can use Apple Maps over the web, without paying Apple a cent. You really think Apple should be a charity and do this stuff entirely for free?
I definitely complain about advertising in Google Maps all the time. The only time I swear out loud while using my phone is when I use maps, like each time an ad for a business blocks the area I'm actually trying to see to navigate, or each time it shows me where Taco Bell and Arby's is when I'm searching for something like "Indian Restaurant". You can argue that they need to do this to make money or whatever, fine, but don't argue that the user experience isn't shitty.
It strikes me as more unreasonable for you to demand that companies to give you things for free. Honestly, it strikes me as some kind of feeling of entitlement, and I don't know what you think justifies that.
And if you're paying them a monthly subscription for iCloud storage or Apple TV or something, I don't see what that has to do with a Maps. You don't get Apple TV for free if you pay for iCloud either. Different services are different services.
Do you think restaurants should just always give you a free appetizer every time you walk in because sometimes you order entrees there?
I paid for hardware advertised to run Maps without ads. I am literally entitled to that. Apple makes plenty of money on hardware for that to be a minor expense compared to their profits.
If they were really greedy, they could require a subscription for Maps. I might even accept that.
I will not accept ads. I paid quite a lot extra specifically to avoid ads.
> I paid for hardware advertised to run Maps without ads.
Show me where their advertising says their hardware runs Maps without ads, where they make that claim. Because I've certainly never seen it.
Again, you know Apple Maps works on web browsers too? It's not only for Apple devices. You don't need to pay Apple a dime.
I really don't know what contract you're imagining where you think you've "paid quite a lot extra specifically" to Apple and they promised you no ads in Maps in exchange.
I didn't know Apple Maps works without an Apple device. Fine, they can require a monthly subscription or show ads to people that haven't paid for their hardware. But I did, specifically to avoid the ads on Windows and Android.
Why are you defending ads? I've never encountered someone insisting companies should do more of them, especially if they clearly don't need the revenue. Are you ok?
Because I'm realistic about the fact that money doesn't grow on trees, and businesses only keep things around in the long-term that clearly contribute to the bottom line.
> especially if they clearly don't need the revenue
Pretty much everyone with shares in Apple would very much like more revenue because those shares become more valuable. There's no such thing as shares that "don't need" to grow anymore.
Not sure what that has to do with anything? Showing software in a particular state doesn't mean the software is frozen in that state for all time. Maps has gotten tons of changes since previous versions in keynotes.
I certainly don't remember any keynote ever saying "and we promise to keep Maps ad-free whenever it's running on Apple hardware!"
I think the answer is obvious, no lawyers needed in this case. That's not a lawsuit anyone would ever win, since Apple has never made such promises, and iPhones continue to accomplish the tasks they have been advertised as accomplishing.
If I want to go to (for example) Buffalo Wild Wings and it shows up second in my search instead of second because some other chicken company paid for a sponsored spot then I’ve lost screen space.
I’m not talking about switching apps, I’m talking about switching phones, and I’ll save on the price of an Apple One subscription and give it to other companies. If all the options are doing the same thing, what differentiates Apple? It’s not their software quality anymore. It’s not their privacy stance anymore. It’s not camera quality. It’s not screen quality. It’s not price. I might as well shop around.
I was under the impression that the extra 20-50% Apple charged for just about everything is intended to cover these costs, in order to retain consumers.
A business needs to make money. Apple, as a business, makes money. They might want to make more money by increasing advertising, but surely they, of all businesses, don’t need to.
This. Apples execs have choices on how to keep making profits. Enshitification is a choice, not a requirement by some force of nature. Tim Cook could just as well sell his shareholders on the idea that really good and user friendly products can be sold for a lot of money.
Each and every piece of software from Apple needs to make money? I just checked here, last year they made $391.035B in revenue. Is there any software from Apple that NEEDS to make money? Is this really a fair and honest take?
I assume this is "crowd sourced" on Apple Maps and Google Maps, simply by gathering data from people who are currently in traffic. There's no reason this couldn't be done with free software, if people opt in. Of course it helps if there are many users, so let's start using it.
I've never looked into this but I have a gut feeling that, for Apple Maps and Google Maps, they rely on a mechanism that is less battery intensive (and not exposed with an API) than what a third party app would have to do.
It's exposed with an API. Google Maps is a third party on iOS but still can do the same timeline tracking all day even when it's not open, if you have it enabled.
The higher-resolution frequency surely comes from people who have Google Maps open while they drive, for directions.
Also, slow traffic is slow. If you're stuck in gridlock, even if your location only updates once every 5 minutes, that might just be 5 blocks. Average that across a quarter of all vehicles and that should be plenty of data for block-level traffic estimation.
Wouldn't mind if they are not intrusive in user flow while using the app, unless the user intentionally search for it, they should not be shown unsolicited. It could also be a cool feature if businesses show deals to get customers in the door, turning the experience like a treasure hunt.
Google Maps sometimes shows ads while searching for a bike route, which can be dangerous when on the move. These are unsolicited. Hope Apple can design advertising the right way without violating user experience.
Can you explain more what Google is doing? You shouldn't be searching while riding to begin with, for safety. How are you claiming that Google Maps is showing ads in an unsafe way?
When trip is planned before riding all is good, but once route changes, I have to reroute manually, that is when I get popup promoted business locations right under my finger while I am pointing at the map - it automatically makes you click them, this is unsolicited and disrupts user flow.
It is distracting and takes attention away while for example, stopping, pointing and relocating the map at a red light. It happened several times, have several screenshots but not sure how to share them here. These might be edge cases that most people will not experience since most in the US don't ride bikes.
An effective targeted ad platform is also expensive to develop and keep current.
They either build something as effective and invasive as what Google and Meta have, and prioritise ad revenue as much as those companies do.
Or they stay closer to the ineffective ad network they already have in News, App Store, etc, neither putting their money where their cultural mouth is nor becoming an ad revenue behemoth.
Presumably you don't have to do much targeting with Maps.
If I do a search for coffee shops, it doesn't take much targeting to figure out I'm interested in coffee shops. Same with pizza or grocery store or gas station.
For Maps search results, I expect the revenue will be plenty effective without having to be "invasive" at all.
"Enough" is not even a real word, when it comes to corporations and rich people. They have zero concept of "enough." It doesn't even register. This is a world where "perpetually increasing growth rate" is seen as a reasonable, achievable goal.
Sure- so if Apple is doing the same thing Google does but hasn’t had a significant feature update in years, why should I stick with them? They’ve lost their differentiation.
This will destroy a lot of trust and between Apple and me.
When I buy Apple, I pay a premium price for a premium product.
I would rather you simple charge me more for my product.
The ways ads work, is that the ad revenue shows up in the company’s revenue, and very quickly the company has to increase ad load across every surface to meet earnings expectations. The user experience deteriorates, getting worse each year.
When I buy Apple, it’s based on my expectation that Apple will remain a premium, ad-free experience for the life of the device. When, after my purchase, Apple make the product worse, like with the recent iOS update that rolled back usability, it destroys a lot of trust.
Stuff like this (lets wring more money out of our existing stuff even if it erodes the customer experience) smacks of a culture that’s losing a spirit of innovation.
This is the kind of thing some jackass worked out in a spreadsheet and then decided the profit outweighs whatever customer backlash.
Stuff like this is a huge red flag for the future direction of Apple.
Has lost. Tim Cook chose the path a decade ago. He’s a guy you can call Tim Apple to his face in front of everybody and he’ll sit there and take it. He is the wrong person for the job.
“Future direction of Apple” is red flag for more than a decade already. Vision Pro, releasing iPhone N every year, doing incremental improvement in CPU and then selling it as “innovation”, making it impossible to repair the devices customers bought with their own money, just to name a few.
Of course Tim is only concerned whether you bought an iPhone to your mom.
I encourage you to read Walter Isaacson's book about Steve Jobs, I think he would've absolutely hated this because it would've degraded the user experience.
Not if you're inside the walled garden. That's what makes it a walled garden and not a walled, uh, prison.
The value proposition of Apple is that they're going to charge you 2x what they should for just about everything. But then, the software doesn't completely fuck you up the ass.
Which isn't even a very enticing value proposition. It's just that Google, Meta, and Microsoft suck so severely that it actually works. Consumers are actually willing to dole out double the funds for stuff that's slightly less hostile to use.
This is how I felt, I was willing to pay more for an Apple product that was easy to use, and straightforward. No bullshit on the back end like Microsoft. This goes beyond a "walled garden" because it's not about the garden, it's about the people who enjoy it.
You're conflating the vendor lock-in with attractive user experience. The latter can (and should) easily exist without the former, e.g., any good FLOSS product. You only would create a walled garden (in order to not let users escape) if you plan enshittification.
Walled gardens degrade user experience in the long term, because they artificially hinder competition by not letting users switch to a better alternative when it appears.
I agree, and FLOSS is gaining more and more traction, in my eyes, as the realities of this become known to common consumers.
But still, most consumers don't view it this way. Primarily because their usage of technology is not intentional. Which, unfortunately, also makes them prime targets to take advantage of.
Not talking about this specifically but I am very skeptical towards biographic books because they make the most despicable individuals look how they want to be viewed.
Why can’t Apple work on a nicer reviews implementation? Linking out to crap like yelp is such a B-grade experience. I wish they’d just build their own and use some LLM/sentiment analysis to help filter any spam, but even then, submissions would be tied to Apple IDs and they have a pretty good handle on the legitimacy of devices associated with an account
Maybe it's the same sort of deal as Google where they sell the traffic to Yelp and agree not to compete? So they can sell your privacy without it looking like they're selling your privacy. If they did what you're suggesting they'd either do it in a privacy-respecting way and leave money on the table, or else directly profit from the sale of privacy and lose the ability to claim they respect your privacy. They don't like either of those options, so they go this indirect route.
Again, I have no idea if they have this relationship with Yelp, I'm just speculating if it's like the Google deal.
> Maybe it's the same sort of deal as Google where they sell the traffic to Yelp and agree not to compete?
I mean they already do this with preferred apps in the App Store (e.g. preferred revenue sharing for apps like Uber), so why wouldn't they do this in maps? The Apple "privacy" brand has been a sales pitch of questionable validity since it started. Apple only cares about privacy enough to keep its users from being a front page headline, nothing more.
This will destroy a lot of trust and between Apple and me.
When I buy Apple, I pay a premium price for a premium product.
The ways ads work, is that the ad revenue shows up in the company’s quarterly earnings, and very quickly the company has to increase ad load across every surface to meet earnings expectations. The user experience deteriorates, getting worse each year.
When I buy Apple, it’s based on my expectation that Apple will remain a premium, mostly ad-free experience for the life of the device. When, after my purchase, they make the product worse, like with the recent iOS update that rolled back usability, it destroys a lot of trust.
Even brilliant companies sometimes make stupid moves and shoot off their legs with literal shotgun. Past performance is not an indication of future and all that.
I'd say this is testing waters, seeing how big backlash will be. The sad part may be they may be right and limited loss with power users will be outweighed by ads income. After all, ads are the sole revenue stream for giants like Google or Meta, too juicy to ignore where no other breakthrough is in sight.
Brilliant people exist, maybe brilliant group of people, say 30-50, beyond that, it doesn’t exist in my view. Apple is a behemoth, with its faire share of slop, just like all behemoths.
People keep expecting Apple to be something else than a profit oriented company.
So far, the proportion of their revenue coming from ads is still lower than google by far, hence statistically I have less chances of being the product with them, hence I choose them.
I definitely don’t choose them because their products are better. The hardware and its software support duration, maybe, but the software is definitely worse than google’s, especially assistant and maps.
I don’t like this direction that Apple has taken over the last several years that it needs to provide more services and that all its services need to be monetized with an aim of a 70% plus profit margin. This greed to capture every penny is creating poorer and worse experiences for users of its platforms.
As for ads on Apple Maps itself, it may generate some revenue in the US and a few other countries. Elsewhere (like in India and many other countries), Apple has practically neglected Apple Maps and it sucks terribly even in large cities. Google, with all its tracking and other issues (including map accuracy issues), keeps moving at breakneck speed on Google Maps.
Apple’s single minded focus on the US with severe lethargy in other countries is why in most countries where (some/many) people use Apple devices, they use Google’s services. Both Eddy Cue and Tim Cook are squarely to be blamed for this greed, laziness and lack of vision or strategy.
This is the real issue.
Before they can think about putting Ads, they should try to make a competitive product.
I used to use Apple Maps but I just don't bother anymore. It's alright for navigation but pretty bad for discovery and finding stuff.
In France it's just so much worse that it is a bit of a joke. When you search for stuff, not only is the information not necessarily correct but the way the information is displayed is not as good/useful and feels extremely neutered like an asepticized listing with no qualities. There are rarely pictures (both outside/inside), opening hours and distance are poorly displayed (when they exist in the first place) and functionally it is harder to use.
The whole thing reeks of rigid/psychotic thinking. It feels like a bureaucrat was tasked to fill in a form and he is not doing it with much enthusiasm.
Apple was supposedly the company for creatives, yet most of their software feels like you are operating in some modernized version of a Soviet system. It's not beautiful, it's barely functional and it's inefficient. They spend a ton of space on oversized UI buttons and useless informations that has to fit in dedicated box without overflowing.
Apple Maps is the perfect example of how bad Apple has become and their inability to build software for the most common use case of today's computing devices: organizing and accessing information.
Google is winning not just because of the monopoly; they became monopoly because the competitors got complacent and Apple is one of the few who could truly compete, yet they refuse to do so.
Considering money isn't the problem, puttings Ads to get more money will only make thing worse.
Perhaps a bit cynical, but it seems that as Microsoft continue to shove ads in absolutely everywhere and track everything they possibly can, Apple are content to be just marginally better rather than actually having meaningfully higher standards. Of course, it's business as usual, but we are boiling the frog for the next generation by tolerating it.
The problem is that these systems are so costly and hard to make that without a capital incentive no indipendent entity is going to make them and what entity do have an interest in making them as a "loss leader" if not monetized in any way (ads or paid product)?
Apple has been running maps for well over a decade without this. They are one of the most profitable businesses in history and have spent almost a trillion dollars in financial games to enrich stakeholders because they had so much cash to burn.
The idea that "poor little Apple is struggling without enshittifying to microptimize profit opportunities" is an utter joke.
I think they were talking about the challenge for a non Apple/Google competitor to emerge in this space with a comparable enough product to win real, meaningful marketshare.
Firefox's abysmal market share, despite being, for the average user, a strictly better experience, would incline me to agree.
Yeah Apple’s evolution over the past decade has been very frustrating and disappointing to see. It seems like whatever scraps remain of the company’s core values now exist solely with a handful of old heads at the company and will likely not survive their retirements.
A lot has changed in the tech industry, but the rapidity of hiring and expansion of headcount just seems to have engendered a broad homogenization of business strategies, design conventions, and product vision. I think they started hiring people based on narrow defined ideas about skills and resumes to fit certain roles and they all end up shuffling the same bunch of people around across the same incestuous company hiring pipelines until they’re all doing stints at every company and driving them in the same broad direction.
Apple News is loaded with ads, so this wouldn't surprise me. iOS already has ads.
I just installed Open Street Map (the iOS app is called OsmAnd) and it looks nice! Zoom in/out is much better than on Apple Maps. A quick check of a route I know produced a good map, so I'll start using OSM from now on.
I used to use waze maps a little over a decade ago. I got into a car accident trying to dismiss an ad that required tapping "dismiss" while trying to follow what road to turn on.
The single reason I use apple maps instead of google maps is because of the lack of ads. For me, it is really the only competitive advantage offered by apple maps
How much does it cost to host a tarball of an app? Maaaaaybe 15 cents?
> Steam for example takes $100 PER GAME.
Well that's not true.
> What we should be pitchforking about is why Apple isn't taking all that 30% to IMPROVE the App Store for USERS
That's exactly what I'm saying.
They're taking 30% and then doing fuck-all. I can maybe, MAYBE, buy the 30% if the appstore was some paradise on Earth and my iPhone gave me a blowjob. But that's not the case. So what are we paying for?
They already get paid to do that - the 30% is completely unrelated to that.
That's also optional. Apple chooses to develop iOS because it becomes a new pathway for siphoning money from consumers and developers, and allows them to create their walled garden.
They could just stop at any point and use android or even off-the-shelf Linux with an OS mobile environment.
The existing Yelp integration is so bad. Want to see a picture larger, or read more than 10 words of a review it opens Yelp app which usually doesn't work.
Apple has been including ads in it's products for years now. I'm not even talking about App store ads, but ads in the OS by default. This should not be a surprise to anyone.
Let me be clear: ads for Apple products and non Apple products have existed as a part of the default user experience in Apple products. Whether you noticed or not is merely whether you paid attention.
It was unacceptable then and continues to grow more-so every time they release anything. However, as another commenter pointed out they seem content to be slightly-less-bad than their competitors which means those of us who are furious remain trapped.
Spent over a week wandering the backroads and state highways of the American southeast region, and I was amazed at how out-of-date Apple Maps was regarding local businesses. Often I’d see something on my map that had clearly been abandoned for years.
Somehow I doubt ads are going to improve the quality of their data. Very discouraging to see Apple (allegedly) headed down this road.
Meanwhile, also Apple maps since launch: “sorry I cant get directions from A to B.”
It has NEVER given me directions. I live in a non-EU country and not in the US. Small island. It shows all the roads, shops and everything but for some arbitrary reason it won’t do navigation here.
Never touched it again since Google maps is perfect. (Aside from the occasional off-road routing).
Even in India, a large country where Apple has a growing manufacturing presence, Apple Maps is totally neglected. It cannot find many places in major cities. It just does not have any transit directions in major cities. It’s at least 10 years behind Google Maps (which updates very quickly to changes, even though it’s not perfect). Apple just does not care much about countries other than the US and a few others when it comes to maps.
Apple Maps is not that good. The main selling point of like half their services was “we're worse but at least not an ad-company”.
Due to some misguided loyalty, I usually search for places in AM fist, then switch to Google. I still don't see viable alternatives to their operating systems, but it's clearly time to de-apple wherever you can.
I love these threads because they're always filled with indignant HNers telling us "if apple does 3 or 4 more things like this it's OVER, I won't be buying from them again". Come on guys. Get real.
You won't get any love for calling it out, but I agree. A lot of hand-wringing goes into discussing "how Steve would handle it" even though that bridge was crossed a long time ago. Apple is not invincible, they're going to be looking for alternative revenue streams as the App Store monopoly becomes less certain and the hardware margins shrink further.
I use it over google maps, even though the navigation is strictly worse, because it feels less seedy. No ads, no RESTAURANTS NEAR YOU when i just want to pick up my kids from school.
Apple does this, they destroy the only differentiator they had.
I guess no user is going to like that and especially not the current users.
Until now Apple has been relatively decent about prioritizing user experience; and if not that then about respecting privacy. Ads are aligned with neither.
This gives Windows/Android/FireTV poor vibes. Not like iPhones are status symbols post '09, just that people are expecting not to deal with this if they pay the name brand premium.
Great, the reason I switched from Google Maps to Apple Maps is going away. I endured all of Apple Maps’ weirdness and how subpar it is to escape those ads. Guess where I’ll probably go, Apple?
How times have changed. It wasn't long ago that Apple was all about promoting privacy and a premium experience, making a clear distinction between themselves and the likes of Meta and Google. Now they are using AI to profile us and deliver ads.
We badly need a good open phone with an open source OS. Choosing a more open phone shouldn't mean having to settle for five year old hardware.
We need to taint the word the boardrooms use as positive lingo. Whenever some suits blarfs crap like "exploring options for gRoWtH" they mean "how can we be more like cancer" and fuck our users up.
Ghost of Steve Jobs, guess what? In 2025, Apple Maps gets billboards; iOS puts text on text and has smudgy visual effects with transparent icons; and Apple is paying for Trump's muscovite ballroom!
The frogs don’t have to wait and see if the pot is boiling, they have a pot named Android right next to them for a direct temperature comparison and other Maps apps available. If I lose screen space to ads in my native Apple apps then I’m out. How is the money they are getting from hardware sales and their developer fees not enough? I don’t see how the execs can’t tell how damaging this is to their brand image.
Apple used to be something you accepted because you were filled with rage at Microsoft. Then Apple was something that cost extra money but it had good software and cross device integration. Then Apple’s software quality went down noticeably, but I stuck with them because at least I figured my data was slightly safer on an Apple device. But now if they’re using my data to sell ads they don’t even have a privacy angle. Apple now lags Android flagships in features, costs at least as much, and also sells my data.
I’m out.