alt Hacker NewsI don't like companies forcing their newest features on me noisily and constantly trying to ship new features and see what sticks so you can't trust whether a feature advertised one week will even be there the next.
However, I have even less patience for companies forcing paid-for third-party ads down my throat on a paid product. Slack at least doesn't sell my eyeballs. Facebook, Twitter, Google's ads are worse to me than new feature dialogues.
Which brings me to Apple. I pay for a $1k+ device, and yet the app store's first result is always a sponsored bit of spam, adware, or sometimes even malware (like the fake ledger wallet on iOS, that was a sponsored result for a crypto stealer). On my other devices, I can at least choose to not use ad-ridden BS (like on android you can use F-Droid and AuroraStore, on Linux my package manager has no ads), but on iOS it's harder to avoid.
Apple hasn't sunk to Google levels in terms of ads, but they've crossed a line.
Replies
I get it but... well I think of App Store as... a store. I don't have to go there.
I'm actually pretty disappointed in the lack of discovery available in the App Store, but I rarely go there. I'm fine with advertising being there. I wish it was better but I'm not offended that there is paid promotion in a store.
I haven't noticed this at all and I wonder if you're mistaking curation for advertising? When I open up the App Store I get a panel written "games we love" and a listing of indie games that are clearly not paid for ads. The ads in search are visibly marked as ads, and while I don't particularly like ads in general, they are pretty easy to avoid.
It's best to avoid App Store and look for apps on Google (with ad blocker).