Edit - it wasn't, my bad, see below.
https://www.rnz.de/cms_media/module_img/176/88193_1_detailxs...
This happened in 2014 and Jobs passed in 2011.
The U2 album wasn’t spammy it didn’t interrupt people, it was in an appropriate place, and it was easily removed. Even if you didn’t want it, it’s reasonable to not consider it a problem.
This was outright spammy. It was trying to sell people something. It was in a sensitive place. And it was an attention-seeking, interrupting notification.
This shouldn’t have even made it onto the drawing board, and for this to make it into production at Apple is a sign something is seriously wrong there.
I was in an older man’s car last year. It started playing the album. He remarked “oh that always plays, I don’t know why” as I reached for the volume.
A decade later that album is still annoying people. Bluetooth triggered play or something like that and the only music on the old iPhone started playing.
And the chief complaint is that there is an album in the library.
I just checked, and I can delete it from my library the same way I can delete any other album.
What's the downside of consumers getting their perceptions closer aligned with reality? Which side are you on?
That's funny. Why would Apple be "different"?
And because it has positioned itself as the single most prominent privacy-conscious champion in big tech through repeated actions over the course of many years.
There are plenty of reasons to dislike Apple depending on where your priorities are (lack of openness and cultivating an ecosystem based on locking you into it by not interoperating with anyone else are great places to start); but it's hard to make an argument that anyone else in big tech even comes close to the amount of trustworthiness Apple has demonstrated for their users.
The fact that Apple actually pushing an ad to its users is headline news speaks volumes to the trust they've earned (and damaged by doing so). Do you think it'd make headlines if Google showed its users an ad? Or Microsoft? Or Meta?
For me, such a notification is an unwanted intrusion, and it is not compatible with privacy.
I just want to highlight this because Hacker News can be incredibly dismissive about this.
Apple’s focus on privacy is a competitive advantage. Consumers value it, and Apple’s competitors have business models that undermine it.
Even if you think Tim Cook is the literal devil and Apple will do absolutely anything for a buck, Apple’s focus on privacy is still relevant.
Privacy is valuable to Apple. It’s a wedge they can use against their competitors. Google doesn’t make their fortune selling hardware, they make it selling ads. Privacy is something that gets in the way of Google’s profits.
Because Apple are in this position, it’s profitable to them to champion privacy. It’s something they can do that’s valuable to customers that their competitors are at a disadvantage with.
You don’t have to be a fan of Apple, and you don’t have to trust Apple. All you have to do is believe they want to make money. Being pro-privacy is profitable to Apple, and so they act accordingly.
But the truth is, nobody really cares about privacy, least of all, users. Nobody ever bought an iPhone because of "privacy"; people buy iPhones because they work, and because they seem cool. Everyone's happy to hand over data to any service.
Facebook has three billion users.
This is a complete misunderstanding of what I was saying. I wasn’t arguing that Apple “really cares” about privacy; quite the opposite – I was arguing that it doesn’t matter if Apple “really cares”, what matters is that they are financially and strategically incentivised to be pro-privacy.
Linux is not Apple’s competitor. Apple only have to be better at privacy than their competitors.
Apple can do no wrong, and if they do wrong, either your expectations were flawed and unreasonable, or it might just have been the accidential hiccup of a single deranged soon-to-be-ex-employee.
Please ignore all the signs and portents that Apple is just another Microsoft or Google, only with a better marketing department and a quasi-religious following...
A great example of this is that they say that iMessage is end-to-end encrypted, and then the second you have an iCloud backup that's completely broken. An actual privacy-centric product, this would be a major problem. Consider Signal.
Apple is also the company that tried to introduce client-side content scanning of user photos.
There is no giant moat between Apple and privacy violation. They'll do it whenever they feel like it, and Apple customers are very forgiving.
Lack of openness means lack of privacy. If we can't install apps on the side that have proper adblock filtering, then all the promises in the world are hollow.
A closed system that prioritizes privacy will result in more users benefiting from greater privacy overall, even if it does give the platform more control than is ideal. And that's the issue with the wallet ads: Apple makes users more secure on average, but it depends on user trust, which it just betrayed.
Those who can take advantage of total control are a minority, and they are not really the people Apple cares about.
Sensible defaults and warnings about changing them is all you need to put any argument of 'bad for privacy' down.
Amazon used to sell us items, now ad sales are a big part of their storefront's revenue. Cable used to not have ads.
If you aren't paying, you are the product doesn't also imply that if you paying you are definitely not the product. To the modern exec, everything and everyone is the product. I an surprised that gig economy apps aren't also selling the eyeballs of their workers, making them watch ads to work.
"Privacy. That’s Apple.
Privacy is a fundamental human right. It’s also one of our core values. Which is why we design our products and services to protect it. That’s the kind of innovation we believe in."
So, Apple explicitly advertises with privacy, which makes it very different from other big tech companies, and it seems justified to expect it to uphold its promise. "Privacy. That's Apple.", according to Apple.
"Apple does have a traditional advertising business, and it does appear to be growing: The folks at Business Insider's sister company EMarketer think it will hit $6.3 billion this year, up from $5.4 billion last year.
And that's not nothing. For context: That's more than the $4.5 billion in ad sales Twitter generated in 2021, its last full year before Elon Musk bought the company; it's also more than the $4.6 billion Snap generated in 2023."
The article goes on to specify it's only 6% of Apple revenue. But 20% comes from Google and looking at how the antitrust trials are going, that source may soon dry up. The logical conclusion is Apple will aggressively move to make up for the loss by exploiting their captive audience.
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-advertising-google-sea...
With any luck this backlash against Apple is so significant that a red flag is waved so ferociously that Google will never blast an advertisement out to their Google Wallet users.
As the article outlines, I am sure that due to the sheer number of people who use Apple Wallet there was someone out there who had just bought an advance ticket to Superman and the moment they received a 'Transaction Successful' message this F1 advertisement notification popped up and had them wondering if Apple preserving their privacy really is a competitive advantage.
Did it send a push notification or bother the user? Got a screenshot or reference, since a quick google doesn't uncover it?
The article links to https://daringfireball.net/linked/2025/06/26/apple-wallet-se...
Which links to these examples:
https://x.com/ParkerOrtolani/status/1937551035825807545
https://www.reddit.com/r/AppleWallet/comments/1ljbjrs/how_do...
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/24/apple-wallet-notificati...
(and actually a few more too)
Every now and then, there is a full-screen popup on my phone that wants to onboard me into the wallet app. The only options I have are "yes" or "later".
Clearly a company that operates on the principle of "If the user doesn't want to, let's just nag them to death until they give up" is not to be trusted.
They do the same on my windows computer, ever time I open edge and every time I open a new tab !
This is the kind of behavior I wouldn’t even tolerate in real life, they are really taking us for sheeps.
If everyone is getting the same annoying ad (in both wallet and App Store), then what individual user tracking or surveillance is happening? Certainly none is required.
It’s still annoying AF and it’s clear they didn’t learn their lesson from U2. But I don’t jump to the conclusion that “Apple is spying on me”. Instead I conclude “iOS leadership are greedy jerks with defective long term memory”.
The breakdown of trust is already in the question "What absurdity comes next from such a sensitive app?"
Not everyone is. I’m in the EU and did not get it. I wouldn’t be surprised if this was only in the US.
> then what individual user tracking or surveillance is happening?
That’s not at all what most people (including this article) are complaining about. It’s about an ad in an app which should never ever ever have them, the targeting is really low on the list of priorities compared to the rest.
> it’s clear they didn’t learn their lesson from U2.
The two cases are nothing alike. They both involved Apple and backlash, and that’s where the similarities end.
> But I don’t jump to the conclusion that “Apple is spying on me”.
Again, that’s not the major issue most people are complaining about.
I like Apple, so I’m really hoping they bring on someone to solve this. Otherwise they’re on track to be the same as every other tasteless tech company.
More on taste and Apple: https://www.readtrung.com/p/steve-jobs-rick-rubin-and-taste
I am not sure either of these people have anything to do with ads on Apple Wallet. Or even Apple Wallet…
Do you hear yourself?
Yes
What are you basing this on, the total number of iPhones sold since 2007? If so, it doesn't account for the users that have bought multiple iPhones.
Ok you haven’t but what about Ive?
Cook needs to stop listening to investors, like Warren Buffett, because he's letting them wreck Apple's integrity for the sake of making a buck. Apple just isnt user focused like they used to be and it's crappy.
Lighting doesnt strike twice imho.
Here’s him announcing and talking about ads in WWDC: https://youtu.be/eY3BZzzLaaM?si=Dttc5eJJ1B7Zf3sB
iAd was something that happened right at the end of his life because devs were putting ads in apple apps anyway and he wanted to control how that was done.
this is meant to add context to what bluedevilzn said, btw. it is not a refutation.
Otherwise you get generic slop, eventually.
That would be ok, because competition, except these days the moat is huge: it is very difficult for a new entrant to compete.
Tacky things under Jobs were failed experiments. Modern Apple doesn't believe in either experiments or failed experiments.
Now Apple is a multi trillion dollar company and they can’t take as much risk.
The old adage of "vote with your (physical?) wallet" holds double here.
For me it's like "oh, I didn't know Wallet was an advertising app", I thought it was something I paid for with the purchase of my phone. But I was wrong. It's just adware. "We'll store your boarding pass if you'll let us spam you about movie tickets." Do not want. I disabled notifications. Now a year from now, I'll be searching for some pass in my wallet. Someone will say "don't you get a notification when you get to the venue"? I'll be like "no I've never seen that work". Multiply that by everyone, and suddenly the buzz is "Apple Wallet doesn't work. Trust my money and credit cards with something that doesn't work? No thank you." And now people are buying a Garmin watch for Garmin Pay instead of an Apple Watch for Apple Pay.
Really dumb. Huge mistake. It makes me sad that they don't care about their own brand. "We won the smartphone wars, let's cash in!" Winning is temporary, but losing is forever.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44368854
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44371872
> Now a year from now (…) people are buying a Garmin watch for Garmin Pay instead of an Apple Watch for Apple Pay.
Talk about a slippery slope fallacy. No, that will not happen. At all. There’s a better chance that this year will be the year of Linux on the Desktop.
The thing I used to like about Apple, even if you disagree with some of its decision. It is very coherent. It act as if Apple is a single entity even when it was a hundred billion market cap company. Compared to companies like Google and Microsoft, every product and services are like their own subsidiaries. Now Apple has become just another cooperate entity but with design team holding sufficient political power.
What? No they don’t. I wish. Where did you get that idea? Apple loves ads. They do a ton of them and sell them to you. You can’t do an App Store search without seeing an ad right at the top, and the bottom, and the sides, and under your pillow. It’s absolutely littered with them.
What Apple rails against is the tracking and invasion of privacy. Which incidentally ads do a lot of. Even Safari content blockers are ingrained in that philosophy: it’s not about blocking ads, it’s about blocking things that invade your privacy.
Here is another angle. If Apple could successfully destroy the In App Ads industry, which they earn nothing from, and force those value into subscription, who will benefit most? Remember Apple tried iAds and earn a percentage of it but failed.
People should at least read PG's Submarine [1] to understand how modern PR and media works. Once you have that understanding the lens of reading anything about Apple becomes a little different.
Yes it is
You’d be surprised to hear how much the political power of the design team within Apple has eroded over the last decade.
Here’s a little game of insider Apple baseball:
1) why do you think the chief of design isn’t on this page? https://www.apple.com/leadership/
2) from the SVPs on that same page, who do you think the chief of design reports to?
Ios26 specifically enables promotions in wallet which is viewed as a feature that can be enabled/disabled
I didn’t find it too intrusive, but it was surprising. It’s probably not a road Apple wants to go further down.
It's not so bad. I would rather have an appliance than a computer as my primary phone, of course. But if Apple is leaving the appliance market, then thank goodness at least I have the skills to use a pocket computer safely.
Most don't have such skills. None should be required to. That's why it's good there should be a company like Apple around, at least as Apple has been. If I need to advise my older relatives never to upgrade, and help them source and maintain older iPhones, I guess I can do that.
> 4.5.4 Push Notifications must not be required for the app to function, and should not be used to send sensitive personal or confidential information. Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages. Abuse of these services may result in revocation of your privileges.> Push Notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing purposes unless customers have explicitly opted in to receive them via consent language displayed in your app’s UI, and you provide a method in your app for a user to opt out from receiving such messages.
Google tried to tackle this with notification channels, but the onus falls on the developer to actually use them honestly. No company trying to draw attention back to their app with advertisement notifications will willingly name a notification channel “advertisements” or “user re-engagement” or similar — they’ll just interleave spam with all the non-spam. This API from G hasn’t worked.
Revolut are really annoying for this. I'm sure there's a few spare days In their development cycle for someone to implement it if they wanted to, but instead they keep everything on the same channel which is 50% promo shit, because you don't want to miss that notification warning you about fraudulent activity on your card.
FirmwareBurner•4h ago
rafaelmn•4h ago
I really hate Apple - but what's stopping me from moving out of the ecosystem is that nobody else builds shit that works and is on same level. The M Pro series processor is only touchable by that one AMD chip you can't get anywhere. Windows is garbage and Linux is a part time job. Android is even worse in terms of spam and jank, and the only ecosystem that works is Google - where if you get locked out - you're just praying to HN/Google contacts that you didn't lose your access.
jb1991•4h ago
mrweasel•3h ago
Phones are even worse. You basically stuck on iOS and Android and I honestly see no situation where picking Android wouldn't be worse. You have a better selection of phone, and you could run /e/OS, Calyx, or something else, but that's just a hassle. I'm not a big fan of the direction iOS is developing, it tried to do way to much and the UI has become a mess.
fakedang•3h ago
jorvi•3h ago
That single-handedly unlocked a huge cohort of boomers and other tech laypeople that had never tried Spotify or any other music streaming platform before.
It was smart and also a huge abuse of market power. Apple Music would have bombed without it. The only reason they didn't get in deep shit for it was that Apple doesn't have nearly the market capture in the EU that they have in the US, and in that time period the US didn't do antitrust against tech companies.
TheDong•2h ago
Deceptive app naming has nothing on that.
rglullis•2h ago
even if it were the best processor to ever exist, it's not something that we can not live without.
> Linux is a part time job
It has been good enough for the past 15 years or so.
Toritori12•1h ago
seszett•31m ago
And I'm not sure what you mean about ecosystems either, yes you do need a Google account to download apps from the Play store, but you also need an Apple account to use the Apple store as far as I know.
In my experience it's easier to create a second Google account than a second Apple account.
Now I'm not representative of most users, like all HN users probably. But at home, apart from my M1 Mac (running Linux because I hate macOS) my other machines are Intel n100-based. They work fine.
denkmoon•4h ago
What you say seems likely, but then what. Should I throw my phone in the bin because it might be bad in the future, as opposed to being actually bad now?
latexr•1h ago
Do you have links? Because every single time someone claims “everyone” on HN shared an opinion and I go check, the threads are split. What that tells me is that the people who accuse HN of being a biased hive mind are themselves biased to the point of being blind to other arguments.
> now they're boiling the frog.
That’s a myth.
> according to modern biologists the premise is false: changing location is a natural thermoregulation strategy for frogs and other ectotherms, and is necessary for survival in the wild. A frog that is gradually heated will jump out. Furthermore, a frog placed into already boiling water will die immediately, not jump out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog