If I am going to see only 1 ad in a normal Apple app (Maps, Music, Podcasts etc.) Apple can kiss that money goodbye.

For every Apple Service there’s a good alternative. I’ll turn my iPhone into a piece of Apple hardware with minimal affiliation to Apple software within the afternoon.

From there on out, I’ll start investigating to replace my Apple hardware with alternatives at their next renewal cycle.

For Apple end users, Tim Cook is the worst CEO you could imagine. A human Excel sheet.

I suppose we could simply blame the entire customer base of Apple, but that seems less than productive.

And it is his job to explain to them that plastering ads all over the UI is going to destroy the entire privacy-conscious image that Apple has built up over the past decade, specially the past five or so years.

You can't just say "There was no alternative but to show ads", it's a reductio ad (lol) absurdum by which you can excuse any bad decisions that a CEO makes by saying "Well, the board made them do it".

First, no. That's a gross oversimplification of the situation, and there are thousands of counter-examples. It's one of those things people see on HN and then pass along as if it was the absolute truth. It isn't.

But, for fun, let's pretend it is true. Then the way Tim Cook answers to shareholders is to preserve the long-term value of Apple as a brand and a company, and not to sell out for short-term gains.

The majority of Apple shareholders are massive corporations that invest for the long-haul, not day traders trying to make a quick buck.

Don't open Settings, then. There's been ads in there for three years.

But yeah, it's an ad. At least you can dismiss it. Dunno how long it'll stay gone (this just prompted me to go tell it "not now", so we'll see).

This is the only way to feel about it: it's un-premium.

Under Tim Cook, there is no possible way things will get better, and I suspect they will get much worse. They'll continue making whatever comprises to the user experience are necessary to obtain quarterly growth. And the more difficult that becomes, the more drastic and user hostile the changes will be.

It's bizarrely short-sighted, and I can't figure out why. I mean there are several videos of Steve Jobs himself warning about this exact trajectory, and I'm sure Tim Cook must have seen them.

No, if Cook fails to "stop" ads that's pretty clearly evidence he's okay with them.

Tim wants ads. Tim is a money guy, not a product guy.

The simplest explanation is that Tim is fine by it. He has agency as much as everyone involved here. And honestly people act as if Jobs wouldn't do the same shit in some variation or another, as if these people all aren't trying to balance a billion things to make money. Nothing is sacred.

I use Meet extensively across my professional engagements with GSuite/Workspace. Works great. No ads.

And then post-meeting popup ads (that are always on top until you dismiss them) like this: https://cs.joshstrange.com/BizVwE

I've gone through almost all the settings I could think of but I don't see a way to disable it. I pay monthly for Zoom and I'm logged into that account. I find it beyond the pale that Zoom wastes my time/energy in this way especially since most ads are about a product I will never use. If I need a tool to run a 500+ person webinar my life has taken a horrible turn, and if I did I wouldn't use Zoom since they do crap like this.

Damnit, Microsoft, why'd you have to ruin your OS with ad and spying garbage and shittifying your calculator and notepad apps et c. just as you were starting to add useful stuff like WSL that might have made it a viable OS for actual work and not just playing video games?

So I guess it's Linux. Ugh. Or maybe the FreeBSD driver situation will get better before then and I can use that. That'd be... fine, I guess.

Zoom has plenty of competitors that don't show ads after calls. Try a few out. Some of them are a much better experience for participants and hosts alike.