If Apple can convince your cohort, herein referred to as "you" for simplicity, that everyone else is toxic, then you'll only use Apple products. If you only use Apple products, Apple has higher quality user data about you than their direct and indirect competitors, herein referred to as "anyone else" or "others". This means Apple is uniquely positioned to sell more effectively targeted advertising to you than anyone else. This is especially true when Apple takes steps to improve privacy and security for you by making it more difficult for others to track you.

Apple said they cared about your privacy [from others, not from them]. To be clear, I'm trying to be objective. They're not selling individual personal data or recklessly leaking your data. They have promised to keep your data secure, and I think they've often lived up to that promise, especially compared to others (full disclosure: I own a multitude of Apple devices, but I'm not a fanatic).

However, the bottom line here is that using Apple products means you're putting a kind of centralized trust in Apple, and Apple never said they wouldn't take advantage of that trust where possible.

It's also worth including https://support.apple.com/guide/adguide/welcome/icloud.

The same way anyone makes with ads, you charge people to show them to others. Apple's ads division alone has revenue in the same ballpark as Netflix. And now that they're cracking down so that first party is the only way to go, they will do really well.

Apple is selling ads on its iAd platform, developers can opt to display them in apps to receive a percentage.

that used to be the case, but they discontinued iAd [1] about 7 years ago

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IAd

I'm old enough now to have both been:

- the person rushing to comment about Apple because there's no way Apple would ever do that

- the person complaining about clearly rushed and motivated comments denying something obvious about Apple

Read up here: https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/data/en/apple-advertisin...

i'm not denying anything. the comment i replied to stated that developers can use iAd to "display [ads] in apps to receive a percentage", which i pointed out is no longer the case.

in no way does my comment deny that there's other ads sold by apple (there are, obviously, e.g. app store search ads), but that's a completely separate issue from the specific iAd program the parent comment was talking about.

Ok, thank you

They collect your data and sell ads to advertisers based on segments you fall into

What data do they collect? Where/how do they collect it? Are they mining my camera roll and notes or just my browser history? What about my text messages?

You don’t remember being asked to opt in?

Oh wait that’s because they created that rule for others

Go Settings -> Privacy -> Ads

>>You may still be served ads based on the criteria listed below. Your personal data is not provided to third parties.

Contextual Information On the App Store, relevant ads may be selected using your search query, information about the page you're viewing, or the app you're downloading. On Apple News and Stocks, the type of story you read may be used to select relevant ads. In addition, information about your device’s keyboard language settings, device type, OS version, mobile carrier, and connection type may be used to serve ads to you. If Location Services is enabled and you’ve granted permission to App Store, Apple News, or the Apple TV app to access your location, your location may be used to serve you geographically relevant ads in each respective app.

So basically absolutely nothing..

?????? The stories you read, the words you type