Why are we paying a premium price for an ad ridden product ?

Wonder why we need 3rd party app stores.
And ffs, would other countries help a little, or should the EU just carry your asses every single time big tech tries some shit.
So is this what the tech bros wanted when they said locked in walled gardens where more secure?
One of the reasons that the App Store purportedly exists is to provide quality software rather than malware and spam.
I guess that goes out of the window as soon as money appears.
You can literally type the name of an app and the first three results are, if you’re lucky, competitors. More often than not they’re pure junk.
And that assumes you’re searching for an app that’s not trash… ugh.
To be more technical correct, all ideals go out of the window the moment a shareholder pushes a little.
Apple has been one of the wealthiest countries for years, they don’t need money, they can’t be doing this just for money.
They are doing it, to get more money yes, but only in order to make the angle of a line go up so they can sell a comfortable illusion to the people keeping them in charge of the available unimaginable mass of wealth already there.
there’s a difference between malware and junk. ios is pretty much malware free. and i’m not sure you want apple deciding what is “junk” and what isn’t.
Facebook app set up a local server on the iOS device that received pings when a browser loaded their tracking pixels.
I feel like that behaviour falls under my definition of spyware. I know it’s not as malicious as it could be, but still.
sure, there are gray areas, and apple does keep them somewhat in check. but also if you’re willingly installing facebook you should know that your privacy is already heavily compromised.
I guess they’re not taking their big cut on app revenue to offer a good neutral platform.
How can they justify 100|300/year + 30% if not with a moderated neutral platform?

Why?
It’s already a cesspool.
I love my iPhone, I’ve been using them for like 12 years (I loved Android but switched when physical keyboards stopped exiting cuz I liked iOS’s keyboard a lot, then fell in love with most of the rest of the OS and how long I could keep my phone for before replacing.)
The one thing I absolute hate is the App Store. It’s insane. It’s so counter to the rest of Apple’s “simple stuff that works” … “ethos”. I use VERY few apps, I only have a couple installed on my phone. Say I want one, though. I open the App Store right now. Main page it dumps me on: 75% of the screen is a Tinder ad (I’ve never used a dating app and I’ve been with my partner for 15 years.) The rest of the screen space below that is a Google Gemini ad (I don’t use any Google products or services anymore, wtf Apple?)
I click on the “Games” tab below and it’s an EXTREMELY busy, loud, colorful assault on my senses. Absolutely not! The “Apps” tab isn’t any better, huge ads take up 50% of the screen and below that, GET TIKTOK AND TINDER. Uhhhh no, never.
Okay, let’s go to search. Click, and it gives me a search box at the bottom with some suggested apps and games I might like. I can appreciate that Apple’s data collection is allegedly a lot lighter than other companies, because none of the suggested shit is anything I would ever touch in my life. Let’s download one of the very few games I have on my phone: Ascension, a deck building game. I type “ascension game” and the first result is an AD FOR A WEIRD MEDICAL APP THAT DOESN’T SAY ASCENSION ANYWHERE AND HAS 70 REVIEWS WHYYYYY?!
An absolute mess compared to the mostly great layouts of their other programs on the iPhone. I do not love the latest iPhoto UI change but I can deal with that. The App Store is fucked.
I decided to also try, there’s at least one ad on every screen.
And searching shows basically a full screen ad
I agree with everything you’ve said here. The App Store is an absolute abomination, even when you search for the exact name of the app you’re looking for it’s several pages down in the results. The App Store is as bad as Google Search now, nothing but ads and garbage, and now they want to make it even worse? I honestly don’t even see how they can add more ads, like physically how? The App Store landing pages and search results are nothing but ads already.
These days I keep forgetting the App Store is a thing. That’s how important apps are to me anymore. Also, fuck apple for being the tacky soulless corporate monster that it always used to make fun of.
Crazy how much companies are shitting all over themselves to try and scrape more money together when, in all likelihood, it’ll have the opposite effect.
That’s for the next CEO to worry about.
What about fedoucheary responsibility?
Oh no, I think I spelled it wrong.
Yes, but they’re magical and revolutionary ads. You’ve never seen ads like these before.
They literally tried that once:
Only Ads? Not IA powered Ads with an agent managing the apps for you? Oh boy Apple really lost the IA race
Is there a better alternative app search platform that has curated reviews and is community driven, or have bots destroyed everything nice on the internet?
I like to look up app recommendations and also just dig deep into the app store.
I found a lot of cool software and apps that are paid once and have forever.
Compared to the podcasts apps that will literally attempt to kill you with video ads while driving.
Apparently according to that one app review.
AppRaven is quite nice
Damn. Between Ios26 bugs, liquid UI, and now this, it looks like Apple is speedrunning losing me as a customer.
Oh boy how exciting!









