[pm]

Quality is 2nd best to what? And people haven't switched to what? Android? The situation is no better on Google OS.

Apple's App Store ad initiatives have always been woeful, and doubt it makes enough revenue to warrant a separate line item on their public accounting reports. Some executive has seen yet another overfunded company potentially making bank with an ad-based business model (OpenAI, et al.), and has thought they could extract Google-level ad revenue due to the App Store's exclusivity. It could also be a response to potentially competing App Stores given their rocky relationship with the EU.

It will have little effect, on revenue or user experience. The greater tragedy is the organisational decay that led to this being greenlit in the first place.

[Noaidi]

> And people haven't switched to what? Android? The situation is no better on Google OS

Agree. Even GrapheneOS is hell to use. I tried both PixelOS and GrapheneOS on a Pixel 9 and ended up returning it. If I was not homeless I would switch to a flip phone and just use a Linux desktop.

[drnick1]

> Even GrapheneOS is hell to use.

This is not my experience. GrapheneOS is great and has absolutely zero bloatware/malware. The base system is just a couple of basic apps like the phone, messages app, and a Web browser. That's it. All the rest is up to the user to set up. You can be completely Google-free if you don't install sandboxed Google Play Services and other GApps.

Without GApps, the setup is extremely private and ideal to use with self-hosted solutions like Nextcloud and Home Assistant as substitutes for the typical commercial malware found on most "smart" phones.

[bigyabai]

> The greater tragedy is the organisational decay that led to this being greenlit in the first place.

Is it? I feel like that would only be tragic if you expected the App Store monopoly company to care about users instead of profits.

For most of us on the sidelines this is a real "told you so" moment.

[pm]

The company cares about neither. People inside the company will care about a great many things. The people who care about users either don't have the power to act or no longer care enough to do so.

If the company was trying to extract as much profit as possible, it would be doing so at every level; it would be a company-wide strategy. This just looks disjointed. It speaks to Apple's loss of social cohesion, the signals of which have been apparent for sometime.

This isn't an "I told you so" moment, as this initiative is meaningless without context, and it's a poor attitude to take.