This week, I came across a couple of posts feeding my new hobby horse: Apple’s descent into advertising. Like almost everyone else, I HATE, HATE, HATE having ads pop up when I’m trying to do something else. It’s bad enough on Web sites where at least they have the excuse of having to make money some how but it rises to intolerable when they put them up on a device I’ve already paid for.
The annoyance is reason enough to dislike Apple’s ads but for me the worst thing is that they’re corrupting and inevitably lead to the user being replaced by the advertiser as the customer. I’ve said all this before and now John Gruber at Daring Fireball is making much the same argument. He says ads in software are like stickers on your laptop. Apple has always considered the stickers an abomination and refused to put them on their hardware. Gruber reminds us what Steve Jobs had to say about those stickers:
You know, we put ourselves in the customers’ shoes and we say, what do we want stuck on our product when we take it out of the box? And the answer is, nothing.
The same principal applies, I submit, to advertisements in software. We’re not talking about freeware here but to software that we purchased as part of the price of our Apple products.
Meanwhile, Jason Snell over at Six Colors makes the analogy of checking into an expensive but good hotel. You expect things to be perfect: the soap smells nice, the refrigerator is maintained, and the pool is clean. The hotel, of course, can save money by scrimping on those things but if they do they become a lousy but expensive hotel.
It’s the same with Apple. We’re willing to pay more for their products because they’re excellent and give good value. If Apple starts sullying those products, suddenly that extra cost doesn’t seem as worthwhile.
I hope Apple abandons this misadventure. It’s not like they need the extra cash.