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Advertising Iphone Apple

Apple Maps Now Has Ads 57

Posted by BeauHD from the it-was-only-a-matter-of-time dept.
Apple has begun rolling out ads in Apple Maps, with sponsored businesses appearing at the top of search results and in the "suggested places" section for users in the U.S. and Canada. Apple says the ads can be based on approximate location, search terms, or the area of the map being viewed, but are not tied to users' Apple Accounts and personal data remains on-device. 9to5Mac reports: Ads appear just like every other business listing, except they have a small blue badge that says 'Ad.' You can see examples of ads [embedded in the article]. Like Apple's ads policy with other services, the company touts user privacy protections for ads in Maps. Per Apple Newsroom: "Ads on Maps builds on Apple's broader privacy-first approach to advertising, and maintains the same privacy protections Maps users enjoy today. A user's location and the ads they see and interact with in Maps are not associated with a user's Apple Account. Personal data stays on a user's device, is not collected or stored by Apple, and is not shared with third parties."
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Apple Maps Now Has Ads More

Apple Maps Now Has Ads

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  • I thought Apple (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    was like ethical and wouldn't do anything like this.

    • Re:I thought Apple (Score:5, Insightful)

      by taustin ( 171655 ) on Wednesday August 26, 2026 @05:22PM (#66308516) Homepage Journal

      You sweet, summer child.

    • Me too.

    • Itâ(TM)s quite disappointing, even though privacy is maintained, which is great, itâ(TM)s just another example of a capitalist company using any means to make more money⦠like bigpharma, military industrial complex, etc.

    • When their only other competitor literally is an advertising company, what did you expect? It'd be nice if we had some real competition in the smartphone OS market, but that ship has sailed.

    • Not ethics (Score:5, Insightful)

      by abulafia ( 7826 ) on Wednesday August 26, 2026 @08:11PM (#66308792)
      Like most companies, Apple has been ethical when it suited their interests. There's always been a slimy side there - Jobs cheated Woz [cultofmac.com] before Apple even existed.

      No, What Apple lost was taste.

      They used to profit from producing products they'd want to use. Now they make profit-maximizing devices.

      I'd argue that the OSes are starting to suffer, too. I mean, bugs are up again, but that's always been cyclic. But I feel like they're losing coherence, too. And a lot of subsystems more technical users like are rotting or being made much more difficult to work with (Gatekeeper and shell scripts, for instance). (I also find it ugly now, but that's subjective and it has has ugly iterations before, too.)

      Anyway, yeah, Apple will make a ton of money for a long time to come. But I'm pretty sure it is losing its sense of taste. It might make the most popular and most profitable phone, but they aren't trying to make the phone people want anymore.

      • Oh man, I knew Jobs was slime (with some decent parts), but this was news to me. The public lore I had heard was that Jobs wrote Breakout. Of course it was Woz. Fun fact, a non-tech friend of mine had his Apple laptop signed by Woz somehow.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by pla ( 258480 )
          Jobs was a completely non-technical stuffed shirt. The only things he brought to the table were his narcissistic self confidence and a sleazy ability to sell other people's work.

          And make no mistake, those are valuable skills, if your goal is to get rich rather than to build the best toys. Even under the most charitable possible interpretations, however, it's still a fundamentally parasitic relationship. The "doers" tend to suck at selling ourselves, while the weasels are good at rooting through our scraps

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        Like most companies, Apple has been ethical when it suited their interests. There's always been a slimy side there - Jobs cheated Woz [cultofmac.com] before Apple even existed.

        No, What Apple lost was taste.

        They used to profit from producing products they'd want to use. Now they make profit-maximizing devices.

        I'd argue that the OSes are starting to suffer, too. I mean, bugs are up again, but that's always been cyclic. But I feel like they're losing coherence, too. And a lot of subsystems more technical users like are rotting or being made much more difficult to work with (Gatekeeper and shell scripts, for instance). (I also find it ugly now, but that's subjective and it has has ugly iterations before, too.)

        Anyway, yeah, Apple will make a ton of money for a long time to come. But I'm pretty sure it is losing its sense of taste. It might make the most popular and most profitable phone, but they aren't trying to make the phone people want anymore.

        Apple under Jobs was always sleaze city... it's just that it's now the Reality Distortion Field has broken down and people are seeing through it.

        Just 10 years ago, Fanboys would be defending the idea of putting ads in as revolutionary, unprecedented, imaginative and groundbreaking whilst jerking themselves silly. Now days the Apple crowd are 40 yr old dads in socks and sandals (and not the fashionable style of hippy, no this is Derek from Accounts Receivable socks and sandals) that has too many kids so n

        • Now days the Apple crowd are 40 yr old dads in socks and sandals

          The only reason the dads have Apple is so they can chat with their kids (who all want Apple).

          It is definitely an area where the duopoly power is out of control. What are you going to do, switch your iPhone for an Android (which has even more ads)? It's like the airlines now, too. They all screw over the passengers. But what are you going to do, not fly? Because the airlines all do the same things, even Southwest now.

    • Steve Jobs died, and the company has no principal anymore.

      And before the Jobs haters come out in droves, the man was definitely a shitty guy, but he had his principals, I worked at Apple under Steve Jobs and under Tim Cook, and I can tell you, the company was more worried about being ethical under Steve Jobs than it was under Tim Cook. Tim Cook was squarely focused on money, where as Steve Jobs instituted a lot of policies that lost Apple money out of principal, like how Apple Care unofficially got you one

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Targon ( 17348 )

      Apple with their famous 1984 commercial that tried to play that Apple was better has been "Big Brother" for decades now. They decide what people can and can not do with their Apple devices, they lock things down to an app store that they fully control, to the point of shutting out apps that they then copy.themselves, the list goes on and on for how Apple is one of the worst companies in that regard. It's one thing to encourage a "safe app store", and it is another when they block out legit apps and then

  • Well looky here (Score:5, Funny)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Wednesday August 26, 2026 @05:22PM (#66308514) Homepage Journal

    Looks like you smugsters are the product after all.

    • I bought the 12 Pro Max a few years ago because it had the best camera on the market at the time, and also because I'd been sledging Apple for so many years, I thought I had best actually try one to make sure that my sledging was warranted. Since having it, I now have a much better understanding of how bad they are, and my sledging is much more focused on material facts rather than wishy-washy 'Apple Bad' statements.

      But this... this brings Apple to a new low. I can't wait to sede this piece of shite to

      • I'm planning on another Moto phone. Too bad about the prices of everything or I would have bought a newer one already. This is a Moto G Power 2021 and it's only now becoming somewhat inadequate. (And only because devs waste RAM...)

        • My favourite phone was a Moto G 3G. It was easy to install Cyanogenmod on it - kudos to Lenovo - and it was actually a phone instead of a phablet. I really don't need the huge screens on today's phones.
      • You hung on to that "piece of shite" for a long time....
        • Very true. I try not to replace my phone until it dies - even if it is unpleasant to keep it.

          As it turns out, a Fairphone might be a good candidate for my next phone. Still reading, but it looks good so far.
          • I am still with my iPhone 11, it just keeps working.
            I am all Mac at home and work, but I am all for people using what suits them.

      • Motorola is planning to launch a phone in 2027 which is designed in cooperation with GrapheneOS. The phone will ship with Android but can be easily upgraded to GrapheneOS - while maintaining Motorola support - and still end up with a locked bootloader. Specs may not meet your needs, but further research may be in order.

        I'm holding on to the two phones I have - one work and one business - until there's more info available. One of my current phones is an iPhone on loan from my wife, and it truly sucks ass in

    • It was only a matter of time before the enshittification of the mobile OS duopoly met somewhere in the middle. Google has become more Apple-y with their changes to app signing that affect the ability to sideload, and Apple has become more Google-y with their embracing of more ads.

  • This will help lower the price of the product. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Wednesday August 26, 2026 @05:55PM (#66308554) Homepage
    Am I right?

    • Are you expecting it to go negative, and for Apple to send you a cheque? Near as I can tell there's no paid option for Apple Maps.

  • I don't own a lot of apple gear but I will say that I have been enjoying the Apple TV, more so than my main Samsung TV, because of one little quality of life feature, there's no fucking ads on the home menu and it doesn't lag when starting up, because on the Samsung I managed to block all the ads, but the device is always trying to phone home to an ad server.

    When reading the title, I thought it was going to be the beginning of the end. - Like, I don't necessarily like Apple as a company, but the user expe

    • I have fought the good fight for media devices forover a quarter century, ever since my actual XBMC install on the original XBox. I've built home theatre PCs and fought with getting remotes to work. I've got two NVidia Shields, a couple of Kodi boxes, a Fire Stick, and at least two Roku's sitting in my electronics graveyard.

      Now? I've got two Apple TVs in use. And they work brilliantly. Except for a banner for current shows on their TV service (I don't subscribe), it never tries to sell me anything. I use In

      • I have fought the good fight for media devices forover a quarter century, ever since my actual XBMC install on the original XBox. I've built home theatre PCs and fought with getting remotes to work. I've got two NVidia Shields, a couple of Kodi boxes, a Fire Stick, and at least two Roku's sitting in my electronics graveyard.

        Now? I've got two Apple TVs in use. And they work brilliantly. Except for a banner for current shows on their TV service (I don't subscribe), it never tries to sell me anything. I use Infuse for my media from my NAS. No lags, no stutter... everything just worked. Immediately. in Full 4K, HDR, Dolby Atmos/TrueHd/etc..

        They're so good, I'll look at the next gen when it comes out. But there'd have to be a pretty compelling reason to upgrade.

        What do you do with Music using InFuse? I agree it’s spectacular for Video Media; but they refuse to have a Music Librarian/Scraper. . .

        • I generally use Spotify, but I do have VLC for simple streaming. But yes, it's a gap. My music library is extensive and eclectic. So for those rare occasions where Spotify comes up empty or I do need to play a curated playlist, my XBox Series X with Kodi is on standby.

          • I generally use Spotify, but I do have VLC for simple streaming. But yes, it's a gap. My music library is extensive and eclectic. So for those rare occasions where Spotify comes up empty or I do need to play a curated playlist, my XBox Series X with Kodi is on standby.

            I do the same with Apple Music; but I have hard drives stuffed full with stuff I never play; just because I hate every Music Librarian I’ve tried so far. . .

            If InFuse would just get over itself on the Music front, it would beat every other Media Librarian hands-down!

    • I used to run a custom home theater setup with all sorts of remuxing and transcoding setups, then I found Infuse for AppleTV. Just point it at an SMB share and it plays pretty much anything you throw at it, as is.

  • Core message (Score:3)

    by devslash0 ( 4203435 ) on Wednesday August 26, 2026 @08:00PM (#66308784)

    This really won't help with juicing up their image.

  • OMG!!! (Score:2, Funny)

    by FudRucker ( 866063 )
    Those monsters!!!

    • Well you're being facetious, but forgetting that the children of the reality distortion field have for years said that their virtuous benevolent corporate non-overlord only has their best interest at heart and doesn't put ads into their products.

      So yeah, for many people Apple doing this would come as an incredible shock.

  • Sent from my iPhone 23 Pro Plus Max (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Wait... the company that inserts ads at the end of every user's email is now putting adverts into their map app? Crazy.

  • How long before directions have adverts (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rjforster ( 2130 ) on Thursday August 27, 2026 @03:42AM (#66309108) Journal

    You plan a route to Molly's house. You've done it a bunch of times before and mostly know the way but you want the extra reassurance of the real-time traffic updates. But then you notice it's taking you on a bit of a detour from the usual way. You're not too worried until you pass $FASTFOODESTABLISHMENT and the little voice says "Turn right for a refreshing beverage and 10% off a new limited edition Smugburger. I've checked the location of Molly's phone and she's not home yet so you have plenty of time."

    Within the year. And I don't even know anyone called Molly.

  • At last Enshittification hits the last bastion of closed source design.
  • So they could have every Apple user's tracking data all to themselves, so they, and they alone, could profit. They're not more ethical than other ad companies, they're more greedy.

  • From the perspective of " What can we do do get folks to use Apple Maps instead of Google Maps ? ",
    someone should fire the idiot(s) who thought that adding ADS into the app would be a positive thing. :|

  • Ads were on the platform as far as I know back in 2023ish where it would promote local business icons like mccdonalds above all other icons when zooming.
  • Apple has always had ads.
    Ads in Apple News: https://ads.apple.com/apple-news
    Ads in App Store: https://ads.apple.com/app-store
    Ads in Apple TV MLS: https://ads.apple.com/mls
    They even did pop up ads with Apple Wallet last year: https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/27/f1-the-movie-now-playing-in-theaters/
    Lets not make this sound like it's something new.

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