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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nThat was Jobs\u2019 \u201cred line\u201d\u2014cross it, and there would be consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, that red line is starting to blur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And today? That red line seems to be slowly fading away.
The latest news suggests that Apple Maps is about to start showing ads. Just like the App Store\u2014which introduced ad placements as early as 2015 and expanded them further in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No one would consider \u201cpassively seeing ads\u201d to be a better user experience, so why is Apple doing this?
The answer is simple\u2014money. You can imagine how bright the eyes of the Apple board must have been when they heard about this \u201cnew revenue stream.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No one seems to care how these ads will ultimately be received by users. Although we already live in an era where \u201cads are everywhere,\u201d many still feel disappointed\u2014that one of the wealthiest companies in the world is willing to trade a bit of its soul for some \u201ceasy money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat would Jobs have done?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Normally, I\u2019d avoid answering hypothetical questions\u2014they\u2019re usually just baseless speculation. But this time is different, because I was actually there when a similar situation arose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I remember it was around 1999. The head of the advertising agency, Lee Clow, and I were urgently called in to meet with Steve Jobs and his executive team. The topic of the meeting was: \u201cShould we insert ads into the Mac system software?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n It sounded reasonable\u2014\u201ctwo choices, let the user decide.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n We even discussed various ways to \u201cintegrate ads\u201d: for example, playing a Nike ad every time the system booted up; or embedding ads in system notifications, like placing a link to an ink supplier next to a \u201cyour ink is running low\u201d alert. The discussion was lively, but no final decision was made that day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few days later, Steve Jobs personally told me\u2014he had rejected the idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n His reasoning was very straightforward: it would undermine the pure, elegant, and clean interface experience that Mac users loved. Even if users could choose between an \u201cad-free\u201d or \u201cad-supported\u201d version, he still didn\u2019t want anyone to see a system that had been \u201cpolluted.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jobs understood that was the \u201ccrown jewel\u201d of Apple. He would rather give up a bit of revenue than sacrifice the purity of the experience. He refused to step onto that \u201cslippery slope,\u201d because he knew\u2014once you step on it, you can\u2019t stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He guarded that red line well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Does Apple still guard that line today?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Fast forward to now, and Apple\u2019s evolution tells us this: red lines don\u2019t last forever. How long they survive depends entirely on whether the person at the helm is willing to continue protecting them. Once no one is maintaining them, they gradually blur\u2014and may even disappear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For whatever reason, it\u2019s clear that Tim Cook is no longer as obsessed with user experience as Jobs was. To sum it up: the \u201cred line\u201d that Jobs drew protected a belief; the \u201cred line\u201d that Cook has erased has brought in profit. Perhaps Apple is still great\u2014but it is no longer pure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If we were to talk about Tim C…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[188,111,193],"class_list":["post-705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-companies","category-people","tag-ada","tag-apple","tag-cook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":708,"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions\/708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.midytech.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
If we were to ask him today, \u201cWhy are things being done now that couldn\u2019t be done in Jobs\u2019 era?\u201d he\u2019d probably respond, \u201cApple today is not the same as it was back then.\u201d And he\u2019d be right\u2014yet that is precisely the problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n