Comment by dlivingston
8 days ago
No, dude. What Apple is doing is providing an API [0] that app developers can do whatever the hell they want with. Apple is delivering ads in the same way that your web browser is (giving other people a blank canvas to draw on).
[0]: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...
Apple is delivering ads
We agree then that the Apple TV has ads in it.
I get the crux of what you're saying -- the Apple TV homepage has a giant ad banner at the top; just another billboard in a world covered by them.
What I dislike about internet discussions is that we've gone back and forth over pedantic definitions of what "ads" are, rather than discussing your more interesting meta-point.
People say Apple has not innovated much lately but they’ve innovated in the advertising space. They have just enough services and products to make it worthwhile for them to covertly advertise them to their customers. They don’t feel like ads and it seems natural the way they do it. To me it is quite clever. I never noticed it until it was pointed out to me.
The OS does not have ads. Some apps can contain ads. This is in stark contrast to other streaming box OSes, which contain ads built into the OS and have apps that have ads in them.