Apple barely does it and only for their products. I agree with you that that’s already too much and too annoying but that’s an order of magnitude less than Microsoft who advertise their products pretty aggressively AND ALSO are advertising for whoever gave them money too.
Ubuntu I didn’t use it for years, there are tons of other distributions that I prefer now but last time I checked, there was a removable default shortcut to amazon. That’s an awful symbol, if you ask me, to associate Ubuntu and its meaning to Amazon but it’s nothing when compared to Apple or Microsoft (dare I say Google) behaviors.
Yes. And the debacle was so loud because it does not happen generally (I’d have to go back to the U2 album thing to find something comparable).
They nag too much about their services, though. I don’t fucking want Fitness whatever or News thing, I would like the OS to stop putting a red dot in my settings. But anyway that’s not as brain dead as what I’ve seen on Windows.
Yes, the most egregious of which being the setting app.
Its an OS setting app. Its the most fundamental bundled application in an operating system, second only to maybe the file manager or package manager. Is nothing sacred?
News app is part of the OS image and littered with ads. I just got an ad in Settings for the month to month Applecare because mine is expiring. Took a few tries of declining to get the badge on Settings to go away.
There's also a couple places where Ubuntu advertises their commercial services in the OS, including in apt ("Get more security updates through Ubuntu Pro...") and in the default login message (promotions for Ubuntu Landscape, as well as various other products and services through motd-news).
Once ever. The default search returned results from Amazon and local files potentially leaking your search intended to find local files to Ubuntu who in turn claimed that it was ok because potentially intensely personal info that could be inferred from queries weren't personally attributable to you.
This was obviously not ok and it never happened again this was if I recall correctly around 2012.
> Don’t Apple and Ubuntu also advertise products in their OS also?
I looks like Ubuntu was created just in order to be able to dismiss Linux as "also advertise products". It's just a single distribution out of a hundred, and far from the best, so it's completely wrong of course. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38300531.
Apple barely does it and only for their products. I agree with you that that’s already too much and too annoying but that’s an order of magnitude less than Microsoft who advertise their products pretty aggressively AND ALSO are advertising for whoever gave them money too.
Ubuntu I didn’t use it for years, there are tons of other distributions that I prefer now but last time I checked, there was a removable default shortcut to amazon. That’s an awful symbol, if you ask me, to associate Ubuntu and its meaning to Amazon but it’s nothing when compared to Apple or Microsoft (dare I say Google) behaviors.
Apple barely does it and only for their products.
With the recent notable exception of the F1 movie advertisement that arrived as a notification from the Wallet app. https://daringfireball.net/2025/06/more_on_apples_trust-erod...
I disabled Wallet notifications immediately :-(
Obviously not defending it, but isn’t the F1 movie produced by Apple?
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Yes. And the debacle was so loud because it does not happen generally (I’d have to go back to the U2 album thing to find something comparable).
They nag too much about their services, though. I don’t fucking want Fitness whatever or News thing, I would like the OS to stop putting a red dot in my settings. But anyway that’s not as brain dead as what I’ve seen on Windows.
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>Apple barely does it and only for their products
And U2
11 years later I still refuse to listen to their music
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Apple pushes their products often on iOS and many of them can't ve turned off or can't be turned off easily.
So you have notifications that you can only get rid of by engaging with the Apple ads.
Yes, the most egregious of which being the setting app.
Its an OS setting app. Its the most fundamental bundled application in an operating system, second only to maybe the file manager or package manager. Is nothing sacred?
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News app is part of the OS image and littered with ads. I just got an ad in Settings for the month to month Applecare because mine is expiring. Took a few tries of declining to get the badge on Settings to go away.
I have yet to see a single ad on either the menus on Ubuntu or in OSX. Care to elaborate on what you mean by that?
A few times over the years Ubuntu included Amazon ads in the OS. Each time, afaik, the community reacted angrily and it didn't last.
There's also a couple places where Ubuntu advertises their commercial services in the OS, including in apt ("Get more security updates through Ubuntu Pro...") and in the default login message (promotions for Ubuntu Landscape, as well as various other products and services through motd-news).
Once ever. The default search returned results from Amazon and local files potentially leaking your search intended to find local files to Ubuntu who in turn claimed that it was ok because potentially intensely personal info that could be inferred from queries weren't personally attributable to you.
This was obviously not ok and it never happened again this was if I recall correctly around 2012.
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Unlike with Apple, you have virtually unlimited choices of Linux distributions that are ad-free.
> Don’t Apple and Ubuntu also advertise products in their OS also?
I looks like Ubuntu was created just in order to be able to dismiss Linux as "also advertise products". It's just a single distribution out of a hundred, and far from the best, so it's completely wrong of course. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38300531.