“Apple Announces Ads Are Coming to Apple Maps”
John Gruber, writing at Daring Fireball:
But more and more it’s becoming clear that while Apple’s devotion to protecting user privacy remains as high as ever, their devotion to delivering the best possible user experience does not. Here’s Apple’s own screenshot showing what these ads are supposedly going to look like. It looks fine. But these ads seem highly unlikely to make the overall experience of using Apple Maps better. Perhaps, in practice, they will not make the experience worse, and it’ll be a wash. But I can’t help but suspect that they’re going to make the experience worse, and the question is really just how much worse. The addition of ads to the App Store unquestionably has made the experience worse.
I was super disappointed to read about ads coming to Apple Maps. I admit that I’m more allergic to ads than most, and will go to greater lengths to avoid them. For me, the screenshot looks, as Gruber says, fine. But it’s never how it looks at first that matters—Google’s ads looked fine at first too. It’s once they get hooked on the ad revenue, it becomes a game of how far they can push it before they start to lose users. And, as I said, most users are far more tolerant of ads than I am. Ads are cancer for products that, once introduced, only get worse over time.
YouTube Premium is arguably the best bang-for-the-buck in the entire world of content subscriptions. Why should Apple One subscribers still see these ads in Apple Maps?
I agree. I pay for YouTube Premium (and also agree about its value), as well as Apple One (which is definitely expensive for what it is). I’d prefer to have an ad-free experience be a benefit of being an Apple One member.
Apple Announces Ads Are Coming to Apple Maps
Link to: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/03/introducing-apple-business-a-new-all-in-one-platform-for-businesses-of-all-sizes/