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Not a lot happened in mobile this week. One company you’ve likely never heard of made some annoucements, but I doubt you’re interested.
Joking aside as I actually have some strong opinions I want to share on Apple’s announcements this week. In typical style they snuck some potentially large and impactful changes into their announcements without drawing attention to them. But we all noticed…
Steve Jobs infamously said in 2011:
“I’m going to destroy Android, because it’s a stolen product. I’m willing to go thermonuclear war on this.”
In more recent Tim Cook led years it seemed that this ‘strategy’ had lessened, until September 16th.
The launch of iOS 9 introduced a slew of new features, amongst them ‘content blocking’ for Safari and in a matter of days, ad blocking software is now topping the App Store charts.
Content blocking is nothing new, ad blockers and content streamliners such as Instapaper and Safari reader have been around for years. The sudden rise in (mainstream) uptake and Apple’s increased push towards walled-garden apps is.
So far this blocking functionality is mobile-web only and in a complete about-turn from the origins of iOS with no app store, Apple are pushing developers from the mobile web into the app store and their 30%. Perhaps this also explains the myriad recent criticisms of Safari, maybe it’s almost intentional.
I would love to hear your thoughts.