Rush Limbaugh: What Apple’s iOS 9 ad-blockers will unleash

Mac Daily News ^ | September 21, 2015 | by Rush Limbaugh

[Swordmaker]

Rush Limbaugh: What Apple’s iOS 9 ad-blockers will unleash

Monday, September 21, 2015 · 5:34 pm ·

Among other things during his radio program, Mac, iPhone, and iPad user Rush Limbaugh on Monday discussed Apple’s iOS 9 for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, specifically content- or ad-blockers and what he thinks is Apple’s reasoning and what will result.

The 3-hour Rush Limbaugh Show, the highest-rated, most-listened-to talk-radio program in the United States with some 15 million weekly listeners, airs daily on a network of approximately 590 AM and FM affiliate radio stations. The program is also broadcast worldwide on the U.S. Armed Forces Radio Network.

From the live on-air transcript:

…Folks, look, on an iPhone, particularly a smartphone, when you have a website that takes 45 seconds to load everything, I mean, things you don’t even see being loaded, the trackers you don’t see. You see the video player being loaded, you see the ads being loaded, but there’s much, much more. All the trackers and the analytics from Google that are being loaded on these websites, you never see it, but it’s why your bar never finishes for 45. You can read what’s on the website maybe within 20 seconds, but your battery is churning for that full minute while all this stuff is loaded. And sometimes the content doesn’t load fully until all these things do.

And then you’re shown how you can have every website you visit load in 10 seconds? What are you gonna do? So the genie is out of the bottle… White listing is not gonna solve the problem. The genie’s out of the bottle. So what’s gonna happen, this guy is exactly right, the consumer is gonna determine what happens here, and the advertisers, Madison Avenue is not just gonna sit there and say, “Oops, we have been snookered.” What’s gonna happen is there are gonna be all kinds of creativity. We’ve already led the way here in radio years ago on this. We are truly the trailblazers. What’s gonna happen next online is advertising is not gonna look like advertising. And it’s not gonna have pictures. It’s gonna present to you as a news story.

Creative writers are gonna write stories about a product or that you’re gonna think is a review or maybe somebody really recommending, when in fact it’s gonna be an ad. And it can’t be blocked because traditional blockers haven’t yet been written to block that kind. Or they’ll come up with some way of disguising what looks like content as an ad, in order to get past the blockers. I mean, too many people are depending on this revenue, too many websites.

I would have to say the top reason that Apple is doing this, and this is my wild guess based on things that I’ve studied and read. Steve Jobs, before he died, declared back in the days when Apple only — I say only. Their cash reserve was $40 billion. Now they’re over $200 billion. Back when they had $40 billion — and it was still more than anybody else had — Jobs said he would spend all of it to destroy Google. He said he was ready for thermonuclear war. The reason was Android, he believed, was stolen from iOS. Eric Schmidt used to be on the Apple board. He was on the Apple board when the iPhone first came out in 2007. If you look at Google’s Android phones around then they were clunkers. They had keyboards, hard button keyboards on them. They were nothing like what the iPhone is or any other smartphone today.

Shortly after that Google announces they’re totally redoing their phones and Android phones begin to look just like iPhones, as Samsung’s did, and Jobs was not mad at Samsung — well he was, but the focus of his anger was Google. Well, Google’s primary source of revenue is advertising sales all over the Internet. And the best way, the fastest way to launch an attack on Google is content blockers, ad blockers on Apple because the percentage of iOS users in the developed world, with customers that spend money, is an overwhelming percentage using Apple’s iOS. So if Google sees a severe decline in revenue from iOS devices, iPhones, iPads, and all that, it would be a huge chunk out of their revenue stream. I think that’s among whatever other reasons there are for this, that’s one of the big ones.

…This is a direct assault on the income streams of a lot of people. Internet service providers and website operators are kind of operating at a — I don’t know if you call it a disadvantage or not, but the Internet, from its earliest days, content was free. And it became expected that everything on the Internet is free, including streamed video, music, textual content, whatever it is, it’s supposed to be free. It’s always been free… So they’ve got big problems. Content blockers coming along and attacking the only revenue source they’ve really been able to depend on is gonna cause major upheavals. And as I say, the way it’s gonna manifest itself is these advertisers and their agencies are gonna try to come up new ways to have their advertising presented to you, disguised as news stories or, who knows, contests, promotions, you name it. But whoever comes up with the most creative way of getting around the blockers is gonna get rich. It’s the way it always happens in America, while America’s still America, so act fast.

Full transcript here.

[Swordmaker]

Rush Limbaugh's analysis on why Apple has suddenly allowed Ad Blocking apps on iOS 9. Interesting take. — PING!

Rush's take on why Apple OKed
Ad Blocking Apps on iOS 9
Ping!

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If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me.

[Scutter]

Amen, brother! Bring on that ad blocker, cant wait to have it on my iPad. Some advertising is reasonable, but on a lot of these sites it is out of control. Breitbart is a good example of that. Just trying to read the article, but stuff is so constantly moving around and crashing the browser, I can’t even do that.

[Up Yours Marxists]

Welcome to 2006. At least on Windows browsers anyway.

[InterceptPoint]

Personally I'm a big Google fan. I may not like their politics but their technology is first class.

Look at what an asset YouTube is compared to a few years ago before Google bought it. My life would be way better if Google and not Microsoft had bought Skype. Skype would actualy work and would be 4K resolution by now.

And look at Google itself. Can you imagine having something like we have today 30 years ago? Would we even have believed it possible?

I'm glad to let Google collect their ad revenue. And when I run into a web page that takes 45 seconds to load I just head back FR and maybe Drudge and watch them load in a few hundred milliseconds.

[ctdonath2]

D@@@@@@@@@@@@@@mn that’s insightful.
Thermonuclear war, just as Jobs threatened.
Google is built entirely on serving ads, and Apple (owning half the smartphone market and rapidly chewing up the PC market) is going to make ‘em all go away.
Wow.

[CygnusXI]

I see it more likely that the ad blockers will be regulated (made illegal) or this will be the catalyst for paid (taxed) browsing.
Rush should realize the free market is gone.

[Jane Long]

Breitbart USED to do that...but not since AdBlockerPlus!

[Carthego delenda est]

I’d like to know which ad blocker ap is the way to go. Ads loading taking up time is one thing, having to pay extra in the data package because of all the extra data the ads use is really aggravating.

[1010RD]

Good analysis and this is an opportunity for creative destruction.

[itsahoot]

Open a web page that has 4 or 5 movies all start playing at once, you couldn’t listen to a commercial if you wanted to. I guess they get paid if the movie even starts, sometimes they are completely hidden only way to stop is leave the page.

[JediJones]

Washington Times and Huffington Post are a disaster with ads and videos loading.

[Scutter]

They can still serve their ads. Just not this browser-killing, 9’different video stream-playing, stuff moving all over the damn screen BS.

[Swordmaker]

Welcome to 2006. At least on Windows browsers anyway.

And Mac OS X Browsers had ad blockers as well for longer than that. . . This is for iOS and ads on iOS browsers have not been much of an issue until lately.

[RinaseaofDs]

Schmidt stole iOS. Gates and Jobs robbed Xerox.

Not good, long term.

[Yardstick]

I feel similarly about Google. My only complaint beside their politics is that their GUIs have a tendency to be poorly designed. Regarding advertising, I’ve got no problem with it. To me it’s a small price to pay for all the otherwise free content. Most sites strike an acceptable balance with the ads. The sites that are too annoying I don’t return to.

[samtheman]

Open a web page that has 4 or 5 movies all start playing at once, you couldn’t listen to a commercial if you wanted to. I guess they get paid if the movie even starts, sometimes they are completely hidden only way to stop is leave the page

---

Not very smart of the website owner is it? So many websites dont even QA their own stuff.

[W.]

What are these advertisements they keep speaking of? TG for Adblock plus, only the very occasional video sneaks in, and I’ll find out how to kill it sometime soon. I only get reminded of adverts when i fire up one of my offbrand browsers that aren’t equipped to squash ads. Heh.

[Cincinatus]

They can just do what Rush does - work in 15 minutes of commercial as program “content.”

[Vinnie]

I have a gen 1 ipad. Can’t get a OS upgrade anymore. Can’t watch youtube videos w/o going thru contortions .
For some months now it chokes often while trying to surf. Safari just stops.
My wife’s gen 2 , running a later OS chokes also. Not as often but similar.