Hi, I just unpacked an iPhone and I noticed this weird widget that was pre-added to my home-screen. Looks like it is ads! Is this a new normal behavior for Apple?
When you click on it you get redirected to the app-store to download this ticket app
I mean, you can easily turn it off by deleting that pane. All it’s doing is showing you a nearby point of interest, which isn’t a targeted ad scraped from your browsing habits. Pretty benign in my opinion, and I’m about as angrily anti ad as they come.
My guess is you’re near a location that has an AppClip (super small and fast app) and Siri thinks that this AppClip is useful to you. The idea here is that if you actually went to this museum/attraction you would want to buy a ticket, so Siri gives you this small app to do so (you don’t need to download the full app from the App Store, just press “open”).
To clarify, this is not an ad, but an unlucky Siri Suggestion and it does not invade your privacy.
From the Apple Developer website :
When your App Clip is associated with a specific location, you can register your App Clip to appear on a place card in Maps so people can open it from there. It can also appear as a Siri suggestion and in Spotlight Search as needed.
That’s the informed comment I was looking for, thank you. But from my point of view it’s still an ad. I don’t care if Apple thinks is the right thing to do honestly.
Also what you quoted: “When your App Clip is associated with a specific location, you can register your App Clip to appear on a place card in Maps so people can open it from there. It can also appear as a Siri suggestion and in Spotlight Search as needed.”
From this prospective looks like it’s something I chose to do, but it’s not, the iPhone was just unpacked, I put the glass-screen and the cover, updated iOS and that’s it. So this behavior is default.
You are correct, this is default behaviour. Siri needs some time to train itself to understand what you want to do with your iPhone, so by default it just gives you random suggestions to see what sticks.
The text I quoted is directed at the developer of the app. I just used it as proof that AppClips can be suggested by Siri.
Technically this is not an ad, since as far as I know nobody got paid, but I agree that this is annoying.
In not too familiar with the App Intents and Siri Kit frameworks, which power these suggestions, so I can’t give you more details.