Joe Rossignol, reporting for MacRumors:

Apple today sent out an ad to some iPhone users in the form of a Wallet app push notification, and not everyone is happy about it.

An unknown number of iPhone users in the U.S. today received the push notification, which promotes a limited-time Apple Pay discount that movie ticket company Fandango is offering on a pair of tickets to Apple’s new film “F1: The Movie."

Some of the iPhone users who received the push notification have complained about it across the MacRumors Forums, Reddit, X, and other online discussion platforms.

Rossignol mentions Apple’s App Review guidelines, which state developers shouldn’t use push notifications for advertisements unless users opt into them. But most developers in the App Store — I’m looking at Uber in particular — silently and automatically enable the switch buried deep in their settings to receive “promotions and offers” without telling the user. Apple did the same thing in the Wallet app, which I learned this week has a toggle for “promotions.” And why would I have thought Wallet would have promotions? It’s a payment app, for heaven’s sake, not something like Apple Music, the App Store, and Apple Sports, all of which have been filled to the brim with promotions for the new movie. I expect ads in Apple services because that’s the new Apple, but the Wallet app never struck me as a “service.”

Every big app developer pulls shenanigans like this, but Apple historically hasn’t. The idea of Apple as a company is that it’s different from the other giants. Samsung phones, even the flagship ones, have ads plastered in the Android version of Notification Center for other Samsung products. Google puts ads in people’s email inboxes. The Uber app is designed so remarkably poorly that it’s hard to even figure out where to tap to request a ride sometimes. But Apple software is made to be elegant — when people buy an iPhone, they expect not to be bombarded by worthless ads for a movie very few iPhone customers will ever be interested in. (As much as I love Formula 1, it’s still a niche sport.) Who decided this would remain true to Apple’s company ethos?

Push notifications are, in my opinion, the most sacred form of computer interaction. We all have phones with us everywhere — in the bathroom, in bed, at the dining table — and most don’t find their presence alone to be intrusive. But every app on a person’s phone has the authority to instantly make it incredibly intrusive in just a second. It’s almost surreal how some server hundreds of miles away can make thousands of phones buzz at the same time — how notifications can disrupt thousands of lives for even a moment. Notifications are intrusions of personal space and should be reserved for immediate feedback: text messages, calls, or alerts. Not advertisements. The concept of advertising is generally structured to be passive — aside from television and radio ads that interrupt content, billboards, web ads, and posters are meant to live alongside content or the world around us. A notification doesn’t just interrupt content, it interrupts a person’s life. That’s contrary to the purpose of advertising.

Who is this interruption serving? What difference does this make to a multi-trillion-dollar company’s sales? How many people seriously tapped this notification, went to Fandango, and bought tickets to see the movie? One hundred, maybe a few more? There are so many great ways to advertise this film, but instead, Apple chose a cheap way to garner some sales. How much does that money influence Apple’s bottom line? Was it seriously worth the reputational hit to sell a few more tickets to an already popular movie? These are real questions that should’ve gone through the heads of whoever approved this. Clearly, they haven’t been at Apple long, and they don’t appreciate the company’s knack for attention to detail. That’s why this is so egregious: because it’s so un-Apple-like. It does no good for its bottom line and just throws the decades-old reputation of Apple being a stalwart of good user experience into the garbage can.