iOS 9 Safari supports content blocking!

[Eug]

Strange. I'm familiar with that problem, and it's much better with 9.1 (except that it keeps showing very old versions of pages when I swipe back, ever since the .1 update).

My iPhone 6 Plus is on 9.1 public beta with Peace, viewing the forums in Safari in desktop mode.

I scrolled this thread rapidly from top-to-bottom and back to the top again. I didn't see the gray area waiting to redraw. It was perfect.

I just tried several pages from the AnandTech forums again this morning as well as other pages. Still happens with the ad blocker on, but not every time. It happens more often with this page (when ad blockers are on) than with some others though. I edited the video's description to indicate that the behaviour is inconsistent. I wonder if it has to do with the specific types of ads blocked.

 

[PricklyPete]

I don't know who "Marco" is, except the historical explorer and the presidential candidate.

Marco Ament is the developer of "Peace" and a number of other iOS apps (generally highly regarded apps). Your post just read as a marketing piece.

 

[Eug]

Peace seems to work better on my iPhone 5s, mainly because a lot of the sites I visit default to the mobile version on the iPhone, instead of the desktop version like on the iPad. I haven't tried Purity on my phone yet.

I usually don't get this strange rendering behaviour with the iPhone mobile version. So, Peace seems to work mostly fine on the iPhone. Nice to see --- or not see --- those missing ads. One site is a bit annoying though since there is an overlay ad at the bottom which normally I can just kill. Will Peace active though the overlaid ad never appears, but an outline for a transparent box appears where the ad is supposed to be. I can still see the content through it, but having that box on screen is distracting. And I can't kill it, because the ad never loads.

BTW, Peace removes the online poll on this page.

http://9to5mac.com/2015/09/18/is-your-iphone-slow-ios-9/

I was scrolling around the page looking for the poll before I finally realized it was being blocked by the ad blocker.

 

[Ichinisan]

Peace is too aggressive. It blocks watcheverywhere.com -- the portal from my cable provider, my WTVE user ID allows content providers like HBO GO to verify that I subscribe to their TV channels. I just wanted to see if any new content providers had been recently added, but the address changes to "about:blank" and the page doesn't load. I tried typing it with and without the "www." prefix.

It doesn't do any good to hold the refresh/reload button for the option to bypass content blockers, because it would only try to reload the "about:blank" address.

 

[Eug]

Peace is too aggressive. It blocks watcheverywhere.com -- the portal from my cable provider, my WTVE user ID that allows content providers like HBO GO to verify that I subscribe to their TV channels.

Peace removes the online poll on this page.

http://9to5mac.com/2015/09/18/is-your-iphone-slow-ios-9/

I was scrolling around the page looking for the poll before I finally realized it was being blocked by the ad blocker.

The poll works fine with Purify. So, I've switched to Purify for the time being on my iPhone. Still leaving it off on my iPad though because of that scrolling bug. However, maybe I should just whitelist the sites I want, since it doesn't seem to happen all the time. OTOH, it seems the scrolling behaviour is not consistent even on the same site, so leaving Purify (and Peace) off is safer. IOW, it may not be a site-specific bug, but related to something else, like the types of ads blocked.

 

[Aikouka]

I got Peace yesterday, but I have had times where all I received was a blank page upon the page refreshing (got dumped out of memory). I just refreshed, and the page came up properly, but that's still a hassle that I wouldn't want to put up with that often. I'll go buy Purify and give that a shot.

 

[Red Storm]

Looks like Peace got pulled from the app store. It was the dev's decision, not Apple.

I think it's probably best to wait a bit before dropping $$$ on these apps...

 

[rumpleforeskin]

What does this mean for the future of the internet, will we be paying per article on Anandtech or news sites if there is a big loss of revenue from advertising?

 

[Aikouka]

Looks like Peace got pulled from the app store. It was the dev's decision, not Apple.

I think it's probably best to wait a bit before dropping $$$ on these apps...

Yeah, looks like he did, and it's quite lame for those of us (me included) that paid for it. :\ My biggest reason for using it is to block those terrible ads that we get on mobile devices. You know... those really dirty ones that open up the App Store to some crappy F2P game, and continuously do it while you browse the site. :|

 

[Red Storm]

If Anandtech tries to charge per article people will just stop reading here and go to places that are free. Websites that "threaten" having to charge don't seem to understand that people don't really care all that much. Ads are mostly very annoying and people want to block them. The web looks so much better without ads.

 

[Ichinisan]

Yeah, looks like he did, and it's quite lame for those of us (me included) that paid for it. :\ My biggest reason for using it is to block those terrible ads that we get on mobile devices. You know... those really dirty ones that open up the App Store to some crappy F2P game, and continuously do it while you browse the site. :|

Yes. The entire mobile experience has been completely destroyed by resource-hungry ads. I can't tell you how many times my mobile Safari crashes due to them...on all my mobile devices. And it's not just crashing, forcing reloads, and wasting memory. Even basic stuff like scrolling and typing is often completely non-functional because of *something* going on with these embedded ads and their crazy scripts.

I recall that, one day almost a year ago, something changed with the ad network on AT forums and all my iOS devices and my brother's started crashing like crazy ever since - even after wiping a device and setting up as new. That change did not coincide with an iOS update. Meanwhile, these problems became more and more prevalent in the rest of the web too.

If it was *just* banners on the top and sides, I'd be perfectly fine with that. Since it's making my device unusable and wasting my time/resources, I feel no guilt about blocking them. Maybe ad supported sites can pick an ad network that lets you pay $2 to remove ads for a year or so. That way, you're supporting the site and you don't have to deal with the BS.

 

[poofyhairguy]

What does this mean for the future of the internet

Inline advertisements. Advertisements that look like editorial content. Product placement.

 

[Eug]

Hmmmm... Strange that he feels the remorse now after 12000 downloads.

Anyone gonna request a refund?

 

[Ichinisan]

Hmmmm... Strange that he feels the remorse now after 12000 downloads.

Anyone gonna request a refund?

Gonna be complicated for me. I gifted a copy to my nephew.

 

[mrochester]

That just points out the hypocrisy of Apple in this situation. I bet if they would enable adblocker in Safari by default, they would have all kinds of legal issues around the world, but since the user does it, it's all fine, but the hypocrisy remains.

It has nothing to do with hypocrisy and everything to do with giving users the choice to block content.

 

[poofyhairguy]

It has nothing to do with hypocrisy and everything to do with cutting Google's throat by attacking their main source of revenue from iOS devices.

Fixed.

We all know iOs accounts for 75% of Google's mobile ad revenue:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/05/27/apples-ios-drives-75-of-googles-mobile-advertising-revenue

 

[mrochester]

Fixed.

We all know iOs accounts for 75% of Google's mobile ad revenue:

http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/05/27/apples-ios-drives-75-of-googles-mobile-advertising-revenue

Well that's just a side benefit. The main benefit is to allow users to block advertising.

 

[jpiniero]

Well that's just a side benefit. The main benefit is to allow users to block advertising.

That's not their advertising of course.

 

[kpkp]

It has nothing to do with hypocrisy and everything to do with giving users the choice to block content.

On the web where Apple makes no money, in the apps on the other side... Yeah it's all about the users.

 

[dawheat]

This is a very useful thread. Since I'm going to hock my wife's iPhone 6 next week once her 6S arrives, I'm waiting to buy an ad blocker.

Hopefully by next Fri these minor issues will be worked out, though Purify seems like the current best choice.

 

[Ichinisan]

On the web where Apple makes no money, in the apps on the other side... Yeah it's all about the users.

Allowing content blocking is probably Apple's reaction to Google's recent policy change (down-ranking sites that have big app landing pages when you visit with a mobile device).

 

[kpkp]

Allowing content blocking is probably Apple's reaction to Google's recent policy change (down-ranking sites that have big app landing pages when you visit with a mobile device).

I don't think that theory works timeline-wise.

 

[Mopetar]

Looks like Peace got pulled from the app store. It was the dev's decision, not Apple.

I think it's probably best to wait a bit before dropping $$$ on these apps...

He probably got cold feet because all of his buddies run blogs/websites that were having their ads blocked by his app.

Personally I think as long as you have a whitelist feature you can leave certain types of ads from various sites in place and I won't mind, but screw all the trackers and various other crap.

 

[Commodus]

He probably got cold feet because all of his buddies run blogs/websites that were having their ads blocked by his app.

Personally I think as long as you have a whitelist feature you can leave certain types of ads from various sites in place and I won't mind, but screw all the trackers and various other crap.

Might be, but that does illustrate one of the problems with ad blocking: those who use it often forget that they're hurting real people, including those who had nothing to do with the ad campaigns. The best thing you can do to get rid of obnoxious ads? Complain -- these kinds of ads sometimes show up unexpectedly in the rotation, and sites can frequently ask to have offending campaigns pulled.

 

[lopri]

I use ad blocker, firewall, and permission-disabler on my phones so I cannot contribute to this thread with good conscience. ^_^