A continuation of an Apple patent filing from April 18th surfaced this week. The invention “Advertising in Operating System” brought up suspicions that Apple is preparing a fremium model for the next release of Mac OS X. Fears that there will be pop-up ads just to do basic functions make pretty good link-bait for the tech blog echo chamber. [AppleInsider]
Optimists hope that this patent will be used just to prevent other software firms from creating their own ad-supported operating systems. If granted, any company out to make a ad-supported operating system could be stopped by Apple patent-licensing fees. Noble, but if we can’t be bothered with ad-supported television will the market support an ad-based computer. *cough* PeoplePC *cough*
Seeing past the idea of Apple leveraging their iAds platform into Mac O$ XashGrab, there are some real opportunities for Apple to encourage growth. Take a look at the one diagram that the tech blogs aren’t bothering to post:
The ‘Advertising Component’ sits alongside all of the other OS pieces. Notice, that it’s neither blocking any of the other modules nor are any modules dependent upon the ‘Advertising Component’. Â So follow me on this one, ‘Advertising Component’ is a core technology.
Core Ads or Core iAds brought to Mac OS will entice developers to make apps for the desktop just as they did for the iPhone and iPod touch. Shareware won’t have to nag you to pay for the full version, it will just nag you with the well honed ads served up from Apple. The true beauty of this is Apple doesn’t have to put advertising on any of its applications to make money. Third-party application developers hungry for a slice of the ad dollars will use Core iAds and Apple makes money on the back end. You won’t be stopped by an ad going from AddressBook.app to Mail.app, but you may have to view a movie trailer in order to paste a form letter from your third-party clipboard app.
iAds just can’t sit on mobile devices alone. This patent is a peek into how Apple is going to make it part of our desktop computing.