If you’ve ever wished that you could banish advertisements from the Internet forever with the wave of a hand, here’s a dose of reality for you: getting the same exact stuff sans ads would cost you hundreds per year.
That’s according to a study conducted by Ebuzzing, a video advertisement firm. What they did was simple; they took the amount of money spent on Internet advertising in the U.K. last year, and divided that by the number of people who use the Internet there. That works out to 6.4 billion pounds, or roughly $10.6 billion, divided by 45 million people.
Plug those numbers in, and you get an annual cost of 140 pounds per year for ad-free Internet. That converts to about $232. People are upset enough already by high cable and Internet service costs, and if you doubt whether most people would shell out that kind of cash for ad-free Internet, you’d be right.
Ebuzzing hired another company, Censuswide, to survey 1,400 people in the U.K., asking them whether they would be willing to pay that kind of money for an Internet devoid of advertisements. 98 percent of those 1,400 folks said that they would not want to pay that amount.
There is a silver lining though; more than 25 percent respondents would be more willing to put up with ads if they provided a laugh, or were otherwise entertaining. 21 percent said that ads should be less than a minute long, while 16 percent said that the ads in front of them should be revelant to whatever they’re doing online at that moment.
“We need to get better at engaging, not better at interrupting,” Jeremy Arditi, Ebuzzing’s U.K. managing director says. “That means introducing new formats which consumers find less invasive, more creative ads that are better placed, and giving consumers a degree of choice and control.”
Mr. Arditi seems to get it, but many more companies have to commit themselves to changing how Internet advertising works in order for big changes to be made.
Until then, ad blockers and the “X” button on Web browsers will continue to remain very popular.
Apple is less than a day away from launching its highly anticipated OLED MacBook Pro with a touch-sensitive screen. But it appears that the upgrade is going to cost a pretty penny. According to a report by Bloomberg, Apple is reportedly eyeing a starting price of $2,899 for the 14-inch MacBook Pro, while the 16-inch version could start at $3,399 in the US.
"At $2,899, the 14-inch model would mark the highest starting price for a new MacBook Pro model, surpassing the $2,799 Apple charged for a 17-inch version introduced in 2006," says the report. The report claims that Apple is targeting a minimum price hike of $400 for its upcoming redesigned 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models.
I've spent a good amount of time digging into the spec sheet of the new M6 MacBook Pro (14-inch), and for all intents and purposes, this is a classic Apple "chip and connectivity" refresh. It's not a full redesign. The chassis, Liquid Retina XDR panel, speakers, ports, and battery, all of them carry over unchanged.
However, the M6 brings more cores, stronger on-device AI, higher memory bandwidth on the larger configs, and modern wireless. Here’s the practical rundown of what actually improved, and whether those gains are worth your money.
Two new highly requested iCloud plugins just got added to ChatGPT, giving people who rely on Apple’s Mail and Calendar services a way to search emails, check appointments, and manage their schedules directly through the chatbot.
The integration is rolling out to all ChatGPT plans, including the free tier. You can access it on the web, desktop, and iOS.