This is a funny gag from Claude Zeins, but if you think about it, it shows just how destructive Apple’s decision was to send a push notification from the Wallet app promoting F1 The Movie.

It’s a fact that no company can inject an ad into your physical wallet. It just can’t happen. So if Apple’s message to users is that they should trust Apple Wallet, and move more of their “shit that goes in your wallet” life from their traditional analog wallet into their digital Apple Wallet, that’s the bar. No ads, ever. They’re competing against the privacy and intimacy of one of the most personal things people carry with them.

It’s not just that many people find ads annoying, no matter where they appear. It’s that Apple Wallet ought to be sacrosanct — like the Passwords and Journal apps. Apple is asking us to trust this app with our finances, our identity cards, and our keys. I’m 99.9 percent certain this F1 ad was just blasted out to zillions of Wallet users indiscriminately, but some number of users who got it — especially people who know they’re in the demographic for the movie — surely think they got the ad because Wallet is tracking their interests and activities. Like, what if you recently bought tickets to see another summer blockbuster movie? Using Apple Wallet? And then you got this ad? It’d be completely sensible to be spooked by that, and conclude that Apple Wallet is tracking you.

Sending this ad is completely destructive to all the hard work other teams at Apple have done to make Apple Wallet actually private. I try very seldom to call for anyone to be fired, but I think whoever authorized this movie ad through Wallet push notifications ought to be canned.

Chance Miller returns to the show to discuss the news and announcements from WWDC 2025.

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Sarah Perez, writing at TechCrunch Tuesday:

Apple customers aren’t thrilled they’re getting an ad from the Apple Wallet app promoting the tech giant’s original film “F1 the Movie.” Across socialmedia, iPhone owners are complaining that their Wallet app sent out a push notification offering a $10 discount at Fandango for anyone buying two or more tickets to the film.

Joe Rossignol, 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.

That’s an understatement, to say the very least. See if you can find a single comment from anyone who was happy about receiving this push notification ad. Seriously, let me know if you find one statement in support of this.

Casey Liss, succinct as ever:

🤮

The ad itself, from Apple, read:

Apple Pay
$10 off at Fandango

Save on 2+ tickets to F1® The Movie with APPLEPAYTEN. Ends 6/29. While supplies last. Terms apply.

In addition to the justified outrage over receiving any ad from a system-level component like Wallet in the first place, this particular ad sucks in multiple ways. Why did Apple put a “®” after “F1” in the movie title? Why not put a “®” next to “Apple Pay” and “Fandango” too? What supplies are running out on this promotion? Why add that “terms apply”? This is just a shit notification from top to bottom, putting aside whether any such notification should have been sent in the first place.

iOS 26 adds new settings inside the Wallet app to allow fine-grained control over notifications, including the ability to turn off notifications for “Offers & Promotions” (Wallet app → (···) → Settings). That’s good. But (a) iOS 26 is months away from being released to the general public — there exists no way to opt out of such notifications now; and (b) at least for me, I was by default opted in to this setting on my iOS 26 devices.

This was such a boneheaded marketing decision on Apple’s part. They cost themselves way more in goodwill and trust than they possibly could have earned in additional F1 The Movie — wait, sorry, my bad, F1® The Movie — box office ticket sales. It’s like Apple got paid to exemplify Cory Doctorow’s “enshittification” theory. Apple Wallet doesn’t present itself as a marketing vehicle. It presents itself as a privacy-protecting system service.

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