Apple’s new iOS 16 could allow ads on iPhone lock screens

Yahoo Finance tech editor Dan Howley details how Apple's iOS 16 will be optimal for ads, other lock screen updates, and upgrades for the Apple Watch.

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DAVE BRIGGS: All right, let's now talk Apple. We can't escape ads. Now they could be coming to our phone lock screens. We have Yahoo Finance's tech reporter, Dan Howley, here to explain how this could be possible. Dan, say it ain't so.

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, so, so far, it doesn't look like we're going to see anything as far as ads on Apple devices. The big story here is kind of what's happening over on the Android side of things and how that could influence what's going on, on the iOS side of things. So according to TechCrunch, a company named Glance, which has set up the ability to run ads on home screens, is going to be rolling out some of those features to US smartphone carriers in the coming months.

Now, we don't know exactly how that will look, what it will be like, but obviously, you can imagine that the lock screen of a phone, which is what you see before you swipe up or enter your password or use your fingerprint, is pretty good real estate. It's the first thing you see when you pick up your phone and the last thing you see probably when you put it to sleep at night. And so that's something that I think developers and advertisers are really interested in getting their hands on.

So this feature called Glance will be coming in the next few months. But we don't know which phones exactly will have it, whether or not it'll be with Samsung or something along those lines. Samsung, obviously, the largest Android smartphone maker here in the US. As for Apple and iOS, they're going to be rolling out a new update to the lockscreen with iOS 16. And that'll be able to show things like different updates for apps, for instance, your Uber's time for arrival, sports scores, things along those lines, your workouts if you happen to be interested in doing that.

But the fear here is that if Android starts doing this, then Apple will, too. But again, there's no inkling that Apple is interested in that. And frankly, I would find it kind of disappointing if Apple did something like that because it would seem to go against their whole ethos of making ads unobtrusive, similar to how they do it in the App Store, as is.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: And I want to ask you about the extreme Apple Watch that a lot of people are speculating about. What are the expectations there?

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, so this is going to be, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, a version of the Apple Watch with a slightly larger display and a slightly larger battery. And the idea is that it would be able to show more fitness information than a standard Apple Watch. So they'll be the Apple Watch Series 8. Right now, we're on the Series 7. That's likely to be largely unchanged from the Series 7.

Maybe a little bit of improvement as far as general performance, perhaps. Maybe they'll be able to squeeze a little bit more out of the battery life, but no major changes as far as the processor goes. So you can't expect huge leaps and bounds of a difference. This updated extreme version of the watch is supposed to have a metal case, though, and more resistant display. So in addition to being larger, it'll be harder for you to crack it or scratch it.

And I could tell you from my own Series 7, I've scratched it myself doing God knows what. But it's scratched, nonetheless. And so, you know, it would be interesting to see how strong that extreme version would be. And Apple's watchOS 8 is coming. That is going to have big improvements to how it displays things like fitness information. So, for instance, if you go for a run, it's going to be able to show you what your prior day's run was and things along those lines. So an extreme version of the Apple Watch, I think, would fit nicely with that.