Its just crazy to me that they can just throw music into your collection without even asking for permission. There's something really arrogant about Apple right now. I'm not sure what other word could possibly describe this.
What boggles my mind even more is that U2, for all its popularity, is a poorly aging nostalgia act. Heck, I'm an old Gen-X'er and I barely remember their heyday with the Joshua Tree. Tweens and Millenials probably only see them as a band their parents listened to. There's really something off-putting about this. If it was Kanye or something, I could see the appeal, as he's popular now and has a wide-range of fans, but U2? We've long outgrown stale classic rockers and music popularity is very much not this monolithic structure anymore. If anyone should know this, you'd think the guys who run iTunes would.
"The album is completely free to everyone and IN YOUR IPOD RIGHT NOW"
...especially since everything else announced was a wait (for the phone) or WAY away (like the watch).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgohSbKMb-8
https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/10/26Apple-Introduces-...
Nobody wants to think about the idea that Apple can do/see anything they want at any time to our music collections and phones. Even if that isn't strictly true, and even if they probably wouldn't, it's a perception that's being confirmed by recent events, and this stunt re-enforced it.
But, I totally agree that this U2 move was absurdly ill considered.
Google recently stated that the 5 million sets of Google account credentials were not stolen directly from them and only 20% of them were valid. Is this also 'unproven'?
Which isn't to excuse it: it was very un-Apple-like. And it certainly wasn't the only un-Apple-like turn last week.
The album was shown as purchased in the iTunes Store app but there was no way to download the files, i.e., to have the album in my own library instead of just the ability to stream it via the iTunes Store.
A well-known BitTorrent search engine let me solve the issue.
As someone who didn't mind they gave me free stuff, it was hard to find out how to actually GET it.
Very strange, start to end.
I actually got up to "show all purchases" and immediately hated that I have to actually do this as the things I bought and discovered it was not what was advertised were visible again, just reminding me of something I'd rather forget. I wish there were just a simple possibility to "permanently delete the information that I've purchased particular tracks."
Then the special "U2 removal tool" weren't necessary too.
This statement is not true.
My first reaction to all this was "Cool, I'll give it a try". I found it in the iTunes store and it said 'Purchased' and... I couldn't download it. I waited 2 days before trying again to figure out how to do it.
Very odd.