“Being angry about an album you were given for free does sound dumb, but due to the way iTunes purchase libraries work, that’s not the whole story,” Marco Arment blogs for Marco.org. “As far as most people can tell, purchases stick around forever. I didn’t even know you could hide purchases from your history until this, and I’m supposed to be an expert in Apple stuff.”
“The right way for Apple to do a big U2 promotional deal like this would have been to simply make the album free on the iTunes Store for a while and promote the hell out of that,” Arment blogs. “The damage here isn’t that a bunch of people need to figure out how to delete an album1 that they got for free and are now whining about. It’s that Apple did something inconsiderate, tone-deaf, and kinda creepy for the sake of a relatively unimportant marketing campaign, and they seemingly didn’t think it would be a problem.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We maintain this is overblown. FWPOS. Apple will learn from this, likely never execute a promotion in such a manner ever again, and nobody outside of overwrought media types and thankful U2 fans will remember this in three weeks.
Related articles:
Apple creates tool for removing free U2 album from iTunes library – September 15, 2014
Apple iTunes users download 2 million copies of new U2 album; 17 other U2 albums in iTunes top 100 chart – September 12, 2014
Apple’s new TV spot “Echoes” featuring U2, iTunes and iPhone 6 goes into heavy rotation – September 11, 2014
Some iTunes users upset over Apple’s U2 album giveaway – September 11, 2014
Apple and U2 release ‘Songs of Innocence’ exclusively for iTunes Store customers – September 9, 2014
I didn’t even know you could hide purchases from your history until this, and I’m supposed to be an expert in Apple stuff.
I DO know you can hide purchases. So apparently that makes me a REAL expert in Apple stuff. I find all this WHINING about a free U2 album to be entirely ludicrous. It’s so ludicrous that I have to imagine a lot of the WHINING is inspired by Apple ‘competitors’ (so-called).
HINT: Hiding purchases is available in the contextual menu. Was that so hard?
I don’t think the analogies hold up. How about just comparing it to giving an app for free. If Apple made iMovie free and put it in your list of apps that would be pretty nice.
The comments about data usage doesn’t make sense either. If you are concerned about data usage then why would you ever have auto downloads on? If you really want to make it easy for someone so you turn this feature on then it’s a trade-off you are making and any music/app/podcast/photo will use up data probably unexpectedly.
As for being inconvenienced, I really don’t get this. I haven’t had to spend one second dealing with the horror of the U2 gift. Nothing was shoved down my throat or showed up in my mailbox or on my doorstep.
Should Apple have added the album to the list of albums I own? Maybe not and they’ve probably learned a lot from this. But I still don’t see how this is such a big deal.
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/2047.html
Auto downloads has always been off on my phone and it still showed up.
Here, let me say that again: Auto downloads has always been off on my phone and it still showed up.
I don’t like having things installed on my device without my consent. I can’t understand why more people aren’t outraged by this.
I see it too but it didn’t download. You are outraged because it showed up?
Because it’s a shitty album, that’s why.
U2 should have named their new album “Songs of Intrusion”
I saw this album as “Purchased” but not downloaded on my phone. Maybe if those indignant privacy freaks didn’t press “Autodown Music”, thus giving the ITunes Store the permission to download automatically, then it WOULDN’T be on your phone. Idiots.
U2 sucks.. always have always will.. force your new album on Apple users and it’s free and people that like creed want to get rid of you
Yeah, U2 is horrible. I’d rather listen to staind even if it was after busted shovel