The whole forcing a U2 album onto people’s devices thing, which happened shortly after Jobs died, was the first time I, a former Apple fan, sat up and realized “wow, these guys are really losing their taste/tact!” Weird to think that was over a decade ago!
They learned from this but still couldn’t help themselves. There’s massive full screen ads in Apple Music to “preload the F1 the movie album”. At least it’s a choice to load it or not this time, but it’s still extremely disappointing that people paying for Apple Music get shown these ads. I had recently canceled my Spotify subscription because of sponsored content in their app.
>But I think he would’ve been more effective at handling the fall out.
"You're holding it wrong" was about the worst case of "handling the fall out" that I can remember in computing history. Jobs was an absolute laughing stock after he said that.
Yeah, I don't think Jobs was well-equipped for the imminent era of Apple's complete dominance. You could tell he was confused by antennagate, bothered by media coverage, and wished everyone would shut up about it. He's the Underdog CEO, not Monopoly CEO.
I know that wouldn't be a popular opinion but I think you are right.
I do wonder that with Job's bowing out when he did may have been the best thing that could happen to Apples. The visionary made way for the logistic guys to let the next 20 years or so boom.
Job's departed just as most technology fields were starting to move into a more mature state, not entirely there but definitely past peak innovation. This is why I think the Apple Watch is the only thing that I think Job's would have absolutely loved out of Apple over the last decade or so. Would have thought Apple TV+ is very cool but risky, and be disappointed in the lack of progress on iPhone and might have down right hated the Apple Vision due to the hardware limits (bulk).
> I think Jobs makes the same mistake with U2 even if he is at the helm. But I think he would’ve been more effective at handling the fall out.
Perhaps, but there probably would have been more thought over it than just shoving it onto everybody's phone. The problem, I think, is that Apple is *mostly* run by white men over 50 - a demographic that sees U2 as the pinnacle of the rock band. They probably don't even realize that rock bands aren't "cool" anymore. I remember when Apple Music was first announced and Eddy Cue spent far too long "demonstrating" his music library and it fell flat even to the press in his age range. Usually you're best off demonstrating with "timeless" music as music tastes are so personal.
That album still shows up today in jarring ways in Apple Music when you use the Create Station feature because it was on everyone’s phones and their algorithm still isn’t good enough to recognize when one of these things is not like the others.
I agree that was weird - but it was never forced onto your device unless you chose to download that album (it would be like saying a particular album was "forced" onto your spotify when they are ALL available and free - this was just the first "spotify"-style album designed to be streamed not purchased).
It was forced onto your device to the extent that any other of your library songs or iTunes purchases were, whether that worked out to be streamed on demand or downloaded locally. Space was never the issue, forcing bad music in my shuffle play was.
I remember distinctly, because after trying patiently for months then years to get rid of it through official channels, I rage-quit iTunes when that whiny man’s voice started playing again the moment I connected my phone in a rental car. I still won’t touch Apple Music to this day.
For that matter, it still comes back from time to time all these years later:
Apparently, since they have taken down their dedicated removal tool from 11 years ago [0], your remaining recourse is to contact Apple Support and persist through upsell attempts to paid support.
