A bunch of people got pissed off because someone gave them free music. Yes, in a stunning turnaround, an industry that’s been fighting piracy for decades now GAVE some shit away.
iTunes users all over the world had the new U2 album automatically downloaded to their iTunes library.
People complained, and then as is internet tradition, people complained about the people who complained. Don’t worry. No internet story has a happy ending. There’s always someone out there who will be personally wrecked by your feelings, whether those feelings be positive or negative, or even not positive or negative ENOUGH. In this case, people complain about the automatic download, then other people complain because, hey, why are you complaining about free music?
On the one hand, nobody likes this kind of move, obviously. Except, I suppose, people who planned to buy the U2 album. On the other hand, it’s easy to look at someone and say, “Hey, just delete it. Not a big deal.”
And that’s how I felt at first. Until I actually put some thought into it.
Imagine you’re a curator of art. You have beautiful paintings all over the walls of your home. You may have taste that’s questioned by some. Art is very subjective that way, none more so than art one hangs in the home.
Then, tomorrow, while you’re at work, someone hangs a painting not of your choosing in your home. When you get home, you’ll be outraged. They will tell you that they tried to do something nice for you. Expose you to something new. And this painting would retail for the cost of most of the other paintings in your collection. Additionally, the painting is by an artist that many, many people appreciate, so it was reasonable to expect, as an appreciator of art, you would too. They’ll also argue that you can simply dispose of the painting, no questions asked. The only caveat is that the painting has no ACTUAL value, so you can’t re-sell it.
The first issue is obvious. People curate their own collections. Movies, books, the crap they have on the one shelf where they have all their personal crap. While they might appreciate a suggestion or even a gift from a known entity that would add to that collection, they are not interested in coming home and seeing a DVD of Transformers 4 on the shelf. Regardless of whether or not the U2 album is good, most people don’t appreciate having it added with disregard for their personal taste and how this album would fit in with their collection.
A music library is digital, however that doesn’t mean there’s less curation going on. There’s less physical storage activity, but selection and experience of that collection are still vital and strong components.
People build a library of music they enjoy. A small, individual representation of themselves. Yes, one can argue that you are not the music you listen to. But if you have all the music, all the songs you’ve enjoyed in the last ten years? That’s no small thing.
That’s the first problem. The biggest misunderstanding that Apple had about what its users want.
The biggest misunderstanding people have about what Apple wants, or at least the biggest one they had before, was that they think Apple wants to sell them a device and let them use the device as they please.
I use an iPhone. I think it’s great. I used an Android, and it sucked. My two main complaints, the battery ran out too fast, and the interface doesn’t allow for a simple full shutdown of apps. You had to get into a menu, open a list of running programs and go from there. I know that doesn’t sound so tough, but I’ll tell you, I work with a lot of people who aren’t tech savvy in my professional life, and this is a process that they cannot accomplish reliably by themselves, but it’s one they do not even understand.
That said, there is a chapping element to Apple products, which is the way they effectively tether you to Apple forever. They can pick and choose what you can and cannot do, and they are always like a parent who looks into how you use your phone.
This is nothing new. When eReaders first hit the market, before any were app-enabled, I always recommended people purchase the Sony Reader for the simple reason that Sony treated their eReader like a CD player. You buy it, it’s yours, they don’t care to fuck with it anymore, nor did they have any sort of infrastructure that would allow them to do so.
The Nook, in its first form, had a lot of internal restrictions. It still does. The Kindle? Ha, the Kindle, in a hilarious and ironic move, had to remotely remove the book 1984 from machines after Amazon sold digital copies it shouldn’t have. The Kindle has been fucked with by Amazon for a long time.
The iPhone does have its frustrations. Why can’t I delete the Stocks app? I promise you, I will never use that. I haven’t even opened it. Not even by accident! Why are the default Safari page blank buttons set as Yahoo, Disney, and ESPN? There are not many sites I’m less likely to be involved with than those three. The iPhone, though an elegant and slick device, has clearly been handled by too many people with too much money changing hands. And it’s fucking up what can be a brilliant device.
The arrival of the U2 album was a nasty reminder. You paid for this phone, you pay to use it every month. But it still belongs to Apple. You might pay for a hooker, but that hooker never belongs to you. The pimp owns the hooker. Apple is a great name for a pimp in a 70’s cop movie, by the way.
With the two big factors put together, it’s clear what we’re talking about here. Apple doesn’t understand the importance of digital media. Although their lives are digital, although their possessions are less and less tangible, it doesn’t change the fact that people want to own and be in control of their consumable media.
Apple has chosen to market their new products this way. And what they need to learn is that people WANT the iPhone already. They WANT a smartwatch. You do not need to market to us with a U2 song. We want this shit, and your ploys only make us want it less because we have to choose to buy a product with such murky practices. Those Android folks will always smirk at my iPhone because they know who really owns my phone.
As a parting shot: Self-Timer on the fucking camera already. If it plays a little U2 song as a countdown, I’m fine with that.