Apple Outrages Users By Automatically Installing U2's Album On Their Devices 610
Zanadou writes "Apple may have succeeded at breaking two records at once with the free release of U2's latest album, titled Songs of Innocence, via iTunes. But now, it looks like it's also on track to become one of the worst music publicity stunts of all time. Users who have opted to download new purchases to their iPhones automatically have found the new U2 album sitting on their phones. But even if iTunes users hadn't chosen automatic downloads, Songs of Innocence will still be displayed as an "iTunes in the Cloud" purchase. That means it will still be shown as part of your music library, even if you delete all the tracks. The only way to make the U2 album go away is to go to your Mac or PC and hide all of your "iTunes in the Cloud" purchases, or to use iTunes to manually hide each track from your purchased items list. Other reactions include rapper Tyler, The Creator saying that having the new U2 album automatically downloaded on his iPhone was like waking up with an STD. Update: 09/16 15:06 GMT by T : Note: Apple has released a fix.
It's not your phone (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's not your phone (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not about the product, it's about the account. People with "download new purchases automatically" switched on aren't forced into it by Apple, it's a user preference. The problem here is that Apple marked the album as purchased for their iTunes account, and that kicked off the normal download that happens when the user deliberately buys music.
It's a side-effect of how the system is supposed to work according to the user's preferences. It just fucked up badly because it wasn't designed with this use-case in mind.
The user getting the album downloaded automatically is just a symptom. The real problem is that instead of setting the price to free, Apple added it to people's iTunes account automatically. It's really got nothing to do with a product "not being yours" at all. It's working exactly as the user set it up to work - the problem is with the account, not the product.
Re:It's not your phone (Score:5, Insightful)
" the problem is with the account, not the product. "
It is a product problem. It seems that many people were happy with products they purchased (a deliberate act) being automatically downloaded.
They are less happy with something thrust upon them without consent.
Apple could have easily made the cost zero for any existing accounts and allowed people to chose to "purchase" it, and the problem wouldn't have occurred.
This is Apple using an existing product in a new way, beyond customer expectations.
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My guess is they went the way they did was that it is a one time modification to the database to mark it as purchased. If a new person comes on they don't get the album free. Setting it to $0 for only existing users would be probably more difficult.
I understand what they did but I think it kind of backfired for them.
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Or they could have set the price to $0 for the next 1 or 6 months or something like that.
I'm not a U2 fan. I think I like one or two of their songs. I have no interest in getting their new album (or being some of the people counted as why their new album went Double-Platinum).
If, instead, I was given a free $10 gift card from Apple to anything in their catalog, I would be happy to make my own selections.
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Revenues are up almost 50% since Job's years. There have been several successful products launched and Apple is much more heavily embedded in the global mobile ecosystem. So yes.
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of course they are, they put a supply chain guy in charge.
they are coasting and sucking up profits now. no innovation.
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He's competent but Apple needs someone great, not merely competent.
Re:It's not your phone (Score:5, Insightful)
There may all sorts of good reasons for why it has happened and why it isn't an evil conspiracy to pollute the minds of young people, but it misses the point, really.
Happily, I don't own a smartphone, but I think I would have been rather annoyed too. It's like being spammed or getting a huge wad of unwanted advertising in garish colours through the door - it's something you never asked for and wouldn't have wanted if you had been asked, it's simply inflicted on you and you now have to do something to get rid of the useless crap. At the root of this lies the feeling that you're not being given a choice, because your opinion doesn't matter, and whoever makes the decisions thinks you are just a mindless automaton who will go out and spend money on whatever the loudest advert tells you.
In the end, it's about respect: you show respect to earn respect. But if producers of eg. music don't respect their potential customers, why should people respect them back? Particularly, why respect the copyright they claim ownership of? I don't condone piracy, but I do understand where it comes from.
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Makes sense. Google Play has had $0 album promotions on occassion. If you don't "buy" the album you might miss out on it, but nothing shows up in your library unless you go out and buy it. Nobody complains about this.
If the local store offered a free roll of toilet paper with every purchase before 10AM next Saturday nobody would be bothered by it. If the same store went around throwing rolls of toilet paper at everybody's houses at night people would complain, and rightly so.
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It's not about the product, it's about the account. People with "download new purchases automatically" switched on aren't forced into it by Apple, it's a user preference.
Not quite. It is the default setting, and if you never bought music for your phone and would not dream of doing so and do not have a data plan that would make that an affordable option anyway, you are still getting the album shoved on your phone.
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Actually it's not the default setting...
I HAVE an iPhone 5s, and YES it was there, but, no, it wasn't downloaded... it was in my list of albums and opening the album showed it was only a one click away to download (click the download from cloud button on the album)... and as I don't use my iphone for music, (I use the old fashioned radio in my car for music) I heard about it "downloading automatically" so I went in there, oh look I have 1 album with 11 songs in my music folder... oh, they're all "Cloud" a
sort of like Amazon Prime Music (Score:4, Informative)
I don't see this as a huge problem. Not particularly invasive. If you don't like U2, don't click on the cloud. If you have things set in a particular way, it might download automatically, but you can now "delete" things directly from your phone (as against the way that it used to be where you needed to do everything from iTunes); so again, not too big of a deal. OTOH, it shows up as an entry in your list of albums, which could become annoying if this were to become any sort of standard practice, but only because at some point it makes it harder to find the items which you want to be there.
In this way it isn't too much different from the new Amazon Prime Music app, which lists all the "free" streamed albums offered through Amazon Prime membership. It becomes hard to browse for something I am interested in because there are so many things that I am NOT interested in. That being said, I can't complain too much as I haven't paid for any of them (I paid for the prime membership for other reasons) and it is occasionally nice when I want to hear something that haven't thought to purchase outright. Search works well, just browsing not-so-much, and even then sometimes one _wants_ to browse through things unknown to find something new.
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Maybe Apple could have added a new category with a separate list of "Free Media" or something, but seriously? I'm no fan of Apple but this is a storm in a molehill.
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Weird Al has a whole song [youtube.com] about just this very thing.
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FWIW, some people weren't really ready for the arrogance of Apple deciding you really really really wanted this album. Those are people who clearly haven't been paying attention. As long as Apple is calling the shots, they know better than you, and they can prove it.
As to the "auto download not the default" setting, sure, the user had to switch it. If they were trusting enough to assume that THEY would be the ones who decided what music is in their own collection, that's a legitimate convenience decision. T
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People with "download new purchases automatically" switched on aren't forced into it by Apple, it's a user preference.
That's like saying you can avoid junk mail by simply not having a mail box. Someone is taking advantage of something you installed for your own convenience, wasting your resources. What about people who are on metered connections, can they claim any fees back from Apple for the tens of megabytes of spam forced on them?
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Not funny at all - people are happy to agree to all sorts of deals, arrangements and compromises. They just dont like it when a big company changes the rules without their consent. People dont want change. That is really, really easy to prove, and Apple should have predicted it.
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Sigh, that's life. Well, at least my nude pictures are mine. Wait...
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Additionally the motive I'm expecting Bono to now come out and say "Songs of Innocence" the most downloaded Album in history but I would give more credence to a torrent stat at least someone deliberately wanted that
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The same can be said of any Android device with Google services installed. If you don't want your phone doing things without your consent, you will have to put on Cyanogen mod, and only use apps from the Fdroid repo.
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Really? I flashed my devices to cyanogenmod and it does not come with google play, or any google app (you have to install those manually if you want them).
This "mandatory" thing you speak of clearly is FALSE.
BTW, Please tell us how you can install software on your apple device without the mandatory Itunes software? I can always just "sideload" apk's on my android.
Can you install whatever you want, or only what apple approves?
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Yes, I think see what you mean. Apps like "Hangout", "Google Video", "Google Books", that kind of apps?
The difference here is that these are always present, but don't interfere with the content of your account. When my Android phone installed Google Video, it didn't replace another Video app, didn't become the "default" video viewer, and wasn't added anywhere except the applications menu. Unless I actively looked for it, I would not find it.
Now, when google decided to add some free music to my music library
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>sloeing their shit down
I thought that was a method for making a variant of gin.
I feel so dirty... (Score:4, Funny)
First world problems. (Score:4, Funny)
You'll get over it.
Re:First world problems. (Score:5, Funny)
Complaining about other people having first world problems.... where does that rank?
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In your view, the fact that people were given for free a piece of music is something they should rightfully complain about? Without us making fun of them?
Strange view you have there.
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Musical tastes differ -- if I left a bag of crap on your front porch without asking first if you were interested in receiving it, you wouldn't complain / be annoyed by it?
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Are you being obtuse on purpose? Probably... but I'll feed your nice troll one last time, by helping you compare a bag of crap with the latest album from U2, so that you will see that your comparison was overly excessive.
Probably more than 99% of the world population doesn't like a bag of crap. So the chance of pleasing someone by leaving one in their front porch is about less than 1%. Can you guess if the percentage of people that don't like the latest album from U2 is higher of lower than that?
Re:First world problems. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:First world problems. (Score:5, Funny)
Count yourself lucky.... it could have been a nickleback album.
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I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further.
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My 'view', is that he was using fallacious reasoning in order to preach.
I could see how the autodownload might put someone out of serious money and/or waste precious bandwidth. Few people have 'unlimited' plans. By all means, offer the music as a free optional download in the itunes store, where, if purchased (for $0), becomes a part of the user's library, and then autodownloads if the user has that turned on. Don't just force the download.
How would you like it if your phone manufacturer or carrier starte
Re:First world problems. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Furthermore. I have auto download switched on, and it hasn't auto downloaded. Despite having been connected to wi-fi.
I call BS on the whole overly dramatic whinefest.
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In your view, the fact that people were given for free a piece of music is something they should rightfully complain about? Without us making fun of them?
Strange view you have there.
I'll kick you in the nuts for free, see how much you complain then.
Re:First world problems. (Score:4, Interesting)
You poor baby, you'll have to scroll past an album you don't like. You no longer can tell your little music-obssessed-U2-hating-because-only-peons-like-U2 friends you have no U2 songs. You have to go into a long story about how Evil Apple put music-other-people-like-on-your-computer.
Let's be honest here. If you're this worked up about downloading a single album you don't like, then you're probably actually enjoying being this worked up about downloading an album you don't like. You and your little hobbyist buddies will get more pleasure from complaining about the Evil Apple/U2 conspiracy then you possibly could from anything as trivial as an actual album.
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Then dont be a idiot and have "auto download" turned on? This album did not magically appear on any of the 6 apple devices I own. I have to go and download it.
100% of the people complaining are the ones that have no clue how to use technology.
I on the other hand like U2 and then had to take some steps to rip the DRM out and convert to MP3 so I can play it on my HTC ONE M8 and my Android based car stereo. (I carry an iphone and and android daily, so yes I use both ecosystems heavily every day)
Re:First world problems. (Score:5, Insightful)
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I on the other hand like U2 and then had to take some steps to rip the DRM out and convert to MP3 so I can play it on my HTC ONE M8 and my Android based car stereo.
Why would you have to do that? Aren't iTunes songs DRM free AAC these days?
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Purchases over 50m download from wifi. So no this wasn't hitting a data cap at all.
I've been on data roaming since last Monday... (Score:5, Interesting)
If this album is 100 Mbytes at AT&T's roaming price of $19.95 per megabyte, this is going to cost me $1,995. The album is on my phone so I hope it downloaded over a week ago! If not, I'm screwed because this is a work phone. They were fine with me checking email a few times the last time I traveled, but that was only $45 in overage fees. This is going to be very profitable for AT&T and other providers.
Re: I've been on data roaming since last Monday... (Score:2, Informative)
Turn off automatic iTunes downloads. It's in settings iTunes .
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That's very useful to know now.
Re:I've been on data roaming since last Monday... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not going to cost you anything unless you went into Settings > iTunes & App Store and told it to use mobile data for automatic downloads. That's off by default, which means it only performs these kinds of downloads if it's connected to the Internet by WiFi.
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Would have had to turn on data roaming, which is also off by default.
Re:I've been on data roaming since last Monday... (Score:5, Informative)
Yes it is Apple's fault. The expectation is that things the _user_ buys will be automatically downloaded, _not_ that things will download without the user doing actively something.
Your failure to understand such a basic thing makes me wonder why you are on a technology website...
This is a failure of user expectations - a obvious user interface problem.
It is also a failure of the accepted usage contract.
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Usually one thinks that he is able to control the device himself by timing the purchases and downloads properly, hence no need for disabling features he would not use at inappropriate places. But as usual, Apple proves that its their device and do what they want. And in the end, likely makes a huge amount of money out of the bad behavior.
Re:I've been on data roaming since last Monday... (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple was a bit naughty by pushing an album we didn't ask for, but that's all it is: well-intended spam. No need to be overly dramatic about Apple owning our devices, and no worrying about racking up insane roaming charges.
Re: I've been on data roaming since last Monday... (Score:5, Informative)
Sadly, it does not automatically download. Even with automatic downloads on. It automatically appears in the list of purchases and automatically appears in iTunes in the Cloud (if you have that option enabled), but it didn't automatically download.
Whiners (Score:5, Insightful)
It downloaded over wi-fi on my phone.
I had to actually start my download because I turn OFF THE ABILITY TO AUTOMATICALLY DOWNLOAD!!!
I swear, the more technology we get the dumber people become. Stop yer damn whining and delete the FREE ALBUM.
+1 for this comment (Score:5, Informative)
It took me all of 5 seconds to hide the album in iTunes. All gone, I'll never see it again (unless I choose to unhide it).
Such a hardship.
Re:+1 for this comment (Score:5, Insightful)
Not Free (Score:4, Insightful)
Nelson Muntz (Score:2)
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HA-HA! [youtube.com]
Samsung did it!
Simple (Score:3)
Re:Simple (Score:5, Informative)
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I hate Steam for doing this. All those fucking cards and coupons in my inventory and no option to just delete them. Also, I know it was part of a pack I bought but I know I'm never going to touch Deus Ex Invisible War. Yeah, I know it'd be an extremely rare thing to want to do and more likely to be used for nefarious trolling purposes but still...
I have issues.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Interesting)
Sell the cards (they'll typically only get you a few cents, but it adds up and it gets them out of your account), trade the coupons with your friends for coupons that actually interest you (a friend had a 90% off coupon for a game this weekend that semi-interested me). The coupon gave me a game for 70 cents, and my card sales paid for that.
-- Pete.
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I hate Steam for doing this. All those fucking cards and coupons in my inventory and no option to just delete them.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/trashbot [steamcommunity.com]
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could have been worse... (Score:5, Funny)
it could have been nickelback....
I guess Apple (Score:3)
Also changes sms alert tone (Score:4, Funny)
Bono is not in Africa. (Score:2)
STD's (Score:4, Funny)
Well, given that I listen pretty much exclusively to classical music, finding the new U2 album on my iPhone (if I had one) or on my Mac in iTunes would be more like waking up and seeing that my ex-wife's sister is in bed with me. Ewww....
But on a serious note, this behavior by Apple is very unpolite, regardless of whether the album is pushed onto one's phone, computer, or cloud account.
BTW, this proves piracy is irrelevant for artists (Score:5, Insightful)
I thought this album release was quite significant actually. Many years ago Courtney Love wrote on Salon.com ("Courtney Love does the math") that she was not bothered with P2P distribution of her music, as in fact CD sales were not a source of income for artists. Every now and again the publishers associations whine about how artists will perish due to P2P, and on /. there is disagreement with no proper evidence to support it. Now we see a well established band and Apple showing that revenue sharing with a publisher for printing CDs that may or may not be bought is not the best deal they could have.
Opt-in and UI preferences aside, this album was a major release.
Re:BTW, this proves piracy is irrelevant for artis (Score:4, Insightful)
Totally. Because U2 are your typical, just about getting by, rock band.
U2 don't have to sell another album, ever, to remain multi-millionaires. They could give away their work for nothing for the rest of their lives, and still be richer than 99.99% of the planet. They are not, in any way, a template for other musicians.
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We already know that new artists do well from free distribution of their work. From Metallica back in the days of bootleg tapes of their gigs, to modern artists who get started on YouTube and social media. We already know that established acts aren't significantly harmed by piracy either, and this just confirms that in a high profile way.
Artists have always needed to give their music away for free. The money they get from radio play is a fraction of the pittance they get from CD sales, but it's an essential
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I assume she was basing this on her own CDs , and indeed the royalties on 37 worldwide sales is probably cancelled out by the clerical, stationery and postage charges incurred by the record company.
Re:BTW, this proves piracy is irrelevant for artis (Score:5, Insightful)
There seems to be a permanent shift in the younger generation not owning music. I don't know that piracy is the problem. My daughter and her friends (all teenagers) don't pirate but they, with very few exceptions for which those services don't work, don't buy music on a per song or per album basis. Rather they subscribe to services or get ads via. things like Pandora, youtube and Spotify.
My generation which was enculturated to buy music still buys. But I think we are talking about a true cultural shift where younger people see music like TV shows as something they wouldn't own for a lifetime.
Re:BTW, this proves piracy is irrelevant for artis (Score:4, Informative)
From 1999 to 2009, music sales dropped about 60%.
Much of that has to do with three things:
1. Many people have already purchased all the pre-1999 music they want, and now only buy new music. Prior to digital, there were a lot of replacement sales of old music.
2. It is now easy to only purchase the songs you want, so people no longer have to spend $10 for two songs, which means overall revenue is down. The solution to this is for artists to create music where every track on an album is desired.
3. "Rental" options like Spotify, Pandora, etc., don't count as sales, but are widely used by many people as their only music source.
And the dance continues... (Score:4, Interesting)
This strikes me as simply the next logical step in marketing. U2 is a major group, and it's hard to argue that giving customers their new album as a bonus is a bad thing. But the next step will be "free" albums Apple wants you to listen to, and the one after that will be extorting artists to pay them to have their albums released this way.
The final step, no doubt, will be an extra fee to have automatic installation of such stuff disabled.
Apple KNOWS what its users want (Score:4, Funny)
They know that ALL their users are U2 fans. Every. Single. One.
And from this point on, if someone says they bought an iPhone you can say to their face that they are U2 fans, even if they deny it. Because Apple SAYS they are U2 fans, and to them that is the word of their god.
The only way to sell a U2 album (Score:3)
As bundled crapware.
article got the basics wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
The only way to make the U2 album go away is to go to your Mac or PC and hide all of your "iTunes in the Cloud" purchases, or to use iTunes to manually hide each track from your purchased items list.
Incorrect. In iTunes there's a prominent "X" displayed on the upper right corner of the album. Click it. The album is gone.
Complain over nothing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Four things happened:
- Apple pushed something on us that we did not ask for, just so that U2 could reach multi-platinum status with the latest album almost instantly.
- Apple forced the music taste of their CEO on everyone with an iTunes account. They should have set the album price to "free" and let people decide if they wanted it or not. Use their music in the iPhone 6 ads and write "U2 album available for free on iTunes until date xyz" at the end of the ad, no need for anything else.
- A lot of people have monthly data quotas, and some are always on the edge of going over it. Around 100MB might not seem like much, but on a cellphone plan of 2GB that's 5% wasted, or roughly a day and a half of data if you spread it over 30 days. Will Apple pay for the people who went over their monthly cap because of this publicity stunt? That certainly doesn't make the album "free" for those people, on the contrary.
- the iTunes algorithms make recommendations based on our purchases. Now, because of the "purchase" of this U2 album that I didn't ask for, I'll get recommendation for things I absolutely hate, which means Apple just destroyed their own recommendation system, which means I'll be ignoring recommendations from now on, which means less profits for Apple. How stupid is that.
Reboot (Score:3)
It's Canter and Siegel for the new millennium. Expect to see more of this (and not just from Apple).
We need a proper open-source phone. Maybe it's time to look into that Pi-phone again. http://www.raspberrypi.org/pip... [raspberrypi.org]
Re: 911 was down for us Friday night (Score:3, Interesting)
U2 didn't pay a dime, Apple paid them.
Re:911 was down for us Friday night (Score:5, Insightful)
If your Mac is running out of hard drive room from downloading a single album, I think the album is probably the least of your problems.
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Apple may be showing a complete lack of respect for it's customers but if you are down to 50 megs of hard drive space or less you are screwed anyway. how can you download software patches?
Re:911 was down for us Friday night (Score:4, Insightful)
> how can you download software patches
When you want to, when you have cleared some space and you're ready. Just like you should be able to choose when to download anything, and how to use your disk drive space.
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Why do you think Apple needs to be paid before screwing over their users?
Re: 911 was down for us Friday night (Score:2, Interesting)
You run macs with almost no free disk space and set iTunes to download stuff automatically - and that's someone else's fault when they run out of disk space?
Re:911 was down for us Friday night (Score:4, Interesting)
You're incompetent or lying.
To download the album your Mac Minis would have to a) have iTunes running, and b) have end-users tell iTunes to download the songs. Unlike an iPhone, there is no auto-download setting on a Mac. Hell, I can't even get the "check for Available Downloads" menu option to download new episodes for my season passes to TV shows, I have to load the iTunes store, go to "purchased," and then manually select the TV season/album/whatever I want to download.
More importantly everybody knows Mac OS X needs multiple gigabytes free as memory swap space on it's startup disk. The general recommendation is 15% of the drive. Which means even if you're using the very first, circa 2005, PPC version, of the Mac Mini you should have 6 GB free. The entire U2 album is only 109 MB.
Re:911 was down for us Friday night (Score:5, Insightful)
"More importantly everybody knows Mac OS X needs multiple gigabytes free as memory swap space on it's startup disk. The general recommendation is 15% of the drive"
Emphasis mine
They may be lying but you are also being dishonest claiming that EVERYONE knows OS X needs 15% free space. I'm sure the number of people that know it is much closer to "No one" than "Everyone"
Re:911 was down for us Friday night (Score:5, Insightful)
If you dont know the basics about computers, you dont deserve to own one.
That's a pretty harsh way of looking at it. You can't even get through a public education these days w/o access to a computer. There a lot of senior citizens (my aunts and uncles in their 70s and 80s are all online), who just want to send email, and surf the web. Why the fuck should they have to know what swap space is?
Re:What about Kindles (Score:5, Insightful)
They have? I haven't gotten any free books. I think you're making shit up.
Re:What about Kindles (Score:4, Interesting)
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Oh right, this is an apple product. You all must be 'stylish' hipster douchebags who think you're smart.
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Just some random counter examples for success == intelligence.
* Athletes
* Musicians
* Actors
* Models
There are other talents a human can have besides intelligence, both mental and physical; beauty, creativity, muscles, taste, empathy, etc.
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Re:Oh noes, I haz been hacked! (Score:4, Informative)