30 years ago, Apple launched their view of themselves as being for the little guy against the oppressors with the iconic Macintosh hot running chick with a sledge hammer commercial, launching it against the giant screen filled by Big Brother, breaking the trance of the people, freeing them.
About a decade ago, Apple, with 'common man' Bono, offered you the Ipod, the ability to pick and choose YOUR music, the ultimate expression of personal freedom and taste in music. What you want, when you want. No more filler songs. Freedom from commercial including promotions on albums and cassettes and CD's.
Apple, using U2 as the vehicle, has now told you what will be ON your devices. Bono wanted to give away his music because of how important it is to him that ALL must hear his work. Apple helped make this happen by forcing it on customers. A 5 minute google of Bono reveals that Bono never was a 'common man'. He ALWAYS wanted to be that guy on the screen.
Has Apple joined him? Has Apple take the first full stride into being Big Brothers?
I mean, consider what we DON'T know about.
It seems pretty obvious that Apple, far from being the little guy that could, is now up on that stage preaching down on you.
This isn't in favor of MS, at all. Or an other entity that sees itself as being omnipotent like Big Brother. It is a lament of where Apple was and what it has become.
Thoughts?
Following most of the bigger tech companies - e.g., Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google, Amazon, Twitter, Alibaba - is a significant part of how I spend a decent portion of my (supposedly) productive time. And by follow I mean, among other things, keeping track of and considering the various things they do on a weekly basis that mainstream news sources don't necessarily pick up on - either because those things aren't sensational enough to fit their model or aren't easily spun to fit their narrative. That having been said, I'd say Apple works harder than any big company to not be Big Brother-ish. They could easily be very Big Brother-ish if they chose, indeed for a company that big which by the nature of its products and services has an incredible amount of day-to-day and even hour-to-hour interaction with its customers and which, btw, has a huge number of customers, it's pretty hard for them to not be Big Brother-ish - without even trying they end up being so to some extent. But they really do go out of their way to try not to be, or to be to as small an extent as is practicable. They are not like many other large tech companies in that regard, it's not the business they want to be in. Some of the companies on that list, and others, are largely in that business - their customers are their products, so to speak - and far more Big Brother-ish than Apple.
To the specific incident you're referring to. It was a mistake, Apple wanted to do something nice (to reward customers, yes; but of course being promotional as well - i.e. not purely altruistically, I'm not at all suggesting that) and didn't fully think through how some aspects of the way their services work would interplay and how some among their huge and diverse customer base would perceive their giveaway efforts. But when they realized they'd goofed up, they fixed the problem pretty quickly. They make a lot of mistakes these days, as big as they are and as many balls as they have in the air and as ambitious as they are they are with some of their efforts, mistakes are going to happen. But they generally fix those mistakes pretty quickly.
And just to be clear about what happened, Apple gave that U2 album to everyone that had an iTunes account (after reportedly paying U2 a very large sum of money) - meaning, essentially, their store put a virtual check next to it for each account such that their system recognized those accounts owned it and could download it for free whenever they want on whatever devices or computers they want. It's the virtual check their system puts next to various media once an account purchases it. For instance, when someone logged into an account that already owns a particular piece of media, instead of seeing a buy button with a price next to it they see a download button which allows them to just download it without paying for it. That's what happened for hundreds of millions of people with the U2 album. The real problem arose because some people had opted to set up some of their devices to automatically download various media (e.g. movies or music or apps) whenever their account purchased that media. So, e.g., if you use your iPad to buy a song your phone might be set up to automatically download the same song. Or if you use a computer to buy an app (or get a free app) your iPad might be set up to automatically download that app. That's a setting people can choose to select (with regard to each media type) on individual iOS devices and OS X computers. Well, some of the people that had automatic download set up automatically had the U2 album download to their device(s) when Apple gave it away to everyone. Without that setting, people had to go into the iTunes store and choose to download the album (or particular songs) - with the main difference being they wouldn't have to pay for it as it had been gifted to them.
It was an error in judgment. Apple shouldn't have set it up like that. They should have figured out a different, special, delivery system that would mean everyone - even those with automatic download turned on - would have to affirmatively choose to download the album. I can understand why some people - whether they like U2 or not, but particularly if they don't - would be bothered that the album automatically downloaded to their device(s). But the harm was fairly minimal I'd say, and Apple fixed the issue. And they even made a way that people could remove the album from their iTunes account if they don't want it to show up as purchased by them and don't want the ability to download it for free in the future.
Not Big Brother, just an overly enthusiastic effort to do something nice (and promotional) for (with) a ####-ton of people at the same time. They realized that and fixed the problem for those that saw it as a problem. I, for one, appreciate the free music - there are a few good songs on the album.
With that said, I would say that there is part of me - as someone who for years resisted the allure of Apple products and only fairly recently (4 or 5 years ago) discovered the pleasure that comes from letting them into my life - that is concerned about how Apple will handle being this big and this omnipresent. It's really only been the last few years that they've had to deal with the dynamic, so it's too early to get a clear sense of how it's going to affect them. I hope they can maintain the focus and the attention to detail and the purposefulness of every little thing they do, but I'm not sure they can. They are so big and serve such a huge, mainstream, consumer base now - such a diverse body of customers - that no matter what they do there are going to be lots of voices telling them no do this instead. Will they choose the right voices to listen to? I don't know. I hope but I worry at some point that will become too difficult to pull off. Can they be the scale of Big Blue (or bigger) and still remain Apple? To the extent that's part of your point, it's quite a valid one.
