Aram Zucker-Scharff

Remove iTunes gift album “Songs of Innocence” from your iTunes music library and purchases:

Follow these instructions to remove U2’s “Songs of Innocence” from your iTunes music library and iTunes purchases. Once the album has been removed from your account, it will no longer be available for you to redownload as a previous purchase. If you later decide you want the album, you will need to get it again. The album is free to everyone until October 13, 2014, and will be available for purchase after that date.

It was incredibly difficult to get the U2 album off an iPad. I was finally able to find an ENTIRE HELP PAGE at Apple just dedicated to a specially created tool made for the sole purpose or removing the U2 album. I share it with you in hopes it saves someone else the trouble. 

I don’t actually hate U2, I do a little bit now. 

What if the iWatch shows me I’m actually a heartless Cylon? Will Siri automatically play All Along The Watchtower?

“Apple’s “tell them what to believe” PR strategy has worked incredibly well for years. But it has also created tensions between the company and the people who cover it, as well as within Apple itself.”

– Seeing Through the Illusion: Understanding Apple’s Mastery of the Media.

The Whiteness of Apple:

Like a reliable, rusty old factory machine, the Apple rumour mill recently sprang loudly to life in anticipation of the company’s rumoured purchase of Beats, news to which Apple fans largely responded with a resounding, “Ew, why?” Even though it’s pretty clear that if Apple does in fact buy Beats, it would be to acquire cachet, talent, and a promising music business, iPhone users still felt the whole thing was a bit off-putting: “Our beloved company is seeking help from a brand we associate with urban kids? Oh God.”It was not a difficult code to crack. The Awl’s John Herrman cleverly suggested we just call it “Apple Privilege”: a tongue-in-cheek way of getting at the fact that Apple seems to be held up as a model of purity, and anything that “taints” it—you know, the masses, the lower-income, those pesky coloureds—is awful.If this were some random occurrence, that would be one thing—but it’s a pattern now. It was only in 2012, after all, that many iPhone users worried that Instagram would be sullied when people without little apples on the backs of their devices could join in on the filtered fun. Couple that with the noise around the Beats story, and the fact that, at least in North America, Android is much bigger with visible minorities, and a question needs both asking and answering: Is Apple “white”?

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“Apple places its own products firmly into the centre of a modern work world in which she with the most minimalist task management system wins. And whenever you get into aesthetics as a performance of identity, race and culture aren’t far behind.”