Comment by NikolaNovak
4 years ago
Haha, sorry, reminds me - my wife hates U2 with violent passion.
Eventually I asked her what caused such burning rage, and she said her car starts playing a specific U2 song every time she turns it on. For years!
Eventually I traced it to a promotional album U2 and apple and iTunes pushed to her devices without her knowledge.
Man can these things backfire!
But yeah we have a 2019 Honda and iPhones xr (not my choice; iPhone is work mandated) and there's just no telling what'll happen any given time when we start the car. Especially annoying since modern infotainment units make you wait 3 to 5 seconds to display crucial legal information before you can mute the darn thing. And let's not start if you have more than one Bluetooth headphone and more than one device at home :(
(Yes I'm now the grouch that misses 3.5mm on modern phones and uses my old Note 8 and wired Sennheiser to listen to music hassle free :D)
Highly likely I'm misremembering, but a decade (at least) or so, there was an iTunes promo where Itunes literally pushed a free U2 album to everyone who had an iTunes account for free.
I specifically remember the internet hate that received at the time haha.
Here's a link: https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/09/09/the-free-u2-album...
Yup. And the hate and negative backlash is still here - I'm not kidding, my wife can NOT hear U2 without a visceral reaction! It followed her through like 3 cars, until she finally married a guy nerdy and persistent enough :-D
That's literally what the parent comment is describing
It bears repeating. I've tried to remove that f*cking album from my library so many times, on so many devices. It's effectively unkillable; and I'm no stranger to computers.
Why that tax-dodging blowhard felt he had the right to squeeze his turd of an album onto each and every apple product I buy for, presumably, the rest of my life is unfathomable.
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We should start a club!
My son just bought a 3.5 mm adapter for the phone. Turns out the younger generation prefers wired too.
I sometimes wonder what the world would be like without FAANG. I'm lead to believe the world would be a better place if all companies would have a max company size of Bose, or Sennheiser. Then no stupid decisions could be pushed through by force, like the removal of the 3.5 mm jack. If the market really wants it, they will eventually vote with their wallet. Same goes with social media, fb killed off local country-specific social media, which sometimes had much better features and less agressivity/conspiracy theories/scams.
Of course the true FAANG solution would be to include a 3.5mm jack but disable it in software, requiring £4.99 per month to enable it with a rent-seeking subscription service.
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The market wants what the other segment of the market has, that's the purpose of marketing. Phones with no jacks, like laptops with no i/o, is something impractical that people self-justify because of the logo and the clout it affords. You're part of the in group, you made it, you have achieved sameness, you have an iPhone.
Airpods are just about the worst headphones money can buy and people fight over them, despite there being headphones sold for <$100 that blow them out of the water. I have in-ear-monitors that cost a fraction of what an airpod does, has detachable cords AND bluetooth to each ear, and they sound much better and balanced.
Whoever took away the audio port on modern phones should be dragged outside and beaten like an unruly fax machine.
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I have some Bluetooth speakers from Teufel. They are pretty big and heavy and supposedly good (actually way too bassy for me, hard to listen to podcasts on). And they have a battery, so they are mobile.
They heave this “feature” where they turn off after 10 min of silence. And they’re Bluetooth, so once they turn off, u have to walk to the damn speaker (no remote), push the power button that’s hidden on the back for several seconds (less used buttons are visible on top), then go to your playback device and reconnect the Bluetooth.
People on the forums have been complaining about this for years, and the support still says this feature can’t be turned off.
For a company that supposedly makes very carefully designed, great Audio equipment made in Germany, this user interface is infuriating, pointless and feels never actually tested. (Also, Nowadays nobody reviews products anymore so bad user interfaces are not caught). Btw, I have some Bluetooth speakers with a tiny battery that will stay on for a day and not turn off, idling takes nearly no battery power.
So yeah, this is like the laziest product I have owned, that just dares u to stop a movie for a bathroom or snack break lest it goes back to sleep, and it wasn’t designed by some big monolithic FANG but a supposedly user centric design focused hiish end shop.
3.5mm can go to hell for a phone. I’d prefer the waterproofing we have with iPhones nowadays. If you need an adapter they are available.
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It's patently ridiculous how much better the microphone on $15 wired headphones is than the ones on a $50 set of wireless earbuds.
A 25 dollar logitech wired headset with a boom is brilliant. I have people with $200+ airpods on the call and I hear their cat dog air conditioner wind spouse keyboard car and everything. But they cannot be told this - they have expensive earbuds and they can hear ME fine, so it's all great!
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Most cheap wireless headsets are cutting the bandwidth down to like 4k for voice when you're talking.
It's also not surprising when you realize no one buying these things is testing the mic before the purchase. They probably aren't even testing how it sounds. It's hard to sell better things when most customers will never know how bad they sound, and even the ones who do probably won't care. And worst of all they'll blame zoom, or the telephone network, or their internet, anything but the cheap piece of crap mic and half bandwidth connection they're using.
Sorry for the rant. The economics of consumer audio are why I personally quit the industry. Some of these things are easy fixes but no one cares enough to make them.
I prefer wired because, for some reason, car audio via Bluetooth has adaptive volume, i.e. I start coasting in the car and the music becomes almost inaudible. I speed up and it returns to normal.
This....
I have exactly the same problem with the U2 album. In general, I like U2, but that album is a pain. It starts up every now and then in my car with carplay. Especially if I have my phone on with no app in the foreground when I plug it in.
I feel you man...
The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone) must be our most listened Song of all time.
For me it was The Jackson 5's ABC that would play as soon as I plugged my phone into my car. That opening "A buh-buh buh buh" is ingrained in my memory forever.
There's an app by Apple that allows you to remove the U2 songs
Looks like that might be retired going by https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251184844
> Customers are no longer able to remove the album on their own. You will need to reach out to Apple Support directly to have the album removed
I guess this is the essence, of why I never wanted an apple device. And I bookmark this comment, in case I forget ..
I would need to ask my apple masters, if they please remove U2 from my device? No thank you.
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Same. Happened twice, really. Once on the ipod and then the iphone. Made U2 haters out of my wife and myself. I wonder how many people hate U2 music now because this.