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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 sp

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)

blackhaz 4y ago
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.
- ricardobayes 4y ago
  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.
  - aliqot 4y ago
    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.
    - NikolaNovak 4y ago
      >> You're part of the in group, you made it, you have achieved sameness, you have an iPhone. I assumed I was just a grouchy old man (because I am:) but I recently found out what level of social stratification happens for teenagers without iPhone. Immediate judgement, plus the continued dreaded green text box. It is brutal I thought I was exaggerating the iPhone as a status symbol as opposed to actually convenient / technical solution, turns out I was naive. (there ARE things that Apple does very well, when it comes to integrating within ecosystem, though some of them are CREEPY - like being prompted to share my wifi password with another person who happens to be looking for wifi around me; just because they happen to have an iPhone doesn't make them my best friend... or does it :P )
      - aliqot 4y ago
        Imagine how I feel, I don't carry or use phones, period. The level of outright indignation I experience is pretty high. People resort to levels of disgust when met with someone who openly rejects carrying around a little bother-box in their pocket as if I'm some type of unwashed knave.
        NikolaNovak 4y ago
        I don't think I can fully imagine; I prefer my ergonomic keyboard and massive monitor to be sure, so I dislike phone-first solutions (GRRR Whatsapp GRRR), or phone-priority design, and computers are definitely my hammer of choice. But between Winnipeg winter storms and kids and experience of civil war and strife in a previous lifetime, mobile phones as a safety lifeline were a strong priority for me early in my life in late 90's; and then I was one of those nerdy guys with Palm Pilot (I used to read entire books... many many books... on a 320x320px screen - which is why I find it hilarious when people so righteously proclaim "Retina or bust" :), then Palm Treo then HTC G1 then Galaxy S2 and so on. I am too self-absorbed or something to worry about social media (I genuinely don't care what anybody else had for lunch or the cute picture of their cat or the latest copy pasted platitude that's 5 words but 3MB overcompressed JPEG grr!), so scrolling Facebook or twitter notification etc are not a real threat vector in a portable phone for me. Which is to say, I don't care one iota if anybody else has a portable phone or not, but I personally find it much too convenient; and I can see it impacting me if somebody else doesn't have a phone, not from status perspective but from practical perspective - there's a change of plans, but oh, Bob is still going to the CoolCafe and we can't tell him to meet us at the NiceRestaurant; or my tire is blown, how am I going to call anybody; etc. How do you handle stuff like that?
  - BoxOfRain 4y ago
    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.
    - mwint 4y ago
      Seems like that’s more the BMW solution (ref. heated seats subscription)
    - ROTMetro 4y ago
      Can I get an audiophile 'Hi-def' tier for $9.99 that's almost but not quite 1982 CD quality?
  - wil421 4y ago
    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.
    - MobiusHorizons 4y ago
      Phones exist that have both waterproofing and a headphone jack. I’m sure it’s a challenge, but it’s not technically an either or decision.
    - NikolaNovak 4y ago
      Interesting; is there some connection between waterproofing and 3.5mm I'm missing? There's plenty of phones and devices waterproofed to any given standard with 3.5mm. To my ignorant mind, a USB C or Lightning port is not fundamentally different exposure / difficulty than 3.5mm when it comes to this - this is far from my area of expertise, but a cursory google search, and plentiful of counter-examples, indicates this is just a post-hoc justification for Apple's removal, not a real critical path. Understanding that "if you need something, get an adapter / live the dongle life" is the core Apple philosophy, and agreeing that most standards should eventually die (parallel port, Firewire, etc), 3.5mm still seems a uniquely standardized, useful, and time proof feature that's is sorely missed with no adequate replacement (dongle, of course, is not it, for many reasons - expense, inconvenience, losing them, and if you want to charge your phone while being on a call things get very wonky very quickly - does Apple even offer a 1st-party solution for this common office-worker use-case?)
    - Larrikin 4y ago
      Sony solved open headphone jack while being water proof nearly a decade ago. The idea the phone can't have a headphone jack and be waterproof was a lie pushed by Apple to save money on not having to put in a headphone jack. I've been using Sony phones in the shower and at the beach for years now and only briefly switched to a different company when they tried to pull that headphone jack removal of crap briefly when I needed a new phone.
      - incongruity 4y ago
  - ant6n 4y ago
    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.
- causi 4y ago
  It's patently ridiculous how much better the microphone on $15 wired headphones is than the ones on a $50 set of wireless earbuds.
  - NikolaNovak 4y ago
    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!
    - HPsquared 4y ago
      Boom mic is always the superior choice.
      - ansible 4y ago
        Yes. All the software / DSP processing can't help if the physics is against you. By placing the microphone close to the mouth noises you make, you are increasing, by many orders of magnitude, the signal-to-noise ratio. Cars and other large BT devices (like an Amazon Echo) can use multiple microphones and some fancy processing to really isolate the voice signal coming from a specific direction (relative to the device) and also cancel out surrounding noise sources. With ear-bud systems, you can't fit in many microphones, nor can you spatially separate them enough for the software to do the job.
      - JohnBooty 4y ago
        In an absolute sound quality sense, yes. But they also pick up peoples' gross mouth noises. You hear them chewing food, wheezing when they have a cold, or even eating food in waaaaay too much detail. Obviously mute buttons exist but... I've had multiple remote coworkers with boom mics and even if they rememeber to mute 90% of the time over the course of a year that other 10% really adds up lol
        4y ago
- JTbane 4y ago
  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.
jeffhuys 4y ago
There's an app by Apple that allows you to remove the U2 songs
- corobo 4y ago
  Looks like that might be retired going by https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251184844 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
  - hutzlibu 4y ago
    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.
    - mmmpop 4y ago
      I remember raging about this back when it happened and my coworkers couldn't understand why I just wouldn't like a free album, and am I bothered by two half-naked men embracing each other? Boulder people are strange.
    - tpush 4y ago
      You can remove the album from your device just fine; This is about removing it from your account, which is contingent on the provider you have the account with no matter what company you're dealing with.
omnibrain 4y ago
I feel you man... The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone) must be our most listened Song of all time.
- allenu 4y ago
  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.
bigie35 4y ago
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-songs-of-innocence-was-a-debacle-for-apple-fans-on-september-9-2018 https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/09/09/the-free-u2-album...
- crubier 4y ago
  That's literally what the parent comment is describing
  - mandmandam 4y ago
    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.
    - lostlogin 4y ago
      It’s really weird how much love Apple has for U2. That whole episode was just so cringe and tone deaf. Knowing the internal politics around it would be fascinating as surely someone tried to stop it.
    - crubier 4y ago
      I totally agree with that, I didn't like U2 back then but I know actively hate them since that episode.
    - jonny_eh 4y ago
      It's as simple as Jobs thinking people would like a free album, but they had no mechanism to "offer" an album, so they just added the entitlement to everyone's accounts. Then they had no mechanism to "remove" an entitlement, because why would anyone want to remove content that they "bought"?
deelowe 4y ago
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.
shortsightedsid 4y ago
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.

blackhaz 4y ago

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.

ricardobayes 4y ago
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.
- aliqot 4y ago
  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.
  - NikolaNovak 4y ago
    >> You're part of the in group, you made it, you have achieved sameness, you have an iPhone. I assumed I was just a grouchy old man (because I am:) but I recently found out what level of social stratification happens for teenagers without iPhone. Immediate judgement, plus the continued dreaded green text box. It is brutal I thought I was exaggerating the iPhone as a status symbol as opposed to actually convenient / technical solution, turns out I was naive. (there ARE things that Apple does very well, when it comes to integrating within ecosystem, though some of them are CREEPY - like being prompted to share my wifi password with another person who happens to be looking for wifi around me; just because they happen to have an iPhone doesn't make them my best friend... or does it :P )
    - aliqot 4y ago
      Imagine how I feel, I don't carry or use phones, period. The level of outright indignation I experience is pretty high. People resort to levels of disgust when met with someone who openly rejects carrying around a little bother-box in their pocket as if I'm some type of unwashed knave.
      - NikolaNovak 4y ago
        I don't think I can fully imagine; I prefer my ergonomic keyboard and massive monitor to be sure, so I dislike phone-first solutions (GRRR Whatsapp GRRR), or phone-priority design, and computers are definitely my hammer of choice. But between Winnipeg winter storms and kids and experience of civil war and strife in a previous lifetime, mobile phones as a safety lifeline were a strong priority for me early in my life in late 90's; and then I was one of those nerdy guys with Palm Pilot (I used to read entire books... many many books... on a 320x320px screen - which is why I find it hilarious when people so righteously proclaim "Retina or bust" :), then Palm Treo then HTC G1 then Galaxy S2 and so on. I am too self-absorbed or something to worry about social media (I genuinely don't care what anybody else had for lunch or the cute picture of their cat or the latest copy pasted platitude that's 5 words but 3MB overcompressed JPEG grr!), so scrolling Facebook or twitter notification etc are not a real threat vector in a portable phone for me. Which is to say, I don't care one iota if anybody else has a portable phone or not, but I personally find it much too convenient; and I can see it impacting me if somebody else doesn't have a phone, not from status perspective but from practical perspective - there's a change of plans, but oh, Bob is still going to the CoolCafe and we can't tell him to meet us at the NiceRestaurant; or my tire is blown, how am I going to call anybody; etc. How do you handle stuff like that?
- BoxOfRain 4y ago
  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.
  - mwint 4y ago
    Seems like that’s more the BMW solution (ref. heated seats subscription)
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    Can I get an audiophile 'Hi-def' tier for $9.99 that's almost but not quite 1982 CD quality?
- wil421 4y ago
  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.
  - MobiusHorizons 4y ago
    Phones exist that have both waterproofing and a headphone jack. I’m sure it’s a challenge, but it’s not technically an either or decision.
  - NikolaNovak 4y ago
    Interesting; is there some connection between waterproofing and 3.5mm I'm missing? There's plenty of phones and devices waterproofed to any given standard with 3.5mm. To my ignorant mind, a USB C or Lightning port is not fundamentally different exposure / difficulty than 3.5mm when it comes to this - this is far from my area of expertise, but a cursory google search, and plentiful of counter-examples, indicates this is just a post-hoc justification for Apple's removal, not a real critical path. Understanding that "if you need something, get an adapter / live the dongle life" is the core Apple philosophy, and agreeing that most standards should eventually die (parallel port, Firewire, etc), 3.5mm still seems a uniquely standardized, useful, and time proof feature that's is sorely missed with no adequate replacement (dongle, of course, is not it, for many reasons - expense, inconvenience, losing them, and if you want to charge your phone while being on a call things get very wonky very quickly - does Apple even offer a 1st-party solution for this common office-worker use-case?)
  - Larrikin 4y ago
    Sony solved open headphone jack while being water proof nearly a decade ago. The idea the phone can't have a headphone jack and be waterproof was a lie pushed by Apple to save money on not having to put in a headphone jack. I've been using Sony phones in the shower and at the beach for years now and only briefly switched to a different company when they tried to pull that headphone jack removal of crap briefly when I needed a new phone.
    - incongruity 4y ago
- ant6n 4y ago
  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.
causi 4y ago
It's patently ridiculous how much better the microphone on $15 wired headphones is than the ones on a $50 set of wireless earbuds.
- NikolaNovak 4y ago
  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!
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    Boom mic is always the superior choice.
    - ansible 4y ago
      Yes. All the software / DSP processing can't help if the physics is against you. By placing the microphone close to the mouth noises you make, you are increasing, by many orders of magnitude, the signal-to-noise ratio. Cars and other large BT devices (like an Amazon Echo) can use multiple microphones and some fancy processing to really isolate the voice signal coming from a specific direction (relative to the device) and also cancel out surrounding noise sources. With ear-bud systems, you can't fit in many microphones, nor can you spatially separate them enough for the software to do the job.
    - JohnBooty 4y ago
      In an absolute sound quality sense, yes. But they also pick up peoples' gross mouth noises. You hear them chewing food, wheezing when they have a cold, or even eating food in waaaaay too much detail. Obviously mute buttons exist but... I've had multiple remote coworkers with boom mics and even if they rememeber to mute 90% of the time over the course of a year that other 10% really adds up lol
      - 4y ago
JTbane 4y ago
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.

jeffhuys 4y ago

There's an app by Apple that allows you to remove the U2 songs

corobo 4y ago
Looks like that might be retired going by https://discussions.apple.com/thread/251184844 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
- hutzlibu 4y ago
  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.
  - mmmpop 4y ago
    I remember raging about this back when it happened and my coworkers couldn't understand why I just wouldn't like a free album, and am I bothered by two half-naked men embracing each other? Boulder people are strange.
  - tpush 4y ago
    You can remove the album from your device just fine; This is about removing it from your account, which is contingent on the provider you have the account with no matter what company you're dealing with.

omnibrain 4y ago

I feel you man... The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone) must be our most listened Song of all time.

allenu 4y ago
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.

bigie35 4y ago

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-songs-of-innocence-was-a-debacle-for-apple-fans-on-september-9-2018 https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/09/09/the-free-u2-album...

crubier 4y ago
That's literally what the parent comment is describing
- mandmandam 4y ago
  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.
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    It’s really weird how much love Apple has for U2. That whole episode was just so cringe and tone deaf. Knowing the internal politics around it would be fascinating as surely someone tried to stop it.
  - crubier 4y ago
    I totally agree with that, I didn't like U2 back then but I know actively hate them since that episode.
  - jonny_eh 4y ago
    It's as simple as Jobs thinking people would like a free album, but they had no mechanism to "offer" an album, so they just added the entitlement to everyone's accounts. Then they had no mechanism to "remove" an entitlement, because why would anyone want to remove content that they "bought"?

deelowe 4y ago

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.

shortsightedsid 4y ago

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.