Not feeling U2’s ‘Songs of innocence’? Read this.

At Apple’s special media event last week, CEO Tim Cook was joined on stage by the band U2 playing a song form their new album, ‘Songs of Innocence’. Tim Cook then announced that as a special gift, all 500 million iTunes users would have the album- for free – automatically in their iTunes account.

Sweet, right?

Well, not if you’re not a U2 fan. Their has been a quite surprising amount of backlash to the gift, and nice guy Apple has therefore given us a way out.

U2’s manager  Guy Oseary told Mashable.”We just want to share it with as many people as possible. If you don’t want it and you don’t need it, delete it.” On Sept. 15, Apple set up an official page to help people do exactly that.

This is the support page you want, and below are the directions.

1) To remove the album:  Go to http://itunes.com/soi-remove.

2) Click Remove Album to confirm you’d like to remove the album from your account.

3) Sign in with the Apple ID and password you use to buy from the iTunes Store. You’ll see a confirmation message that the album has been removed from your account.

If you downloaded the songs to iTunes on your Mac or PC or to the Music app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you’ll need to delete them manually. After you’ve deleted the album, you won’t be able to redownload it and will have to purchase the album when it is available after October 13th.

Now for some good ol’ Tuesday afternoon U2 comedy;

Why did Bono fall off the stage?  He was too close to The Edge!

Budum pshhh!

Q: What kind of lawyers praise U2? Pro Bono lawyers!

and finally:

At a recent U2 concert, Bono asked the audience for total quiet.

Then, in the silence, he started to slowly clap his hands, once every few seconds. Holding the audience in total silence, he said into the microphone, “Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies.”

From the front of the crowd a voice with a broad Scottish accent pierced the quiet …

“Well, f**kin stop doin’ it then, ya evil ba*tard!”

We’re here all week!

The Apple announcement!

This morning, at 10:00 AM Pacific time, Tim Cook took to the stage at the Flint Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of De Anza College in Cupertino.

Over almost 2 hours, we were introduced to two new models of iPhone, a new service in ApplePay and the Apple Watch. A lot of rumors were confirmed, some were seen to be false (bye easy to type iWatch) and a raft of new services not foreseen were revealed.

The live stream was not the best thing anyone’s ever seen, far from it actually, from consistent pauses and breakdowns in the streaming video, to the addition of a lovely Chinese translator (we’re assuming?) cutting in over Tim Cook’s sentences. It seemed to work itself out after about 40 minutes thank goodness, but not before Twitter was set on fire annihilating Apple for being unable to use simple streaming technology.

But, it worked itself out. Shout out to the guys over at MacRumors for live blogging so we could understand anything we missed! We were introduced to the two models of the iPhone 6 – the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus. They are, as rumored, a 4.7 inch model and 5.5 inch model respectively. They both have a bunch of updates and improvements and we’ll delve into them in a little bit in our detailed iPhone 6 blog post.

We had confirmation of NFC capabilities with ApplePay, aiming to make payment transactions in a bunch of online and in-store retailers all over the US simpler and more secure.

Then; One more thing!

Those magic words that we haven’t heard in a while! That one more thing? Nope, not the iWatch. Natch. It’s the Apple Watch. And it’s so very pretty! And functional! And innovative, and useful. We’ll be going into far more detail in our Apple Watch blog post coming soon. But all you need to know for right now? There are two sizes and three models – the Apple Watch, the Apple Watch Sport, and the Apple watch Edition. They’ll be coming in early 2015, they’re highly customizable, they start at $349, and you’ll probably want one.

Tim Cook ended the event with a performance by U2 and the announcement of their new Album ‘Songs of Innocence’. And Apple just made the album free to all half a billion iTunes users!

We’ll be bringing you the details of both models of the iPhone 6, Apple Pay and Apple Watch shortly.

Photos courtesy of 9to5mac.com