I have no take on the iPhone 6 Plus, which looks like the Samsung Galaxy and other big phabonelets. I’m sure that I will eventually buy an iPhone 6 Megabundle, because the new built-in camera is banging, and I use my phone mostly to order food and take pictures. The Apple Watch looks like a Happy Meal prize, and it may or may not change health care by helping people “learn” to avoid junk food and run more, which is some groundbreaking intel....MORE
Yesterday, to help celebrate the celebration of a phone and a watch and the omnipresent-overlord vibes of Apple, its C.E.O., Tim Cook, announced that the new U2 album, “Songs of Innocence,” was being added automatically to everyone’s iTunes library. That’s right, even if you didn’t ask for the new U2, it showed up in your iTunes music library. Except if it didn’t. My iTunes Store cheerfully insisted that I already had the album in my library. I did not. Whether an iCloud mix-up or an iTunes glitch, early adopters and heavy users should beware of Apple products not working with Apple products (or iTunes Store copy leaving out a note about hinkty little preferences boxes that need checking). This heightens the feeling of the music and the gear—all of it—being for the casual user, and not of any great significance. What Cook and U2 probably wanted to duplicate yesterday was the organic delight when Beyoncé released an entire album out of the blue last December on iTunes. Instead, U2 stuffed a locksmith card in your doorframe, which you’ve probably already tossed. In case you didn’t delete this modern-rock wet wipe, here is my track-by-track guide to “Songs Of Innocence,” by those famous tax-avoiders U2.
- “The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)”: One of those yo-ho-ho nautical camp sing-alongs that Coldplay loves to squeeze out. Not as good as “Pretty Hurts.” Also: don’t talk about Joey Ramone.
- “Every Breaking Wave”: That recursive U2 trick where they sound like one of the hundred bands who ripped them off. I think this one might be by Snow Patrol. Bono’s vocals sounds like they’re ten feet away from anyone else in the band. Not as good as “Haunted.”...
We have a few posts on Bono:
Bono's Elevation Partners Runs $90 Mil to $1.5 Bil in Facebook, Making Him the World's Most Insufferable Musician (FB)
Bono Sings to Warren Buffett
Mugabe launches Robert Mugabe intelligence academy; Chicago Economists to Aid Inflation-Weary Zimbabwe
..."We were hoping for Bono," says Nkende Masvingo, referring to the rock singer who has made sub-Saharan poverty his personal crusade, "but they sent us Gary Becker because U2 was on tour."But my all-time favorite has to be:
Becker, the winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Economics, will lead a "dream team" including Steven Levitt, co-author of the best-selling pop economics book "Freakonomics", that will set up camp in this city, the nation's capital. "First, we need to understand the situation," said Becker ...
Africans to Bono: 'For God's sake please stop!'
