Apple's Big Blunders a Decade Ago: U2, Bendgate, Botched iOS 8 video

When Apple holds an event, it makes history. But when you look back on all Apple has done, I am fascinated by one singular Apple event that happened 10 years ago, a lot went wrong and nothing like it will ever happen again. I'm talking about September 9 th 2014. The day Apple shoved a youtube album on everyone's iphone. But youtube was the only debacle to come from that beautiful day. This was the iphone Six event which gave us Bend Gate and a botched I Os release. It was the debut of the Apple watch pitched as a luxury item costing as much as 17 grand for the fanciest of fancy pants customers. This also was when Tim Cook introduced Apple Pay with the bold promise of replacing your wallet news flash. We still need wallets but most folks just remember it as the day when Apple installed a youtube album on every device whether you wanted it or not. And it ticked off so many people, I'll get more into that, but so many things went wrong around this iphone launch that we have to talk about it. So as we get ready for the iphone 16 and the watch 10 event in just a few weeks. Here's one more thing. Let's look back on the awkward moments from the Six event and how much has changed in the decades since I'm Bridget Carey. And this is one more thing. The iphone six was the first time Apple had the iphone in two sizes. There was an iphone six plus it measured in at 5.5 inches. Now, that's totally not a plus size by today's standards. The plus size screen is now 6.7 inches in diameter. The iphone six also was one of the thinnest iphones which turned up might have caused some problems shortly after its release. Some folks reported that the phone casing would bend under pressure like if it's in a tight pants pocket and that gave us the term bend gate at the time. Apple said bet iphones were extremely rare but surely no phone was thinner ever since the six. Perhaps Apple didn't want another Bend Gate, but we could be going back to super thin designs. Rumor has it that Apple is working on it. Slim iphone 17. Now Apple analyst, Ming Shu Ko says it would have a mixed Titanium aluminum frame for strength and just have one camera on the back and we might say goodbye to the plus size all together. That's next year. Some are saying this new model could be five millimeters thin that would make it the thinnest iphone ever so 10 years after the iphone six plus, we could be going back to something that looks like the iphone six plus, Ben was a rough time because it came right as Apple was recovering from a bad I OS eight update. A week after I OS eight released Apple pushed out a version 8.0 0.1 to fix some bugs, but it came with bigger bugs and it forked some iphones. users reported that it was breaking cellular reception with the iphone showing no service on the display. And others noticed problems with touch. Id. Apple had to pull back the update. This event made reporters like me warn people to never download an Apple update on the first day it comes out. I still get weird about downloading I OS updates right away. The following year in 2015, Apple opened up the I Os beta program to the public for the first time. Perhaps it's one way Apple makes sure it doesn't have another problematic update like that. Again, when Tim Cook introduced the Apple watch, it wouldn't reach consumer risks for another seven months. There was a lot of time to wait and speculate folks were wondering why do you even need a smartwatch? And Apple was marketing this in many different ways. You see, Apple wanted it to be for both runners and the high end fashion crowd. Remember at this point, every tech company was making smartwatches. So Apple went all out on the luxury angle to stand apart. There were three versions, the entry level aluminum and glass watch sport model. It started at about $350. There was a stainless steel version started at roughly $550. But the big daddy was the Apple watch edition. A luxury model made of 18 karat gold starting price was $10,000 and it went up to 17 Grand Vogue gave it a 12 page cover spread. But here's the thing, unlike a real luxury watch, computer screens are not an heirloom. You can't pass this down to your kids. So it was a doomed idea and it flopped. It did in fact become obsolete. Apple will no longer fix it and the software has not been updated beyond watch os 4.3 0.2 that's back in 2018. A decade later, we still have three versions and the luxury aspect is really about which wrist strap you buy. Hermes sells a band for $590 more than the cost of buying two Apple watches. But all those fashion bands might as well head to the landfill. The 10th edition of the Apple Watch is rumored to have a whole new design with a new system for connecting the bands. So these current bands that just kind of slide in and out of the slot here, they're likely incompatible. Will people be quick to upgrade if they're losing all of their investment on the bands. I mean, at least when I buy a new pair of pants, the belt I bought is still compatible. Apple Pay was introduced as a way to replace the wallet but not every retailer was playing along at first stores like Home Depot and Walmart did not take Apple Pay. And 10 years later, you still can't use it at Home Depot or Walmart, but many other retailers did eventually get on board. And it seems to be almost everywhere I could pay for the New York City subway by just tapping my iphone now. But it still struggles to be a wallet replacement because of driver's licenses. Only some states are compatible with putting their licenses in the Apple wallet. So wallets are not dead if you're like me and you love those wild lounge fly wallets, you can still keep buying them with Apple pay. Ironically, that September event was jam packed and it was a live event which sadly I think is something Apple won't do again. But even with all of this news, Tim Cook wanted one more thing to close out the gathering in a celebratory moment for the itunes store, which at this point was for a decade. The band youtube performs this new song for the crowd and then Bono gets on stage with Cook to tease up that Apple should pay him to give this whole album to every itunes customer if we gave it away for free. But first you would have to pay for it because we're not going in for the free music round here. And with that magic instant, everyone got songs of innocence on their machines. And then everyone was left confused on how to remove songs of innocence from their machines. If you don't follow Apple News, I guess you just woke up and you were like, uh what is Bono doing on my iphone? Now, I'm old enough to remember when devices came with free media all the time. Windows 95 came with a free movie file of the Wheezer Buddy Holly music video and one of the earliest Samsung Galaxy phones, it was called the Samsung Vibrant on T Mobile in 2010. It came with an entire copy of the Avatar movie loaded on it and I swear to you that's how I watched Avatar for the first time on a four inch screen just like how James Cameron wanted but pack to Bono. Although it was a free thing and Americans love free things. They do not love having this music appear on their machines because it was so woven in with their itunes music library. It was in the icloud and you couldn't just delete it out of the icloud. At least not at first. Like if you just shuffled, you had you two suddenly playing. It was so bad that Bono apologized for the stunt and Apple had to provide a whole fix just to help people remove it. It went so poorly. I don't think we're going to get a free piece of media again unless you count free trials of subscriptions. Because now so much has shifted to streaming services and think about how much is different from a decade ago in music ownership, we had mp3 libraries and ipods and then they took away our CD drives and I guess you could buy an external CD drive but not anymore on Apple because the Super Drive is no longer available. As of just a few weeks ago, we had this method of buying and story music, but the environment changed around this method. So I don't blame consumers ownership just became obsolete when the infrastructure of ownership changed. Now, doing this story made me realize that my digital music library over the years is just rotting on some drive somewhere because I stream everything. I realize it's been years since I purchased any song. And that kind of freaked me out because you don't really own anything. If the digital rights to a song you love leaves a streaming service. It's a bit of a mission now to get MP threes and figure out where it all lives and how to move files around. But there is still a desire with customers or some sort of physical device that you could take music with you and also let you disconnect. Just look at Urban Outfitters. It is selling old ipods. The company retrospect, refurbishes old ipods and it inspired me to get back to our past. So I bought one. This is a first generation ipod mini from 2004 and I'm going to play around with this a bit and I'm gonna report later on what it's like going back to just a simple mp3 player. Even when itunes software really isn't a thing anymore. Let me know what you're looking for in the next iphone event or let me know if you have any experience going back to ipods. But even if you don't comment, I'll still do a show about it with or without you. Thanks for watching. I'll catch you next Friday for one more thing.