At Apple's big event this week where it announced the iPhone 6 and Apple Watch, the company also launched something else — U2's latest album Songs of Innocence. After Bono and the band closed out the event with a song, Apple infected, err gifted, U2's new release to all iTunes users.

Go ahead and check your iTunes. I'll wait. It's either in your list of purchased items or already automatically downloaded to your various Apple devices, depending on your settings.

What really has people pissed off — besides the obvious aging hipster response of "I stopped listening to U2 in the 90s" or young cool kid response of "Who the hell is U2?" — is that it's tough to get rid of the album. This being iTunes, you can attempt to delete each track, as Gigaom explains, but the album is still in your iCloud and you're only just hiding it.

Jay Z struck a similar deal with Samsung last year, but users had the option of downloading his new album for free as opposed to having it forced on them.

Naturally, people have taken their grievances/jokes to Twitter.

So how is the album? The old, white dudes at Rolling Stone liked it, giving it five stars, but perhaps the best review so far comes from Sasha Frere-Jones of The New Yorker, who does a scathing track-by-track analysis that is clearly influenced by the way the album was pushed on the masses.

Frere-Jones ends his review by saying: "Don’t shove your music into people’s homes. A U2 album that some would have taken seriously was instead turned into an album that seems as pointless as it probably is. Lack of consent is not the future."

With 800 million iTunes accounts worldwide, as Bloomberg estimates, Apple has spammed (or surprised, depending on how you look at it) a ton of people.

Meanwhile, the iPhone 6 Plus has already sold out via pre-sale, presumably all purchased by hard-core U2 fans.

Update: The publicity stunt seems to have worked out well for U2. Interscope Records issued a press release today saying that U2 "saw an unprecedented number of its previous releases enter the iTunes US album chart. As of Thursday afternoon, 24 of the bands titles had charted on the top 200 of the chart, and the U218 Singles Collection had reached top 10 in 46 countries."

Update 2: In response to the backlash, Apple has released a special tool to remove the U2 album, which you can find here. It deletes the album in one step.

[Gigaom]
[The New Yorker]

As the list of companies continues to climb, Cupertino-based Apple decided to yank its precious iTunes music service from noted hate group "Christian Values Network" (CVN). It all started after Western Washington University student Ben Crowthe's started a petition on Change.org going after the Stephen Baldwin- and Michael Lohan-backed group for exploiting Christianity for dastardly anti-gay and anti-woman schemes.

Change.org notes:

The Apple campaign, which picked up significant momentum after 13,000 AllOut.org members signed another petition on Thursday, follows Microsoft’s decision to leave CVN two weeks ago, prompted by another customer-driven campaign on Change.org. Several other companies have removed their online stores since then, including REI, Macy's, Delta Airlines, BBC America, and Wells Fargo.

CVN is most infamous for funding arguably deplorable organizations like Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, organizations known for Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council. Both groups are known for fearing and attempting to stomp out freedom and sexual visibility.

Another group known for allegedly attempting to stomp out sexual freedom and visibility? Apple. If you recall, CEO Steve Jobs had a heated email exchange with Gawker's Ryan Tate in 2010 that, among other things, revealed the company's apparent "freedom from porn" agenda.

Taking lessons from recently acquired LaLa, Apple is said to be making moves to make iTunes more web-friendly, potentially allowing users to access their music via "the cloud" online, rather than having it tied to specific devices. According to a piece in the Wall Street Journal, the success of LaLa, which Apple acquired for $85 million, has shown them that broader access to one's music library is a growing priority.

LaLa's service allows users to listen to over 8 million songs for free once they've signed up and gotten an account. Users can buy music as well, with their first 25 songs being free, and then have access to their library from anywhere via the internet.

We hope this all works out... we still can't get that stupid Home Sharing thing to work right.

Five months after a liver transplant, Steve Jobs is alive and on stage at Apple's "It's only rock and roll" event this morning. The focus is on music, and the release of iTunes 9, but if there are any huge announcements you can find them here in the next half hour. We're not physically there, but as a service to you we're going to give you a few highlights as we receive them from the fine nerds at Endgadget -- and for the truly Apple-nerdy among you, you can click over there for their moment by moment live blog.

10:06 a.m. - Steve alive, thanks his 20-something liver donor who died in a car accident. Announcement about iPhone and iPod Touch software update 3.1

10:09 a.m. - A bunch of bragging about iTunes is the #1 music retailer in the world. They're updating the Genius functionality. Endless mix possibilities from your library -- that is if you've invested days organizing and properly labeling your genres.

10:19 a.m. - iTunes 9 and the iTunes store have a new look and feel and help your organize your Apps better. Something about home sharing, where you and "your wife" can see each others' libraries better. *YAWN*