The most surprising thing about Apple’s move to preload the new U2 album onto iPhones isn’t that they did it, but that people are surprised that users are angry about it.
For example John Gruber declared “Nailed It” in response to someone describing “removing a free album” as a “first world problem”.
Apple themselves said it in the very keynote they announced this. These iPhones, iPads and iPods are incredibly personal devices, to which users create a much more intimate bond than they do to pretty much any other device.
The WATCH is only going to be even more personal than that.
Apple have been preloading apps onto our personal devices for a while now, whether we like them or not, with no way to delete them. It wasn’t a surprising move for them to start preloading music either.
But they, and nobody else, should be surprised that people see this as an invasion of their personal space.