I’m really not sure what they were thinking with the U2 thing(the only party more delusional than Apple was Bono declaring the exercise to be “very punk rock”); but Apple has made a long-standing policy(frequently though not universally successful) of operating on the theory that they know what their customers want better than their customers do.
When correct this tendency helps them open new markets and avoid the bottom feeding that makes cheap laptops so terrible. When wrong it comes of as high-handed arrogance on the part of someone with a tight grip on the platform; because that’s what it is.
The somewhat uncharacteristic element here is the little twist of pathos: burning reputation to try to spam up an audience for your lousy little TV show is so…plaintive… You’d think that having a nation-state size money pile would allow you to refrain from stooping for subscriptions like a precarious YouTube personality; but apparently not.
