It’s been a while since my last Apple Music rant. After the recent iOS 17 update the Music.app greeted me with the splash screen on the left side of the above compilation – as I mentioned time and time again, Apple Music could not be disabled any harder on any of my devices or my account.¹ This splash screen has zero benefit or relevance to me.

Even more ridiculous are the constant and increasingly desperate-feeling attempts at trying to suck me into using Apple Music. To give some context for the two other screenshots from the compilation: The first time I got the ad this time was about an hour after the upgrade finished. It’s not the first time I’ve gotten and ignored the ad, it definitely popped up during iOS 16 as well. What is “special” about an offer that you try to get me to please take you up on after every iOS update? The third screenshot above happened after upgrading from 17 to 17.0.3 a few weeks later – is it a bug to be shown more than once per major upgrade cycle now, or just Apple getting more obnoxious? Hard to tell these days.

The most important context however: I own a single HomePod, and I bought it in 2018. Five years ago. How is that still eligible for a “special offer”? I’d have more respect if they simply said “We’d really like for you to fall into our services trap and think that this free initial fix might do the trick” than for this. It’s dishonorable and pathetic.