Apple’s newest iPhone update includes a non-deletable app intended to work with the Apple Watch, TechCrunch reports, drawing comparisons to a free U2 album that appeared without warning on Apple devices last year.
Once the Apple Watch actually ships next month, its companion iPhone app will let you customize various settings on the wearable device. But for now, it’s basically a dummy app taking up space on your iPhone screen. There’s also no word on whether iPhone owners who don’t choose to buy an Apple Watch will be able to get rid of the app.
The Apple Watch app joins a cadre of Apple first-party iPhone apps that users can’t delete, like Weather and Stocks. While it’s possible to hide these apps in their own folder, iPhone users can’t rid their devices of the apps completely.
U2’s Age of Innocence was pre-packaged on Apple’s iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus smartphones as part of a promotional deal. The album also unexpectedly appeared in a half-billion iTunes users’ libraries, causing enough of an uproar that Apple released a one-click tool to rid the album from users’ accounts.
