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Apple’s never gonna give up trolling its developers

Apple’s never gonna give up trolling its developers

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This is the sort of backwards compatibility that doesn't get enough airtime at Apple's keynotes: making sure that even the company's latest devices keep up with the Old Memes. If you take a close look at this image of the Apple Watch's contacts app from the company's own support page, you might notice something odd about the initials of the friends. Something familiar. Yep, it's a Rickroll, and one as quiet and restrained as if Jony Ive had come up to you at party and whispered Britishly in your ear: "Simplicity is not the absence of clutter, that's a consequence of simplicity. Simplicity means I'm never gonna give you up, never going to let you down."

This low-key gag was spotted by Mike Rundle on Twitter, but, perhaps surprisingly, it's not the first time Apple has dealt out a subtle Rickroll like this. In 2013, screenshots of an iPhone on the support pages of the newly-released iOS 7 showed Rick Astley's epochal hit playing in the Control Center, and the year before that there was a Rickroll in Apple's changelog for the YouTube app. It all seems a bit old hat for a company like Apple, but, as always, it does have its own explanation for all this trolling. It won't please everyone though.