At last year's major Apple product launch event, U2 made a surprise appearance to perform and, more notably, announce the free release of its album "Songs Of Innocence," which was automatically made available to all iTunes users. It was a controversial move for many listeners, who did not welcome the unsolicited album on their devices. So when today's iPhone 6S launch event was announced, rumors circulated over who would be the surprise musical guest - and possible album releaser. Drake? Taylor Swift? This afternoon, the speculation came to an end when pop rock band OneRepublic took the stage after an announcement by Apple CEO Tim Cook.

"We have one of my absolute favorite bands here...One Republic," Cook said from the stage, according to BuzzFeed Tech's Twitter feed.

OneRepublic tweeted a picture of singer Ryan Tedder with Cook during the band's performance.

Some observers were much less than enthused than Cook about the band's surprise appearance, however, with some lamenting that it wasn't the similarly named boy band One Direction. TV personality Dave Holmes made a dig about Cook and his fandom of OneRepublic, while The Verge's Silicon Valley editor Casey Newton expressed mock worry that Apple would force a new OneRepublic album to iTunes, like it did with U2 last year.

That said, this time, Apple will not release a surprise album by OneRepublic, or any other artist, according to Entertainment Weekly.