Someone in marketing may be getting fired for this
The ad itself depicted a mechanical crusher destroying artifacts of human creativity. A trumpet, guitar, sculpture, piano, drawing board, paints, a metronome, several analog cameras, a turntable, and hi-fi equipment were among the much-loved items yielding to the machine's unstoppable force.
Can we just STFU about this mediocre ad already? You’re giving it more airtime and more mental bandwidth. I didn’t think it was worth one day of headlines much less two or three.
Agreed. People like to get upset over nothing. It’s a stupid commercial that landed poorly. Someone in the marketing department has way too much control and probably didn’t do a very good focus group for this.
There are plenty of other things about Apple we could be complaining about.
Ignoring things like this is how we've ended up with an entire generation of people who Apple thinks are either too lazy or too stupid to create art or music on their own.
Note that I am not calling anyone lazy or stupid, I'm just stating Apple thinks this is a desirable outcome and is pushing forward with that plan
I have to read the headline to ignore it. That puts the ad in my brain, which is what the purpose of the ad is. The post itself is doing advertising despite being negative. I don’t want to think about ads. Fuck em.
I did get shown the ad, I thought “huh, it’s not like Apple to do ragebait marketing”. I thought that was just what that is, and that everyone can see that. The “Newphoria” marketing tagline I think was verging on it as well, but I didn’t see anyone moaning about it online. Much harder to avoid for me because it was on giant billboards and shop signs.
I guess it’s just working as intended if people are recycling it every day into news fodder, not like there’s anything else going on in the world (ongoing genocide? No we have four tweets about Apple’s new ad and boy are these tweets strongly worded!)
My coworker is fully bought in to the ecosystem, so I get the full experience every launch day. Listen critically sometime. Turn on your bullshit filter. It's a fun game.
I got a pixel 8.
I'm really enjoying it.
But the camera doubles the thickness of the phone where it is.
And the case I have for it just gave up, and made the whole phone+case that thickness.
I'd have liked the actual phone to be that big, have a bit more battery - maybe even replaceable battery, a 3.5mm jack at stuff like that.
At some point, things get too thin to hold and use comfortably. I think the Nintendo switch highlights this, whereas the steam deck is much more comfortable to hold.
In 2007 I had a Gateway convertible computer. This thing was like 14 or 15 inches screen size, it had to have weighed 5 pounds with the battery attached, closed and without worrying about the battery's additional thickness it had to have been an inch and a half thick. The thing is, it worked fine.
The Dell Inspiron that replaced it has one of those soft shell lithium batteries that inevitably bulge and stop the trackpad from clicking, there's a fan that scrapes its housing because of how tight the clearances have to be...all so the thing can be about a half inch thick? Why?
Apple popularised two things that bug the shit out of me in addition to everything you said. "on iPhone" "on iPad" just sounds utterly wrong. It needs to be "on the iPhone" "on the iPad". Now everyone is doing it.
The other is " breathlessly we're excited to announce/we're excited to share with you/we're excited!!!!big fucking cheesy grin". The whole point of having that whole "excited" or whichever adjective you want at that point of the sentence is to prep you and let you know what you're supposed to feel. If it's that good surely you shouldn't have to tell me what I need to feel.
If you got Apple is “destroying creativity” from that, you A) only saw the clip or B) are searching for problem.
The outcry's not really Apple, but tech in general. The backlash of crushing the human experience is the transition from valuing true art and creativity, and just lurching toward yet another do-everything screen that doesn't compliment creativity, but instead displaces it, with the hint of incoming generative AI.
Apple really doesn't give a fuck about art, creativity, expression, or for that matter quality anymore. They're good at making a thing that sells, they're good at marketing it, and they're good at convincing people of the cost vs worth equation that gives them insane margins over their chic branding. I love the outcry not because of any validity behind the detriment of tablets and smartphones (which is absolutely there) but moreso because it's entertaining when a company renowned for their advertising prowess fucks up so publicly then backpedals with apologies.
Yeah, I'm no marketing guru, but I feel their actual point would have been better conveyed by a pile of all of the things the iPad replaced slowly gathering dust, spider webs, and eventually archaeologists.
I'll try to explain this to you - the video shows crushing of plethora of sophisticated, subtle, powerful instruments and then says you can replace them all with Apple's picture poking thing. The preciousness of that thing is not shown to us. The preciousness of those instruments is implied, because we know what they are.
We literally see the precious being crushed and some shit being offered instead after crushing it. Like "I broke all your toys cause I think this one is better and you are going to like it".
I actually think that's perfectly possible because to be a christian you have to already be in denial about a whole boatload of things, so really.. what's one more? And as a bonus "my own people hate me" fits nicely with the whole christian guilt thing.
Save us 5 years. Just put the new ipad into e-waste collection now. Meanwhile, anyone want to use all the real tools designed specifically to make music? Any kid with half a brain will spend their $1000 musicmaking budget on something useful
Seriously, everyone is going to forget about this in a week. Regardless of how you feel about Apple, one slightly tonedeaf ad isn't going to significantly affect their reputation.
I just watched it for the first time and... I thought that while the handwringing is excessive, the subtext that all these other emblems of human creativity have to be destroyed to become part of the iPad is unsettling, moreso because the visuals are so decadent in their detail. It makes it feel much more like replacing than supplementing. It's probably worse that I think it was also unintentional. Big miss for me.