I found Elizabeth Lopatto’s take on the iPad ad especially interesting (though I think a properly maintained piano can last a lot longer than 50 years, which makes her point even stronger).
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When I heard about the uproar over this commercial I had to replay the event. Because I was transported back to 1971 as soon as the music started and had paid it no attention.
So some people are offended by an advertisement they think says “technology is disposable”? From a company that has become wildly successful selling hardware that cannot be upgraded or easily repaired? I guess Apple’s reality distortion field has finally collapsed.
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I have read all the criticisms of the commercial, but I didn’t understand them. Maybe I have this completely wrong, but I thought that the point of the ad was that all these artistic tools were being squashed together to make this generation of the ipad. The iPad is made from and embodies all the tools, not that those tools are disposable or outmoded. A chef must mash tomatoes in order to make pasta sauce. It seemed to me that the ad was supposed to show that the iPad was a child of all the artistic tools that came before it. Did I miss the mark?
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I don’t think so. My interpretation is the same as yours. Real musical instruments, cameras, and paint will always be better than an iPad. But the iPad is thinner than musical instruments, cameras, and cans of paint.
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I haven’t a clue what the ad was about. The music and the colors reminded me of much simpler technology. 
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This really feels like made up controversy. Some people on Twitter comment on it, and then a couple of articles came out (no surprise the Verge is one of them). But all the places I visit online, pro-Apple or not, no one seems to care. It’s more of people saying they didn’t think anything of the ad when it was shown.
It’s like the whole Marquees Brownlee killing Humane with a bad review. One person makes a comment on Twitter and suddenly it’s a thing.
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One way of looking at it is that the iPad is a poor (at least in aesthetic terms) version of all of those things it crushed. But it’s thin and convenient.
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For those of you professing to not understand, here’s the money quote from the original article:
The message many of us received was this: Apple, a trillion-dollar behemoth, will crush everything beautiful and human, everything that’s a pleasure to look at and touch, and all that will be left is a skinny glass and metal slab.
This isn’t a made-up controversy, people had ‘visceral’ reactions. I didn’t see the ad until I read about the controversy, and I had a similar reaction. People have emotional attachments to things, like musical instruments. We might be replacing them with digital tools, but that doesn’t get rid of our fondness and nostalgia for analog things.
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I think the ad is a little tone deaf during the emergence of ‘generative AI’ and many artists having their work stolen or plagiarised.
But that’s all.
Making a bigger deal out of it is histerionics. The idea that one of the most successful technology companies in the world collectively doesn’t understand how technology is used is just the dumbest level of clickbait. Folks shouldn’t fall for it.
I saw an article this week suggesting that debuting the M4 in an iPad means the MacBook line is cancelled. Completely ignoring the need for a display driver that just doesn’t exist in the M3 chip that’s needed to drive the display.
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A few people did, sure, I am not doubting that or your feelings. I don’t think many people had that reaction though, or at least didn’t until someone pointed out that they should have that reaction. Even with the usual Apple pundits, they said as much, they didn’t think much of the ad until later when they saw the Twitter reaction.
I think most people just don’t particularly care. It’s an ad. I spent the ad thinking “I know this is CGI, but is it really?”
I find it hard to believe that rational humans can only see the most hard-line and extreme interpretation of something and take it as an absolute with no nuance or space for benefit of the doubt without being on some level intellectually dishonest.
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I was one who had a visceral, negative, reaction to this ad.
Come on, Apple, can’t you find an ad agency that will re-capture the humor and gentle mocking of the Apple ads with John and Justin? Or the innocence of the “What’s a computer” ad?
EDIT TO ADD: Or even the whimsy of the OK GO videos that it cold-heartedly mimics.
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Which I completely understand. But it’s still just an ad, who cares in the long run? Do we really need the articles about how people are falling out of love with Apple because of this, etc?
I agree. Didn’t they even test the damn thing in focus groups? It’s not like Apple is short on cash. It was ugly and distasteful. As some have pointed out, all they had to do to fix it would have been to run it in reverse, so all the instruments, etc. emerged from the iPad instead of getting crushed by it. It would have been an exaggeration, but it wouldn’t have been offensive.
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I did feel sorry for the smiley face ball, but overall the reaction to this add strikes me as ridiculously overblown.
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Has Apple pulled an ad before? Just curious.
I don’t interpret one questionable creative choice as evidence that Apple doesn’t know why I use technology. I do interpret that headline as a predictable attempt to generate clicks.
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Perhaps you don’t remember Apple co-opting Mother Nature?
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Here’s the thing…
I thought the ad was in bad taste. There would have been a way to do the ad that wouldn’t have been as dramatic. Whoever did the ad amped the drama of the things being crushed, and went out of their way to personify the items. It was absolutely fantastic dramatic filmmaking, but it was a bad ad.
I also think that’s exactly what it was - an tone-deaf ad. The article reads:
The message many of us received was this: Apple, a trillion-dollar behemoth, will crush everything beautiful and human, everything that’s a pleasure to look at and touch, and all that will be left is a skinny glass and metal slab.
Astoundingly, this is meant to sell a product. “Buy the thing that’s destroying everything you love,” says Apple.
No. C’mon. The article would have you believe that Apple is intentionally portraying itself as a destructive force, and that
The point of this ad is not about the iPad’s creative uses — it’s that it’s skinny.
Not even close. It’s a tone-deaf article about a tone-deaf ad.
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We don’t, but everyone that depends on stories about Apple for clicks & listens does.
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