That’s why they need to find a good ad agency. 
By techies on the podcast circuit. Not by ordinary Apple customers to whom the ad was aimed.
I believe you miss the point. People found the ad unpleasant in spite of its easily understood intention. What I don’t understand is why Apple would want to portray an unpleasant image. 
Same with this ad. Finding very little outrage over this ad on websites (forums, article comments, Reddit). Most people took the ad for what it was. Some people find it was a misstep, but it really seems like most people don’t care much. Your ordinary iPad buyer probably has no clue this ad ever aired anywhere.
I have no doubt there is a ton of outrage on Twitter though. There is outrage over everything on Twitter.
+1
Some people are threatened by change. Anyone who thinks they are going to be typing on laptops in 2060 are almost certain to be disappointed.
TBWA (their agency) made this one. It’s pretty boring compared to ‘Crush’ and getting overlooked, but it didn’t get pulled…
Apple still makes some of the best ads in the business. Speaking of hyperbole, suggesting that one miss from what is generally a parade of hits means they need to start outsourcing is ridiculous.
Most people also don’t give a damn about this ad. The noise is almost entirely from corners that benefit from clickbait.
And I get the point just fine. If you’re capable of understanding the intention and did so then that makes the reaction even more irrational. Apple clearly didn’t intend the image to be unpleasant (so I’m not sure you did understand the intention as this was not it).
Choosing to be outraged is your prerogative, but it’s not proportional to the ‘offence’.
If an ad doesn’t land as intended, then the failure lies with those who developed it, not with the audience.
I find it interesting that the strongest emotional reactions in this thread seem to be coming from those who are outraged that others found this ad offensive.
I’m guessing that some Apple marketing people were looking for something “zeitgeisty” and found inspiration from the Hydraulic Press Channel known for videos like this:
but instead of the ad being fun and quirky, it can be interpreted more like this:
The subject matter has very little to do with my frustration from this thread.
@RunningBoris, don’t be frustrated. Let’s leave aside the outside world for a moment. Some of us on this forum found an Apple ad to be unpleasant and / or did not like it and posted about it. Some of us found nothing wrong with the ad or actually liked it and posted that opinion. Sounds to me like a pretty typical situation for lots of topics on our forum.
If we all agreed on everything it would be so boring that we’d all leave 
I don’t think anyone has disputed this.
Focus groups, indeed.
Let me digress just a moment. I have devoted my entire career to representing creatives–the past 25 years of my life. I have an imdb page with most (not all) of the films I’ve handled; I’ve tried motion picture copyright infringement and fair use cases to juries in order to stand up for, and protect creators. For ten years I was an editor of the Los Angeles Lawyer’s annual entertainment law issue. I’m a partner in the premier music law firm in the U.S. I saw the ad and thought it was great and was surprised that people found it offensive. Admittedly, I did not see this perspective at all. My background and my opinion, however, are absolutely, totally irrelevant and meaningless (well, to this issue, anyway!).
People did find it offensive, maybe even disturbing. Just a sampling from this thread is telling:
This is where @Synchronicity hit the nail on the head. If Apple had done focus groups (and, sheesh, maybe it did) it might have discovered a set of people who saw the ads from this perspective. That might have given Apple’s marketing team some pause. Maybe just changing the theme from “crush” to something else might have made people receive the ad better.
Maybe this controversy is overblown, and maybe people should be less offended by ads, and maybe people should be giving Apple the benefit of the doubt after all that it’s done to promote creativity. But they didn’t and this is now a thing (at least in some corner of the Internet). From a PR perspective, it was avoidable.
This is, IMHO, the precise difference between the “what’s a computer?” ad and the “crush” ad.
“What’s a computer?” was roasted by Apple pundits, but it wasn’t targeted at them. I don’t have any reason to believe that it was ineffective at hitting the audience it was intended for.
The “crush” ad was targeted at professional creatives, many of whom seem to think it was in bad taste. Even people who do nothing but digital music on YouTube probably have enough sentimental connection to the analog medium that they don’t want to see hydraulic presses crushing pianos.
You can make an ad that offends people, but you typically shouldn’t be making ads that offend the ad’s target market. 
I feel pretty sure that Apple’s obsession with secrecy around unreleased products is making it difficult / impossible to conduct focus groups for launch day ads like this one.
Best case, they may do company internal screenings or testing, but here the culture and context would act as blinders to the issue.
Do you think it may be time for Apple to lighten up on secrecy? Despite what Apple has said their actions make it appear that the generative AI boom caught them by surprise.
I do think the secrecy is a bit silly, at least for well established products like the iPhone, iPad and Mac. I accept it for Vision Pro and other “one more thing” type of announcements.
I also believe Apple has been wise to stay out of Generative AI. The current offerings are a hot mess of copyright infringement, tools for spam, content click farms and scams while burning more power than a sm nation.
Apple have given us very useful tools for on-device face recognition (and pets) in Photos, auto tagging of keywords that let us search for generic terms, the auto OCR of images, that whole magic Photonic Engine. These are practical ML (or now, due to market conditions, AI) applications we all use without thinking.
Earlier Apple AI include the session drummers and bass players in Garage Band, the Siri Suggestions I hear many people use and like, location aware notifications etc. In my book, Apple have been using technology to improve the lives of their users, not just building something “cool” then figuring out how their AI thing is actually useful.
Apple has a large number of creators as their customers. Stupid “help me write” tools or weird renderings of images for the LinkedIn post is not the prime objective among these longtime users.
You make a good case for Apple “business as usual”. I like Apple’s hardware, but I’m not a fan of the corporation that it has become. I wonder if it’s time for some new additions to Apple’s family tree?
I am ready for John Ternus Apple.