24 hours later, Apple thinks different about flattening creativity for iPad ad
Mere hours after Tim Cook introduced to “the thinnest product we’ve ever created,” the company says it didn’t mean to scare the creatives it normally courts
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Screenshot: Apple
Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they are very, very sorry for flattening the whole of human creativity to convince consumers to buy another iPad.
Apple’s latest blunder, a new commercial entitled “Crush,” was supposed to excite people about shelling out another grand for another iPad. However, because consumers spent the last few years being taken for fools by tech companies that can’t seem to make anything anymore, most read this as a pretty clear metaphor for how Apple and its ilk have treated art during this tech bubble. Like Rodney Dangerfield, the arts get no respect. So, in a rarity for the company, Apple has apologized.
“Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world,” said Apple’s VP of Marketing Communications Tor Myhren told AdAge. “Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.”
The ad sees a massive hydraulic press slowly crushing instruments of artistic expression, like a trumpet, a record player, a piano, a guitar, paint cans, and more, into a really cool new iPad. Though Apple, as is its wont, hoped to highlight the razor-thin size of their latest tablet, most interpreted it as an insensitive metaphor for how tech giants are attempting to replace creativity with AI junk that doesn’t work. It’s almost as if Apple doesn’t own a Hollywood studio that produces work written by the same WGA writers and starring the same SAG actors who spent last year striking against machine-written gobbledygook and AI-generated Pixar characters with 13 fingers and four rows of teeth. Apple, for its part, also released a pair of $3,500 ski goggles no one wanted this year, so the goodwill that shielded the company from accusations of worker exploitation (here and abroad) and weaponizing tax loopholes is wearing as thin as the all-new iPad.
“Meet the new iPad Pro: the thinnest product we’ve ever created, the most advanced display we’ve ever produced, with the incredible power of the M4 chip,” Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted yesterday. “Just imagine all the things it’ll be used to create.” Most imagined all the things Apple was destroying. As bestselling author Hari Kunzru put it: “Crushing the symbols of human creativity to produce a homogenized branded slab is pretty much where the tech industry is at in 2024.”
The last time Apple released an apology was in September 2012, when Tim Cook posted a letter on the company’s website expressing regret over the release of Apple Maps. So, if anything, we can rest assured that the backlash to this shortsighted commercial convinced someone to think different.
31 Comments
It’s just so weird. I understand that the ad is supposed to mean “look, we compressed all these things into an iPad” but that’s just not what it actually says at all. It solely reads as: “look, we’re violently destroying at least one thing you have a strong emotional connection to; now give us a thousand dollars.” That they didn’t realise this is astonishing.
Coulda had someone using a wand magically combine everything nondestructively.
Ah, yeah, yeah, but you see, they don’t feel any emotional attachment to those things. They feel emotional attachments to the tech – and so, they believe, do you, because if they were able to relate to other, different people, they wouldn’t be working in fucking Silicon Valley making iPads.
The fact that the artist’s model and emoji ball clearly looked distressed as this was happening certainly didn’t help.
If the ad merely showed those things being compressed/shrunk down instead of crushed, it would have made emotional sense. But the emoji ball’s eyes and the paint bleeding out just made it gruesome.
Literally squishing its eyes out in pain as it tried to escape. “People will love this.”
It’s almost impressive that what I’m sure is a massive marketing team all watched that ad and thought, “Yep, no sinister undertones there.”
“And you’ll see why 2024 will be exactly like ‘1984.’”
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine an iPad smashing in a human face— forever.”
That shot of the human anatomical model being bent backwards is really something else.
The techbro believes they should be at the centre of all human endeavour, hell at the centre of humanity itself. You should not be able to do something, anything, that doesn’t some how involve them, that they can’t stand up and go “See? Because of me you can do that – YOU’RE WELCOME.”That’s why they work so hard to insinuate themselves into every facet of life, and, as explicitly show in the video, destroy anything that could allow you to work outside their fiefdom. Musical instruments? Paint? Physical toys? Sorry, Silicon Valley doesn’t make any of that. Into the bin – or, at least, the press.
Hey now, I know you’re just using “Silicon Valley” to mean “the tech industry,” but as someone who lives in the area but doesn’t work in tech, it *is* region that also contains artists and creatives.Not disagreeing with your overall sentiment, just trying to make a case for precision in language so as to not erase the rest of us who live/work nearby. :’)
Fair point, but I’d also say that just adds to the cosplay of it all. “See? We’re in California? You know, California! Ground zero for artists and hippies and creativity and that sweet Laurel Canyon sound! So, ergo, we must be just like that, right? After all, we wouldn’t be in a place like that if we weren’t like that, eh? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get in my hideously un-environmentally-friendly Citation Ultra and fly to DC to explain how it’s not our fault our algorithm kept recommending white supremacist content to that guy who shot all those Indians in Oregon.”
Funny, because to me it seems like the physical medium purists are the ones that think you should not be able to do something, anything, that doesn’t some how involve them, as evidenced by their gatekeeping, especially when it comes to AI.
Any time a blunder of this scale occurs I can’t help but think it came down to some very high up executive who either had the idea themselves or was just really in to it and was surrounded by underlings who couldn’t question them.
Agreed, I’d like to think there is an underling that got shot down who is now smirking to themselves about how much shit Apple is getting for this.
Business culture rarely rewards folks for speaking up against the quality of other people’s work, especially the closer it gets to a deadline, and especially if they’re at a higher paygrade than you. I’d reckon there were plenty of “can you believe it” side-conversations in hushed tones though.
Why did nobody complain when LG did basically the same ad in 2008? Honestly this whole “controversy” is stupid. It’s obvious what both LG and Apple meant — that their devices contained cameras, musical instruments, and games machines in a compact device. There is nothing sinister about this. With all the real problems in the world right now I don’t get why people would get all upset about this. Again, the main real criticism one can make of the ad is that it is unoriginal.
‘good artists copy; great artists steal’ — and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.”-Steve Jobs
LG was at least less rumoured to have suicide nets for their workers in 2008, and also less successful overall?
I think you are confusing it with Foxconn (the Chinese manufacturer of iPhones), although even there the suicide nets might just be a rumor. LG is South Korean, where workers have a far better quality of life.
I was confusing them, indeed. Thanks for the correction, and I knew that was Apple, but thanks for the further information. Oops on my part.
I suspect the people who made this were fans of that guy with the hydraulic press on YouTube and thought they could somehow shoehorn that into an iPad commercial.
Finland’s second-funniest cultural institution!
yeah my main issue with it isn’t so much that it’s insulting (which, hey, it’s not not!) it’s that it’s such a BORING concept.
I really don’t understand why they did this ad. This isn’t 2010. It’s not like it’s some exciting news that you can fit so much into a computer in your pocket. So it’s a little thinner this time, so what? Show me that thinner is cool, not that it can do the same thing as every smartphone for the past 10 years.
i thought the advert was cool. When people start moaning about an advert, they’re obviously unhappy about something in their life and is taking that unhappiness out on a silly advert.
“Advert” is a super annoying word. Thanks for giving me something on which to focus !
No it’s usually cuz the advert is dumb as dick. The armchair psychiatry is also dumb as dick which must be why you like commercials.
“celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves”“comments for this video are disabled”Please express yourselves.No! Not like That!
Wonder if they’ll follow this up by sending personally branded iPads to a bunch of trans influencers?