My initial reaction to the ad, upon watching it in the launch event was "huh, that's a fun reference to the Hydraulic Press Channel". The slapstick elements (trumpet noise, squishy balls) made it come across as light-hearted, rather than an ominous display of force by a large company crushing artists' tools.
This idea of 'squashing all these tools down to a thin slab of glass' made sense given their somewhat unusual focus on the thinness of the device. It was a bit of a throwback to the early 2010s smartphone innovation, where the size of the devices was the yardstick by which manufacturers would outdo each other. I would charitably interpret it as an uninspired marketing team trying to spin some version of Jobs' classic "the iPhone is simultaneously an iPod, phone and internet device" - however the party trick is old, and nobody's impressed anymore.
Perhaps the blowback is a sign of a wider weariness that people have accumulated towards big tech companies over the past few years, mixed with a nebulous malaise about 'AI' and what it means for the status quo and people's livelihoods.
This outrage feels so manufactured. I'm a huge basketball fan, coach, ex-player. If they included a basketball in the ad my thought would've been "yeah, you can play NBA2k on it". I'm not mad about the destruction of a single basketball. I don't feel like its disrespect to the game. It's showing that this single device has captured elements of basketball into a small form factor.
As you note this may hint at a larger weariness with big tech -- and I tend to agree. I feel like if it was a public library crushing a bunch of things, and then ends with it lifting up and showing a library card there wouldn't be the same concerns.
Interestingly, basketballs are designed to be as standardized and replaceable as possible (so there’s no question about whether they affected the game.) Whereas musicians do not think of instruments that way. Nor photographers and their cameras, etc. The reaction might be specific to artists. They’re represented on HN, but not as much as non-artists, I bet.
I have to acknowledge that there’s probably a pile-on effect from people who enjoy outrage, but a lot of the negative sentiment is coming from level headed musicians and artists; a group that I identify with.
And I wouldn’t say my reaction is rage. It’s closer to a combination of deep disappointment, strong dislike, and a growing feeling that the nebulous worries I’ve felt about tech and its impact on art/music are being made very real.
I don’t find it analogous to a library. Such an ad would imply (to me) some kind of digitization, which frankly is a huge problem at a time when libraries and access to physical books are increasingly under threat.
And I find it different than a basketball, because no one is worried that NBA2K is an actual threat to the game, and basketballs are inexpensive standardized objects.
What they crushed was symbolic of thousands of years of human artistic creativity and output at a time when there’s a lot of anxiety about AI more or less crushing those fields for real.
I like the ad on the whole, but I was a little upset about the destruction of seemed like a perfectly good guitar. I play the guitar as a hobby.
But then again, rock bands have been making me upset by smashing guitars on stage for decades now. And these are the same kind of musicians who are apparently outraged now.
Can sort of understand the discomfort, but musicians have been smashing their own instruments for dramatic effect for a while now.
I think it’s the disappointment that Apple is supposed to be on the side of creators and humanity in an era where the arts have been under attack in schools. Apple makes great tools that should complement an artist and their work. It enables a kid who can’t afford an expensive studio to produce their own music. It’s not that it was an outrage machine - it was a population of creatives saying “hey, this feels a little weird”
Look at the replies to the original tweet, it's all as you say completely manufactured outrage. Perpetually-online wannabe influencers with 70 followers talking about how it's "problematic." Maybe it has to do with Big Tech, I don't know but that sounds like it could be it.
I think the big thing here is that if you don't have an attachment to any of the items being crushed you probably don't feel as strongly. If you're a trumpet player, seeing a trumpet being crushed is going to be a bit distressing. If you're a photographer, you're putting a monetary value on those lenses being destroyed. If you're into old arcade machines, you're thinking about how many of those cabinets are left in that good of a condition.
AFAICT people are not so much upset about objects of value being destroyed as they are about the symbolism of creative tools being crushed flat and turned into an iPad. For artists and similar creatives, it evokes the way AI companies have already stolen their intellectual property, and their promise to make them all but obsolete in the future.
The arcade one particularly distressing given that arcades and their unique arcade hardware are rapidly vanishing across the world without replacement.
So if you own a house or car then it's distressing to see one destroyed in a movie? Both of those cost much more than a trumpet, and for many people are more personal and unique, but somehow most people manage to keep their eyes on the screen.
You mean the arcade cabinet that conveniently switches to a GAME OVER screen while it has sparks flying and smoke pouring out of it when it gets hit by the crusher? Somehow I doubt you lost an actual cabinet. I'll be surprised if it's even made out of wood and not polygons.
> If you're a trumpet player, seeing a trumpet being crushed is going to be a bit distressing
Really? I play the trumpet and felt nothing watching this ad. My trumpet wasn't being crushed, so who cares? It wasn't a rare Stradivarius, nor even a high-end Schilke or anything... Even if it was - why care? They can make more trumpets after all...
You either get the symbolism of "let's crush all remaining vestiges of creative culture" or you don't.
If you don't, that's fine. Policing the extent of people's reactions doesn't make for constructive conversation, and, ironically, is merely a different form of "over-reaction."
It's simply uncomfortable to see a lot of valuable creative tools being slowly destroyed for no reason, especially a piano. I'm not even thinking about the symbolism.
I thought it was obvious that the entire ad is CGI. Nothing really breaks how it would. When the top of the piano breaks, all the dampers magically fall off.
If my metronome app stops complying with iOS developer guidelines, it will stop working or Apple will pull it. This doesn’t happen to a real dedicated metronome. The App Store is a problem for iPad. Developers need the freedom to develop solutions for iPad without Apple constantly breaking their APIs or introducing new standards. Otherwise nothing on iPad is timeless.
How much of a blowback was that really anyway? I mean a social media headline that a few others pile on... is rather limited as a blowback.
If anything both ad idea and implementation are mediocre - and perhaps should have been rejected on that account. This is indeed Youtube shorts stuff. And someone pointed out the exact same ad idea from LG 15 years ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcUAQ2i5Tfo with even more musical instruments.
> Perhaps the blowback is a sign of a wider weariness that people have accumulated towards big tech companies over the past few years, mixed with a nebulous malaise about 'AI' and what it means for the status quo and people's livelihoods.
I think you hit it on the head. It's not so much anger about seeing a piano or a trumpet get crushed but more about the symbolism of it. Which, I think is definitely tone deaf on Apple's part.
The fact is, artists, developers and many people from all walks of life are terrified of what AI will mean for their jobs and their livelihood, and also, afraid that it cheapens everything they've spent all their life learning and mastering.
There's definitely a lot of pent up fear and/or hatred for it bubbling at the surface for many people and this commercial just kind triggers those feelings.
It's also from Apple's long-time core audience. I'm not sure how people don't understand this, other than maybe they've forgotten the roots of Apple's comeback.
I am not a musician or photographer, but I see the emotional value of those extremely well crafted and often beloved objects.
I create software, mostly, but I practice woodworking as a hobby, and I can tell how difficult it is to build a piano or any kind of musical instrument.
I found the ad extremely distasteful, enough to trigger mild nausea.
I see the point they were trying to make, but it is both dumb and old, and frankly nobody asked for a thinner iPad.
The most annoying part is that _they_ did not feel what countless people saw and felt, they are too disconnected from their audience.
The outrage is not made up, some of us felt it in our bones, I understand that we don't all share the same sensitivity, but you can't simply brush it off as if this was somewhat orchestrated or theatre.
My initial reaction was the opposite — “wow they are kind of late to the hydraulic press channel hype. That’s odd.”
For a company that has always prided itself on having strong marketing chops, this felt out of character. And perhaps a sign of the general change in culture and standards at Apple.
Perhaps the blowback is a sign of a wider weariness that people have accumulated towards big tech companies over the past few years, mixed with a nebulous malaise about 'AI' and what it means for the status quo and people's livelihoods.
Exactly. It's not only the creative artists who are opposing, although that's what this ad targets; a lot of others not in big tech are also very displeased with where things are going. The sentiment of this resistance can be summed up in two short sentences: "You will not replace us. Machines will not replace us."
I saw the ad as trying to draw an equivalence between the iPad and all of those creative tools, as if owning an iPad is equivalent, or even better, than owning those objects. This is a lie, a deception, and apart from lamenting the loss of so many wonderful objects the lie of it is what really sticks in my craw.
It made me cringe, but only because I saw it after hearing about the controversy. It made me wonder whether I'd have had the same reaction if I just saw it "fresh".
“Perhaps the blowback is a sign of a wider weariness that people have accumulated towards big tech companies over the past few years, mixed with a nebulous malaise about 'AI' and what it means for the status quo and people's livelihoods.”
To the former point, I think it was Doctorow that coined the term “enshittification”.
To be fair to Big Tech, they’re not any worse than healthcare companies, or airlines, or any of the countless (sometimes it seems basically all) corporations that have been steadily turning the crank on making the modern experience a little worse every year for typical people (I’m not interested in silly summary statistics like per-capita GDP or the CPI, those are gamed to hell: give me an arithmetic mean and I’ll give you a corrupt system).
It’s that so recently they were so much better. When I joined a FAANG in 2011 I had no issue wearing company gear around. People would be like: “that’s awesome I use that every day it’s great”. By 2018 I was lying in coffee shops and bars about what I did for a living (one of the main reasons I left).
Regarding AI broadly construed, it could be used as a wildly powerful tool for leveling the playing field, the way Google was when it appeared. It’s in the hopes of realizing that outcome that I work on it and am so vocally critical of those who just trivially don’t want that.
But it could also become the greatest tool for oppression since the firearm, and I think the public is starting to get wise to the fact this is unfortunately the path we’re on.
It’s trite, but I always come back to this: when the robots are finally capable of doing all the work, do we get Star Trek TNG or Blade Runner.
The technology is a step in either direction depending on how it’s used and regulated.
Yeah — I liked it in general. But can completely see why artists would hate the concept of a giant weight crushing the artistic object that has fueled their life-long obsessions.
I can absolutely see what they're going for- something like "you're iPad contains the power of all these cultural tools", but visually that connection isn't there. It just looks like "Hooray! Culture has been destroyed, now there is only iPad!"
I took the message that all that culture is now available in an even slimmer form factor. This is the problem with art. Unambiguous messaging is impossible as one casts a wider net of interpretation
I think the mark of a good ad is that you can turn the music off and most people will get the message. The imagery of destroying the things is the problem, if you turn the music off you really don’t know how you are supposed to feel about this. Apple conveyed similar messages before with animations that did not destroy the underlying album arts, just shrunk them into an iPod. It would hit very different if they crushed a bunch of music paraphernalia people got a lot of enjoyment out of.
Very true- I wonder if the prevailing interpretation would be different if this was 20 years ago. The destruction of all those tools would probably have a much more "punk rock" interpretation from people if Apple weren't the megacorp they are today.
The ad clearly didn't communicate that message to a huge portion of its audience. There's plenty of us who can see the intent but still don't like the ad. There are so many other ways to communicate that message in a more effective way.
I think everybody agrees that that was the _intended_ message. But it's a forced transition. At the end of the ad there is _just_ an iPad. It's not as if the user has any choice now. And that makes the ad very weak. Why is Apple even going into the destruction business? They are supposed to be a creative (creating?) company, if it were an Lockheed Martin ad it would have fit ;)
Its not Apple's style, but they could have opened the ad with some cringe fake scientists discussing how to shrink and/or combine and/or smush music, books, art, etc together. And then at the end show them excitedly rushing to the IPad as if they've solved everything.
So an Aperture Labs reference? They could have Chell pick up the iPad and throw it at a screen of Cave Johnson’s motivational speech. Then it could bounce off without causing damage, showing how lightweight it is, and who it truly serves.
Beautiful, colourful, creative objects gathered together in a the middle of a grey room and destroyed to be replaced by a generic rectangle. This is like the 1984 ad with Apple as the bad guys.
Hahahaha you’ve never worked in ad creative have you? It’s full of people who have been crushed by their inability to support themselves making pure art.
This ad makes perfect sense from that perspective.
Okay, Zappa is a bit defeatist although what he says is true, I don't think it's that bad... But here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88zvm7-fhKo (Frank Zappa on American culture)
American exceptionalism is easy to pick apart, and George Carlin would agree.
The point he's making was (c. 1970) that much of American culture's presumption of innate superiority post-WW2 was unfounded overconfidence demonstrating a lack of humility and intrinsic tempered confidence in relation to other rich traditions that also exist. It is also true that American culture was and is intrinsically hollow and shallow in many (but not all) dimensions not replicated in other parts of the world. And to be fair, Zappa was brilliant and a guitar virtuoso but a bit off in a way the 60's-70's counterculture celebrated profusely in a reactionary oppositional mirror of mainstream American culture. Growing up, my hippie nudist neighbors with their hydroponic weed and horrible tasting tomatoes would be all over everything Zappa. Incidentally, I have a signed Zappa KSJO sticker signed at a Campbell, CA venue and its newspaper clipping provenance... going to get it framed and probably sell it on FleaBay at some point.
Frankly it’s bizarre. He was a fantastic rock musician who seemed to forget where delta blues, jazz, bluegrass comes from. They drew on older traditions but were distinctly American culture. Maybe his point was really that it’s not popular culture but you can criticize any country’s pop culture.
edit: I'm surprised at the downvote. I'm a huge Zappa fan. I know that he was into many kinds of music. That is why I find it strange that he doesn't even consider the rich tradition of American folk music to be part of our culture.
So which is it, am I wrong that he was a great musician? Am I wrong about the rich tradition of American folk music? Am I wrong about pop culture in other countries? Is it because I didn't mention country music?
Double-edge sword with only one surface. Just don't get it wet, expect it to last over 7 years, expect your old accessories to work with it, or for it to actually substitute for the mastery of physical artistic crafts like Mehmet Girgiç is to felt.
Missing from this extremely short and underreported article is how badly this played out in Japanese market. The culture they have states that musical instruments, creative tools have some energy and imbued sense of spirit to them. So destroying these elements of culture is really really blunt and gauche to them. The majority of the push back came from Japanese people, and then artists empathizing with their sentiment.
Not because eg one piano got destroyed; surely that happens all the time, even on camera for eg movies and such. But there was something about watching beautiful objects be destroyed, in slow motion, gratuitously, and with an upbeat/sunny tone, that just aesthetically made me squirm in my seat
It goes beyond aesthetics for me. It's like they took everyone's deepest fears about technology and AI, that it will replace or "crush" authentic human experience and creativity, and they just embraced and celebrate it by literally crushing representations of human creativity. At least I'm glad the corporate types were actually honest about their goals, though, instead of their typical doublespeak
Exactly my thoughts - this ad does very little to invoke the desire for the product, unlike many other Apple ads.
It's not like Apple has forgotten how to make such ads - the recent one for iPhones with family members asking to not be let go while the owner tries to delete photos represented a familiar experience of people trying to free up storage, and how they wouldn't have to do that if they bought a new iPhone.
On the other hand, this ad just shows stuff being destroyed, just like some of those useless Youtube videos which shows perfectly usable stuff being destroyed under the pretext of "ASMR" or whatnot. Not only is it very difficult to watch as someone who didn't have a lot of money and was taught to make careful use of it from an early age, it just invokes negative vibes, as if possessing a musical instrument is something to be ashamed of.
I haven’t seen anyone mention this yet, but I think the concept here was inspired by all the viral hydraulic press videos on Instagram and TikTok. Here’s a similar video showing random objects and consumer products being crushed in slow motion with similar upbeat music: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q9BtYEnrkg4
I'm not bothered by the destruction. Destruction itself can have artistic value. For example, you can't portray the Nazis on screen without showing how destructive they were.
What bothers me is the arrogance to say that an iPad, a device which will be obsolete in a few short years, can replace all those instruments and tools that last more than a generation.
This is similar to the history channels which use AI colorized historical footage which wildly shifts objects from red to blue in a few frames and have the audacity to claim this is an improvement over the original.
I had same reaction to the 'niceness' of what they were crushing. Things looked too good, like still usable. What if they were slightly older and dinged, scuffed up, looked more like they were done being useful.
For me it was just because of the damage it caused. I guess if I heard someone was throwing out a piano I wouldn't think much of it, but the destruction of everything in the ad made me uneasy. I just felt like it was so wasteful to destroy things in the way they did. But again, maybe I have a double standard, because if I saw someone throw a trumpet or an old camera in the dumpster I probably would not care as much.
Really interesting to consider that this might be one of the few incidents that Shintoists, or at least "cultural Shintoists," have gotten offended at a western production.
Makes me wonder if this is why Apple went out of their way to apologize for the ad. I think if this ad just had non-culturally-specific backlash, they would've simply moved on. But because this impacted a specific market's sensibilities, maybe they felt the need to do a public mea culpa.
I have seen recently a documentary about Japanese food, and an interesting fact was that the chefs at some big Japanese restaurant had a special decorated grave, in some nice yard, in which they deposited their old kitchen knives, when those were so worn out that they could no longer be used.
They felt that it would be disrespectful to just dump somewhere the main tools of their work, after they had used those every day for decades.
I think a lot of people are a little bit Shintoist. That's one of the reasons why we have museums - we regard things as some kind of reflection on people and events, and a chair in which a famous person sat or an instrument they played is different for us than otherwise identical object that doesn't bear that imprint. We may not literally believe in things having spirits, but for many the things have some qualities that go beyond their physical structure. Emotional value, etc.
The popular sentiment has changed from enthusiasm about "digital", to disillusionment about big tech inserting themselves into our lives to monetize everything.
In 2009, smartphones were a novelty, and the iPad has not been announced yet. People were wowed by the new capabilities that "multimedia" devices were enabling. They were getting rid of the old, outdated, less capable tools.
Nowadays "multimedia" is taken for granted. OTOH generative AI is turning creative arts into commoditized digital sludge. Apple acts like they own and have the right to control everything that is digital. In this world, the analog instruments are a symbol of the last remnants of true human skill, and the physical world that hasn't been taken over by the big tech yet. And Apple is forcefully and destructively smushing it all into AI-chip-powered you-owe-us-30%-for-existing disneyland distopia.
It aired on the Internet, which is available in Japan. You can see some examples of backlash from Japanese people in the replies to this tweet, if you have a twitter account. https://twitter.com/tim_cook/status/1787864325258162239
Absolutely no offense - I don't see what this has to do with Japan at all although this has been repeated everywhere. I think this is just an unfortunate natural intuition.
Japanese users normally aren't exposed to the rest of WWW at all, even on social media, so there's intuition that any notable interactions observed has to do with the four-seasons and egg sandwiches way. But it's also true that there are 0.35x as many of the people here as there are US Americans, or 1.5x more than Germans, which creates a lot of presence in itself, possibly even grossly exaggerated on Twitter due to cultural fit and ongoing collapse of its en-US bubbles. I think this instance is example of the latter being the case mistaken as the former.
Aside from the destruction of low-tech artistic tools triggering non-tech people aspect, tonally the ad was also overly edgy, which is off-brand for Apple. As noted elsewhere, it felt like a video game commercial from the '90s: gratuitous in its attention-seeking.
Re: the Pokémon commercial, I feel like the Apple commercial put way more focus into the actual destruction of the instruments… Like, a lot of its runtime was spent on actually showing each thing getting destroyed individually, so it has a completely different energy compared to the silly Pokémon one
It’s like if the Pokémon one showed each Pokémon getting crushed with splattering and gore…
Yeah there was revelling in the visual and nuance of their destruction. Could have done the whole thing CG where the objects squished together satisfyingly like they were made of clay rather than cracking and shattering. Honestly was easier/cheaper to do also.
1984 was edgy for its time. I think the difficulty is that the iPad is no longer an edgy product. The least edgy thing you could be these days is an iPad owner, and this ad wasn't the one to change that.
1984 [1] was edgy precisely because it worked as a criticism of society and culture, and then showed a way to 'break free' of mindless dystopia. This [2] ad is pretty much the exact and literal opposite. It essentially takes a sampling of the great things that culture and society has produced, destroys them, and then shows the Product, while literally singing "All I Ever Need Is You." Here [3] a guy basically reversed the ad, with the iPad being crushed, and then slowly lifting it up to have all the great stuff in society come out of it. And suddenly it's actually quite uplifting and positive!
"1984" was edgy in a cool way, but that's not the type of edginess I'm evoking. Most '90s video game commercials that were edgy did so in a puerile, juvenile way as befitting the target audience. And not just video game ads, there was definitely a big "xtreme" trend as well.
The Apple ad taps into that xtreme vibe by embracing destructive energy to depict a physical contrast. Which is visually attention-grabbing, but it puts the focus on the act of destruction, and reduction, and people who like the destroyed objects feel miffed.
"1984" I'd say was edgy in a rebellious way as you point out, which I'd argue gives it more substance. The sledgehammer hitting the screen isn't even the focus, it's the climax to a sequence that carries more of a meaningful message than "wow look how much functionality we fit into this thin shell."
For low-tech I meant analog as opposed to digital. And I meant nothing pejorative in non-tech; these days, there's fewer and fewer positive connotations in being techie.
we're on a technical forum, but "low tech" isn't inherently inferior. All the MIDI's in the world can't truly replace a good ol' acoustic sound. That's why we still have Orchaestras.
The other half, sure. To think that all tech people are welcoming the current portrayal of AI/LLM's/Generative Art is simply tone deaf. Some of the most cynical detractors are in fact highly technical people.
On the contrary, I wish this was dismissive. It's about time that the Overton window gets shifted about the overly nostalgic articles that get praised by "the right people", which means we need to "read the room" and share the same opinions.
It is an absolutely good thing that an inexpensive device is replacing an expensive one, and that impoverished children will be able to create music with an inexpensive iPad and will not be forced to learn obsolete methods to "finger" an instrument.
> Aside from the destruction of low-tech artistic tools triggering non-tech people aspect...
604 comments on this HN post (at the time of writing this), the bulk of which appear to be opposed to this video, and you're trying to tell me that tech folk aren't, to use your word, "triggered"? C'mon now.
Yikes, that was really offbrand for Nintendo also, but it fits within their 90s "Play It Loud" marketing strategy wherein they tried to compete with ow-the-edge Sega and later Sony.
It accurately shows how tools are being replaced with digital and cloud. It’s a violent process and precious things get destroyed along the way. It totally hit the mark.
But true, it doesn’t make people want to go grab an ipad, so I get why they don’t want to use it.
> It accurately shows how tools are being replaced with digital and cloud.
No it doesn't.
Throwing away all other sentiments, I really would like to see a 100lb digital piano replacing a 500lb upright piano while keeping its action, feel and sound, if not a grand piano. That hasn't happened yet, not even remotely, after all these years of technology advancenent. Anyone who is serious in learning and performing piano would be doing that on a real piano. And of course iPad isn't even in the conversation -- what can you do with a touch screen?
You’re talking about whether an iPad can accurately reproduce the quality of the original tools.
While I would certainly agree, like it or not, many of these things are being replaced by iPads/iPhones and other smart devices.
Many people used to carry around point and shoot cameras, calculators, watches, flashlights, etc. but those things are just short of completely depreciated.
Sure, this ad included things that aren’t quite as deprecated, but the trend is in that direction, and not away.
> I really would like to see a 100lb digital piano replacing a 500lb upright piano while keeping its action, feel and sound, if not a grand piano.
I get the impression that you’ve not played a digital piano lately.
While purists will definitely not touch an electric, most casual players — and especially beginners — will be fine with, and are buying — and preferring! — a good electric piano over a grand or even uprights these days.
I wanted a grand myself for years, but couldn’t justify the cost or space consumption of a grand.
We’re now the happy owners of a Roland FP10, and it’s great! The sound, IMO is amazing, and about as close as an electric can get to the real thing.
When world-class artists come to the NPR studio, a place with high end upright and grand pianos, to perform; many of them bring Nords Korgs or Rolands. Why do you think that is?
> I really would like to see a 100lb digital piano replacing a 500lb upright piano while keeping its action, feel and sound, if not a grand piano. That hasn't happened yet
It absolutely has. The sales of upright pianos are down, while sales of digital pianos are up. I'd call that replacing.
"Hybrid pianos have gained immense popularity among music lovers. These pianos are increasingly being used to provide keyboard lessons as they combine the electronic, mechanical and acoustic aspects of both acoustic and digital pianos. In addition, hybrid pianos take up limited space and can be easily moved due to their small size and lightness. In addition, these pianos require little maintenance. Temperature and humidity do not affect their configuration due to amplifiers and speakers. They can also be connected to digital interfaces, laptops, iPads and other devices. As a result, pianists are increasingly preferring hybrid pianos, prompting vendors to launch more innovative products that will boost market growth during the forecast period."
That would've be hilarious as parody of this commercial if the hydraulic press shot out flames too and burnt some books. Make that message even more ambiguous lol.
Burning books certainly doesn’t have the connotation it used to, given that the idea of a book is now mostly divorced from the physical implementation.
You could burn every physical copy of most recent books and no data would be lost; I assume most authors write with a word processor.
I agree. This is a rare gift of truth and honesty in advertising.
You might not like what the industry is doing but don't kill the messenger: they just gave you a short glimpse behind the curtain. The company will keep the same goals even after they give their ad team sensitivity training.
Agreed. This will be considered a huge win by Apple's marketing department. People (online at least) are talking about the iPad like I haven't seen in years.
If anything, an ad like this is too real and lets slip the mask that is "Apple is for artists". Nope, Apple is for expanding the existing Apple-only ecosystem.
A classic arcade game experience is not going to be reproducible with a subscription to Apple Arcade. A stradivarius violin is not going to be replaced by Apple Logic Pro.
In my opinion, it's one of those ideas that are so obvious that I wouldn't necessarily think it's plagiarism.
> It's a small electronic device that replaces so many real world things. It's like all these things 'zipped' into one... Okay good idea, but how do we make it look cool?... Epic music... And Explosions!
The ad is actually less embarrassing than the fact that how uncreative this is.
On the other hand, it's also hard to imagine that a bunch of people working in the ad business / phones / creative marketing, and not one of them said while working on this ad: "hey guys, aren't we just redoing that phone ad from 15 years ago?"
> how uncreative this is ... aren't we just redoing that thing from 15 years ago?
People of a certain age are informed by shared cultural touchstones.
Those making ads in these timeframes are ages where they all experienced the Star Wars trash compactor scene as a visceral moment pressed into their psyches:
As a child, the blasters and light sabres are make believe, but the compactor closing in slowly on Luke, Leah, C3PO, that felt real. Kids could feel that big squeeze. It was ... VIVID.
When you start making create visual experiences (ads in particular), it's not uncommon you'll reference such touchstones. You'll get approved by marketing committees because they too have that touchstone in their pasts.
The original scene plots out as an increasing stress, but ends with a relief. Ad creatives often "quote" these if they feel they can match/replay the original emotional beats, here implied looming threat, visceral danger building agonizingly slowly, realization of total destruction, saved by suddenly revealed relief.
Nintendo, LG, and Apple all tried to have their "product placement" land in that surprise moment revealing the pressure relief: a sleight of hand where this moment, this thing, is the MacGuffin associated with the stress vanishing.
Is this uncreative? "Aren't we just redoing Star Wars New Hope?" Sure. But ads that connect to the beats of touchstones inside the viewer do evoke more reaction, and the ads aren't quoting each other, they're quoting the original.
Art often quotes art, the quoting considered both creative and effective.
On the other hand if your product has become a commodity and the new version barely changes from the previous one, you are entering detergent advertising territory.
Wow, you're not exaggerating. That actually does bring a legitimate accusation of plagiarism to the table. Compare 0:13 in the LG ad to 0:37 in the Apple version.
Never mind that the artwork itself looks straight out of DALL-E 2, with its orange-bluish cast. Who is calling the creative shots at Apple these days?!
The amber/teal stuff is mostly because it makes the foreground warmer and the backgrounds colder drawing the audience's focus. Or so the theory goes. I think it's just more of a case of "fuck it, no one is going to complain if we do this"
Check out the transformers films - those are the canonical punch in the face in that department.
That's what I really want to figure out. I feel like I wouldn't have a problem with it if I knew it was 100% fake and not actual items being destroyed.
Eh, It's a pretty obvious premise. I think it's reasonable for two creative teams to come up with the same unoriginal/uninteresting premise. The execution of the Apple version is also miles ahead.
LG in 2008 was not on Japanese people's map regarding to phones, their "Chocolate" line was an utter failure that got the brand promptly forgotten. I doubt that spot was even aired in Japan.
This ad feels unnerving for, I think, non-obvious reasons, beyond just the raw destruction of artistic tools.
In music and sound effects from horror genres and other "scary" things, playing very high pitches with very low pitches makes us anxious - our brains are wired to perceive high pitches as safe and low pitches as menacing[1]. If they're both happening at the same time, our brain gets stuck trying to figure out WTF IS GOING ON, which makes us anxious.
A similar thing happens with this ad: cheerful music while apparently senseless destruction (the reveal doesn't happen until the end) is taking place. IIRC one of the Fallout games did this too - post-fallout world but upbeat country music as the theme? The gasoline fight scene in Zoolander. Etc, etc.
Anyway, these kinds of juxtapositions are SUPPOSED to make our brains feel uncomfortable. I imagine this was interpreted by the ad people as "edgy" or "surprising" or "innovative". But it's still going to make people who aren't sensitised to it feel uncomfortable.
This is a really good observation, it's uncomfortable to watch and listen to even beyond the really obvious but apparently unintended symbolism. The music is off, the sound is off, so many weird decisions here ... some ad exec using ChatGPT instead of doing their job?
Yeah, I got these vibes too, but especially from the cinematography. It was kinda _lingering_ on all the little ways each item strained and broke under the weight of the press, almost like it was something to savor. It was weirdly voyeuristic, in a way.
I didn't like the ad. I think the people creating it wanted to imply that it's as if they took all these things and put it in an iPad, where you can still achieve all the creativity while carrying a thin device.
I don't think it's impossible to convey that message without destroying instruments and creative tools that are precious to so many. Maybe if they had made the animation very fast it would've appeared as a joke and not something intended to be taken literally.
Also could've had some artist exit a studio, take the iPad, do a whole bunch of stuff, then go back to the studio and kind of test out/use the tools while reading from the iPad or something like that.
I know some people are saying the reaction is too strong, but trust me if you practice on a piano daily you will not feel good watching it get crushed.
I don't even work in marketing or own any Apple devices.
The original idea is sound: "we are squeezing all tools into the iPad".
The problem is that you can't squeeze an object without resorting to animation. So instead they went for crushing, which carries destructive undertones. A lot of people have strong emotional attachments to objects like pianos and vinyl players; destroying them is a powerful trigger.
If this had been done with animation, with some djinn magically squeezing everything into an iPad, it would have been just fine.
This said, there is no such thing as bad publicity - here we are, talking about the umpteenth version of a product we would otherwise take for granted. The ad might have been distasteful but it did the job.
There definitely is such a thing as bad publicity, I wish people would stop using that phrase to make dumb things sound smart. Of all the companies out there, Apple definitely doesn’t want to trade on negative sentiment, it clashes with their overall brand strategy. In particular this iPad Pro launch is riskier than normal, given that it has brand new screen tech and is the thinnest device they’ve ever made, and it’s possible they pulled this commercial to avoid creating associations between this iPad and the act of “crushing” things.
Furthermore I doubt that anyone on HN (except like 2 people who will definitely reply to this comment) who didn’t know about the new iPad Pro before this commericial learned about it from this post.
> The original idea is sound: "we are squeezing all tools into the iPad".
Hard disagree. Yes, I do agree that a big part of the emotional reaction to the ad were seeing all these beloved tools of craftsmanship being destroyed.
But another underlying current is people reaching the conclusion that they do not want all of their individual, sometimes quirky tools being subsumed under a single flat silicon panel. I'll just speak for myself, but I often find myself craving more real, physical interaction and not just something that exists on a screen.
Some of us actually crave a little more of the chaotic, interesting world of WALL-E over the sleek perfection of EVE (which was, somewhat unsurprisingly, reviewed and blessed by Jonathan Ive).
The creative tools just had to be sucked in like a wormhole. It's just surprising it got this far without someone intervening. Shows that someone high up couldn't be backed down.
There is no such thing as bad publicity when you are not yet established. When you are already a recognized and popular brand, such as Apple or AB InBev, it can hurt revenue, such as how AB InBev suffered from lower revenue following their own advertisement backlash.
This exactly. There are many other ways to express "squeezing into one" but both bizarrely and shockingly Apple (or whichever ad agency) went for "crushing with hydraulic press" instead. How did everyone miss on the negative undertone before this ad was released?
Could be extrapolating this incident too much but it feels it encapsulates the transformation of Apple from this quirky, unconventional upstart into a monopolistic leviathan the past 2 decades. There's also a sense of hubris at suggesting your single electronic device can replace all those creative tools.
A djinni with Tim Apple's face would be funny. Comes out of a home pod and magics the whole recording studio into an iPad. Probably too whimsical for an Apple's taste though.
There is a growing backlash against technology and its harmful effects though. People are rightfully getting suspicious about that handful of tech companies and their intentions. Few are willing to give up on technology, nor should they as it's futile to fight progress, but the debate and guard rails are being shaped, and the tone deafness of some of these big technology companies is not helping their cause.
The astronomical user base of companies like Google and Apple should not be an indicator about the actual goodwill of people towards these brands. Getting away with something does not mean your behaviour isn't causing increasing animosity and feeding general discontentment.
> An iPad will never replicate the beauty of a human playing a piano or a violin.
I mean, one of its primary uses is to replicate the beauty of a human playing piano or violin via videos and recordings.
Aside from that, isn’t this just an appeal to tradition? An iPad is a tool just like a piano or the violin, people make beautiful music with them all the time.
I am sure there were curmudgeons saying that the piano and violin would never replicate the beauty of the human voice when they were the top technology of the day.
I am quite confident that a skilled musician with an iPad (or, even more obviously, an electric keyboard with a MIDI cable to the iPad) can create music that is indistinguishable from a human playing a piano. The synthesizer will be able to replicate the sound of the best concert grand in the best auditorium, direct to your studio headphones.
I'm also quite sure even unskilled musicians will prefer the feel of practicing and playing on a slightly out-of-tune old upright to a cheap electric synth-action keyboard or (ugh) a glass touchscreen.
I would have preferred the reverse of crushing our tools into something. I would have preferred pulling them out of the iPad to create. As a d&d fan, I could imagine a bard with a black hole pulling instruments and creative tools out in order to render magic.
I felt like I was watching the end of Terminator 1 when watching that iPad commercial.
> I don't think it's impossible to convey that message without destroying instruments and creative tools that are precious to so many.
This is how I felt seeing rock musicians destroying perfectly good instruments and amps. Growing up my parents didn't have the money to buy me a guitar (or didn't want to buy me one), so I would see these performances and would just think, can't they just donate that guitar to some poor kid or a school instead of destroying them? It really annoyed me, but it didn't stop me from loving the band and their music. I'm a late Gen-Xer and watching Nirvana destroy the stage after a performance just made me go "aw, those were good instruments someone else could have used". I don't know if it's "cool" to do that anymore, but I never see any other artists calling that out like they are for this ad, and it's been going on since the 70s.
Interesting point. The Clash even celebrated the destruction of instruments on the cover of London Calling (the cover being a photo of their bassist smashing his bass). And though the Apple ad seems like it’s trying to convey they idea that all these devices are within the iPad, the smashing of instruments and equipment by rockers seems to just be about…reveling in the destruction of instruments and equipment.
You see this in other art as well. For example, the Dadaists took a lot of functional tools, messed them up, and displayed them as art. Moving beyond art, destruction that accompanies political unrest is often dismissed.
It’s interesting that the Apple ad is what touched off this discussion, because it’s actually fairly tame with regards to a lot of intentional destruction of equipment.
Or have a giant scale, show people loading all this stuff into one side of the scale, and then placing the iPad on the other side, and the iPad side sinks. There's a million ways to do this idea
Agreed. I was thinking along the same lines. Some Wonka-like contraption where all this on-going creativity in a room was captured, fed into a whimsical pipes leading to an assembly line, with an iPad reveal at the end.
I'm not sure but I think this ad was fully animated and nothing was actually destroyed. A hydraulic press of this size, if any even exist, is going to look a lot bulkier and not like a cartoon stomper coming down from the ceiling. We don't see the side bracing which would needed if you didn't want your hydraulic press to rip a hole in your ceiling.
Especially with all the angles they have it would have been incredibly difficult and dangerous to get all the shots, and every shot came out perfectly.
It was painful to watch and i won’t have a second look.
It would have been as simple as adding a short “Professional CGI Artists. No actual instrument and tools were harmed.” to set a lighter tone and take the pain away.
Given the raging discussion and thus reach, this won’t hurt sales in the slightest - pretty much the opposite and i guess we’re left with giving kudos to marketing well played.
It seems odd to complain about one old upright piano being crushed for the video when thousands upon thousands of them are out on the streets, living under bridges, because no one wants to move the piano anymore, or wanted the convenience of an electronic keyboard.
I implore you all: adopt a piano today! You may find yourself saying "I didn't rescue it, it rescued me."
I think this misses the mark. The ad is inherently symbolic—it’s not this particular piano, but the fact that they’re destroying all of these beloved instruments of creativity in such a gratuitous and evocative manner. That’s what upsetting, not the literal fact that one piano was destroyed in the making of the ad.
We adopted a piano while we were overseas and moved it to San Francisco. We ended up giving it to a church after my son decided he couldn't abide the high notes that could never quite get into tune. Still have fond memories of it though.
Anyone remember the original awesome Google Chromebook ad where they meticulousoy showed destruction of several laptops? I know it’s not the same thing but it reminded me of it and I can’t find it anywhere in YouTube! Anyone got a link who knows what I’m talking about?
They probably figured it would be really strong imagery to see the items being physically crushed in a giant press. It definitely invokes feelings, but not good ones.
If you think of yourself as skeptical, agnostic, materialist. I don’t understand how you can be upset about cheap in-animate objects get destroyed for an entertaining video.
Im not a skeptical agnostic materialist, but those objects were far from being cheap. Those instruments cost thousands of dollars each. The arcade cabinet as well(there aren't exactly a lot of those left).
The entire point of the ad is that the entire human creative experience is consolidated into the ipad, which is a pretty dystopian way of looking at things. Even if you ignore the cost and rarity of these items, the symbolism is pretty horrible.
No one is actually upset about any specific objects that were destroyed in the making of this ad. This sort of advertising is all about eliciting emotions and shaping a message--a vibe--about a particular product. This ad triggered visceral feelings related to the emotional connection a lot of people--even skeptical agnostic materialists!--have with the tools, instruments, and products of creativity and art. And based on the reaction, the ad clearly elicited a lot of negative emotions and a negative vibe in what is presumably the iPad Pro's target audience. Thus, I'd say that even from your ultra-rationalist point of view, it's a bad ad.
Another person on social media noted that no Apple ad has ever depicted older generation iPads or MacBook Pros being crushed by a hydraulic press to signify them being made thinner - I suspect Apple wouldn't even greenlight that ad pitch.
Try a car analogy on for size: a new Corvette might be superior to a classic Porsche in all the ways that matter, but nobody at GM would greenlight an ad depicting a C8 emerging from a crusher that had just destroyed a '63 911. They would understand how disrespectful it would seem.
If you had ever put the time and effort (and blood!) into learning how to play the guitar, you too would have a visceral reaction to seeing a guitar getting destroyed for nothing. It's not the objects themselves that are the problem, it is our connection to those objects, and our innate feelings about those objects, that Apple has smashed in that video. That's a marketing 101 mistake and how this ad ever got greenlit is beyond me.
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This idea of 'squashing all these tools down to a thin slab of glass' made sense given their somewhat unusual focus on the thinness of the device. It was a bit of a throwback to the early 2010s smartphone innovation, where the size of the devices was the yardstick by which manufacturers would outdo each other. I would charitably interpret it as an uninspired marketing team trying to spin some version of Jobs' classic "the iPhone is simultaneously an iPod, phone and internet device" - however the party trick is old, and nobody's impressed anymore.
Perhaps the blowback is a sign of a wider weariness that people have accumulated towards big tech companies over the past few years, mixed with a nebulous malaise about 'AI' and what it means for the status quo and people's livelihoods.
As you note this may hint at a larger weariness with big tech -- and I tend to agree. I feel like if it was a public library crushing a bunch of things, and then ends with it lifting up and showing a library card there wouldn't be the same concerns.
That's barely hyperbole. The arts are sacred, and big tech is destroying and defiling them.
Maybe I'm even overreacting. But I had tears in my eyes watching it and I assure you my outrage is not manufactured right now.
Basketballs are replaceable. They specifically picked objects with nostalgic connections.
Would you feel different if they burned an old high-school jersey, or maybe the one Michael Jordan wore?
I have to acknowledge that there’s probably a pile-on effect from people who enjoy outrage, but a lot of the negative sentiment is coming from level headed musicians and artists; a group that I identify with.
And I wouldn’t say my reaction is rage. It’s closer to a combination of deep disappointment, strong dislike, and a growing feeling that the nebulous worries I’ve felt about tech and its impact on art/music are being made very real.
I don’t find it analogous to a library. Such an ad would imply (to me) some kind of digitization, which frankly is a huge problem at a time when libraries and access to physical books are increasingly under threat.
And I find it different than a basketball, because no one is worried that NBA2K is an actual threat to the game, and basketballs are inexpensive standardized objects.
What they crushed was symbolic of thousands of years of human artistic creativity and output at a time when there’s a lot of anxiety about AI more or less crushing those fields for real.
But then again, rock bands have been making me upset by smashing guitars on stage for decades now. And these are the same kind of musicians who are apparently outraged now.
Can sort of understand the discomfort, but musicians have been smashing their own instruments for dramatic effect for a while now.
but I don't think it was planned they are just capitalizing on the free algorithm marketing by catering to the loud voices on tiktok, x and threads
Regardless, it's absolutely ridiculous.
The worst part was that you can have a super effective ad simply by reversing the video.
Everything now springs out of the iPad and nobody is thinking about whether anything got crushed.
I see a bunch of cheap knock offs being crushed but I cannot say all of the items were.
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Really? I play the trumpet and felt nothing watching this ad. My trumpet wasn't being crushed, so who cares? It wasn't a rare Stradivarius, nor even a high-end Schilke or anything... Even if it was - why care? They can make more trumpets after all...
I know that wasn't what they were going for (I'm pretty sure, anyway), but it's very hard for me to interpret it differently.
I never connected it to the hydraulic press channel at all for some reason.
If you don't, that's fine. Policing the extent of people's reactions doesn't make for constructive conversation, and, ironically, is merely a different form of "over-reaction."
https://youtu.be/qzAo9HzOgtQ
https://youtu.be/CWh_6jutU7M
It was also a throwback to the original iPhone announcement bringing all these separate functions into one.
If anything both ad idea and implementation are mediocre - and perhaps should have been rejected on that account. This is indeed Youtube shorts stuff. And someone pointed out the exact same ad idea from LG 15 years ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcUAQ2i5Tfo with even more musical instruments.
I think you hit it on the head. It's not so much anger about seeing a piano or a trumpet get crushed but more about the symbolism of it. Which, I think is definitely tone deaf on Apple's part.
The fact is, artists, developers and many people from all walks of life are terrified of what AI will mean for their jobs and their livelihood, and also, afraid that it cheapens everything they've spent all their life learning and mastering.
There's definitely a lot of pent up fear and/or hatred for it bubbling at the surface for many people and this commercial just kind triggers those feelings.
COVID hangover, war, elections, food prices
That news & social media is significantly negative and designed to induce and promote rage, that's the crux of this issue
I create software, mostly, but I practice woodworking as a hobby, and I can tell how difficult it is to build a piano or any kind of musical instrument.
I found the ad extremely distasteful, enough to trigger mild nausea.
I see the point they were trying to make, but it is both dumb and old, and frankly nobody asked for a thinner iPad.
The most annoying part is that _they_ did not feel what countless people saw and felt, they are too disconnected from their audience.
The outrage is not made up, some of us felt it in our bones, I understand that we don't all share the same sensitivity, but you can't simply brush it off as if this was somewhat orchestrated or theatre.
For a company that has always prided itself on having strong marketing chops, this felt out of character. And perhaps a sign of the general change in culture and standards at Apple.
Exactly. It's not only the creative artists who are opposing, although that's what this ad targets; a lot of others not in big tech are also very displeased with where things are going. The sentiment of this resistance can be summed up in two short sentences: "You will not replace us. Machines will not replace us."
“Perhaps the blowback is a sign of a wider weariness that people have accumulated towards big tech companies over the past few years, mixed with a nebulous malaise about 'AI' and what it means for the status quo and people's livelihoods.”
To the former point, I think it was Doctorow that coined the term “enshittification”.
To be fair to Big Tech, they’re not any worse than healthcare companies, or airlines, or any of the countless (sometimes it seems basically all) corporations that have been steadily turning the crank on making the modern experience a little worse every year for typical people (I’m not interested in silly summary statistics like per-capita GDP or the CPI, those are gamed to hell: give me an arithmetic mean and I’ll give you a corrupt system).
It’s that so recently they were so much better. When I joined a FAANG in 2011 I had no issue wearing company gear around. People would be like: “that’s awesome I use that every day it’s great”. By 2018 I was lying in coffee shops and bars about what I did for a living (one of the main reasons I left).
Regarding AI broadly construed, it could be used as a wildly powerful tool for leveling the playing field, the way Google was when it appeared. It’s in the hopes of realizing that outcome that I work on it and am so vocally critical of those who just trivially don’t want that.
But it could also become the greatest tool for oppression since the firearm, and I think the public is starting to get wise to the fact this is unfortunately the path we’re on.
It’s trite, but I always come back to this: when the robots are finally capable of doing all the work, do we get Star Trek TNG or Blade Runner.
The technology is a step in either direction depending on how it’s used and regulated.
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I can absolutely see what they're going for- something like "you're iPad contains the power of all these cultural tools", but visually that connection isn't there. It just looks like "Hooray! Culture has been destroyed, now there is only iPad!"
2. It looks like you're implying the ad is somehow a piece of art. It's not, it's an ad.
Sorry, but this polished piece of corporate messaging is anything but art. It's at best shiny kitsch.
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Its not Apple's style, but they could have opened the ad with some cringe fake scientists discussing how to shrink and/or combine and/or smush music, books, art, etc together. And then at the end show them excitedly rushing to the IPad as if they've solved everything.
This ad makes perfect sense from that perspective.
The point he's making was (c. 1970) that much of American culture's presumption of innate superiority post-WW2 was unfounded overconfidence demonstrating a lack of humility and intrinsic tempered confidence in relation to other rich traditions that also exist. It is also true that American culture was and is intrinsically hollow and shallow in many (but not all) dimensions not replicated in other parts of the world. And to be fair, Zappa was brilliant and a guitar virtuoso but a bit off in a way the 60's-70's counterculture celebrated profusely in a reactionary oppositional mirror of mainstream American culture. Growing up, my hippie nudist neighbors with their hydroponic weed and horrible tasting tomatoes would be all over everything Zappa. Incidentally, I have a signed Zappa KSJO sticker signed at a Campbell, CA venue and its newspaper clipping provenance... going to get it framed and probably sell it on FleaBay at some point.
edit: I'm surprised at the downvote. I'm a huge Zappa fan. I know that he was into many kinds of music. That is why I find it strange that he doesn't even consider the rich tradition of American folk music to be part of our culture.
So which is it, am I wrong that he was a great musician? Am I wrong about the rich tradition of American folk music? Am I wrong about pop culture in other countries? Is it because I didn't mention country music?
Not because eg one piano got destroyed; surely that happens all the time, even on camera for eg movies and such. But there was something about watching beautiful objects be destroyed, in slow motion, gratuitously, and with an upbeat/sunny tone, that just aesthetically made me squirm in my seat
It's not like Apple has forgotten how to make such ads - the recent one for iPhones with family members asking to not be let go while the owner tries to delete photos represented a familiar experience of people trying to free up storage, and how they wouldn't have to do that if they bought a new iPhone.
On the other hand, this ad just shows stuff being destroyed, just like some of those useless Youtube videos which shows perfectly usable stuff being destroyed under the pretext of "ASMR" or whatnot. Not only is it very difficult to watch as someone who didn't have a lot of money and was taught to make careful use of it from an early age, it just invokes negative vibes, as if possessing a musical instrument is something to be ashamed of.
What bothers me is the arrogance to say that an iPad, a device which will be obsolete in a few short years, can replace all those instruments and tools that last more than a generation.
This is similar to the history channels which use AI colorized historical footage which wildly shifts objects from red to blue in a few frames and have the audacity to claim this is an improvement over the original.
Makes me wonder if this is why Apple went out of their way to apologize for the ad. I think if this ad just had non-culturally-specific backlash, they would've simply moved on. But because this impacted a specific market's sensibilities, maybe they felt the need to do a public mea culpa.
They felt that it would be disrespectful to just dump somewhere the main tools of their work, after they had used those every day for decades.
In 2009, smartphones were a novelty, and the iPad has not been announced yet. People were wowed by the new capabilities that "multimedia" devices were enabling. They were getting rid of the old, outdated, less capable tools.
Nowadays "multimedia" is taken for granted. OTOH generative AI is turning creative arts into commoditized digital sludge. Apple acts like they own and have the right to control everything that is digital. In this world, the analog instruments are a symbol of the last remnants of true human skill, and the physical world that hasn't been taken over by the big tech yet. And Apple is forcefully and destructively smushing it all into AI-chip-powered you-owe-us-30%-for-existing disneyland distopia.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mottainai
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Cite?
If not, then I am not sure what you're talking about.
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Japanese users normally aren't exposed to the rest of WWW at all, even on social media, so there's intuition that any notable interactions observed has to do with the four-seasons and egg sandwiches way. But it's also true that there are 0.35x as many of the people here as there are US Americans, or 1.5x more than Germans, which creates a lot of presence in itself, possibly even grossly exaggerated on Twitter due to cultural fit and ongoing collapse of its en-US bubbles. I think this instance is example of the latter being the case mistaken as the former.
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https://twitter.com/cuniiform/status/1788013085392859171
And it's actually already been done before, by Nintendo:
https://twitter.com/rsnous/status/1788047377556791321
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzAo9HzOgtQ
It’s like if the Pokémon one showed each Pokémon getting crushed with splattering and gore…
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntjkwIXWtrc
[3] - https://twitter.com/rezawrecktion/status/1788211832936861950
Apple today is the one size fits all megacorp the 1984 ad railed against.
The Apple ad taps into that xtreme vibe by embracing destructive energy to depict a physical contrast. Which is visually attention-grabbing, but it puts the focus on the act of destruction, and reduction, and people who like the destroyed objects feel miffed.
"1984" I'd say was edgy in a rebellious way as you point out, which I'd argue gives it more substance. The sledgehammer hitting the screen isn't even the focus, it's the climax to a sequence that carries more of a meaningful message than "wow look how much functionality we fit into this thin shell."
This was really poorly worded and sounded very elitist and dismissive, I trust this was not the intention.
The other half, sure. To think that all tech people are welcoming the current portrayal of AI/LLM's/Generative Art is simply tone deaf. Some of the most cynical detractors are in fact highly technical people.
It is an absolutely good thing that an inexpensive device is replacing an expensive one, and that impoverished children will be able to create music with an inexpensive iPad and will not be forced to learn obsolete methods to "finger" an instrument.
604 comments on this HN post (at the time of writing this), the bulk of which appear to be opposed to this video, and you're trying to tell me that tech folk aren't, to use your word, "triggered"? C'mon now.
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It didn’t! It is a good clip.
It accurately shows how tools are being replaced with digital and cloud. It’s a violent process and precious things get destroyed along the way. It totally hit the mark.
But true, it doesn’t make people want to go grab an ipad, so I get why they don’t want to use it.
No it doesn't.
Throwing away all other sentiments, I really would like to see a 100lb digital piano replacing a 500lb upright piano while keeping its action, feel and sound, if not a grand piano. That hasn't happened yet, not even remotely, after all these years of technology advancenent. Anyone who is serious in learning and performing piano would be doing that on a real piano. And of course iPad isn't even in the conversation -- what can you do with a touch screen?
Which is exactly why I find this ad ridiculous.
While I would certainly agree, like it or not, many of these things are being replaced by iPads/iPhones and other smart devices.
Many people used to carry around point and shoot cameras, calculators, watches, flashlights, etc. but those things are just short of completely depreciated.
Sure, this ad included things that aren’t quite as deprecated, but the trend is in that direction, and not away.
I get the impression that you’ve not played a digital piano lately.
While purists will definitely not touch an electric, most casual players — and especially beginners — will be fine with, and are buying — and preferring! — a good electric piano over a grand or even uprights these days.
I wanted a grand myself for years, but couldn’t justify the cost or space consumption of a grand.
We’re now the happy owners of a Roland FP10, and it’s great! The sound, IMO is amazing, and about as close as an electric can get to the real thing.
It absolutely has. The sales of upright pianos are down, while sales of digital pianos are up. I'd call that replacing.
"Hybrid pianos have gained immense popularity among music lovers. These pianos are increasingly being used to provide keyboard lessons as they combine the electronic, mechanical and acoustic aspects of both acoustic and digital pianos. In addition, hybrid pianos take up limited space and can be easily moved due to their small size and lightness. In addition, these pianos require little maintenance. Temperature and humidity do not affect their configuration due to amplifiers and speakers. They can also be connected to digital interfaces, laptops, iPads and other devices. As a result, pianists are increasingly preferring hybrid pianos, prompting vendors to launch more innovative products that will boost market growth during the forecast period."
source: https://www.businessresearchinsights.com/market-reports/pian...
It has happened, you just can't afford the price tag of the digital replacement because close enough is good enough.
You could burn every physical copy of most recent books and no data would be lost; I assume most authors write with a word processor.
No it doesnt, it shows thats what Apple thinks which is the whole problem here.
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You might not like what the industry is doing but don't kill the messenger: they just gave you a short glimpse behind the curtain. The company will keep the same goals even after they give their ad team sensitivity training.
When you are already familiar, this is just bad press.
But don't sweat it, according to chatGPT4, Apple is the best company at marketing of all time. They wont be losing for long.
A classic arcade game experience is not going to be reproducible with a subscription to Apple Arcade. A stradivarius violin is not going to be replaced by Apple Logic Pro.
If you move the mark, and replace this mark with your mark, then, whatever. Your answer will be always right if you change the question.
So, yes. It did miss the mark.
The (accidental?) plagiarism of the ad is nearly as bad as the vibe.
> It's a small electronic device that replaces so many real world things. It's like all these things 'zipped' into one... Okay good idea, but how do we make it look cool?... Epic music... And Explosions!
The ad is actually less embarrassing than the fact that how uncreative this is.
On the other hand, it's also hard to imagine that a bunch of people working in the ad business / phones / creative marketing, and not one of them said while working on this ad: "hey guys, aren't we just redoing that phone ad from 15 years ago?"
People of a certain age are informed by shared cultural touchstones.
Those making ads in these timeframes are ages where they all experienced the Star Wars trash compactor scene as a visceral moment pressed into their psyches:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u3QInIMVME
As a child, the blasters and light sabres are make believe, but the compactor closing in slowly on Luke, Leah, C3PO, that felt real. Kids could feel that big squeeze. It was ... VIVID.
When you start making create visual experiences (ads in particular), it's not uncommon you'll reference such touchstones. You'll get approved by marketing committees because they too have that touchstone in their pasts.
The original scene plots out as an increasing stress, but ends with a relief. Ad creatives often "quote" these if they feel they can match/replay the original emotional beats, here implied looming threat, visceral danger building agonizingly slowly, realization of total destruction, saved by suddenly revealed relief.
Nintendo, LG, and Apple all tried to have their "product placement" land in that surprise moment revealing the pressure relief: a sleight of hand where this moment, this thing, is the MacGuffin associated with the stress vanishing.
Is this uncreative? "Aren't we just redoing Star Wars New Hope?" Sure. But ads that connect to the beats of touchstones inside the viewer do evoke more reaction, and the ads aren't quoting each other, they're quoting the original.
Art often quotes art, the quoting considered both creative and effective.
I don’t believe that this is the general consensus.
Never mind that the artwork itself looks straight out of DALL-E 2, with its orange-bluish cast. Who is calling the creative shots at Apple these days?!
Check out the transformers films - those are the canonical punch in the face in that department.
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In music and sound effects from horror genres and other "scary" things, playing very high pitches with very low pitches makes us anxious - our brains are wired to perceive high pitches as safe and low pitches as menacing[1]. If they're both happening at the same time, our brain gets stuck trying to figure out WTF IS GOING ON, which makes us anxious.
A similar thing happens with this ad: cheerful music while apparently senseless destruction (the reveal doesn't happen until the end) is taking place. IIRC one of the Fallout games did this too - post-fallout world but upbeat country music as the theme? The gasoline fight scene in Zoolander. Etc, etc.
Anyway, these kinds of juxtapositions are SUPPOSED to make our brains feel uncomfortable. I imagine this was interpreted by the ad people as "edgy" or "surprising" or "innovative". But it's still going to make people who aren't sensitised to it feel uncomfortable.
Anyway just my take.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-u9YDDrTFo
I don't think it's impossible to convey that message without destroying instruments and creative tools that are precious to so many. Maybe if they had made the animation very fast it would've appeared as a joke and not something intended to be taken literally.
Also could've had some artist exit a studio, take the iPad, do a whole bunch of stuff, then go back to the studio and kind of test out/use the tools while reading from the iPad or something like that.
I know some people are saying the reaction is too strong, but trust me if you practice on a piano daily you will not feel good watching it get crushed.
I don't even work in marketing or own any Apple devices.
The problem is that you can't squeeze an object without resorting to animation. So instead they went for crushing, which carries destructive undertones. A lot of people have strong emotional attachments to objects like pianos and vinyl players; destroying them is a powerful trigger.
If this had been done with animation, with some djinn magically squeezing everything into an iPad, it would have been just fine.
This said, there is no such thing as bad publicity - here we are, talking about the umpteenth version of a product we would otherwise take for granted. The ad might have been distasteful but it did the job.
Furthermore I doubt that anyone on HN (except like 2 people who will definitely reply to this comment) who didn’t know about the new iPad Pro before this commericial learned about it from this post.
Hard disagree. Yes, I do agree that a big part of the emotional reaction to the ad were seeing all these beloved tools of craftsmanship being destroyed.
But another underlying current is people reaching the conclusion that they do not want all of their individual, sometimes quirky tools being subsumed under a single flat silicon panel. I'll just speak for myself, but I often find myself craving more real, physical interaction and not just something that exists on a screen.
Some of us actually crave a little more of the chaotic, interesting world of WALL-E over the sleek perfection of EVE (which was, somewhat unsurprisingly, reviewed and blessed by Jonathan Ive).
They don't need to be known, but they need to maintain the positive values associated with their brand.
The Apple brand is their most valuable asset, they probably destroyed billions in brand value with the shitstorm around this horribly distasteful ad.
That would have have looked nice, but it wouldn't have touched people.
This is very graphic and elicits a much stronger emotion. I think that's why it was chosen.
The irony is that it know kind of feels like more honest then it's supposed to be, digital tools crushing tradition artistry.
Could be extrapolating this incident too much but it feels it encapsulates the transformation of Apple from this quirky, unconventional upstart into a monopolistic leviathan the past 2 decades. There's also a sense of hubris at suggesting your single electronic device can replace all those creative tools.
The astronomical user base of companies like Google and Apple should not be an indicator about the actual goodwill of people towards these brands. Getting away with something does not mean your behaviour isn't causing increasing animosity and feeding general discontentment.
It already was an animation. So they could have taken your approach instead.
Really? I wonder how it got titled Crush! then.
> The problem is that you can't squeeze an object without resorting to animation.
Not a problem. The ad isn't short of animation.
> there is no such thing as bad publicity
I's say the apology shows Apple disagrees.
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An iPad will never replicate the beauty of a human playing a piano or a violin.
It’s dumb consumerism trying to make us believe that life comes down to buying rather than living.
Might boost sales to everyone who has never heard a violin...
I mean, one of its primary uses is to replicate the beauty of a human playing piano or violin via videos and recordings.
Aside from that, isn’t this just an appeal to tradition? An iPad is a tool just like a piano or the violin, people make beautiful music with them all the time.
I am sure there were curmudgeons saying that the piano and violin would never replicate the beauty of the human voice when they were the top technology of the day.
I'm also quite sure even unskilled musicians will prefer the feel of practicing and playing on a slightly out-of-tune old upright to a cheap electric synth-action keyboard or (ugh) a glass touchscreen.
It's just a tool.
I felt like I was watching the end of Terminator 1 when watching that iPad commercial.
That is, hilariously, an excellent ad.
It's gotta sting when someone says "No, actually just reversing your terrible thing makes a wonderful thing. Didn't you think of that?"
This is how I felt seeing rock musicians destroying perfectly good instruments and amps. Growing up my parents didn't have the money to buy me a guitar (or didn't want to buy me one), so I would see these performances and would just think, can't they just donate that guitar to some poor kid or a school instead of destroying them? It really annoyed me, but it didn't stop me from loving the band and their music. I'm a late Gen-Xer and watching Nirvana destroy the stage after a performance just made me go "aw, those were good instruments someone else could have used". I don't know if it's "cool" to do that anymore, but I never see any other artists calling that out like they are for this ad, and it's been going on since the 70s.
You see this in other art as well. For example, the Dadaists took a lot of functional tools, messed them up, and displayed them as art. Moving beyond art, destruction that accompanies political unrest is often dismissed.
It’s interesting that the Apple ad is what touched off this discussion, because it’s actually fairly tame with regards to a lot of intentional destruction of equipment.
Especially with all the angles they have it would have been incredibly difficult and dangerous to get all the shots, and every shot came out perfectly.
It would have been as simple as adding a short “Professional CGI Artists. No actual instrument and tools were harmed.” to set a lighter tone and take the pain away.
Given the raging discussion and thus reach, this won’t hurt sales in the slightest - pretty much the opposite and i guess we’re left with giving kudos to marketing well played.
I implore you all: adopt a piano today! You may find yourself saying "I didn't rescue it, it rescued me."
What I am having a reaction to is all the reactions about destroying instruments. Which in turn reminded me of the song by Cake.
Rock n’ Roll Lifestyle:
…
How much did you pay
For the chunk of his guitar
The one he ruthlessly smashed at the end of the show?
And how much will he pay
For a brand-new guitar
One which he'll ruthlessly smash at the end of another show?
And how long will the workers
Keep building him new ones?
As long as their soda cans are red, white, and blue ones
…
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The entire point of the ad is that the entire human creative experience is consolidated into the ipad, which is a pretty dystopian way of looking at things. Even if you ignore the cost and rarity of these items, the symbolism is pretty horrible.
If I put my skill and effort crafting something and it is destroyed, I'll feel sad.
Feeling that way even for things other made is called empathy.