Apple can usually be counted on for smart, well-produced ads, but it missed the mark with its latest, which represents a tower of creative tools and analog objects literally squashed into the form of the iPad. Many, including myself, had a negative, visceral reaction to this, and we should explain why.
It’s not just because we’re looking at crushed things. There are countless video channels dedicated to crushing, burning, exploding, and generally destroying everyday objects. And of course, we all know that this kind of thing happens every day at transfer stations and recycling centers. So that’s not it.
And it’s not that the object itself is so valuable. Of course, a piano is worth something. But we see them explode all the time in action movies and we don’t feel bad. I love pianos, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do without a few little old grand pianos. Same with the rest: it’s mostly junk you can buy on Craigslist for a few dollars, or at a landfill for free. (Maybe not the editing station.)
The problem isn’t with the video itself, which, to be fair to the people who directed and shot it, is actually very well done. The problem is not with the media, but with the message.
We all understand the ostentatious point of the ad: you can do all of this on an iPad. Great. We could also do this on the latest iPad, of course, but this one is thinner (no one asked for this, by the way; now the cases don’t fit) and an invented percentage better.
What we all understand, however, because unlike Apple’s ad execs we live in the world, is that the things crushed here represent the material, the tangible, the real. And reality has value. Value that Apple clearly believes it can crush in yet another black mirror.
This belief disgusts me. And apparently many others too.
Destroying a piano in a music video or an episode of Mythbusters is actually a creative act. Even destroying a piano (or a monitor, or a can of paint, or a drum kit) for no reason is, at worst, wasteful!
But what Apple is doing is destroying these things to convince you that you don’t need it — all you need is the company’s little device, which can do all that and more, and no need for boring things like strings, keys, buttons, brushes or mixing stations.
We are all facing the impacts of the massive shift in media to digital and always online. In many ways, it’s really good! I think technology has been extremely empowering.
But in another way, just as real, digital transformation seems harmful and forced, a vision of the future endorsed by technotopian billionaires where every child has an AI best friend and can learn to play virtual guitar on a glass screen cold.
Does your child like music? They don’t need a harp, throw it in the landfill. An iPad is enough. Do they like to paint? Here, the Apple Pencil, as good as pens, watercolors, oils! Books? Don’t make us laugh! Destroy them. Paper is worthless, use another screen. In fact, why not read in Apple Vision Pro, with even faker paper?
What Apple seems to have forgotten is that it is the things in the real world – the very things that Apple destroyed – that give value to the fake versions of those things in the first place.
A virtual guitar cannot replace a real guitar; it’s like thinking that a book can replace its author.
This is not to say that we cannot value both, for different reasons. But Apple’s advertising sends the message that the future it wants doesn’t have paint bottles, turning dials, sculptures, physical instruments, or paper books. Of course, that’s the future he’s been trying to sell us for years now, but he hasn’t said it so bluntly before.
When someone tells you who they are, believe them. Apple tells you very clearly what it is and what it wants the future to be. If this future does not disgust you, you are welcome.
techcrunch
