- Apple’s ‘hot’ ad for the new iPad Pro has sparked a backlash.
- The company apologized, saying it “missed the mark” and pulled the ad from television.
- But seriously, folks…it’s just an iPad ad.
There has been a huge backlash following the ad Apple released this week promoting its updated iPads. In the ad, a hydraulic press crushes a piano, a trumpet, books, cans of paint, then reveals the new iPad Pro.
The feeling that this was not possible was immediate: for many, it was a dystopian scenario in which the tools of human art and creativity are destroyed and replaced by a machine. This struck a chord in a time of anxiety about the potential of AI to replace humans, particularly in the arts.
The iPad ad blowback has gone far beyond just a handful of disgruntled tweets from the anti-tech peanut gallery – it has become its own mini-crisis news cycle, and even people at technology sector have accumulated. (“Steve would never have published this ad,” Y Combinator founder Paul Graham tweeted about Steve Jobs.)
Ultimately, Apple told Ad Age that it was canceling the television broadcast of the ad and admitted that it “missed the mark.”
But please. Let’s be serious here. I’m all for analyzing ads and thinking critically about how big companies market themselves. Noting that this ad had a darker allegorical meaning – the crushing of the soul of humanity and its replacement by a machine – is a good thing. Good game.
But come on. It’s also very clear that the purpose of the ad is to show that the new iPad is very thin. It can bundle many applications into a small package.
It’s just not that deep.
The iPad Advertising Concept Is Just Quite Boring
The concept of the ad is so basic that people have noticed that it’s not even new: A 2008 ad for a camera is almost identical: a hydraulic press crushes a pile of bulky camera parts to reveal the new slim digital camera.
I’d wager that Apple didn’t intentionally copy the 2008 ad; on the contrary, the idea is so obvious and boring that more than one company has come up with it. Additionally, crushing objects in hydraulic presses only to see them explode is a meme in its own right on TikTok and YouTube. A YouTube channel dedicated to hydraulic press videos has more than 9 million followers.
I might be a little more nervous if this ad wasn’t for an iPad. Let’s say OpenAI made an advertisement crushing books, newspapers and magazines, then revealed the ChatGPT logo. Because my job is to “generate short text articles,” well, that might make me sweat a little.
But it’s an ad for a fucking iPad. It’s not about replacing pianos; it’s a tablet with GarageBand software installed. This does not replace paint; it is a tool with graphic design applications. If the iPad aspires to replace anything, it would be a laptop, Apple’s own product. iPads have been around for over a decade and the only thing they’ve managed to replace is an airplane’s in-flight entertainment system for a preschooler.
We may have techlashed too close to the sun
The fact that there was so much outrage over this ad perplexes me. I spend a lot of time thinking about the sinister ways that tech companies cause real harm or develop products without thinking about the risks. There are many examples of this. Is Apple, as a company, doing bad things? I am on!
But launching a thinner iPad Pro… that’s… not it. In fact, a thin iPad looks very nice! A good thing! I think it’s cool that an iPad can do all these things and be thinner than a phone. Neat!
Apple knows perfectly well how to shape its image through its marketing, so it is not unreasonable to overanalyze its advertisements. But the reaction to this ad seems like a gut feeling that anything technological is bad and anti-human. Sometimes it’s true! But sometimes… an iPad is just an iPad.
businessinsider
