About That Apple Ad...
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- Опубликовано: 8 июн 2024
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#apple #ipad #crush
Timestamps
0:00 Introduction
1:22 Part 1: Intention
3:36 Part 1.5: Adland
7:19 Part 2: Symbol and Material
13:16 Conclusion
Sources (quoted + shown):
www.nytimes.com/2024/05/08/bu....
edition.cnn.com/2024/05/09/te...
www.thedrum.com/news/2024/05/...
www.hollywoodreporter.com/bus...
www.marketingdive.com/news/Ap....
www.marketingdive.com/news/Ap...
shorts.stackingthebricks.com/...
arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/...
apnews.com/article/apple-ipad...
edition.cnn.com/2024/05/07/te...
www.forbes.com/sites/siminami... 
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Apple is weird.
POG
I saw someone point this out on Twitter and Ill never not think of it when this ad is discussed (paraphrasing):
"In 1984, Apple made an ad where the Mac represented freedom and colour, destroying a cold, grey world with the throw a hammer.
40 years later, Apple made an ad where they destroyed freedom and colour with a hydraulic press in favour of the cold and grey."
I thought of the '84 ad the whole time I saw this one. At the end of the day, this ad is what Apple always was, just painted with a veneer of freedom and nonconformism. But now the company is saying the soft part out loud: they were aiming for this the whole time. The rebel grew up to be Big Brother, and we the public fell for it.
That's gold.
@@groofayNot just Apple, but mega corporations in general. The republican party, bug businessmen, and fascists have conspired to instate a corporation ruled dictatorship where the non-wealthy classes are held hostage and their hapiness is monopolized and given back to them in small increments after hours of soul crushing labor, like the elite throwing table scraps to dogs while they stuff their glutinous faces with food. Trump is their puppet, he's dumb and arrogant enough to play into their hands. He set a precedent: That reality is not an objective metric but one subjective that can be changed with a lie, exactly the precedent set by the ministry in 1984.
No, they destroyed a bunch of marketable OBJECTS. YOU have to make the strawman that "no no, nothing is being destroyed" being the only point in favor, because you see art as these ITEMS you could buy, instead of an iPad. You make it into nothing but a pissing contest, who gets to own the most beautiful tools.
Real artists build and destroy in a constant cycle, it's fundamental in the old religons like Hinduism and Zoroastrianism.
You're offended because you CAN'T live in the rock garden, you CAN'T replace a broken tool by CREATING a new one. You can't mix a new color, and you can't mold a bunch of new plastic without polluting the environment. YOU are anxious because YOU are beholden to corporatons, and now blame corporations for fitting into YOUR worldview as this Devil of the new age. That's what your new secular religion NEEDS A DEVIL FOR.
🙄 they were always a corporation just cause the ads give you nostalgia tingles doesn’t make them any more whatever bull you’re going on about. It’s not the ad that annoys me, or that it’s good or anything it’s that people are conflating it to any of these issues. As the article said it’s “all this fits in this” that’s all the ad is. Nothing more nothing less. Implying it’s some dystopia because we don’t use gross colourful plastics that fit the trends in 80 to 90s doesn’t make it some evil corporate conspiracy. And the fact that I’m saying the obvious and then that’s to be made fun of is just as ridiculous, it’s not deeper and it’s not mind blowing to be like it is what it is. It all a nothing burger like majority of things.
There’s just something so viscerally uncomfortable about watching everything get smashed, explode, shatter. Intentional or not, the ad isn’t about compression; it’s about destruction.
I think the people that made this ad have never met a musician. Musicians sometimes give their instruments names, they take remarkable care of their intruments, as it becomes a musical extension of themselves. To see a trumpet bending, and a piano being destroyed in a realistic manner, is viscerally horrifying and rage-inducing. It's too real, I would feel the same way if I saw someone intentionally destroying an instrument irl. Even a cheap instrument which could be gifted to a beginner.
Many corporations have a philosophical component beyond the acquisition of wealth. Apple - like many others in the Silicon Valley - are working to demoralize the population.
@@crazitaco Tech bros are all about convenience and quick dopamine (hence the current generative AI craze). They will never understand the beauty of taking the difficult road to create music, art, objects.
I think that’s the purpose though, and I honestly think that if it weren’t a huge business this would be applauded, because this is just as much an art form as anything the things they’d be crushing. They could obviously have given the stuff to people who could use it and learn from it, I’m not going to argue that they shouldn’t have, but if they were going to crush that stuff I’m glad that made a video that pushes you outside what you’re comfortable with and makes you confront complex feelings like that, because that’s a big part of what art is for, and that’s what a lot of the things that were crushed did.
You say your a buisiness,
theres still alot dead people and extremelly sad disabled people though.
and now every1 wants to die then be controlled by you.
If they did this as a cartoon/obvious CGI, it would have worked. The way it was actually done... It's an accidentally brilliant anti-consumerist piece of performance art.
True. They could have lovingly animated this and, tbh I still would've rolled my eyes (anyone who actually plays or wants a musical instrument knows that no tablet is capable of most of what we use them for), but it wouldn't have been nearly as poorly received as this.
Oh definitely, some Dr. Seuss-esque contraption could have worked way better for this, and also apple has better marketing on their Apple pencils, why not leverage on the creative presentation seen on those products
Honestly, I thought it was all CGI until I was 12 minutes into this very video...let's just say the little yellow ball was me when that realization - that much of the destruction on screen was made using real props - finally crept in...
that was an ad for gen 1 pokemon games, bus driver compress a bus load of 'mons into a gameboy
@@RaidenTheWild That's funny because the little yellow ball was the part that made me question if any of it was real. There's no way it bounced like that and nearly "escaped" (only to get pinched at the perfect point to make the eyes bulge) all by itself. If that whole sequence wasn't CGI, I'll be very impressed.
"All press is good press..." except when it's a hydraulic press apparently.
What about Aliexpress?
That’s a damn good one.
Alr go off Shakespeare
Lol
1990s Pokemon Gameboy ad where they crush a bus:
the opposite would have been so much more effective.
imagine a big room with an ipad in the middle.
A sterotypical party magician comes in.
He goes towards the ipad, reaches into it and pulls out a trumpet. etc.
you could use slowly more total camera shots to show the amount of things escalate
That’s so much better
I was picturing more like there’s a big pile of stuff, and, one by one, they float over to an iPad and get sucked into the screen.
A trumpet plays a horn line, then dives into the screen, a can of spray paint makes a little picture, then follows, a camera takes a photo, etc.
Then, there could be clips of people using the iPad to do the same. Making music in GarageBand, painting with the pencil, or taking pictures with the camera.
Working with your idea though, it could be like PhilharMagic in the Magic Kingdom. At the beginning of the show, Donald Duck is prepping the orchestra and quickly pulls all the instruments out of a small box, then tugs hard on something in it for a few seconds, then a grand piano flies out.
But then we probably wouldn’t be talking about it, would we?
@@avationmusicYeah but as the video says: nobody is talking about the iPad. We‘re only talking about apple and big tech
Apple absolutely does not need to get their brand‘s name out there more, they want to sell an iPad, which everyone ignores in this ad
I can just imagine a Kindle ad showing a book burning.... because those books on on your kindle! Why is everyone so upset???
That's a great example actually. Imagine if Amazon had advertised Kindle by throwing a library of books into a wood-chipper. That would be an obviously horrible idea.
„Re-kindling your love of reading!“
*lights match
Fahrenheit 451 ebook, anyone?
dmmd jumpscare
People just want that power flex. I think most of the people hated this are the writers who did the protest thing
this is my first time seeing or hearing of this ad, and honestly a big part of what gets me about it isn't even the actual destruction of all these objects (which is terrible), it's the way it's framed. the surroundings are grey, cold and dismal, not a shred of humanity to be found. the floor is covered in the remains of the crushed objects, the paint seeps out of the press like blood. it reads like a piece someone would make to criticize silicon valley and consumerism, and not a particularly subtle one. it's crazy to me that a company would put this out and honestly believe it's a good ad, that people will love it and love them in turn.
It also doesn't make sense from a marketing perspective. Who is this ad tailored to? The average consumer or techbros? Its hard to tell because your average consumer can't really afford to upgrade every year so seeing precious things that could last someone years of enjoyment getting crushed sends a message that this product is not for the average person.
@@kappadarwin9476It's pretty clear this ad was commissioned and created in a vacuum, and also pretty clear that all of the people who created it were jack off little tech Bros who do nothing but talk to each other about how Superior they are
It reminds me of Dan Olsen's gold-documentary video. Towards the end, he points out how the "selling shovels in a gold rush" concept is inherently critical of the mining industry, how it preys on the exploitable impulses of the miners...and then plays a clip of mining executives talking positively about that idea, of selling whatever you can to make a fortune during a gold rush. They're capitalists, pure and simple.
In the case of this ad, it's a case of Silicon Valley techbros who think of disrupting industries as an inherently good thing to do. That's not just how you make money, that's how you make _progress!_ So they assume that destroying a bunch of obsolete tech and saying your device can do all that and more is an appealing value proposition, not a distressing and highly symbolic waste.
@@timothymcleanThey do not understand that their attempts toward art betray their lack of awareness. "Making money is good, and I'm making money, so it must all be good."
If it was a piece of performance art that was meant to comment on how technology is ultimately crushing us and our creativity, I’d say it was brilliant. But it’s not, it’s tech bros being horrendously out of touch with what people actually want, as usual.
I think there’s also an underlying hubris in thinking that people will be totally on board with the suggestion that a fuckn iPad will be a valid substitute for a $20,000 film camera or a real physical guitar, not just in actual ability but in visceral and personal experience
This. Like, I can tell that what they want us to take away from the instruments being destroyed is "this will make music for you," which... I mean, sure, but not in the same way. If I want to practice scales or perform for a friend, this is utterly useless. If you invite me to compare a piano/guitar/trumpet/whatever other perfectly fine instruments were destroyed here, to this tablet, the tablet loses that competition by default because it isn't even capable of most of what we love about those instruments, and frankly I'm insulted that they'd think otherwise.
It's not that we don't get the comparison, it's that the comparison makes their product look bad.
I agree!
It makes YOU look bad.
It Might Get Loud | "Jack White Builds a Guitar Then Plays It" Official Clip (2009)
yeah but it has a camera? so ofc they are gonna highlight the fact it has one. I dont think they were saying it was the same quality they were just putting a camera in the press lol. i feel like all the complaints are just looking wayyy too deep into it.
Mm - I'm all in favour of electronic music, and tend to roll my eyes at the suggestion that synths and other forms of electronica are worse than traditional instruments...
...But if you want the sound of a trumpet (to pick an example of an instrument on that pile of stuff)? A trumpet is a vastly superior way of getting that than emulating the sound of a trumpet on a computer. Sure, not everyone can afford an orchestra, or even a professional trumpet player, for their piece, so substitutes are sometimes required, but... Given the option between the two, the only situation I can think of where you'd go for a synthetic trumpet over a real trumpet is if the piece specifically requires the trumpet to sound fake.
This ad taps into a visceral feeling. It's trying to play even a simple melody on a touch screen piano when you've felt the weight of the keys on an upright. The frustration of getting a decent photo when you've used even an entry level DSLR. The way digital journalling is interrupted by neverending push notifications, a $2 notebook and 20c pencil will leave you alone in a way that the iPad won't. The way MIDI brass always sounds like a fly buzzing in your ear.
I'm no luddite, tablets can be great for reading on the go, consuming media, lightening your schoolback by turning your 1000 page textbook into a thin glass rectangle. The iPad is also still the king of digital art on the go, it is in a league of its own.
The ad is a failure because it reminds people of all the things they hate about technology. If you put the iPad on top of an upright piano and showed someone reading sheet music without having to page through a stack of it, or showing someone using the apple pencil to render a gorgeous artwork, or showed someone transferring a photo from their camera to their iPad and editing it... It would have worked. The tech is supposed to work for us, not against us.
It is by NO means whatsoever "the king of digital art on the go," and the fact you claim this 100% confirms to me, a digital artist who uses a phone for literally everything, that you've never drawn anything before lmao. Apple products are TERRIBLE for digital art, you NEED some kind of buttons outside of the application, which Apple products don't have. Literally only Android has the Navigation Bar that I genuinely don't know how people live without.
@@SnoFitzroy How does the navigation bar help with digital art? I mean it is useful for almost all other applications (especially the back-arrow), but i don't see how it helps with art.
also is there something like the apple pencil (a touch pencil without the annoying rubber tip you see on most) for phones?
The whole "ludites hate technology, the end" was literally propaganda by literal industry owners of the time. Ludites had complete legitimate reasons for their actions, and they were perfectly rational given the conditions, and none of the motivation was simple "fear" or "hatred" for technology, rather exactly how the then blooming big business were using it to fuck literally everyone else. Do give a read on their actual history, it is pretty interesting.
@@roberine7241 there are non-apple styluses without rubber tips. My spouse has a stylus set with changeable tips that they use for most of their digital art. The one they use most has a soft metal mesh tip but there are more precise ones in the set. They used to draw on their phone with them, but found a mid size tablet easier to work with because it didn't have as much lag on the screen and the larger area was more ergonomic to work with. Its a Samsung tablet I think. They also use its camera to scan their physical drawings in.
@@SnoFitzroy How in the world does that tell you that theyve never drawn anything before? You really dont need buttons outside of the app, that sounds like something you personally experience and have somehow decided every digital artist in the world also needs, despite the overwhelming amount of artists who use ipads for digital art. Most find drawing on a phone very inconvenient because of the small screen. Phone/finger drawing is generally considered an unusual commodity in the same way people who draw with their mouse are. The next best thing for travel would be a laptop, but those are much larger, so ipads are very popular with digital artists. Thats just a plain fact.
(And im a traditional AND digital artist before you go accusing me of never having drawn before lmfao)
Theres an angry birds piggy bank in a few shots that I had as a kid, I was a very sensitive kid and I put a lot of sentimental value into my belongings, so when mine broke I’m pretty sure I cried. I had forgotten about it, but seeing the same one being crushed reminded me, and also just made me sad. They don’t make those anymore, but the people who made this commercial probably didn’t know or care. It was just another thing in the pile to be crushed for spectacle. Everything in that pile could have been used and loved, and to me this is just an example of the waste and lack of humanity of capitalism and the corporations that uphold it.
it kind of makes all these valuable objects of creativity seem to have no value at all doesn't it
@@xXluluchanelXx As far as the ad guys are concerned, they have no value that cannot be matched or exceeded by the new iPad. It has the Angry Birds game, and you can watch RUclips, or draw with whatever the iOS equivalent of Microsoft Paint is, or play music on RUclips, or do all sorts of other things. Wow. Cool.
Sure, Jan.
Why you glazing apple under every comment bro@@Lukweo
@@LukweoApple’s member cannot possibly taste that good for you to be globbing on it this hard
Advertisers and marketers, I say this as someone who used to be one in a previous millennium, have deluded themselves into thinking they are artists. They think what they do is art. Not that there is AN art to it, nor that it requires art to make an ad or a campaign. They see the ad, the campaign, the IDEA of it, as ART. And the more risks they take, the more money they spend (and waste) and things of value they sacrifice for that art, the more arty they feel their art is. If they had a client who could afford to buy the Mona Lisa and feed it into a woodchipper, they would do it. For the statement. For the buzz. For... whatever. It's art. Art that is so arty that it is worth destroying something that expensive (the cultural significance and historical value might not occur to them) just to art their arty art. There are actual artists who would do the same. I sort of feel like they are just frustrated advertising execs who don't realise that their "art" is entirely self promotion. Artists who would tie up a dog in a gallery and let it starve to death for, the statement? The... whatever. It's art. It must be very arty art to need to let an animal suffer and die horribly. How art. Filmmakers used to do it too. Kill animals. Kill people. Do things on camera they should spend a life in prison if they did it for... not art. Ad people, marketing people, they think they are artists. Of course they'd smash a guitar some poor kid could use to make real art. Hell, if they could get it on camera, they'd find a poor kid WITH a guitar and smash it in front of them if they could sell it as the message - of their "art."
I may have some feelings about this.
There's literally a Franz Kafka book called "A Hunger Artist" about this exact concept. Where someone publicly starved themselves as "art" but when the audience stopped coming realized all of it was pointless. The tech industry really has gotten this dumb hasn't it?
I hate that I know someone is going to call this Ad "abstract/performance" art. It isn't, for all the jokes, the point is "big thing now small". Art doesn't need a complex statement, but it needs a meaningful one. If this wasn't by Apple and done as an animation with intention, it could have been a statement worth makeing. Art requires a level of intent.
"Creativity is in our DNA"
- Takes away beloved hardware such as the headphone jack
- Makes proprietary chargers and software updates which make the device useless and force you to buy a new one.
- Haven't made an actual change to their phones since the 1st.
- Predatory storage pricing which manipulates you into buying the most expensive model.
Yeah, sure Apple, sure.
Also the apple pencil only works with the one single generation of iPad and nothing else.
Also how they never change the design that much but each year they'll still charge u for some overpriced piece of crap that is slightly different from the last piece of crap.
I bet the tablet (the one shown in the commercial) didnt even improve that much. This whole thing of them making a new phone every year is very sketchy to me, like.. why? They just greedy af, i dont know if the original maker of these products would even let products be made every year.
@kqlolll2618 if you add how things are currently being marketed right now. The ai is the big selling point. It's the new thing everyone is talking about. When you here AI, you think Ultron, Wally and Eve, and all the outer movie AI. What AI is at the moment is essentially an algorithm that guesses what would be the next word in a sentence. It's likely going to be a simplified or slightly different chat GPT with maybe some compatability with their own stuff.
Do you know who else presented an Apple? Satan did, and that guy is the biggest liar of all.
Fanboys still love it. 😂
I don't like apple
based..?
But they keep the doctor away
thank you Giorno Giovanni
Me neither. Too sleek and kind of soulless for my tastes.
I prefer oranges too
It'd be like Facebook making an ad crushing all your friends and loved ones with a hydraulic press into the Facebook app running on a phone.
You don't understand, silly viewer, you see, your friends were big, and now they're small. They're also dead. Fun ad, please laugh.
I can‘t quite put my finger on it, but I could have sworn that I have seen ads about things being compressed, smashed together or otherwise (violently) combined into a new thing before. It‘s just that these ads never actually show the violence of that process. Just hide the actual crushing behind shots of the machine or some special effects and show the end product, preferably with all the original stuff in there or on the screen, because that’s the message you probably wanted to send.
I was thinking about this, too. I remember older ads, particularly in the 2000s and early 2010s, that showed basically the same concept, tons of stuff being compressed into a single device. As you note though, as Pillar noted, this one showed things how they are.
Someone pointed out on Threads that LG had a similar commercial with the difference that the compression was oriented differently. Also, there was the Gameboy commercial with Pokémon on a bus being crushed in an automotive crusher.
@@MagusNone I loved that Pokemon commercial, which was very tongue-and-cheek compared to this Apple one.
Yeah there was one that has all the things being sucked into the computer like a genie going back into it's lamp or something. It's not destructive.
like, for crying out loud - just yesterday I got an ad for a browser's AI features that had a lot of things (related to creating or learning about stuff) get broken down into *pixels* (or stylized small squares anyway) that then make up the icon of said browser
similar idea, similarly mixed feelings about AI but at the very least it wasn't as viscerally upsetting
This is very "children's hospital color theory - like yes you can say putting trails of red paint on the floor of a children's hospital plays on the natural positive energy of the color but that does not change how the overall effect feels to the audience
I had not heard that example before, but that's great.
@@BrooksMoses Oh the original was hilarious, it was a Tumblr post about a frankly bizarre choice of flooring in a children's hospital. Genuinely looked like blood trails all over the floor. Half the people were justifying it with "color theory" and the other half were desperately trying to explain that red smears are not encouraging in a hospital.
@@infinitemausoleum721 : Oh my. That sounds like quite a thing indeed!
@@BrooksMosesit's a very popular post on tumblr, and Bettina Levy has a reading of it on her chanel if you're curious!
@@BrooksMoses became a running gag on the website too, given the notoriety of the post. pretty neat!
The way it looks like the squish toy tries to “escape” and gets crushed anyways, as it stares directly into camera… it really doubles down on the horrifying tone.
Intent vs Execution is so fucking important. It’s why conceptually the “Martha” scene in Batman v Superman should be really poignant and emotional. When in reality it’s a fucking meme because the execution is fucking silly.
Tell that to Zod's snapped neck!
That’s another good example. Clark being all teary eyed over having to kill Zod rings pretty hollow when he seemed fine with the two of them leveling Metropolis in their fight
The fix to this is easy. Have Superman say "save my mother". Then it doesn't hang on a stupid coincidence or result in Batman not understanding what he means immediately. Instead it's that Superman loves his mom and Batman and the audience both immediately understand that this makes Supes like a human because we also love our moms.
1@@thewoollyviking5928
I've never felt more uncomfortable watching an ad and I remember the weird sexual fast food ads from the 2000s. Combined with Apple's relentless planned obsolescence, so many of those things crushed would've lasted so much longer than this new ipad. (As an artist, seeing all that paint and such get wasted and knowing how expensive it can be, good golly) It's such a slap in the face to all artists of all kinds. Even though I primarily do digital art, the erasing of everything tactile to be cold and lifeless *feels* antithetical to everything that makes art, art. It didn't even really register to me consciously that all those things were crushed and being turned into the new ipad. I was way more preoccupied with the feelings of watching those things get destroyed instead. They made an anti art ad even if that wasn't the intention.
Not that it changes your point, but I would bet a gallon of house paint that those paints are CGI. As the Hydraulic Press Channel pointed out in their analysis of the ad, there are some clear tells that some important parts aren't real.
That first sentence is wild
'they told the truth'... this line slaps
let no man say I wasn’t cooking 🥘
Wow, that ad looks like its ripped straight out of a dystopic cyberpunk setting to "subtly clue the viewer/player/reader" that the mega-corporation running the world has playing on every reflective object they could feasibly jam it on
Worse yet, people would criticise it for being unsubtle.
it’s an ad that just exponentially gets worse the more intimate of a connection you have to art, the stronger your connection to reality, & the more rational you are.
it’s artistically gruesome & grotesquely dystopian. from the bleeding of paint onto a mini grand piano, the pressing of a human clay face against a cold, unrelenting, massive, metal plate of industry. one of the most massively widespread emojis being the last thing to survive only ads insult to injury. tools are an extension of oneself, they know this. they provide us with tools afterall, that is their job. they know the meaning behind this & they just don’t know how much it really hurts, because to them they value their tool as an equivalent to all they’ve destroyed. it’s the issue of “oh i’ll just replace it with something of equal or greater value!” without properly addressing the real issues of morality that they so casually & unthoughtfully discarded
its the lenses and paint that get me, as someone that cant afford a 60-200 lens , or paint, or canvases, its just disgusting
I even doubt any of the things in that pile were broken/defective. In which case it’s even more tone deaf.
I'm pretty sure a lot of it, if not all of it, is CGI. The Hydraulic Press Channel did an analysis of it pointing out some obvious tells, and there also lots of aspects of it that would be easier to do in CGI than practical effects. Including having the paint and lenses splatter in the "aesthetically perfect" way that they do.
Not that it really changes the feel of the ad at all.
@@BrooksMoses The Hydraulic Press Channel analysis only showed that this was not a real hydraulic press, but a prop. But he didn't prove that the destruction was made by CGI. He only showed that it wasn't a hydraulic press doing it.
Practical effects have existed for decades. And the way these things look and feel, it was most likely done for real, with practical effects.
I feel like there's nothing really clearly intentionally malicious about it, but it is kind of tone deaf. It's obvious the intention is that they're pressing all this creativity down into a sleek package. But also they want the visuals of hydraulic press crush videos, which is something being completely destroyed and smashed. They mix their metaphor.
These things have to go through departments and commitees and are overanalyzed before being released. It speaks volumes that they still managed to appear so tone-deaf.
@@c0rnichon sometimes, those rooms are just filled with yes-men, and people to afraid to speak up lest they lose their jobs.
It is especially noteworthy to me how they seem to treat all of these meaningful and sentimental objects as incidentally disposable in service of a device they effectively treat as disposable. A guitar can last a lifetime and lenses made decades ago can still be useful today. How much does Apple expect this new iPad to last until they start hawking the next one?
This is people intentionally choosing to read negativity into this ad, anyone with a shred of common sense gets this is them saying ‘all this potential in one incredibly small piece of technology’, it’s how video games market handheld gaming devices. As for how long they last I’m using a 5yr old iPhone XR and a 7yr old IPad and they both still function quite well. The obsession people have with constantly upgrading their tech is consumer driven not company driven, Apple doesn’t tell people to buy a new phone every year anymore then car companies tell people to buy a new car every year.
@@tiffanyroberts6460 You didn't address their point at all but made a bunch of tangentials sort of related to their point.
@@tiffanyroberts6460there is more than potential in a small package here. That may be the intended statement, but it is not the implied one. There are more factors then the intent. The intent of the matrix is a story about a Tras experience. The reading a lot of people got was one of extreme masculinity being distracted and to that only those with that extreme masculinity can see a kind if "true" world. A world that is in all honesty, painfully childish world that ignores complexity in favor of a might makes right hierarchy.
@@tiffanyroberts6460 your first point was already criticized in the video and the second missed they point that apple products are designed to brake so you buy a new one (other companies doing similar things doesn’t make it better)
@@Volcano22207 they’re not designed to break as I said I’ve have had an iPhone XR for over 5 years, only issue if the battery which is at 80% capacity now, my iPad is 7 years old and has no issues at all. Most companies don’t do it full stop, yes there’s a culture of buying new over getting things repaired which has existed for decades long before the iPhone existed but actually making products deigned to last only a few years is nonsense. If any companies encouraged continuous upgrading it’s the telcos cause they make more money off your new plans but Apple doesn’t tell people to buy a new phone every year nor does any other tech company.
As for my first point no I’m criticising they’re dumb argument, there’s nothing wrong with this except for snowflakes choosing to be offended, what Apple did wasn’t new or controversial to anyone who can think. What’s truly insane is that Apple was spineless enough to apologise for a great advert cause idiots like Hugh Grant thought he’d grab 15 seconds of relevance despite being a part of an industry that’s done infinitely more harm to art then Apple ever has. If there’s an industry that’s oppressing art it’s Hollywood not Silicon Valley.
OH MY GOD I can't believe the agency is literally called "Iconoclast". My first reaction to the ad was _"This seems like nasty iconoclasm."_ I am immediately skeptical of iconoclasm. There's something unpleasant about people who revel in the destruction of the past more than the creation of the future.
The symbolism isnt much better. Yea its compressing those tools into one item. But that item is under the iron grip of Apple. A monopoly. A company that will take you and shake you until all your money falls out.
Companies should not ever hold our creative abilities in their hands. No matter how slick and easy to use it may be. Anyone who struggled with Adobe will understand that very well.
What immediately stuck out to me is the way the objects being crushed are anthropomorphized /in the ad itself/. Like, the arcade cabinet saying “game over,” the mannequin with its hands up like it’s fearing for its life, the clay human head painfully twisting in on itself. Also the cartoon character looking up with a concerned face before exploding. These objects are presented as if they are aware of what’s going on and fearing their demise. The concept was fine, but the execution was telling its own story. Coulda just… put the previous iPad Pro on a hydraulic press and replaced by the new one when it lifted back up. But that wouldn’t have been flashy enough.
Anyways, I want to acknowledge that this is a really well-written and well-presented essay! Introducing and explaining the different points, acknowledging the criticisms and respectfully rebutting them, and the organization overall just 👌 I mean I know those are the goals of an essay but you don’t always see this level of quality haha
Someone mentioned Tsukumogami, the belief that artisan tools can have a spirit, is another reason why it's extremely distressful.
Your point about what it means to destroy a guitar is especially interesting in light of 1960s rock stars like the Who and Jimi Hendrix destroying their guitars as a centerpiece of their concerts. It just goes to show how the same physical act means something very different when it's coming from a tech advertisement versus when it's coming from true artists.
Except those guys broke their guitars solely because they didn't want them to be sold to scalpers and collectors. They did it to avoid being commercialized and commodified.
@@jordanloux3883 Is that true? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrument_destruction
This says the trend in rock concerts began when Pete Townshend of the Who saw a piece of performance art in which someone destroyed a guitar. Pete Townshend said it was "auto-destructive art", and Jimi Hendrix said he lit his guitar on fire as a kind of sacrifice.
This ad feels like one thing in a line of a thousand pushing AI and new "innovations" as the answer to all our problems, the cheap, simplified, and more effective version of art and labour. Execs that don't even understand the technology are punting billions on it, and it's humiliating for everyone involved. I'd find it funny if it wasn't so detrimental to society.
They put convenience over genuine experiences. They will never understand why somebody would bother to pick up a pencil or go through the process of learning an instrument.
The whole "don't you get it" thing reminds me of that one Tumblr post where someone was trying to justify red paint smeared on the floor of a children's hospital with colour theory.
This was the result of an environment where people are not empowered to question the decision makers. It's clear that someone at Apple felt they were being very clever by incorporating the Hydraulic Press Channel, that it would make them look in the know and with their finger on the pulse of cultural trends. They were so enamored with their idea that they went full tilt into it and no one in the room anywhere along the way was empowered to say anything critical or even ask the question of how this will play from a different perspective. It's Apple's version of the Super Soaker goo ad.
Watching the people defending this ad makes me feel like I'm the one sane executive in that Grapist sketch from the Whitest Kids You Know "Does no one else see why realistically and violently destroying visual art, children's toys and musical instruments might come off as pure evil to our audience?"
Yeah it seems like the sort of thing which would be conceived by teenage boys on TikTok. Not the creative professionals who feel increasingly abandoned by Apple.
@@ChissHansen : Indeed. "We are showing a very clear face on this round ball, which is a thing we know elicits emotions from the audience. Exactly what emotion are we eliciting, and how does that further this narrative?"
On top of all of that, Hydraulic Press Channel hit their peak a while ago. They're still doing fine but in terms of trend chasing this one is a couple years late.
there's just something about seeing several colorful things (that don't belong to one singular entity in a way) being crushed into small monochrome thing owned by a terrible corporation in a perfect monochrome factory background that does it to me, really got that life sucking visuals
'Big things go small' doesn't work because the ad doesn't show the big things being turned into small things. It shows 'big things smashed into fragments'. If they wanted the ad to say 'big things turn small' they should have used CGI or something to show the items being compressed but not broken, and then when the press raises you see all the items except they've been miniaturized.
As someone who works in ads (hi, animator who sold his soul here!) marketers and ad agency types are so up their own ass.
Most of them make ads to be seen by other people in the ad industry. It's all award bait.
Therefore it's all about "how high concept can I make this ad?". Which other ad people understand and lavish awards for.
But most of the time, the average viewer of the ad either doesn't care or understand what's going on behind the ad. It's all wank in a dumb industry. Why should they care or want to understand?
So no doubt the agency on this was seeing all the awards that were going to come in for this "super high concept" and also super high bugdet, highly produced ad. While completely misreading the room on who's actually using iPads and what for.
They're betting so hard on generative algorithmic bullshit, they didn't see how the core audience of creative professionals were going to interpret this ad.
Ad people don't have imagination. Just campaign goals.
That certainly explains why the quality of ads has gone to shit since I was a kid.
@@AzureGreatheart South Africa used to have crazy funny and clever ads. A few that ruffled feathers too. Now every ad is the same safe bet CGI barrage of information. And when they aren’t they’re just annoying 🙃
Even if you put aside the connotations of 'destruction' the message of the ad is still one of replacement. "The new iPad means you dont need all that old stuff now." Like I can imagine (since it's been done before) an alternative tech advert that portrays "our new gadget will perfectly *fit perfectly alongside* your lifestyle". It honestly makes me not want an iPad and not in a boycotting apple way, just that it makes me think of how much of that tactile experience of real objects is lost when everything in the world is done via a screen.
The smiley's get me I will admit. I think a life time of movie explosions and Mythbusters putting things in microwaves has numbed me to the destruction of objects, but anything you can anthropomorphise, or which represents a person (or animal, I've got a rubber duck on my desk and when it cracked I described it as 'I think my rubber duck died') has a habit of getting to me. Especially the eye popping. I get that that's supposed to be the joke, but I viscerally dislike it.
Interesting. I had the opposite reaction.
Destroying the books and records and statue and arcade cabinet and other art feels like a waste of beauty.
Destroying the metronome and piano and paints and trumpet lenses and guitar and pose figurine thingy and all the other artistic tools feels like a waste of potential.
Even the monitors and CRT television and lamp and shelves and containers represent countless man-hours of labor to extract and refine materials, to assemble them into a useful shape, to figure out _what shape_ would make them useful.
Squishing the little smiley thing, seeing its surprised eyes bug out and pop, feels like a gag. Like a Looney Tunes bit, but made from rubber and metal instead of ink and paint. It's goofy.
Because it has an expression it felt even more visceral, like in a slasher movie, and it kinda communicates that the objects were also in pain, as everything was on the same crushing table.
as someone who couldn't hold a Furby upside down for more than 3 seconds, "viscerally dislike" is the right phrase for my experience.
It was the camera gear for me. Sure, for amateur stuff, a modern flagship phone might be better with all the computational photography stuff built into it, but for reach and flexibility, there is no substitute for an interchangeable lens camera. I challenge anyone with a phone or tablet to get a shot of the moon nearly filling the frame showing actual detail of the lunar surface.
I felt that with the little mannequin being made to bend over before being completely crushed :(
My mom's cousin worked as an ad executive in NYC at the *height* of the 1960's fashion-- she was responsible for some insanely iconic and successful print and commercial ads, mostly print. There's no reason in heaven, hell or purgatory she'd have approved something like this-- it's so tone deaf, especially when elder Gen Z has embraced the arts after having it squeezed out of public schools due to lack of funding. Half of my entire friend group (a mix of elder Millennial and elder Gen Z) have bought cheap musical instruments to learn how to play, they pick up art supplies as a way to unwind and relax on their days off work. The consequence of arts getting stripped out of learning centers is we discovered a lot of it on our own, and while I don't doubt a lot of the ad is AI, that's not the point. The point is the ad said the quiet part out loud, "all creativity will be subsumed by electronics, and we are proudly leading the way." They are screaming to the heavens that all art, all creativity will only be able to exist in a space where it can be wrenched away from you at the press of a button. I also feel you on the guitar, my mom was self taught and my best memories of her are playing Joni Michelle and when I was *really* young, "Puff the Magic Dragon"-- to see one literally explode is very jarring. Unfortunately, Apple is a cult and there are people who are willing to die on the hill of defending a commercial.
All I know is, if I put an iPad in a hydraulic press and it breaks, I'm sueing. Because this ad clearly shows an iPad surviving a hydraulic press.
Pepsi and the Jet all over again
Ad/Marketing/PR guy here
The only important metric when it comes to ads is, "who is your target market and how did they react to your ad?"
Basically, who are you selling to? And did they bite your message?
The key idea about advertising is not the immediate buy. Even in a world of one-click, next-day-delivery e-commerce, most advertising is still about putting a product top-of-mind to the target's decision-making process at the point of purchase or deciding to.
When the target market is thinking, "do i want to buy a gadget and what brand is that?" is when your ad comes in.
So this ad of Apple's has to be taken in that context: who was Apple selling to?
Because no amount of yea or nay means anything if the ad doesn't make the target audience buy that new IPad. Like that person who said they're part of the millions who sub to a pressing machine channel. So what? Are you buying an iPad?
The reason this ad comes off as tone deaf is because most of us do not live with the excess that the rich take for granted. For them, a piano costing thousands of dollars is just a drop in the bucket. For ordinary people, that same piano would be a major investment, and to see it crushed in a hydrologic press like garbage for a stupid commercial is horrifying. The rich live in a totally different world, and the fact that they didn't see the backlash coming is just proof of that.
I think the context around this ad is worth noting too, though. It comes at a time when the context is *very* bad. Most artists I know (and I know quite a few) use Apple devices, but most artists I know are at the end of their tether when it comes to technology in general. So artists and audiences are more primed to see this ad as destructive, because that’s how they see technology.
And we can know this because this is not the first “hydraulic press squishes artistic tools into a consumer device” ad; LG made a very similar (smaller-but-not-that-much-smaller scale) ad in 2008: ruclips.net/video/NcUAQ2i5Tfo/видео.html
This
"At Apple, we hate you and everything you love, now give us money like a good little piggie."
So what your saying is that one cursed Pokemon bus commercial but if it was actually full of adorable small animals, got it
Oh wow. You're right.
The hydraulic press thing is funny, cause it’s so 2017 to be watching a press crush things.
The ad symbolically crushing creative tools in pursuit to an old idea: Make it Smaller.
And we dont want it smaller anymore.
Immediately was thinking of a better way to convey "compressed" or w/e would be to have a person walking around with the ipad, spotting the creative objects they want to put into it, and then taking them: the guitar, the paint can, the clay, etc and smoosh it into the ipad like a cartoon, or like a bag of holding in D&D or whatever. It's just wild to me no one objected to this ad until the public got ahold of it.
That would be slightly less terrible
@cosmicspacething3474 Oh yeah, it would still be kinda shitty, but it wouldn't convey "destroying art." And it's an idea I literally thought of in 5 minutes.
Are you cussing telling me they had the BALLS to do this to real items instead of making it all CGI? Which would probably have been cheaper in the long run.
No. They haven't said one way or the other, but (as the Hydraulic Press Channel pointed out in a review video) there are some things about it that are very obviously CGI.
Maybe some bit parts of it are real, but I'd bet against it.
I had Marketing classes in college, and something the teachers emphasized above all else was that you have to know the target audience you're advertising to. Because even the most technically impressive, most mindbendingly conceptualized ad will fail if it doesn't speak to the people who actually pay for the product or service its advertizing. Its like a professor said "You can't stand alongside a billboard or a screen saying to people 'with this I meant to say this, you see'. If you wanted to comunicate something and the audience understood another thing, you have failed as a communicator"
... The Apple advertizers are a bunch of faillures, there's no way arround it
The word is "Emphasized"
I like how pog makes very in depth, intelligent video essays in which he tackles very broad and interesting subjects, and also pauses to laugh at the fact that he said “do do”
I had a realization recently that, when a corporate or political decision looks dumb on the surface, 99% of the time, it's dumb all the way down. My favorite corporate conspiracy theory was that Coca-Cola messed up New Coke on purpose in order to juice sales of "Coca-Cola Classic." Then I found out that they actually got screwed for an entire summer because of New Coke, and it actually took a bit to recover. Figuring this out made me rethink all of the 4D chess theories I subscribed to, and I realized, on a much deeper level, that the elites are all morons! They would all rather you think they're playing the wounded gazelle gambit, when the reality is that most of the people running our society are idiots who got where they are due to nepotism and brown-nosing.
Could it be that they are not feeling the current pressure of layoffs, ai replacement, not projecting themselves under the press among everything that represents human experience.
Get inside the box. This razor sharp box.
This is way more relevant than they intended imo.
Seeing Blackmagic Design editing/color panels and keyboards really hit me hard. If I’m a fanboy of a company, it’s Blackmagic products and DaVinci Resolve. So seeing apple do this to products from a partnering company(they helped BD with their apple silicon. Not even just them, Affinity works so well on Mac’s and iPads that it saves me money from having to pay an adobe suite subscription) really feels like a conflict of partner interests.
That is why bands like OK Gp only use faulty instruments as props.
I remember when OK Go damaged hundreds of guitars in the _Needing/Getting_ video. But then they restored them to a playable state, signed them, and sold them. That was classy.
All those instruments and materials put together are probably worth 5x more than this new iPhone, but you could probably buy them all for half the price of one
No I mean a real guitar that you would want to take on stage and that you would keep for your whole life and play in front of thousands of people a real guitar like that it's like a thousand bucks. Just the guitar I mean a real camera that takes decent pictures and that they don't have to be photoshopped to look good I mean it's probably way more than that.
And sitting there twiddling things on a f****** iPad will never come within a billion f****** miles of the experience of taking a real instrument on a real stage in front of real people.
10:11 for me, it's the arcade machine. But all of them hurt.
By destroying such vast variety of things they managed to hurt everyone feelings
I will admit thatbthe dirst time i saw this ad Skill Up was using it as an analogy for the video game industry.
He didnt say heaps and thats very telling for how accurately this ad is being seen. I immediately got that this was all if this big stuff but now in this little stuff! I got the minimalism. I have also watched the lay offs in so many industries, especially creative ones. Ive seen the uncreative movies, heard the uncreative songs that im pretty sure were made by AI because of how meh they are.
'They told the truth' you completely nailed it.
your idea of the artist giving away his stuff because he doesn't need it anymore because he has an ipad is BRILLIANT
To be honest, just looking at the ad myself, all I see is "we smushed all these little things into one big thing so now it does all the things you used to need all these big things to do". I never saw the ad before this video, didn't know people were upset about it, and if I'd seen the video first it never would have occurred to me to be upset about it. But now that I've seen your take on it, I understand. Apple isn't just saying "it does all the things these things do", they're going on to say, "and thus these things have no value."
Yeah the whole “game over” screen on the arcade machine pushes me over the edge
An acoustic guitar doesnt need to be recharged, can be used without reception and doesnt make you bump into people or lightposts because you are staring on it while walking on the street.
I think it lacks a sense of magic of what having a device that comprises all of those things in one could mean. Instead it feels cruel and needlessly violent.
And it looks like a parody of a Silicon Valley episode where some tech bro says «disrupt this shit» 😅
I also thought that they wanted to jump on that Tiktok Trend were people crush all kind of stuff with hydraulic presses. Because now they also started to crush valuable items. Such a weird trend.
It really is a great encapsulation of whats wrong with this moment in tech. They are trying to "empower artists" but there doing it by reduceing the number of them nessacary on the payroll. Its weirdly artful? The years of training required to hire a team of concept artists are being compressed into a tool that can replace that team with a manager. The metronomes we used to train musicians are no longer nessacary. Death of the author i cry it doesn't mater what they thought they were doing. Its in the name of AI which only represents one thing in the creative feild. The replacement of jobs that previously would of taken many artists to make bulk amount of art to use in a project being widdled down to an artist skimming the cream off of what stable defusion puts out.
This
I just had to find Hanlan's Razor:
"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"
It seems pretty apt for this discussion. Btw f*ck Apple, what a pillar of garbage!
To be honest they should have put a Congolese kid amid the pile. For me it is not a marketing slip … this is a sign of Apple (big tech) not understanding how far away from regular lives and problems they are.
I think too this is incredibly poorly timed in the post "let them eat cake" backlash to consumerism and consumer culture.
You touched on it with the idea someone would give their arm for one of those instrements and now they cant be removed. You pitch at the end would be so much better to.convey the point.
Every day a feel slightly more like we need to go back
This ad would have fitted right into the movie Equilibrium, where they had scenes of enforcers burning art pieces because the rulers believed suppressing all emotions was the only way to have a stable society.
The ad triggered ppl because of the color scheme, the unnerving jittering of the objects as they get crushed and finally the final short showing a face being crushed. It pulled some subconscious strings in our minds.
I think what truly pushes me over the edge for this is the whole “game over” screen in the arcade machine. I just don’t see how anyone doesn’t find that antagonistic in the slightest.
It perfectly encapsulates the tech industry and what it represents I’ll give them that. Encouraging people to kill their own creativity so they’ll be more dependent on technology, hopelessly out of touch with what the public actually wants to see, repackaging the same product from 10 years ago but easier to break. You name it, it’s present in this whole fiasco
Fantastic video, as always!
This ad definitely struck a negative tone with me, and you really hit the nail on the head why. What really blows my mind on top of everything else is that a good ad exists here. Pretty much just hit "reverse" and it's almost a proper follow-up to the classic 1984 ad.
I wouldn't be surprised if they did, at some point, realize the likely outcome of this and release it anyway.
I wouldn't mind this as much if the device was actually capable of being an adequate replacement for these products, and photography is one of those areas where there isn't an adequate substitute for a DSLR/Mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses. Some phones like Samsung's Galaxy S Ultra lineup have incredible systems with a 10x module that rivals my 55-250mm zoom lens, something that has a profile similar to that of a 12oz soda can. Having that compressed into something I can discretely fit into my pocket is incredible!
time to get a pearphone
Someone made a version that plays in reverse and it relays the “big thing made small” messsage much better, references the popular hydronic press content, and still displays how flat the new iPad is.
"You don't need all of that GARBAGE! Our new iPad can replace ALL of it!" is what it looks like to me
What marketing thought: "You can do so much stuff with an iPad!"
What everyone else understand: "We will crush everything you love and we will be the only ones left"
This is why social media literacy is essential for advertising and marketing something Apple failed to understand.
there are so many ways to think about this. One way is to think of that often posted meme, that in the past we were sold on big tech so we didnt have to work, and free us up to be creative. Yet today the AI is being creative, and all work long hours for less and less reward. The press is the capitalist owned AI crushing all of our creative dreams.
A kinder reading, would be "Sure you can be creative, but only on our £3,000 tablet, and using our software, is going to feel like we own how you be creative, how you share what you creative, they might as well own what I create with the melding of software and hardware."
Your ad suggestion at the end would be a perfect, tug-at-your-heartstrings little short
All Press is Good Press
It's not even a new concept. We have seen this 'big things go little' A LOT (pokemon being crammed into a Gameboy pocket comes to mind). It's a low hanging fruit idea as far as 'creative' goes. It's what you do with it.
I agree the issue is not the concept, it is totally the execution. It screams compressing for destruction, not for synthesis. Like seeing a gummy teddy bear being crushed by teeth in excruciating detail instead of it amusingly dissolving in acid or something.
I hope this inspires people to touch grass more, if anything. Apple's pocket will not be hurt AT ALL from people not liking an ad. Realize the disconnect we live in.
"We compacted all these things into one product" (ipad can be used to draw, make music, 3D modelling, etc.)
I *really* do think they just went for that and didn't really put any more thought into it. They maybe should've put some more thought into it, but I really doubt there's many people working in marketing who are deep into metaphors about capitalism
"See all this stuff you can't afford?"
**crushes everything, reveals iPad**
"Now here's something you _still_ can't afford!"
Just more signs of their increasingly creepy and detached cluelessness......with a smile.....a crushed one!
Perhaps a blender, rather than an hydraulic press, would have conveyed the same idea less directly and violently, and without the implied destruction.
That would look less pretty, more violent and dumb. Even more dumber.
How about a person putting the items into the ipad, (forced perspective, and other special effects), going increasingly large. Up to the piano. And then said person picks up the device, showing its actual size, and puts into a pocket or small bag or purse, and walks away.
No destruction, at all.
@@JohnZ117so hammer space?
@@JohnZ117 If I were in the boardroom (and hopefully not as disconnected as every billionaire executive), I'd go for something like a chef adding all these things to a big pot, mix in some gratuitous food p0rn-esque shots of the various items/instruments as they get added, then the iPad being served on a silver platter. Not focus-tested at all, and I'm sure as heck not a marketing person, but I feel like that would've pissed off WAY fewer people.
I think you really have a point about there being no apple products like former iPhones, iPads, even apple computers in that commercial. This isn’t a compressing of all previous technologies and tools used for the creation of that thin little device. This commercial is showcasing all previously revered instruments that Apple and to an extent popular society views as old and unnecessary.
Also last line goes hard not gonna lie.
actually it is killing creativity, the original add was made by LG in 2008
They could've made the exact same ad crushing obsolete Apple products into the new Apple product, but then tech execs would have seen what the rest of us are seeing in this ad.
never really got the obsession with making tech smaller. tbh.
To a point it makes sense to shrink tech. Sat phones couldn't fit in a pocket on your pants, new phones can (unless you have women's pants, a whole different topic). But there's a limit to how thin something "needs" to be. An iPad this thin is bound to break easily, and maybe that's the point. Gotta buy that apple care, or replace your iPad frequently.
@@NubifierThe screen sizes keep getting bigger so women's pockets can keep dreamin
@@AugustCrossroads This is true, it also doesn't help that some pants literally just have fake pockets.
Up to a certain point, it really is a good thing. The phones we use today are at least a couple orders of magnitude more powerful than the computers that powered the rockets we took to the moon.
All that being said, making devices thinner and thinner comes at the risk of them snapping like a twig the moment any compressive/tensile stress is applied.
@@NubifierI will never, and I mean ever, understand fake pockets. Why the actual fuck would you think I want pockets purely as an esthetic and not as a utility. Are there actually people who think, "Geez, I sure do like how pockets look, but I just can't stand being able to put things in them." Is that an actual thought process people have. Because if so, well, I would have to say I disagree.
This feels like a slipup of timing rather than a deliberate attempt to provoke. "All your creative tools in our thinnest product yet" (And I feel this intention is given away by the games that get represented - if it was just intended as provocative I don't think we'd have seen emoji and angry birds in there) feels like it comes from the same school of thought that gave us the pokemon yellow ad with the bus full of pokemon getting crushed down into a... I think a gameboy pocket?
Just instead of 'oops we accidentally made a horror film' we got an 'oops we accidentally made a visual metaphor for the tech industry's apparent desires for the creative arts'. Less traumatized 7 year olds, more frustration and anger at the company for being so lacking in self awareness. (You know, while I think no one would deny the pokemon ad as being memorable, I don't tend to hear it being remembered _positively_ - I think I've seen it more on lists of 'weird' or 'unintentionally terrifying' ads, not lists of 'nostalgic' or 'iconic' ads. Now, it could be a coincidence, there's only two data points, but maybe 'depicting stuff getting crushed to advertise your product' is a bad idea?)
Back in the day, there was an ad that kind of did a similar thing for advertising Pokémon Red and Blue, where a bus driver gathered all 150 Pokémon and left them in a bus, and then proceeding to crush the bus, where it became a GameBoy with Pokémon. The difference between this and Apple's ad is that the Pokémon ad was a lot faster in compressing the creatures into the GameBoy (probably to fit within the 30 second ad frame) and still showing the same idea of you can do all of this with this tiny device.
YES! You got it exactly right!
I was watching the WAN show and I just can't agree with Linus position. The ad is not bad because it's trying to put all these tools and the iPad on one level, it is bad because it hurts every single artist who has to see their beloved tools destroyed before their eyes. It just hurts to see this ad.
It's not about the symbolism or anything deep. Just that seeing this destruction hurts...
The fact that everyone at Apple was so pleased with themselves that they released the ad to the public is hilarious, especially to non-Apple users. "Come here, darling, and all your little toys will be crushed to become one-a multi-thousand-dollar subscription technical prison."
Hell, the only reason I’m using an Apple anything right now is because my mom and dad bought a smart phone and we were still in that “Apple is so cool” era up until she died.
I’m grandmothered into this stupid brand.
Dunning-Kruger is probably an overused reference at this point, but all the condescending “you guys it’s just saying big things go small” takes on the palpable failure of this ad just scream “Mount Stupid” to me. The fact that they’re apologizing and pulling the ad should tell these Media Understanders something. Apple wanted to be cool and splashy, but the public saw the ugly reality of the side effects of big tech reflected in this ad. Especially considering what a weak payoff “iPad slightly thinner now so go buy another one” is for all the destruction p*rn they set it up with. Apple fell on their faces here, which should give us a glimmer of joy and hope. No they’re not the avant garde geniuses they pose as, they are dum dums just like the Muskrat.
I'm old enough to have been in the demographic who watched a busload of Pokemon being crushed in a hydraulic press, the result being the Gameboy Color, a much faster, more cartoonish example of this concept. But even then I was like, "This idea makes me feel uncomfortable and I don't know why exactly."
The first thing that freaked me out was how lifeless everything looked - at least with the Gameboy Color ad it was done in a cartoonishly colorful way where, even if you couldn’t see humans operating the machine, you could imagine they’re still there behind the scenes, planning this stuff out.
The Apple ad immediately made me think, “This building has been overrun by humanoid, cold androids that killed the human employees hired to oversee the next Apple phone.”
*'Hungry for Apples?'*
-Jerry Smith of Dimension 5126
For me it was the sketchbooks and cameras. Sketchbooks because I have so many filled ones, they are very personal, like a diary. Cameras because.... damn want one, they are so expensive! A good lens costs a fortune!
4:58 HPC has used 2 different main presses. A 150 tonne and a newer 300 tonne. NEITHER of these are what a normal person could even hope to get. They are extremely expensive, MASSIVE industrial machines.
It also stands out to me that some of the things destroyed, like the old tvs and the video game cabinet, are not made anymore. Perhaps the ones used weren’t actually old and were just props but it’s shown as destroying something impossible to replace. You can make new paint or new emoji toys or even a new camera but that old retro technology is something that can never be replaced.
9:39 i think there's also something to be said about how apple brands themselves as being committed to environmentalism with those new non-leather accessories they announced, and then turns around and destroys a bunch of stuff for no reason