What was there to apologize for? I guess good on them for responding in a respectful manner to all different viewpoints but it’s just an ad, not a political statement
What’s hilarious is that apologizing for it feels even more strange. Luke, I also thought the ad was a little tone deaf but it’s not the sort of thing that requires an apology.
It was a cool visual but I have to admit it felt wrong destroying all of the stuff for a cool visual. The iPad will never replace real world experiences. It can help produce art and music but real world objects can never be replaced by digital replicated ones. Using real paint, playing a real instrument, or playing an original arcade game is just not the same on an iPad. I love technology but certain thing can just not be replicated.
It was cool. There’s a reason the hydraulic process Chanel was wildly possible, it’s just cool to watch. And this ad idea was perfect for getting across the point that the new iPad is thinner, so it seems well thought out.
What are these people even complaining about anyway, CGI instruments getting crushed? wtf? I imagine that’s even part of the the ad: look at the CGI we can create, all in a much thinner package
Honestly I don't get why they apologized at all. This was a lame story yesterday. The apology stretches the story an extra day. Say nothing and nobody remembers the pearl-clutching next week.
Maybe it’s because I hate ads in general, but I don’t see what makes this one different than the other vapid ads forced on me. Seems no worse than them, so I don’t understand the uproar. Ads are frequently stupid and follow popular trends; big deal. You could have Scorsese direct a commercial and I’d still think it’s stupid.
There is a difference when you show things getting crushed „for science“ and showing basically a whole room of tools for creativity being crushed to replace it with a cold, flat digital device. Especially now that AI is threatening to replace many creative jobs, this is just bad timing. Ads are also statements.
I hope it was all CGI because my first thought was, what a waste of beautiful, fully intact things. I personally don’t like seeing those videos on Youtube either.
Some of us don’t like watching beloved musical instruments destroyed. We also don’t like how so many people think watching TikTok on an iPad is “music”.
When my father died, my sister didn’t give a shit about the house. She just wanted the guitar - which our father (a drummer) inherited when the lead guitarist in his band died. The guitarist had two dozen guitars but was his favourite.
It’s close to a century old, nobody knows what trade secrets the luthier who created it used to get that sound, and no other instrument sounds the same. It’s been used on stage in countless live performances on every continent in the world and has been used to record over a hundred songs in professional recording studios. It was used to play music at the funeral of both the previous owners and it’s literally impossible to replace.
I get it, not every instrument is that special… but this instrument wasn’t that special either when the first guitarist ever picked it up. Nearly all instruments have the potential to become that special… and Apple created a video dedicated to destroying a bunch of them while also implying that listening to an MP3 is as good as an actual instrument. No way.
They didn’t actually destroy them… it’s all CGI. And people are free to enjoy music how they feel. I’d rather listen to a streamed song from my phone while sitting on the train than sitting there playing my guitar… imagine 50 people in a train carriage all trying to play their own music.
Crushing the industry I work in, and my dad worked in, is CGI? I’m pretty sure that’s very real.
I love listening to digital music on as much as anyone. More than most people. But it will never replace physical instruments for me and I don’t like to see a company celebrating that transition - even if I admit it’s very much real.
I think the world was a better place when all 50 people on a train carriage listened to the one musician who brought a guitar onto the train and called out asking them to sing a favourite song next.
But it will never replace physical instruments for me
FOR YOU (and for what it’s worth for me as well). Meanwhile many more people will be introduced to music creation than they otherwise would have due to there being many more ways to do it now. Stop being a gatekeeper.
Do you really think paint cans are going to crush before a piano top? Absolutely no way. And to all burst at the same time?
Then there’s the guitar strings when they snap is way too unnatural. And the bouncing emoji ball just happens to escape and land perfectly at the edge.
Not to mention, no one has a 10m x 5m hydraulic press.
Because the way things crushed was a bit strange. No way the metal paint cans crushed before the wooden piano top. The bouncing emoji is also nothing that can be planned that perfectly.
I’m sure they had cuts, multiple takes, and staged things to get it to work. Maybe added in a bit of CGI. This just seems like one of those things though where CGI isn’t worth the cost when you can just film it. Also, they apologized. Why would they do that if it’s all CGI?
Because I watched it and it’s very clearly CGI. Paint cans are an order of magnitude stronger than a wooden piano top, not to mention they wouldn’t all explode at the same time. The emoji ball didn’t just land at the edge. No one has a 10mx5m hydraulic press.
Originally I watched the ad and couldn’t see what was wrong with it (from the perspective of a relatively isolated software developer).
However the top comment on the Verge summed it up in a way I understood, making comparisons to the crushing of various creative devices in the ad (instruments, cameras, paints etc) and the current creative landscape in reality (game studios, music production etc).
With that in mind, the timing is pretty poor IMO and feels quite insensitive to creative individuals
You have basically described how everyone who has seen the ad cannot understand the concepts of nuance or metaphor, for these are not what they criticize.
Don’t get me wrong: I don’t like the ad, either, mostly just because I don’t like ads in general. I just find this one pretentious redirect once again, and I’m bored. It tries to cram a tired message into an overwrought concept so they can avoid saying the same thing for the 20th time: it’s a bit faster and does bit more than the previous model.
But just because the ad is dumb and boring and overwrought doesn’t mean that some of these rather absurd criticisms are valid, either. Hugh Grant criticized it as a ‘destruction of the human experience’.
Really
sigh
Edit: I want to explain this further—
The ad tried to employ the visual metaphor of “constructive destruction” in that they were distilling that closet/room full of creative hardware into the iPad— but so much focus was on the destruction of it all and so little on the results of that “distillation” that the ad just comes of communicating that the new iPads are fucking dreamkillers. Hard sell! Or that all of your hard work or that all of the “real tools” that creatives break their backs with are meaningless nothings to Apple… lots of bad symbolism there.
Apple (or their ad agency) was likely going for the fruit > blender > delicious smoothie visual metaphor and missed by a lightyear. My brothers and sisters in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, people are getting fired over this. Wow.
Yeah there was a compress all your favorites into the device bit, and cashing in on the semi-current trend of check out how cool it is to crush stuff bit, and they just didn’t connect.
It boils down to this: the ad was a visually detailed and drawn out destruction of things some people like and are not easily replaced. These are physical objects that people genuinely have emotional attachments to. So it’s musicians and photographers who probably had the strongest visceral response: the type of people who kept obsolete devices past their obsolescence because that was the physical artifact of the thing they learned their craft on.
I know software developers who would’ve had the same visceral reaction to a Commodore 64 or Apple II or NES being slowly destroyed. Or even other gadgets that people loved, from a Walkman to an iPod to a Tamagotchi to original iPhone.
It’s not like the scene from Office Space where there’s visceral disgust for the thing being destroyed, but precisely the opposite emotions involved.
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