'Destruction of the human experience': Apple iPad ad prompts online backlash | Hacker News Reader

'Destruction of the human experience': Apple iPad ad prompts online backlash

theguardian.com

13 pointsphilk1014 comments

The observation that this ad is a bookend to the classic 1984 ad is interesting, in 1984 Apple is destroying a screen and freeing people to work on creative, human expression. Meanwhile in the M4 iPad ad, they're crushing the tools of creative human expression into a screen.

Edit: I bet the reaction to this would have been completely different if it was a cartoon instead of real life commercial.

Yeah there's no problem with the general concept of the ad, and a cartoonish squish solves that. But they wanted dramatic images of destruction because it looks cool or whatever, without thinking that it's really odd and dissonant to feature a bunch of creative tools being destroyed in an ad which is ostensibly meant to celebrate and encourage creativity.

They are not destroyed, this is a framing of those that want to produce outrage. These things are compacted into a iPad.

It's pretty obvious the items in the advertisement are being destroyed. The message is that they were compacted into an ipad, but if like the vast majority of the population you don't think an ipad is a replacement for those items, they were destroyed and replaced with something worse.

I don't see how its worse. All the stuff compacted would cost 10000s and take up an enormous amount of space.

Replacement/alternative. This is just whining around the meme of smashing stuff in a press.

Outrage is lame.

What they should / could have done: Through the Looking Glass:

Start with an extreme close-up on the implements of human creativity. Pan across the paints, the instruments, canvas, start to zoom out... You keep zooming out until your viewpoint moves away back out through the surface of the screen. The screen tilts away from the viewer until it shows the iPad edge on.

Hmmm... Matrix references aside, that might be creepier. Captivity instead of creativity compressed.

Apple essentially wants to destroy those objects because it can't charge rents for them, but only for the electronic simulacras it offers.

The ad is kind of pretty and gently amusing. In the grand scheme of "offensive adverts" this doesn't wiggle the needle. I'm suspecting this is more likely a thinly veiled hype from Apple, or just a result of Apple being polarizing.

Could of used "welcome to de heedrolic press channel'

Whenever I see backlash like this I always wonder if the marketing company is thinking dangit or mission accomplished.

Apple works very hard to cultivate an image of "our users are hip, cool, creative, and free." Apple also specifically avoids controversy often going out of their way to take non-positions, so to speak. At that level, no advertiser should take the maintenance of that image lightly for what would be a cheap bump in the discussion trends.

That'd be my guess, at least. I imagine we'll know if we see the ad pulled (if it hasn't been already).

Probably both... However, the last several Apple ads have been tone deaf.

I would have gone with a synthesis approach. Say teleporting the items and "quantumly mixing" them into the new ipad.

The ad does seem very tone deaf. It looks like they were going for “thinness” with the hydraulic press, but the ad instead evokes “destruction.” Apple’s brand has never tried to be about destruction, particularly the destruction of creative things, so it feels like a pretty big mistake.

Kinda sad

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