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Comment by lionkor | Hacker News Reader

I like it. You throw away all your hard-earned, expensive instruments, tools, and crush them to be sure. You then go buy an iPad, and the circle is complete: You're now a next-generation Apple consumer! Just turn on YouTube kids and watch slime videos for the rest of your life.

Reject culture, consume the slop.

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We should be commending the honesty!

I thought Apple did a great job of providing an ad that makes a bold statement (which is the ultimate goal of advertising).

In other words, I think Apple crushed it (pun intended).

Did you watch the announcement event where on introducing the ad John Ternus made the same pun?

What's the bold statement? Throw away all those things, get an iPad instead which can "do everything" and is thinner?

I thought everyone could see the absurdity in there?

For me personally, crushing an upright piano is like Apple showing a middle finger to anyone who plays on a real piano.

Apple should go back to the ads where the bold statement is generic upbeat envato elements music and the only new feature in their new products: phone colors

>Reject culture, consume the slop.

Culture from the last 20 years has been the slop and the people complaining loudest here have been making the sloppiest slop of all.

> Culture from the last 20 years has been the slop and the people complaining loudest here have been making the sloppiest slop of all.

10 years, I would say. It went downhill somewhere around 2015-2016, imo.

It feels like this is the turning point when corporate social media giants found out that anger/depression are the easiest ways to increase engagement.

>It feels like this is the turning point when corporate social media giants found out that anger/depression are the easiest ways to increase engagement.

Rush Limbaugh figured this out in the 80s. He made lots of money and everyone followed suit.

Maybe you’re younger than I am, but I definitely feel like the introduction of the smart phone — and the iPhone on particular — was when things started to decline steeply.

Out of curiosity, why do you say the iPhone in particular? I think smart phone ubiquity, regardless of smart phone choice, is what has led to significant cultural changes (some positive, many negative). But I can't really think of a reason why the iPhone should get more blame than the Galaxy's and whatever other smart phones are out there.

I guess I feel that the iPhone was the innovator for a lot of things that are in use today, ultimately leading to the cultural fall.

For sure, today the iPhone is no more to blame than other smartphones. But the iPhone lead the charge, IMO.

And FWIW, I’ve only owned iPhones, so it’s not like I’m anti-iPhone. But perhaps I have unfair bias and am giving too much credit to Apple.

But just like this ad reinforces, I feel like their goal from the beginning was to replace these devices, destroying much of the culture that we used to know.

Smart phones were good until new age social networks, imo. Instagram, Tinder, new Facebook, new Vkontakte, etc. is where it went downhill.

Don't forget to take your ibuprofen.

Absolutely not, you can still go to theatres, concerts, etc. theres plenty of culture to be had

Apple is too skittish.

There’s no reason to apologize. It’s taking the ‘crushing carbon into diamonds metaphor’ and using it for their product.

In the beginning it looks over the top, ‘ultra violent’, but then it becomes a metaphor for how they view their product.

Now, sure, it’s preposterous to think that this diamond of a thing can be as good as all the real objects it replaces, but that’s advertising.

Even if so, that metaphor was not executed faithfully, and for a company like Apple that is bad.

But more so there is an unmistakeable 'destruction is cute' aspect to the ad that is uncalled for, that is what the reaction is toward.

I don’t know that it’s bad. I think it’s a fringe minority that think it’s bad. You’re always going to have people who dislike these kinds of ads.

To me it’s more a metamorphosis rather than authoritarianistic crushing of the spirit.

Lots of Super Bowl ads are of the ‘stupid, dumb, frat/soro’ variety. Some are a hit, some are duds.

Maybe they tried being to clever by half. Let the ad run out; no need to apologize though.

I don't know whether they have a reason to apologise or not. But... this ad is not doing what they wanted it to do. It's too heavy handed, it's too weak in its value proposition. It's just a bad ad. Compare it to the original introduction of the iPhone. Jobs just stated "we build a new phone, a new iPod and a new ?calendar?" [0] repeated that 5 times and asked "Do you get it?". The (implicit) statement was "you won't need any of those again". This message is what they aimed for with that ad. But instead of the (admittedly arrogant) prediction "YOU won't want any of those anymore", they went for "you can't use the other stuff anymore" [1]. And that just makes them look far, far weaker than e.g. the iPhone intro

[0] not sure about the last one [1] In German we'd say "alternativeless", which has a nice set of negative connotations nowadays

> In German we'd say "alternativeless"

Out of curiosity, what's the actual German word? (Or is that the actual word?)

alternativlos

If that was the intend an animation that doesn't literally crush things would have worked much better. Let it fall into a black hole and let an iPad emerge or whatever. The dramatic effect of a hydraulic press adds nothing positive.

Still less dystopian than the vision pro with a dad running around his kids with a walled-garden-camera-helmet.

Once may have been a mistake, twice means there's some psychopath marketing VP at the helm OR a joker trying to see far they can go before somebody actually watches ads they're doing before they go live.

Twice means this is really the company vision, not just a bad marketing officer.

There is no vision. All I’ve seen from Apple since Steve died is continued momentum in the same direction.

“What’s a computer?” Should count as one too. But back then we just scoffed at the idea that an iPad can replace a computer. Now somehow we are offended or even terrified by the same absurdity that an iPad can replace a real musical instrument.

I am both offended and terrified at the idea that an iPad should replace my computer

I feel like people were very much offended by the "what's a computer" ad too, at least on Reddit.

"psychopath marketing VP" - how do you build such a narrative?

Psychopath? Perhaps a stretch. Soulless? Absolutely. Probably not just VP but whole department if no one raised the voice and said guys, maybe people won't vibe with this.

I think there is a third option. Deliberate outrage.

People yelling at each other on twitter over your ad is free marketing. Tons of it.

I was giving them the slight benefit of the doubt for that one, the VP can consume 3D photos and they hadn’t released the new iPhone that can take those photos, so it was more of a derived situation to get the plot to “you can rewatch rewarding 3D movies you took”.

I do agree the test marketing groups are not providing good feedback about secondary interpretations…

Join the Apple ~~~jail~~~ ecosystem, or die.

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