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Comment by yousif_123123 | Hacker News Reader

I didn't like the ad. I think the people creating it wanted to imply that it's as if they took all these things and put it in an iPad, where you can still achieve all the creativity while carrying a thin device.

I don't think it's impossible to convey that message without destroying instruments and creative tools that are precious to so many. Maybe if they had made the animation very fast it would've appeared as a joke and not something intended to be taken literally.

Also could've had some artist exit a studio, take the iPad, do a whole bunch of stuff, then go back to the studio and kind of test out/use the tools while reading from the iPad or something like that.

I know some people are saying the reaction is too strong, but trust me if you practice on a piano daily you will not feel good watching it get crushed.

I don't even work in marketing or own any Apple devices.

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The original idea is sound: "we are squeezing all tools into the iPad".

The problem is that you can't squeeze an object without resorting to animation. So instead they went for crushing, which carries destructive undertones. A lot of people have strong emotional attachments to objects like pianos and vinyl players; destroying them is a powerful trigger.

If this had been done with animation, with some djinn magically squeezing everything into an iPad, it would have been just fine.

This said, there is no such thing as bad publicity - here we are, talking about the umpteenth version of a product we would otherwise take for granted. The ad might have been distasteful but it did the job.

There definitely is such a thing as bad publicity, I wish people would stop using that phrase to make dumb things sound smart. Of all the companies out there, Apple definitely doesn’t want to trade on negative sentiment, it clashes with their overall brand strategy. In particular this iPad Pro launch is riskier than normal, given that it has brand new screen tech and is the thinnest device they’ve ever made, and it’s possible they pulled this commercial to avoid creating associations between this iPad and the act of “crushing” things.

Furthermore I doubt that anyone on HN (except like 2 people who will definitely reply to this comment) who didn’t know about the new iPad Pro before this commericial learned about it from this post.

Allow me to be the first of the two to announce themselves.

I agree, though. Although I only learned of the product because of the outrage over the ad, it certainly hasn't moved me toward wanting to purchase one. And I'll actually be in the market for a tablet in a few months.

#2 checking in. I pay almost zero attention to what Apple does. I'll pay attention if they start allowing Mozilla to ship add-ons with Firefox so I can run adblock on mobile like on Firefox!

You can run ad-blockers on iOS Safari (they're called "Content Blockers", I use Firefox Focus's) granted you're still stuck with Safari/WebKit for the time being.

And although it's not Firefox, the Orion browser from Kagi supports Chrome and Firefox add-ons on iOS.

That's interesting! Does it work well, e.g. on YouTube ads?

#3 of a vast number: I don't pay attention to what Apple does, choose not to own any Apple products even though I do respect their technology, particularly Apple Silicon; would not have been aware of a launch of a new iPad if it weren't for this controversy.

Yep, I had considered getting an iPad. I probably wouldn't have, this doesn't prevent me bur it is a point in another directiom. Things like the Minis Forum V3 give me more options and the company knows "how to read the room".

More people know about iPad released a thinner version now than before the controversy.

Mission accomplished.

There is really no such thing as bad publicity.

Number of people who will stop buying Apple products due to this Ad : ZERO

Number of people who are aware of iPad Thin due to controversy : > ZERO

A small number of people shit on Apple/Google/Meta/Amazon all the time for every little thing

Edit : HN crowd downvoting a marketing concept. I must be right!

I disagree. I own zero apple products but pretty soon I will be purchasing a tablet for the kids.

I was looking at ipads, but this ad and the comments have reminded me why I dont like putting money in Apples pockets. So I shall definitely be buying android when I buy one.

I have a lot of Apple products, but my recent work projects on Android have brought me around a bit on the Pixel line; if I had to switch to Pixel I wouldn’t be mad (though I don’t intend on doing that any time soon). With that being said, I don’t know of any Android tablets that match the iPad in terms of quality or performance, and I’ve been watching the market closely for years (I would love a tablet I can do real programming work on). What Android tablet are you looking at?

Have you tried the Pixel Tablet? I'm on the fence mainly because I have very few tablet needs and my Samsung S6 Lite has been wonderful, but I love the idea of docked mode where it becomes a Google Home. It makes it incredibly useful as both a desk companion (love getting meeting notifications and such on a screen liek that), an alarm clock, a digital photo frame, a music player, a quick way to see my doorbell camera, etc.

I like the look of Lenovo Tab P11 or P12 etc

"No such thing as bad publicity" directly implies that brand goodwill doesn't have a tangible dollar value.

This is false, not least because this is something companies declare on financial reports.

Since my argument is “there is such a thing as bad publicity and I will die on this hill”, I’m going to shift from this sloppy ad rollout to an example that I think proves my case (that bad publicity is a thing that exists) pretty definitively.

Although it no doubt produced tons of brand awareness among people who had never heard of them, I doubt that the folks at Humane AI would argue that the recent flood of bad reviews or even the backlash against the bad reviews were helpful to them in the long term. Like sure, tons of people know about them now, perhaps they even sold a pin or two to the folks who heard about them through the controversy. But there’s a good chance they may not be able to stay solvent as a company long enough to actually capitalize on their increased brand recognition.

I agree with most of your comments here, but I actually don't think the Humane AI stuff is a good example.

By all accounts, the new iPad Pro is a good, solid product. The problem is that people don't like the ad.

The problem with Humane AI is not really "bad PR", it's fundamentally bad products. Or perhaps to put it a little more generously: as has been very common of late in the tech world, the Humane AI products are technologically interesting marvels that solve literally 0 problems people actually have and are basically worse in every way compared to a smart phone.

That is, the iPad Pro's problem is really just the PR. No amount of good PR could save Humane AI's products.

“Is there such a thing as Bad Publicity” would make for a good freakanomics podcast episode.

My 2c: when that addage was first coined, public outrage was much harder to mobilize.

Social media and globalization work hand in hand to make it easier for people to have an outsized impact.

Two recent instances I can think of: Budweiser and US campus protests regarding the war in Gaza.

The budweiser thing should dispel the phrase once and for all. They lost over a billion in sales apparently

I feel like it’s pretty easy to disprove. I mentioned Humane AI in another comment, so here I’ll use a different and more flamboyant example: the 2019 movie Cats.

After putting $85-110M into the production of the movie, Universal released a trailer that went super viral and had every person on the internet talking about how terrible it looked. When the movie actually came out there was a second viral wave of gawking. Did this drive tons of people to the theater so they revel in the movie’s epic badness for themselves? No, the movie (which had over a dozen stars and was based on a hit musical that is popular around the world) failed to make back its budget at the box office. For reference (in case someone tries to pull the “maybe it would’ve made less money without the negative publicity” card) Tom Hooper’s previous movie musical Les Miserables earned $442M on a $61M budget.

Sources:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cats_(2019_film)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables_(2012_film...

The fat lady has not sung yet - terrible movies often become cult hits once they are "rediscovered" for their badness and prices go down. I wouldn't be surprised if Cats eventually became a streaming staple.

I expect the majority of people really aren't bothered about this though - just a vocal minority, so although maybe a bad ad for some, I expect the benefits of the publicity of this ad far outweight the downsides.

I wouldn't have paid any attention to a new iPad launch or known that it was the thinnest one yet, without this 'bad' press.

If anything, I'd say I'd be more likely to purchase a new iPad as a result

A vocal minority of artists and creatives who are precious about the tactile and aesthetic experiences of using the tools of their trades could also be called “Apple’s target market for the iPad Pro.” So Apple would definitely need to care about the sentiments their ads engender.

The publicity might be a short term win but there is a dangerous narrative for Apple that it feeds: that they are no longer a design-obsessed company that prizes art and creativity and channels that obsession to build the best products.

Also: Products version 15 are boring and the only way it generated awareness was through bad press, not features.

Totally agree. The people saying "but now we're talking about the iPad, mission accomplished!" isn't even marketing 101 grade.

Like saying that using the color red makes people think of a stop sign, so they won't buy your product.

>There definitely is such a thing as bad publicity, I wish people would stop using that phrase

the phrase "there's no such thing as bad PR" is meant to make you realize that there's more to PR than you... realize. It's in the style of something like a Buddhist koan. it's not meant to be taken literally or to an extreme. It's not a proof but it does describe a real phenomenon. You can't reject the phrase without rejecting its wisdom.

I hope, on that hill, you don't die as you plan to. Because you are very literal, aren't you.

Exactly. This saying is much like Confucius famous sayings in that you have to think it through, trying it both literally and symbolically, and move several steps forward logically to try and understand the wisdom it is conveying.

It's not saying literally that no publicity can ever be bad. That's obviously not true and is easily disproven nearly every single day by current events. It's a broader conveyance of truth regarding the difficulty of getting noticed in a world crowded with content. Even if it's "bad publicity" there are still benefits of becoming more well known, for example. Apple is one of the few companies where that probably won't help, but it doesn't "disprove" the saying and mean we should reject it.

I don't understand what you are responding to. The GP comment never said anything about "dying on a hill" or being overly literal. They weren't making some grand pronouncement that there's no wisdom behind the "there's no such thing as bad PR" saying. They just pointed out that in this specific case that the bad PR is most definitely undesired and not a net benefit, and that the "no such thing as bad PR" phrase is often overused in places where it's not warranted as a sort of lazy "sure, this is fine!" explanation.

one of his other comments did say it was a hill he was going to die on, which is "a saying", as "there's no such thing as bad PR" is a saying.

My issue is that people take the idea that “bad PR” can actually be good for a company (which is common knowledge these days) and just stop there. They don’t go a step further and contemplate where the phrase applies, where it doesn’t, and what makes those situations different. They just bend over backwards and try to figure out the way it applies in every situation (even if in reality, it doesn’t). It’s that line of thinking that I find annoying.

I think the phrase has outlived its usefulness. Nowadays when I see it used it’s often in exactly the kind of extreme or overly literal way you yourself criticize.

Bad PR works on controversial things, for example if someone wants to sell courses to become “Alpha Male”. People who are into that become suddenly aware of it.

Apple ad isn’t controversial because people react indifferent at best and very negative at worst. Everyone already knows what an ipad is.

Let's be honest here: people are going to watch the video on their iPhone, fleetingly think "well that's a weird ad, really did not like that..." and then move onto something else on their iPhone. Apple has been untouchable for many years now. Basically Trump "I can shoot a man on 5th Avenue and people will still vote for me" level

There is absolutely bad publicity when you already have the world's most valuable brand (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_valuable_brands)

> If this had been done with animation, with some djinn magically squeezing everything into an iPad, it would have been just fine.

It already was an animation. So they could have taken your approach instead.

Have you confirmed there are no practical effects in this — definitely it seemed like a lot had to be animated from the timing of events, to cutesy thinks like the smile ball squeeze.

Like if this was hand drawn animation, would anyone care? I think people think real instruments (even ones that were junk, ie old pianos are worthless) were destroyed.

Do you have a source that it was animated or are you just making it up to sound smarter?

I was replying to the previous posters who said it was already animation. There certainly is some animation at play but was wondering of the mix of practical effects and CGI.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some practical effects at play but it honestly looked too simplified to be real. Crushing a lot of stuff like that would be messy and ugly. Also unsafe with things like broken metal and shattered glass. It’s feels more like CGI. And personally I think that would be the better way to do it. As someone who’s watched a weirdly high number of YouTube videos of things getting crushed by presses, it’s not pretty like that video was.

If, and if think that’s a big if that was mainly practical effects, then those props would almost certainly be fake instruments made from different materials that crush in more visually appealing ways.

The creative tools just had to be sucked in like a wormhole. It's just surprising it got this far without someone intervening. Shows that someone high up couldn't be backed down.

Exactly. Part of the reason this is news is that this in an incredibly obvious and rare own goal on Apple marketing's part.

To the extent that someone high up who greenlit it should be fired.

How do you know...

   - Creatives are a target customer
   - Creatives are concerned about AI
   - Everyone is concerned about AI

... and possibly approve a literal machine crushing (in slow motion detail!) instruments of human creativity?!

That'd be like making a tobacco ad that features a pair of lungs aging...

When your Brand is as valuable as Apple or Boeing, bad publicity is a thing.

They don't need to be known, but they need to maintain the positive values associated with their brand.

The Apple brand is their most valuable asset, they probably destroyed billions in brand value with the shitstorm around this horribly distasteful ad.

> they probably destroyed billions in brand value

So go short AAPL, Jim Cramer. My bold prediction is this ad does diddly to their bottom line. You really think people are going to boycott Apple over it?

I am not talking about stock, here.

Stock is short-sighted, and I don't expect any boycott.

The consequences of the slow degradation of a brand are measured in decades.

If you take a look at the Vision Pro, they didn't expect selling them like hot cakes, given the price, but from what I've heard they still missed their projections, by a long shot.

This pattern will repeat, one failed or tepid product launch at a time, eroding confidence, and ultimately, yes, the stock will plunge.

You're reading tea leaves now. Meanwhile Apple has actually measurable problems like plummeting iPhone sales in China, and I guarantee that's not because of a stupid ad.

To be clear, I don't think the ad itself is the issue, I think this is pretty benign given their scale.

But I think they have a leadership problem. Tim Cook is a glorified bean counter, not a creator, not a visionary, and it shows.

I know that most people are looking at the stock and will say that everything is fine. Sure. I am looking at the products, and except for M series of SoC, this is all boring.

Apple's valuation is up over 1000% since Tim Cook became CEO. His greatest failing is that he isn't Steve Jobs, but most corporations would literally kill to have a bean counter like Tim Cook. Yes, he's in the hot seat, and Wall Street is very "What have you done for me today?", but I don't see shareholders calling for his head.

All empires fall, but today is not that day for Apple.

> Apple's valuation is up over 1000% since Tim Cook became CEO

GE's valuation was up ~4500% during Jack Welch's tenure as CEO.

You two are talking about separate things.

Parent is talking about brand goodwill.

You're talking about revenue.

The two are different, but not unrelated. One reason Apple can run the margins and move the product that it does is because it's Apple. If it were "random company" and didn't benefit from its RDF, those numbers wouldn't be sustainable.

Which, in a nutshell, is the Tim Cook problem -- you can make all the sales numbers go in the right direction, but that's not the product magic that Apple has historically benefited from (and been valued at).

Executive dysfunction seems the root issue. Tim, Phil, and Craig have been running on Steve and Jony's fumes for years, and now have no ideas beyond incrementing numbers and buying back stock. It's like ol' Gil all over again.

Apple is the default choice for grandparents again, but they don't even have the schools anymore (Google conquered edu with Chromebooks).

I am not getting such horrible vibes from the ad.

Maybe the strongest sense is that the iPad comes from the island of broken toys?

Slightly less emphatic but more sinister is that an iPad cannot help but involve itself in the destruction of the arts.

I do agree that the ad does not have any observable moral upside, and it was a mistake to run it.

But then again, if Apple did have a YouTube collection of ads that they chose not to run and discussion of why, it might be easier to trust them. They are so opaque at the moment that trust is a very big ask.

>Stock is short-sighted

stock is not short sighted. It does react quickly to information (which means it was too late to short a while ago) but to think that you can make money by not buying stock now, but waiting to buy it at another time is really terrible advice, and it's been refuted.

To believe that stock is short-sighted is to believe that investers as a group are dumber than you are because they've put their money into the market but you know better.

> To believe that stock is short-sighted is to believe that investers as a group are dumber than you are because they've put their money into the market but you know better.

There is a saying you may not be familiar with, "Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."

what's your definition of irrational?...

the market doesn't know the future, it just incorporates current knowledge and opinion. Is AI a bubble right now? the vast riches afforded those who make the right call when AI is ready is justification enough for current enthusiasm, no irrationality needs to be hypothesized. And like people who lost their bet on the 49ers to win the Superbowl, there's no reason to posit irrationality if a bet doesn't pay.

The stock market, or any kind of market really, is nothing else than a huge distributed pricing machine.

It is incredibly good at doing that. But it is short sighted. It is able to integrate risks to some extent, on a short time scale, but it is very bad at processing second or third order effects, and can't do strategy.

In other words, the famous invisible hand is completely unable to predict the future.

Humans are also notoriously bad at that, but still better. This is why we have states and CEOs.

at the beginning of every day, the market has a greater probability of going up than down, and a risk adjusted positive expected value (which is a different thing)

Therefore, your money should always be "in the market", not out of the market. Therefore, it's very difficult to make the case that the market is short sighted. I think what you are trying to say is that immediate risks are better understood than longer term, so the more distant future has higher volatility.

I would not bet against any company on the basis of people whinging on the internet unless it's about their actual product or service being bad at it's job. (e.g. Humane and Rabbit are probably doomed)

Consider that when talking about something measured in decades the examples that come to mind are things people said in the last few weeks. But what were people talking about a decade ago? Which of those things actually reflected the long term trajectory of the company?

My Gen A son enjoys his Meta Quest and jokes about the Vision Pro.

I love the name play with "If it's Boeing, I'm not going".

Waiting for something like that for Apple. Let me get my popcorn...

How about “causing walled garden headaches since Eden”

Doesn’t really ring, no rhyming bling…

It does in native Ayapaneco

Translating poetry is tricky at best…worse if transliteration and cross-cultural currents pull in multiple directions…

Maybe "crapple" ...

"If it's Apple, it's crapple" was my first stab as well. Just didn't have the same je ne sais quoi to me about it though.

The app'll work best with genuine apple handcuffs.

I do like the direction this started if not the finish

What's tragic is that it was originally coined "If it ain't boing, I ain't going" back when their brand stood for quality.

But that's the history that makes the flipping of the script so stark. Anybody embedded deeply enough in the company should be aware of that exact loss of reputation.

And if the company fails to know its own history well enough that even they are missing the point that speaks volumes about how they value institutional knowledge.

No need to destroy. They could have definitely merged the items like a rainbow melting all into the iPad. Those visuals are pretty common.

That would have have looked nice, but it wouldn't have touched people.

This is very graphic and elicits a much stronger emotion. I think that's why it was chosen.

The irony is that it know kind of feels like more honest then it's supposed to be, digital tools crushing tradition artistry.

That “unintended” honesty may be too close to home, and been a catalyst to the outrage.

I mentioned in another thread, if they showed AI “crushing” the artist (ie replacing) that would have been the powder keg.

> The original idea is sound: "we are squeezing all tools into the iPad".

Hard disagree. Yes, I do agree that a big part of the emotional reaction to the ad were seeing all these beloved tools of craftsmanship being destroyed.

But another underlying current is people reaching the conclusion that they do not want all of their individual, sometimes quirky tools being subsumed under a single flat silicon panel. I'll just speak for myself, but I often find myself craving more real, physical interaction and not just something that exists on a screen.

Some of us actually crave a little more of the chaotic, interesting world of WALL-E over the sleek perfection of EVE (which was, somewhat unsurprisingly, reviewed and blessed by Jonathan Ive).

> The original idea is sound: "we are squeezing

Really? I wonder how it got titled Crush! then.

> The problem is that you can't squeeze an object without resorting to animation.

Not a problem. The ad isn't short of animation.

> there is no such thing as bad publicity

I's say the apology shows Apple disagrees.

There is a growing backlash against technology and its harmful effects though. People are rightfully getting suspicious about that handful of tech companies and their intentions. Few are willing to give up on technology, nor should they as it's futile to fight progress, but the debate and guard rails are being shaped, and the tone deafness of some of these big technology companies is not helping their cause.

The astronomical user base of companies like Google and Apple should not be an indicator about the actual goodwill of people towards these brands. Getting away with something does not mean your behaviour isn't causing increasing animosity and feeding general discontentment.

The video is cool, but yeah, watching all these great items being crushed, is wow.

There is no such thing as bad publicity when you are not yet established. When you are already a recognized and popular brand, such as Apple or AB InBev, it can hurt revenue, such as how AB InBev suffered from lower revenue following their own advertisement backlash.

This exactly. There are many other ways to express "squeezing into one" but both bizarrely and shockingly Apple (or whichever ad agency) went for "crushing with hydraulic press" instead. How did everyone miss on the negative undertone before this ad was released?

Could be extrapolating this incident too much but it feels it encapsulates the transformation of Apple from this quirky, unconventional upstart into a monopolistic leviathan the past 2 decades. There's also a sense of hubris at suggesting your single electronic device can replace all those creative tools.

A djinni with Tim Apple's face would be funny. Comes out of a home pod and magics the whole recording studio into an iPad. Probably too whimsical for an Apple's taste though.

It is also a false equivalence.

An iPad will never replicate the beauty of a human playing a piano or a violin.

It’s dumb consumerism trying to make us believe that life comes down to buying rather than living.

> An iPad will never replicate the beauty of a human playing a piano or a violin.

I mean, one of its primary uses is to replicate the beauty of a human playing piano or violin via videos and recordings.

Aside from that, isn’t this just an appeal to tradition? An iPad is a tool just like a piano or the violin, people make beautiful music with them all the time.

I am sure there were curmudgeons saying that the piano and violin would never replicate the beauty of the human voice when they were the top technology of the day.

They might make beautiful music but not beautiful piano music. The piano must exist in order to be recorded into the ipad, and recording isn't unique to ipads. You could play the piano samples via midi from the ipad but hundreds of other devices can also do that and that still wouldn't replicate from the player's perspective, actually playing a piano or and audiences experience of actually hearing a piano.

I don't personally play an instrument, but I can also understand that the physicality of keys, strings and pedals is innately different from tapping on a glass screen. A digital piano aims to replicate the sound a specific piano, and provide a piano-inspired interface for playing it.

A real piano is a big single use device, in theory yeah, but I imagine for the people playing it the direct control over the things making the sound that is irreplaceable. There's things that will always be impossible on a VST instrument because it's construction (Prepared Piano [0]), and vice versa [1]. They seem like two different avenues of artistic expression to me.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepared_piano [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesizer

> They seem like two different avenues of artistic expression to me

I agree completely, this is the point I was trying to make.

People are treating the iPad and the piano as fundamentally different despite both being tools that are equally as capable of making beautiful music in the hands of a talented musician in my eyes.

It’s for this reason I have a minstrel that follows me everywhere. There’s really no substitute for the original analog sound - it’s warmness and the subtle imperfections of the original - can’t be substituted with a consumer device manufactured by a soulless megacorp. It does become problematic on flights as the imperialist cryptofascist lackies of capitalism require my minstrel buy a full ticket and doesn’t let her play my tunes on the flight. People at work get pretty irritated and complain about flow and focus and whatnot and keep insisting I submit to the consumerist mediocrity of a sound cancelling headphone - and I’ve tried in honesty to build a portable sound proof booth with an ear trumpet attached but it’s kind of bulky and I’m not really that handy with tools to begin with. It was also really hard to get a badge for the minstrel but eventually HR just gave me a neurodiversity exemption and classified her as a support animal, which in my opinion is kind of sexist but there’s only so many things one can get outraged about. The real issue is that a single instrument is kind of insufficient to fully capture a wider range of sound and experience so I’ve been trying to figure out how to pull off a quartet - really some of the best music is done by a four piece band anyway - but the above problems just seem to get worse but I’m sure I’ll figure out how to scale this solution.

Minstrels are also useful in the event you travel through the frozen land of Nador.

Minstrel "music" is perhaps problematic itself. On the one hand, you have music as an emergent property of the gathered individuals' culture and skills. That blurs when a tavern sings to a traveling minstrel rather than a neighbor. But professionals can enhance rather than displace. Consider European acting troupes traveling a US West steeped in discussion of Shakespeare. Or printed "poems" to be spread and read in support of real spoken poetry. And minstrels do collaborate with local players... but they can also displace. Something is lost to a community when the local kid or elder can no longer make a bit of money piping in the harvest. Or neighbors play the gather fiddles. When music becomes for a community a spectator sport, rather than something embedded. A train car singing together, versus an occasional platform busker. Like trust-fund kids who see strength of knowledge and skills as something to buy not build in themselves. Or a merchant who doesn't value strength of body for farming. And then there's the my-tower-is-taller-than-yours of court "professional music". With richly textured diversity, complexity, nuance, and surprise consequences, these can be hard to think and discuss clearly. Like struggling now to appreciate the impoverished isolation of people's un-musical experience of tunes before AR's ambient-rendezvous-and-collaborate jamming apps.

And really it’s turtles all the way down. That’s why I’m considering joining a hunter gatherer tribe that’s never had contact with the modern world. As I worked through the profession of institutional oppression of the natural state of man I realized there’s no other option. I just hope I don’t wipe them out with my imperialist diseases - the least of which is the social cultural ones of modern consumerist capitalism!

(In all seriousness I do agree btw, there’s value and worth in all the art and forms of art we’ve created … but I’m reacting a bit to the “one step backward in historical progression is the pinnacle of achievement” … plus I have to say I’m pretty impressed with the visual and cinematic quality of the Apple ad itself and find the contextual outrage a bit weird - comparing it to the Ridley Scott ad is wild too - not every creation has to be an iconic achievement of a master, but is untrue this particular ad wasn’t interesting and well executed and I feel bad for the creative crew that developed and produced it)

Excuse me, but real musicians use butterflies. They open their hands and let the delicate wings flap once. The disturbance ripples outward, eventually producing a freak weather event which sounds out an awesome cacophony carefully honed to activate homo sapiens' most dormant primal instincts for rage, love, mourning, and triumph.

Anything less is a crude shortcut afforded us by our decadent culture of consumption.

>Aside from that, isn’t this just an appeal to tradition?

No. It's an appeal to something that is eternally true.

> I mean, one of its primary uses is to replicate the beauty of a human playing piano or violin via videos and recordings.

Videos and recordings don't actually replicate those things. They approximate them. Recordings leave out tons of really important expression.

I am quite confident that a skilled musician with an iPad (or, even more obviously, an electric keyboard with a MIDI cable to the iPad) can create music that is indistinguishable from a human playing a piano. The synthesizer will be able to replicate the sound of the best concert grand in the best auditorium, direct to your studio headphones.

I'm also quite sure even unskilled musicians will prefer the feel of practicing and playing on a slightly out-of-tune old upright to a cheap electric synth-action keyboard or (ugh) a glass touchscreen.

It's just a tool.

> I am quite confident that a skilled musician with an iPad (or, even more obviously, an electric keyboard with a MIDI cable to the iPad) can create music that is indistinguishable from a human playing a piano. The synthesizer will be able to replicate the sound of the best concert grand in the best auditorium, direct to your studio headphones.

Perhaps this is true, but it is entirely limited to replicating a _recording_ of the instrument. An iPad cannot replicate (or even come close to) the sound of a human playing a piano that you hear in person.

are there actually any good piano sample libraries on ipad? the ios music ecosystem is pretty dire

Best would be pianoteq, but let's be serious, nothing will come close to an acoustic piano. After for YouTube consumption and for the mass, yeah, it will be good enough, afterall most people don't realize that Rousseau is/was not only a team but rearranging midi for their output and still are playing poorly.

Have you ever listened to the difference between a piano and a digital keyboard? The difference is night and day. Digital tech can only imitate the sound of a string piano, but it can never truly be the real thing.

its like smelling fresh apple pie vs smelling an apple pie car freshener. The idea gets across, but it can never be the same.

I'm a hobby musician and let me tell you that I can hear digital instruments and to me they sound like "they cheaped out on hiring some guy to actually play this"

That can be said for most of all tech companies who are just trying to sell you shiny app that will supposedly fix all your problems.

Also all of the artistic stuff they crush will still work in 5, 10, 50, or more years.

Especially without subscriptions.

Apple's destruction of the real and of tradition is also a bid against longevity and ownership.

And now through this global marketing effort, everyone who proudly displays apple gear is complicit in their desire to crush tangible media.

I think we're supposed to believe the human plays the tablet as beautifully as s/he plays a violin.

Might boost sales to everyone who has never heard a violin...

I'm actually surprised how fake the fake violins still sound.

I would have preferred the reverse of crushing our tools into something. I would have preferred pulling them out of the iPad to create. As a d&d fan, I could imagine a bard with a black hole pulling instruments and creative tools out in order to render magic.

I felt like I was watching the end of Terminator 1 when watching that iPad commercial.

I saw a tweet that did exactly that, reversed the ad. The subtext was really different.

Some filmmaker just ran the video backwards and it worked so much better

Backwards: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XYB6JJoDSuk

That is, hilariously, an excellent ad.

It's gotta sting when someone says "No, actually just reversing your terrible thing makes a wonderful thing. Didn't you think of that?"

The funny thing is that reversing the ad doesn't change the fact that all those things were destroyed. If people like the reversed version it means they actually never cared about the destruction in the first place

Obviously no one cared about the literal destruction but the message it was sending. Pianos are destroyed all the time

>obviously no one

reading just this HN submission's replies begs ti differ

> they actually never cared about the destruction in the first place

For the most part, they don't. I think what people are reacting to is the perceived symbolism of the whole thing. Reversing the video in this case is kind of reversing the symbolism to something more like what I assume Apple was going for in the first place.

Jesus, of course nobody cares about that specific piano. Are you one of those “kids in Africa could’ve rate that destroyed piano” type of people?

It’s a metaphor.

Maybe instead if being arrogant and condescending read the very comment section you are partecipating in to see plenty of people saying just that

It is really amazing the difference in emotional impact. Nicely done in super hi def! Thanks for this.

It's also wild how much more the reverse version feels like an Apple ad over the original.

is why I think Tim needs to get a forceful visionary as head of both design and marketing...the 2 departments where there seems to be a ton of turnover. Would this ad have passed muster w/ people like Katie Cotton/Lee Clough? At the very least, have someone w/ a better sense of this be the final editor before releasing...

> I don't think it's impossible to convey that message without destroying instruments and creative tools that are precious to so many.

This is how I felt seeing rock musicians destroying perfectly good instruments and amps. Growing up my parents didn't have the money to buy me a guitar (or didn't want to buy me one), so I would see these performances and would just think, can't they just donate that guitar to some poor kid or a school instead of destroying them? It really annoyed me, but it didn't stop me from loving the band and their music. I'm a late Gen-Xer and watching Nirvana destroy the stage after a performance just made me go "aw, those were good instruments someone else could have used". I don't know if it's "cool" to do that anymore, but I never see any other artists calling that out like they are for this ad, and it's been going on since the 70s.

Interesting point. The Clash even celebrated the destruction of instruments on the cover of London Calling (the cover being a photo of their bassist smashing his bass). And though the Apple ad seems like it’s trying to convey they idea that all these devices are within the iPad, the smashing of instruments and equipment by rockers seems to just be about…reveling in the destruction of instruments and equipment.

You see this in other art as well. For example, the Dadaists took a lot of functional tools, messed them up, and displayed them as art. Moving beyond art, destruction that accompanies political unrest is often dismissed.

It’s interesting that the Apple ad is what touched off this discussion, because it’s actually fairly tame with regards to a lot of intentional destruction of equipment.

Why not show all of these objects being put into a magicians top-hat and then pulling out the iPad at the end?

Because that would have been too 2001 and the ad company paid for this couldn't have justified it's budget like that.

Or have a giant scale, show people loading all this stuff into one side of the scale, and then placing the iPad on the other side, and the iPad side sinks. There's a million ways to do this idea

Agreed. I was thinking along the same lines. Some Wonka-like contraption where all this on-going creativity in a room was captured, fed into a whimsical pipes leading to an assembly line, with an iPad reveal at the end.

I'm not sure but I think this ad was fully animated and nothing was actually destroyed. A hydraulic press of this size, if any even exist, is going to look a lot bulkier and not like a cartoon stomper coming down from the ceiling. We don't see the side bracing which would needed if you didn't want your hydraulic press to rip a hole in your ceiling.

Especially with all the angles they have it would have been incredibly difficult and dangerous to get all the shots, and every shot came out perfectly.

It was painful to watch and i won’t have a second look.

It would have been as simple as adding a short “Professional CGI Artists. No actual instrument and tools were harmed.” to set a lighter tone and take the pain away.

Given the raging discussion and thus reach, this won’t hurt sales in the slightest - pretty much the opposite and i guess we’re left with giving kudos to marketing well played.

“Honey, I shrunk the iPad. And the composer. And the orchestra.” would have been a better angle

It seems odd to complain about one old upright piano being crushed for the video when thousands upon thousands of them are out on the streets, living under bridges, because no one wants to move the piano anymore, or wanted the convenience of an electronic keyboard.

I implore you all: adopt a piano today! You may find yourself saying "I didn't rescue it, it rescued me."

We adopted a piano while we were overseas and moved it to San Francisco. We ended up giving it to a church after my son decided he couldn't abide the high notes that could never quite get into tune. Still have fond memories of it though.

I think this misses the mark. The ad is inherently symbolic—it’s not this particular piano, but the fact that they’re destroying all of these beloved instruments of creativity in such a gratuitous and evocative manner. That’s what upsetting, not the literal fact that one piano was destroyed in the making of the ad.

See also Jimi Hendrix, the Clash, The Who, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana…

I just watched this ad for the first time. It’s odd but I don’t have a reaction to it.

What I am having a reaction to is all the reactions about destroying instruments. Which in turn reminded me of the song by Cake.

Rock n’ Roll Lifestyle:

…

How much did you pay

For the chunk of his guitar

The one he ruthlessly smashed at the end of the show?

And how much will he pay

For a brand-new guitar

One which he'll ruthlessly smash at the end of another show?

And how long will the workers

Keep building him new ones?

As long as their soda cans are red, white, and blue ones

…

Anyone remember the original awesome Google Chromebook ad where they meticulousoy showed destruction of several laptops? I know it’s not the same thing but it reminded me of it and I can’t find it anywhere in YouTube! Anyone got a link who knows what I’m talking about?

They probably figured it would be really strong imagery to see the items being physically crushed in a giant press. It definitely invokes feelings, but not good ones.

If you think of yourself as skeptical, agnostic, materialist. I don’t understand how you can be upset about cheap in-animate objects get destroyed for an entertaining video.

No one is actually upset about any specific objects that were destroyed in the making of this ad. This sort of advertising is all about eliciting emotions and shaping a message--a vibe--about a particular product. This ad triggered visceral feelings related to the emotional connection a lot of people--even skeptical agnostic materialists!--have with the tools, instruments, and products of creativity and art. And based on the reaction, the ad clearly elicited a lot of negative emotions and a negative vibe in what is presumably the iPad Pro's target audience. Thus, I'd say that even from your ultra-rationalist point of view, it's a bad ad.

I mostly agree. My point is I don’t think the audience here would give the same empathy to flag burning, Christian trolling etc. just want to be clear if these are the gods we worship here

As a recovering christian I don’t “worship” anything, especially a god.

no one asked

> just want to be clear if these are the gods we worship here

“We” don’t worship anything here.

The root of this thread is arguing that the musical instruments are sacred and deserving of symbolic respect.

Yes, by Apple customers, not HN commenters.

HN commenters in this very thread. And it's one of the most upvoted comments.

Another person on social media noted that no Apple ad has ever depicted older generation iPads or MacBook Pros being crushed by a hydraulic press to signify them being made thinner - I suspect Apple wouldn't even greenlight that ad pitch.

It's not matter of spiritualism.

If I put my skill and effort crafting something and it is destroyed, I'll feel sad.

Feeling that way even for things other made is called empathy.

Try a car analogy on for size: a new Corvette might be superior to a classic Porsche in all the ways that matter, but nobody at GM would greenlight an ad depicting a C8 emerging from a crusher that had just destroyed a '63 911. They would understand how disrespectful it would seem.

Disrespectful? What? That sounds like a cool ad.

People are being babies about this.

That's an indication that you're not a good fit for the sports-car advertising business, just as whoever approved this ad isn't a good fit for the creative business.

If it has to be explained to you, you won't get it.

> People having different tastes than me are babies

You are free to think that the ad was boring and that you didn't like it.

But yes, if you are losing your mind over it and crying about it, with an extreme emotional reaction, yes that makes you a baby.

I have no problem with someone who merely didn't like the ad. What I do have a problem with is this extreme freakout response.

I don't think anyone's losing their mind and crying. It's just interesting to see something like this from a company that has historically prided themselves on mutual respect (if not outright symbiosis) with artists, musicians, and other creative people.

Somewhere within Apple there was a failure of taste, and that was always the proverbial "sin unto death" from Steve Jobs's perspective. Doesn't happen every day. You hate to see it, but you can't help but watch.

> I don't think anyone's losing their mind and crying.

Then I guess you didn't see the social media response. There were absolutely a lot of people who were extremely upset.

> But yes, if you are losing your mind over it and crying about it, with an extreme emotional reaction, yes that makes you a baby.

Define “losing your mind” and “crying about it with extreme emotional reaction”.

> Define “losing your mind” and “crying about it with extreme emotional reaction”.

The people I am seeing on Twitter who are very upset.

So, if would be anyone who instead of merely thinking that the ad is bad, instead are actually angry about it.

Thinking an ad sucks is different from being significantly offended by it.

Writing an angry comment on twitter is “losing your mind” and “crying about it with extreme emotional reaction” to you? Who is a baby here?

Hey if you think it is so ridiculous for someone to be significantly offended by the ads that you don't even believe that people were, then you are basically agreeing with me.

I am glad that you seem to now agree with me that it would be dumb to be personally offended by this in a significant way.

You agree with me so much, that it is so dumb to be mad about this, that you actually don't think that people were!

You actually believe this argument even more that I do, because it isn't even conceivable to you that people were very upset about this.

I am glad that I convinced you at how dumb it would be to very mad about this ad.

Im not a skeptical agnostic materialist, but those objects were far from being cheap. Those instruments cost thousands of dollars each. The arcade cabinet as well(there aren't exactly a lot of those left).

The entire point of the ad is that the entire human creative experience is consolidated into the ipad, which is a pretty dystopian way of looking at things. Even if you ignore the cost and rarity of these items, the symbolism is pretty horrible.

You know there are reproductions of those arcade cabinets right? And used instruments cost hundreds, not thousands. A guitar with a broken neck or stripped screws could be propped up long enough for a scene such as this and be useless to actually play. And busted pianos are easy enough to find.

>And used instruments cost hundreds, not thousands.

A guitar, sure. I tried getting an used string piano and couldn't find one...used...for less than five grand. Used violins and other instruments are also usually very highly priced.

You are trying to get a working piano. This ad only required a non working piano.

Someone bought me a broken piano once thinking I would be able to repair it. We ended up letting someone else have it for free. It wasn’t expensive to begin with because it didn’t work.

Try craigslist or a local piano mover. Local piano movers are often asked to haul off abandoned pianos and will resell them [1]. This company's stock at the moment is a bit pricey compared to what I usually see, but it's not unusual to be able to get even a baby grand for ~$1,000. The catch is you've got to pay to move them, which is a bit of an ordeal.

[1] e.g. https://www.actionpianomoving.com/used-pianos if you're in the greater NYC area

I won't speculate on how hard the ad agency worked to source a low-cost piano.

But used pianos go unsold for under a hundred dollars all the time within an hour's drive of major US cities.

I feel like people have bought into the PR.

Everything in that press was a representation of a real and useful thing, and the people who hate this commercial the most seem to have substituted a real and useful thing for the simulation of one. Whereas the moment the cans on the piano were crushed, I thought, "wow that old (busted?) piano is holding up well."

Practical effects are not only full of fakery, they're also the origin of a lot of the tricks known to the world.

If you had ever put the time and effort (and blood!) into learning how to play the guitar, you too would have a visceral reaction to seeing a guitar getting destroyed for nothing. It's not the objects themselves that are the problem, it is our connection to those objects, and our innate feelings about those objects, that Apple has smashed in that video. That's a marketing 101 mistake and how this ad ever got greenlit is beyond me.

Literal rock stars destroy their instruments on set just for fun.

If it weren't offensive to someone, somewhere, they wouldn't do it.

Apple, on the other hand, will never be punk. They left that path when they realized it was more profitable to become the guy on the screen in their earlier ad.

A better comparison might be to Spike Jonze's famous Ikea ad ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBqhIVyfsRg ), which was also sort of disturbing to watch.

Or if they're asked to vacate the stage.

https://youtu.be/g9zogQOmQVM

At least Billie Joe Armstrong showed that Gibsons are very durable and you really have to put your back into destroying it.

I'll bet you didn't know that many times, those are getting repaired.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8838159/amp/The-Who...

Because of the connection that the players have with the instruments.

Could you do that with an iPad?

> Because of the connection

Well, the article says it was because of the money of having to buy new equipment.

Do they destroy them and continue playing on an iPad?

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