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Comment by citizen_friend | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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