> Is the New York Times especially antagonistic towards the tech industry?
Yes
> Do you seriously believe there exists some us-versus-them division between "liberal arts" and "technologists"?
Not in real life among friends, but it's definitely a culture war flame that was started and is stoked by media.
Yes. It was obvious in college that the non-STEM majors didn't like the STEM majors or vice versa, but it was more strongly in one direction.
But I'm a computer programmer, so even if I'm in a more balanced environment now, all I meant is I simply don't work with artists etc daily.
Also, the same embittered liberal arts majors had no problem telling rust belt coal miners that it was a good thing their livelihoods were being shredded.
If you fail to see that there's a massive culture war element to this, I have nothing more to say.
Steve Jobs addressed this exact point during a 2011 keynote [0]:
> It is in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.
Where they have lost their vision is in the iPhone and Mac lines which are simply so profitable that there is no reason to mess with a good thing.
Hardly anyone seems to remember how the iPhone used to be small enough to fit in one hand or in any pocket. As people became increasingly addicted to phones to the point of having them outside the pocket more often than not, bigger phones made more desirable, but Steve Jobs insisted on keeping it small. He said nobody wanted a big phone, but since it was obvious users did want it, I'm wondering if there was another reason. He died, then a few years afterwards, Apple released the larger iPhone 6.
Artists are really being stung by AI right now. And Apple, ostensibly the darling tech company for artists, puts out an ad literally crushing artistic tools and telling you to buy an iPad to replace them. By the way, it has the most powerful neural engine ever.
It's not just tone deaf, it's insulting.
You are spot on, and the ad, and it’s humorous “wait they hate us?” counter-reaction/confusion in reaction to feedback about encapsulates it all well.
If there's a single product company that hires technologists who also love the arts, it's Apple -- this campaign was just mismanaged by someone who missed the point, and didn't understand Apple's history very well.
Also, apparently, the ipad is really thin, so maybe they got overexcited :)
Right on trend. They might love it, but they don’t understand it, and per the last 20 years love unemploying it.