It was clear to me that that's what they wanted to express but their chosen visuals didn't convey that well at all. Expanding outwards from the iPad would have made a lot more sense.
I think the #1 third party app is probably more responsible for this sentiment than the device itself.
People can’t emotionally separate their hatred and disgust at corporate social media taking over and censoring and monetizing the public square with the physical device that it leverages.
On one hand, we have Facebook and Instagram. On the other, every person interacting with a cop has a cloud-uploading HD camera at the ready.
For every Twitter, everyone can video call their parents/grandparents at any time for as long as they want for ~free from ~anywhere.
I've already opined my thoughts on the video, no need to redo here.
Strictly speaking about the article, it feels more like 'go away' lip-service, especially seeing as the bottom contains the ad - still up on Apple's official YouTube. If they really felt it 'missed the mark' and were sorry about it, they'd have probably taken it down.
Apologizing bought them another round of "earned media". Not only did the ad get press, now the apology gets press, exposing the message "there's a new, thinner iPad" to people who didn't see the ad before.
I personally don't care if the ad was good or bad. I'm not an interested shareholder and I'm not in the Apple ecosystem.
But I just learned there's a new iPad via HN.
Maybe they'll take down the ad next week for a third bite at the apple. The first line of the article might read: 'Apple has cracked under pressure after the company's botched launch of the thinnest M4 iPad ever. The company took down its "Crush!" ad on Monday.'
Steve Jobs would have probably fired whoever suggested this ad, at best. He always saw the Mac as an enabler of and conduit for peoples' creativity, not a replacement for other forms of it.
Jobs' death is truly tragic in the context that Apple - and by extension, the rest of the tech world - could have gone in a very different direction if he were still around. He would probably be screaming his head off at the idea of generative AI.
Seriously and sincerely, I'd like to hear a dozen definitions of what
people think that "mission" is in 2024.
I think we long departed from "making the world a better place". And
yet the change simply cannot be explained by greed, money, or
obsession with growth.
Surely a lot of the venture capitalists that frequent this forum must
be as confused as the next person if they still hold on to the ideal
of "doing good with money".
What I see is the rise of a terrifying quasi-religious anti-humanist
cult with overtones of masochism and self-hatred (of human life).
I'm no big fan of Steve Jobs, but clearly he would be horrified by
many of the anti-human sentiments expressed daily in forums like this.
Is it too late to redefine digital technology as humane, and return to
the roots of SV [0] ?
Between e/acc+singularity, hyper-libertarianism and the actual locked-in, rent-seeking, culture-choking techno-feudalism we're getting, it's always been pretty obvious to me that the "mission" is to become the secular equivalent of a god, and then reign eternal, just like the world-building genre of games primes them for.
Too bad it's a big club and everybody here won't be in it, eh.
> Too bad it's a big club and everybody here won't be in it, eh.
There is some uncomfortable truth in this.
Those who identify with technology, and take for granted being its
masters, controllers and benefactors, end up the most disappointed.
The hoi polloi are happily indifferent to the cargo cult of shiny
stuff that comes and goes, which they buy because their friend got
one.
But those intelligent enough to know what we could have had, what's
possible and what's lost, will feel betrayed by larger forces that
nobody controls, whatever "big club" you imagine yourself in.
It's one thing for a man to lose to lose his faith. It's something
else when a priest does.
Well, most revolutions succeed when the overproduced elites join the masses to overthrow the rulers. So it's probably a good thing in this case if the priests lose their faith, as long as they do it quickly enough. Otherwise we'll all just be NPCs in Altman's and Zuckerberg's metaverses.
Another day, another stupid "controversy" where a few Twits complain on social media simply to get attention and publications pick it up as if it's a real issue. Why waste our time?
> People based in Japan appear to be prominent amongst the critics, which some said "lacked respect".
> Some said this was based in "tsukumogami” - a term from Japanese folklore describing a tool which can contain a spirit or even soul of its own.
> "The act of destroying tools is arrogant and offensive to us Japanese," one person explained, while another said musicians value their instruments "more than life itself".
So, let's reverse this. A Japanese company's online advertisement offends some American sensibilities (not a stretch to imagine). So a few hundred Americans comment on the video and on Twitter.
Would that deserve a news article and a statement from the company?
They might, depending on the slight. It's a culture that emphasizes politeness and propriety after all. You might’ve chosen one of the least effective counter-examples for this one.
Apple is advertising to a global audience here, and are big in Japan.
I think the closest thing I can think of is Sony, perhaps, doing an offensive ad(to Americans) with the PS5/6. I do think it'd be written about and they'd apologize, though it's a little different because Sony has a specific US subsidiary which acts like its own company.
Imagine a Japanese ad where they melt down guns, set fire to an F150 and turn some bald eagles into a burger. I believe a lot of Americans would call for the death of the company, not just a statement
It's a bit insane to me that Apple felt the need to "apologize"... so they made a crappy AD that didn't appeal to some audiences... is this really grounds for retractions/apologies these days?
Yeah, imagine telling a guitar or piano player that they can trash their respective instruments, because "all they need now is an iPad". Doesn't sound good, does it?
Apple is essentially saying 'Don't worry about learning to play an instrument, use an iPad instead!' which is just disgusting. The modern world has lost too much dicipline and creativity already. It doesnt need more people being encouraged to take the lazy option.
I'm confused about the confusion, really. It's not hard to imagine how "tech company compressing all your traditional art tools into a blackbox" imagery would have struck some nerves that were already rubbed raw by the AI-Art Discourse.
It's not just general sensibilities, it's comically topical.
I had no idea this ad existed until this came through here. But having watched it: seems totally fine.
They're just playing "earth". To make diamonds you apply pressure. The iPad is the diamond resulting from crushing all that creativity into a tiny form factor.
Exactly. Had they invoked the idea of a shrink ray and knolled the tiny items, then pressed those into a unified object, revealed to be the latest iPad (with a needlessly spec-bumped processor and inflated price) then it might have accomplished their objective.
I've seen a few people mistake the outrage felt by artists as them misunderstanding the concept. I'm an artist, and I understand the concept just fine (all these tools are squeezed into the form factor of an iPad! Our thinnest one ever!) but the visual itself is tone deaf. Especially with artists feeling so threatened by tech companies this year, using a metaphor that shows their tools quite literally being crushed is insensitive.
It's a bit like if you made a video that showed my dog getting crushed in a hydraulic press and replaced with a tamagotchi-like device. Like, I get the idea, but it still makes me want to cry.
2. Something that is grossly offensive to decency, morality, or good taste.
3. Resentful anger aroused by a violent or offensive act, or an instance of this.
I think people are just a little critical, more than they are outraged. I have a deep hope that you're not outraged.
I'm typically critical of Apple's value and technology, but I am far more offended by what is a clear oversensitivity to art, and expression, which is by far the greater crime to the arts and to society as a whole.
The idea that people can't make art or express themselves for fear of other artists' outrage is what's truly outrageous.
To set my bias, I'm surrounded by music people and their instrument is basically an extension of themselves, they spent hours everyday touching it, for their whole life since 4. For some it's also the most expensive thing they own.
Some violinists are put off by music videos with violins played in the rain. Apple's ad would be traumatic.
> The idea that people can't make art or express themselves for fear of other artists' outrage is what's truly outrageous.
Eliciting a reaction is part of art, and people getting outraged is par for the course. You're also totally free to outraged at the outrage, that's the cycle.
> I'm surrounded by music people and their instrument is basically an extension of themselves, they spent hours everyday touching it, for their whole life since 4. For some it's also the most expensive thing they own.
Meh. I was very into music growing up, and still play. It doesn't bother me in the least to see a musical instrument that is not my own being destroyed, any more than I have a reaction to seeing a car being destroyed in a movie ("some people really love cars!") or someone blowing up a building ("some people really love architecture!") or an artwork being burned/modified/mutilated ("some people really love art!"), or food being wasted/destroyed ("some people really love cooking!") all of which are more-or-less common in mass media.
(To wit: someone else here pointed out the OK Go music videos where they -- professional musicians! -- destroy all sorts of things, including musical instruments. Those were great, btw.)
While I do not exclude the possibility that some people may have feelings in reaction to seeing a generic musical instrument being destroyed, you can extend this metaphor to any number of areas where it's completely accepted to see similar acts of destruction.
> Some violinists are put off by music videos with violins played in the rain. Apple's ad would be traumatic.
More likely is that a few people are truly bothered, but lots of people engage in performative outrage for attention, which is so common that we have a name for it: pearl-clutching.
A better reference for us could be to look at a monitor getting smudged with greasy fingers, people eating crisps above a keyboard, or a ball pen repeatedly scratching an 8k monitor ?
On the other hand, many rock guitarists have destroyed guitars on-stage as an act of expression. Destruction is a perfectly valid mode of expression this way, and there's no "correct" way to handle an instrument just because one group of individuals idolise the form over its function.
That said, this is exactly what is interesting and "triggering" to many about the ad, IMO. That it emphasises destruction, and therefore is a metaphor for the replacement of material expression with the immaterial, or something along those lines.
Just to add, I play guitar every day. I don't handle my guitar with care: I ding it against walls, toss it onto the couch, fail to clean it as regularly as I should, drive with it in my car using no case to do so. But I love my guitar very much, because it enables me to play beautiful (to me) music. I don't want to be burdened by the "perfection" of my guitar. To each their own, I say.
I think modern guitars have their own niche, with a whole scene of people building, modifying, tweaking their guitars, and a flurry of accessories, variants and innovations that expand the artistic range.
I kinda feel it's not so far from synthesizers in a way.
Wind instruments will also probably fall in the "handle casually" space, while still sensible to being dinged and needing care ?
Classic instruments have a harsher split between the centuries old instruments that just can't be replaced [0], and the modern versions that are left mostly for amateurs or pros expanding their range and aiming for different sounds. That's where pro instruments end up at five~six figures prices, and are definitely not tossed around.
[0] I remember being told by a player that their instrument was there before their birth and will still be in people's hands way after they die.
I think that's broadly true, and possibly an aesthetic thing that in part is what pushes me away from certain types of classical music, but look up, for example, Rushad Eggleston[image: 0] for a counter-example of whether or not classical instruments (cello, here) are "allowed" to be tossed around.
I certainly want to put my guitar down and stop recording artists if I'm going to be faced with violence or any of the lesser definitions of the word "outrage."
You can dislike something without being outraged. Well, right up until someone is outraged with you. Then you can't say that you like or dislike things anymore.
That seems like a terrible society to live in. It's the one we're experiencing.
If you truly value art and expression, then why do you oppose people expressing themselves when they say they don't like the ad?
The society you want is the one we have - an expression was made by Apple, and in response, thousands of artists have made their own expressions. This is what a society of free expression looks like.
The world you're arguing for would be one where the expressions of tech companies are beyond reproach and other people are not allowed to express themselves in response. Why should tech companies get that special treatment?
In my opinion, it says something about your mentality that you value the expression of one group but not the other.
I hate this idea - this apparent concern that Apple is getting "silenced". There is no such thing as being "silenced" when you're a billion dollar company. Moreover, the apparent "silencing" is simply people using their freedom of expression to voice an opinion of opposition. It is the core feature of being able to express oneself.
The ability of these common artists being able to speak their true thoughts against a billion dollar institution - and the institution feeling pressure to respond to them - is the whole point of having the freedom of expression. What else is even the point of allowing discussion, dissent, and expression if you don't want those to have any chance of affecting some outcome?
Interesting. I didn't say any of that. I'm saying "outrage" is too strong. You don't need to cancel someone else to express yourself. Note the downvotes for example.
Maybe they were trying to appeal to the MAGA audience, the same way Kristi Noem was so sure she could win the Vice Presidency by bragging and doubling and tripling down on shooting a puppy and a goat in the face with a shotgun.
> I had no idea this ad existed until this came through here. But having watched it: seems totally fine.
I presume you're a technology person, so maybe it's a good illustration of how tech sensibilities are far from universal and can be extremely tone deaf.
The point of advertisement is to attract people to the product. If the ad alienates enough of their potential user base, it totally makes sense to try to take that back, and make amends. To me, that alone is enough ground for retraction/apologies.
I have been an Apple user since June 1983, and have repeatedly sung the praises of the company, its technology and its vision for decades to friends, family employers and employees. Some of my own identify is strangely drawn from being an Apple aficionado for so long. Personally, this ad was very disappointing, very crushing - to purposefully destroy instruments of creativity is rudely incongruous to my understand of the meaning of Apple.
Apple is the most draconian company and operating system maker. It's astounding that they're associated with creativity. They make it really hard to even use their devices as computers. And they've made the same aluminium rectangles for decades now. Literally, where is the creativity?
No, I'm not. Apple breaks music applications with every new release. They're all being held hostage due to OpenGL being deprecated on macOS. Apple is the hardest platform to develop creative applications for.
Logic was the absolute best for a while (IMO). Those were good times. Just don't update. I still have OS X 10.4 machines with expensive upgrades. If you're doing serious/pro-level music creation on Mac you're not installing updates until you know every piece of software is supported. It's brutal to try to produce decent-tier music if you want to actually use the computer as a general personal machine (and keep it up to date), though.
> They make it really hard to even use their devices as computers.
that's a bit extreme. yeah, many of us had hoped ipad would be more of a laptop w no keyboard (vs a huge smartphone), but macbooks have long been the most capable dev laptops on the planet
> macbooks have long been the most capable dev laptops on the planet
I personally don't find that to be true. The jobs that forced Macbooks on me were fraught with development issues all stemming from macOS.
In Windows, I am currently running Windows 11, several versions of Ubuntu, and even NixOS. WSL vastly outclasses VMs on macOS (which barely work anyway on macOS) and the "Linux but not Linux" nature of macOS.
Yeah, I had the same impression (admittedly I was already slightly biased once I saw the ad). On a very deep level it shows, that there is some serious lack in core understanding why Apple is useful in the world. How anyone at Apple can see a destructive thing in an ad and say "Yep, that's us" is just beyond me
The whole point of apple is that its aimed at the "creative" segment. Whether they are actually creative or not is another matter. One of the core pillars of apple's appeal is that creative people use it's stuff.
The main pitch is that Apple helps you be creative as an augment. Look at all the other Ads they pitch to creatives.
The ironic thing is that the advert neatly sums up what the tech/media giants are trying to do to the creative segment (and have been doing for a while)
Yeah, apparently its hard to just move on with your life after watching something you dont like. This making front page on HN is wild. The echo chamber is sealed tight.
Honestly, yes. Reading the overly emotive language in these comments, it’s pretty clear that many people here are just looking to be outraged and / or got caught up in the herd mentality of it all. I genuinely don’t think that most of the people here would feel this strongly if they hadn’t seen it through the lens of some tweet or click-hungry Apple blog exclaiming “what the hell!”
The error here, on Apple’s part, is that they made an ad that people can so easily lean into hating and publicly attribute it to some sort of intelligent, intellectual attribute that they want to signal to others.
And for the record, I don’t really care about the ad one way or another. It struck me as unremarkable for an Apple ad. It’s blindingly obvious that the right person lit a match at the right time, and this quickly turned into something else. I truly can’t believe that Apple chose now to engage with the peanut gallery.
I thought the ad was great but to actually have to apologize for it ?? I am a self admitted Apple fanboy but while I don’t see eye to eye on this I really don’t see the offensiveness .
But in the grand scheme of things it might sell more iPads due to the Streisand effect.
A lot of people have strong emotional connections to their artistic tools like instruments. It's a very common reaction to feel discomfort at the sight of an instrument being destroyed. Emotional attachments are irrational, but the point of an advertisement isn't to be rational otherwise they'd just show a spec sheet as a still in a video.
Apple really fucked up here. Did no one on their marketing team bring this up?
When I was a young'n, Apple was very big on treating artists and creatives as a set of people they were humbled to have stumbled into helping.
Marketing was driven by ideas like avoiding "speeds and feeds", in the words of Steve, and emotionally connecting with users: ex. famous lore is an Apple ad is never "Buy the New Galaxy Plus Pro S6 with the 120 megapixel 240x Zoom!" it's "Soft tinkling music as smiling father takes video of 5 year old sledding down hill in snow"
I'm not saying they always obeyed those principles in every single ad until yesterday, but you'd be hard pressed (lol) to explain to someone a decade ago why Apple's first ad for a once-in-3-years iPad launch was...crushing a bunch of creative tools to communicate they shaved half a millimeter off.
It's funny being old because the thing that confuses me is why people have reactions to reactions, ex. people saying "based, why should they have to apologize anyway, it wasn't offensive"...it clearly wasn't offensive in that sense! It was just bizarrely off-brand.
> It's funny being old because the thing that confuses me is why people have reactions to reactions, ex. people saying "based, why should they have to apologize anyway, it wasn't offensive"...it clearly wasn't offensive in that sense!
Some people just really seem to object to the idea that anyone could ever experience an emotion and have it not be based on some kind of cold rationality.
The idea of feeling something in your gut, something visceral, is anathema to them.
Imagine something you care about, maybe a family dog. Now put it in a hydraulic press. Cut back to "Nintendogs now available!"
For many, musical instruments and artists tools carry not just their functional nature but a spiritual or cultural identity. A piano isn't just a box with some metal strings inside, it represents something. That guitar could have been played, instead it's destroyed.
The as is also needlessly wasteful. It communicates a sense of disregard for the value of stuff. If apple burned a hundred grand and then showed us an iPad, many folks might be like, "what the fuck?" Same sort of vibe.
I get what they were trying to do which is “the iPad can do all of this and it is thin”. I think I don’t have the personality to have a personal relationship with artist tools …
This is the third time I’ve seen someone compare the crushing of a musical instrument with the crushing of living, feeling beings in this thread and I think you are absurdly off base.
People are mad when you crush their dog because it feels pain and experiences things and has some sense of self, things that inanimate objects cannot have. Not because they no longer have a dog or because of their emotional connection to that particular dog.
Perhaps a better analogy would be putting the corpse of an already deceased family dog in the hydraulic press but that isn’t too dissimilar from cremation.
Probably best to avoid the crushing dogs analogy all together.
> (Apple) released a “Crush!” commercial that shows things like a piano, record player, paint, and other works flattening under the pressure of a hydraulic press. At the end, only one thing remains: an iPad Pro.
It was very painful to see musical instruments and cameras/lenses destroyed. These things are so dear to many creative people that it feels like watching someone's arm being cut off. No matter how cool the camerawork is, it just sends a very negative message about the product and their marketing team.
I play guitar and I didn’t find it painful to watch. I thought it was a cool idea illustrating all those instruments being compressed into a tiny device.
The ad was strangely off-brand for Apple. But I suppose they’ve been trending edgier and moodier in their advertising lately. I just don’t get why - they had a really effective brand to begin with.
A lot of people have strong emotional connections to their artistic tools like instruments. It's a very common reaction to feel discomfort at the sight of an instrument being destroyed. Emotional attachments are irrational, but the point of an advertisement isn't to be rational otherwise they'd just show a spec sheet as a still in a video.
You didn't see the trumpet that was the focal point of the first few moments? The piano with paint cans prominently shattering right after that? The guitar towards the end?
Dunno... I guess I just saw the first shot, thought "huh, they're crushing a room" and zoned out. It all just registered as "stuff in a room" not "expensive musical instruments".
> People have just become overly sensitive it seems.
I hear this said a lot, but know of no psychological evidence that
people have actually become more "sensitive" (by which I mean
neurotic, defensive etc).
What's happened is that people became better informed, educated, and
communicative. They're more comfortable with expressing. And that's
mainly down to technology which facilitated cultural change.
It is natural for that to turn inward. This is the evolution of
critique. It took many years from Gutenberg to Vanity Fair. Literary
criticism only emerged once the medium itself was mature.
The same thing is happening in technology as Lewis Mumford predicted.
Technological critique. has come of age with AI.
Anybody so unsophisticated as to ignore that, like Apple, is doomed.
No one gives a shit how "thin" or "powerful" your gadget is. They care
what it means to them and their values. Apple, of all organisations,
should be mindful of that.
>No one gives a shit how "thin" or "powerful" your gadget is. They care what it means to them and their values. Apple, of all organisations, should be mindful of that.
No one's like crying out here or jumping off a bridge. People are just kinda ticked, or disappointed. There's no "cancel culture" happening here. Why such a reactionary interpretation of the ad's poor reception? o_O
Would you prefer a world wherein people aren't allowed to speak their mind instead?
Stop being so sensitive about people "being sensitive" and engage in the discussion instead of dismissing it.
All this complaining about "cancel culture" is just complaining that other people are using their freedom of speech in a way that you don't like. This is what freedom is speech means - disagreement. Stop whining about people disagreeing with you.
Either address the arguments they're making to further the conversation, or deal with it.
It's fine to voice opinions but why does Apple feel it needs to apologize?
No animals were harmed, no protected groups offended.
Apple could have just internally said, "well that one kinda didn't work well",pull the ad and move on.
If you prefer to be a jerk, that's certainly an option, yes. Just don't be surprised or blame "cancel culture" when the people you belittle stop inviting you to parties.
Ok, but disagreeing is not what cancel culture is.
It’s attacking someone relentlessly, canceling their contracts, getting them fired, kicked out of institutions, debanked.
I’m not sure if you are pretending to not know that, or really just don’t know anything on the topic at all. But either way, it’s kind of showing your cards.
People complaining on Twitter don't have the power to fire/remove anybody. All they can do is spread allegations. If those allegations are true and bad enough that your employers or associates want to disassociate themselves with you, that is your (or your associates') fault, not the whistleblowers'.
Employers don't just fire you because a Twitter mob told them to. They do it because they learned about your bad behavior and no longer have faith in you.
If you don't like being fired:
- Don't do stuff your employers will find distasteful
- Vote for candidates to end at-will employment and give stronger employee rights
There you go again, complaining about my argument instead of refuting it.
It's not about liberals or conservatives, it's about ordinary people not liking things and spreading the word, ideally so people with the power to change things hear it. Conservatives cancel too, e.g. the Bud Light / Dylan Mulvaney boycott.
Things seem to escalate quite quickly now with no rationale. There seem to be no middle ground these days. My reference to cancel culture is that while it isn't there yet, Apple may have felt the need to apologize before it got there.
Crushing the tools of art and fun into a tiny technological device is maybe a little tone-deaf in the context of AI trying to crush all scrapeable human creation into a model that would fit on that same iPad.
They are destroying everything analog used by humans for fun and creativity, including a piano, a trumpet, paint, an arcade machine, synthesizers, and toys. In return we have one soulless bland iPad. If you have any object remotely similar to the ones depicted as destroyed, you will feel anger and pain at the sight of destruction.
When I was younger, I used to believe that the antiquated image of the hipster or upper-class white Starbucks artist who owns a Mac was a cliché, an invention of the boomers. But as I have had to deal with some creative teams.
I have come to loathe and disdain this kind of person I did not think even existed a decade ago. The sad truth is that a lot of people of a certain demographic will prefer to die before even switching to Windows, let alone Linux or something open. And sadly, a small part of the tech world is the same; they think that their experience with Windows and Android more than a decade ago is reflective of how they work now. Thus, Apple could spit on their faces, and yet they will still like it. Sadly, nothing to do with people who just suck up to modern Apple.
Aside from the destruction of low-tech artistic tools triggering non-tech people aspect, tonally the ad was also overly edgy, which is off-brand for Apple. As noted elsewhere, it felt like a video game commercial from the '90s: gratuitous in its attention-seeking.
1984 was edgy for its time. I think the difficulty is that the iPad is no longer an edgy product. The least edgy thing you could be these days is an iPad owner, and this ad wasn't the one to change that.
"1984" was edgy in a cool way, but that's not the type of edginess I'm evoking. Most '90s video game commercials that were edgy did so in a puerile, juvenile way as befitting the target audience. And not just video game ads, there was definitely a big "xtreme" trend as well.
The Apple ad taps into that xtreme vibe by embracing destructive energy to depict a physical contrast. Which is visually attention-grabbing, but it puts the focus on the act of destruction, and reduction, and people who like the destroyed objects feel miffed.
"1984" I'd say was edgy in a rebellious way as you point out, which I'd argue gives it more substance. The sledgehammer hitting the screen isn't even the focus, it's the climax to a sequence that carries more of a meaningful message than "wow look how much functionality we fit into this thin shell."
> "1984" I'd say was edgy in a rebellious way as you point out, which I'd argue gives it more substance. The sledgehammer hitting the screen isn't even the focus, it's the climax to a sequence that carries more of a meaningful message than "wow look how much functionality we fit into this thin shell."
Well, it just wasn't focusing on empty slowmo destruction of a big screen. It had an emotional message behind it. A bit like original Star Wars vs Rebel Moon.
1984 [1] was edgy precisely because it worked as a criticism of society and culture, and then showed a way to 'break free' of mindless dystopia. This [2] ad is pretty much the exact and literal opposite. It essentially takes a sampling of the great things that culture and society has produced, destroys them, and then shows the Product, while literally singing "All I Ever Need Is You." Here [3] a guy basically reversed the ad, with the iPad being crushed, and then slowly lifting it up to have all the great stuff in society come out of it. And suddenly it's actually quite uplifting and positive!
Today's "1984" ad would have to include someone throwing a sledgehammer through an iMac, and similarly destroying an iPhone. It wouldn't be an advertisement for any corporation though, because a truly game-changing act today would be to opt out of the extractive and coercive cycle of modern proprietary technology.
Rebellion can't be bought, but in the 1980's I think it was still an open question whether computers would ever be something that non-nerds wanted. In hindsight, it seems inevitable that general purpose, user friendly computers would crush everything, but was that really a given? Isn't there a possible world where IBM and/or Xerox do own everything and never make it past huge, expensive systems that were only made for specialists?
For everyone here that loved our C64 or DOS PC, how many of our peers actively rejected early computers because they weren't fun to use?
Besides which it seems to me that Apple has never really been against having a single giant corporation controlling everything you can see, do and say, they were just against that corporation not being Apple.
What about rebelling against the cultural elements of rebelling? Much of the image of rebellion has been a futile cycle of (ironically) trying the same thing repeatedly and failing to make any changes. Not falling into the bullshit of old bearded white men who never had to work for a living, were total economic illiterates even if they called themselves economists, and have been dead-for centuries.
Re: the Pokémon commercial, I feel like the Apple commercial put way more focus into the actual destruction of the instruments… Like, a lot of its runtime was spent on actually showing each thing getting destroyed individually, so it has a completely different energy compared to the silly Pokémon one
It’s like if the Pokémon one showed each Pokémon getting crushed with splattering and gore…
Yeah there was revelling in the visual and nuance of their destruction. Could have done the whole thing CG where the objects squished together satisfyingly like they were made of clay rather than cracking and shattering. Honestly was easier/cheaper to do also.
Yeah, I think if they did than then it would have actually been a good ad. But focusing on the destruction/actually having destruction at all took away from the point that "it's compressing all these things into one" and made it interpretable as "we're destroying all these things, cause iPad can do it all"
On the contrary, I wish this was dismissive. It's about time that the Overton window gets shifted about the overly nostalgic articles that get praised by "the right people", which means we need to "read the room" and share the same opinions.
It is an absolutely good thing that an inexpensive device is replacing an expensive one, and that impoverished children will be able to create music with an inexpensive iPad and will not be forced to learn obsolete methods to "finger" an instrument.
Aside from whether the iPad is inexpensive or not, it just doesn't replace an actual piano or trumpet.
If your use case is really covered by the iPad, you could also make do with a refurbished corporate DELL costing half the price or 3 years ago's Surface Pro, same way the track makers were doing 2 decades ago.
So no, Apple's marketing would sure want us to think so, but impoverished children are probably not saved by 2024's thinner iPad in any significant way.
I can just visualize the post iPad high school jazz band -- twenty kids sitting in chairs with their tablets, rhythmically tapping virtual buttons on their touchscreen. One stands for her solo, tapping her screen at a different cadence. Oh, she's playing trumpet? I thought she was a saxophonist!
What artistry! What musicianship! Thank God for Apple and the new iPad!
How to even start here..
Calling the ipad inexpensive will make people in most of the world to laugh at you (even the discounted stock of ipad 9th is unapproachable for many).
While a guitar at a local store (just looked it up) costs under 80 EUR, needs no apps, no power, no subscriptions, has no EOL, doesn't have a battery that will go bad.
Yes you need time to learn, but you do not necessarily need to invest more money with an analog instrument.
I’ve never seen a guitar under about $300US new that was actually playable without some serious attention from a guitar shop, and on the lower end they’ll probably just tell you there’s not much they can do to make it better. They may need frets filed down to remove rough edges, neck adjustments, to simply have the tuners replaced because they’re so poorly-made they basically don’t work, et c.
Guitars that cheap are similar to crappy small-key $40-80 electronic keyboards that can only sound like three notes at a time and sound terrible doing it—they’re so bad that they will tend to frustrate and turn off even a beginner.
Yeah, how dare people have emotional connections with musical instruments! The great (and very inexpensive) iPad will finally allow humans to become equals and set poor people free. Nostalgia is exactly what's wrong with this world.
Yes, this is very over the top, but the iPad is neither inexpensive (compared to your $50 garage sale guitar and synthie) nor is it sufficient to make music.
People enjoy music from instruments not only because someone was able to compose a song on it, but because the instrument carries emotion, there is sweat and pain in learning it, people become masters of their instruments and have actual connections to them. The iPad is a powerful device for making music, sure. But it's not exactly the device I would choose to allow impoverished children to create music. And I, personally, enjoy music more when I know it's actual people playing instruments rather than just a producer mixing some stuff and only recording the singing. Calling playing an instrument obsolete and "fingering" is insulting.
I mean that's just a nonsense statement. You can say "make music (that I don't like)" but you 100% cannot say that an iPad is insufficient to make music when thousands of people do that every day and tens of thousands of people enjoy their output.
I get your sentiment, but I feel like your view on iPads and there being no musicianship to it is just wrong. The instruments in garage band have velocity sensitivity and can be played expressively by tapping the screen just as you can tap the keys on a piano or hit the marimba with some mallets.
In fact on some of the synthesizers you gain an additional mode of expressiveness because you can adjust your input as you're playing notes, similar to MPE synthesizers like the Osmose.
An iPad is more than sufficient for making music.
I say this as someone that really enjoys playing my instruments (mostly guitars) and wouldn't trade the experience for an iPad ever.
I'm not so optimistic these days. Poe's Law has long since died. Even if this was misunderstood sarcasm, you can probably find this opinion around the net (mayeb even further down the post).
> It is an absolutely good thing that an inexpensive device is replacing an expensive one.
Professional musician (pianist) here. It’s an outlandish take on solving affordability by destroying acoustic instruments and replacing them with iPads. Let’s see someone play the Prokofiev Toccata in real time using Garageband, no MIDI files allowed.
I bought my German made mandolin that's like 100 years old for less than 10% of an ipad, and it'll never be obsolete, that's the whole point...
It'll always be up to date, I'll always find the parts to fix it, and even if one-day it somehow gets damaged beyond repair I can recycle it in my fireplace in about 30 seconds
I feel like people making your point don't see the fundamental difference between a functional tool like a hammer and an artistic tool like a musical instrument, and it's kind of scary tbh.
> I can recycle it in my fireplace in about 30 seconds
not disagreeing w/ anything else (beside responding to a sarcastic comment, usually 'caring for the children' [esp. out of place] is a decent giveaway + repeating 'inexpensive'); however burning stuff is not recycling. If anything it releases all the carbon (CO2 + CO) in the atmosphere, compositing in the ground is a tad better option, but the lacquer might prevent that part... for a while.
>Not more than burning my regular fire wood, and infinitely better than fossil fuel
Not recycling still, recycling would be making something out of it, e.g. a plate, a toy, whatever.
Another option is making fiberboard alike material out of it from sawdust.
Dunno about termites, it'd depend where you live, but then again, I am not sure how that came into the discussion. Anyway compost is used in gardening, so it's a form of recycling.
There's a lot to break down here, but I'll take the less obvious angle. If you're calling the shiny new iPad an "accessible, inexpensive device for the impoverished", Apple's multi-billion dollar, decades long marketing has clearly failed you.
Yeah, why learn to play an instrument with your caveman hands when you can rent an iPad and make something that sounds the same with the AI in Garageband!
Between the fact that you think that entry-level instruments cost more than iPads, that somehow "fingering" an instrument is a bad or obsolete thing, and that you think iPads are affordable to the impoverished, I'm really not sure where to begin correcting you.
Just... yikes. I hate to be flippant, but you're so out of touch that my only thought is to tell you to touch grass.
we're on a technical forum, but "low tech" isn't inherently inferior. All the MIDI's in the world can't truly replace a good ol' acoustic sound. That's why we still have Orchaestras.
The other half, sure. To think that all tech people are welcoming the current portrayal of AI/LLM's/Generative Art is simply tone deaf. Some of the most cynical detractors are in fact highly technical people.
For low-tech I meant analog as opposed to digital. And I meant nothing pejorative in non-tech; these days, there's fewer and fewer positive connotations in being techie.
Yikes, that was really offbrand for Nintendo also, but it fits within their 90s "Play It Loud" marketing strategy wherein they tried to compete with ow-the-edge Sega and later Sony.
> Aside from the destruction of low-tech artistic tools triggering non-tech people aspect...
604 comments on this HN post (at the time of writing this), the bulk of which appear to be opposed to this video, and you're trying to tell me that tech folk aren't, to use your word, "triggered"? C'mon now.
Missing from this extremely short and underreported article is how badly this played out in Japanese market. The culture they have states that musical instruments, creative tools have some energy and imbued sense of spirit to them. So destroying these elements of culture is really really blunt and gauche to them. The majority of the push back came from Japanese people, and then artists empathizing with their sentiment.
Really interesting to consider that this might be one of the few incidents that Shintoists, or at least "cultural Shintoists," have gotten offended at a western production.
Makes me wonder if this is why Apple went out of their way to apologize for the ad. I think if this ad just had non-culturally-specific backlash, they would've simply moved on. But because this impacted a specific market's sensibilities, maybe they felt the need to do a public mea culpa.
I have seen recently a documentary about Japanese food, and an interesting fact was that the chefs at some big Japanese restaurant had a special decorated grave, in some nice yard, in which they deposited their old kitchen knives, when those were so worn out that they could no longer be used.
They felt that it would be disrespectful to just dump somewhere the main tools of their work, after they had used those every day for decades.
I think a lot of people are a little bit Shintoist. That's one of the reasons why we have museums - we regard things as some kind of reflection on people and events, and a chair in which a famous person sat or an instrument they played is different for us than otherwise identical object that doesn't bear that imprint. We may not literally believe in things having spirits, but for many the things have some qualities that go beyond their physical structure. Emotional value, etc.
Not because eg one piano got destroyed; surely that happens all the time, even on camera for eg movies and such. But there was something about watching beautiful objects be destroyed, in slow motion, gratuitously, and with an upbeat/sunny tone, that just aesthetically made me squirm in my seat
It goes beyond aesthetics for me. It's like they took everyone's deepest fears about technology and AI, that it will replace or "crush" authentic human experience and creativity, and they just embraced and celebrate it by literally crushing representations of human creativity. At least I'm glad the corporate types were actually honest about their goals, though, instead of their typical doublespeak
This was what I understood it to be as well, they let it split out by accident/enough group think. I’ve worked in tech long enough to firmly believe this sentiment exists.
Agreed, that's exactly how tech companies are, and Apple is one of the biggest. Apple doesn't really care what people create, so long as they are buying an Apple product to create it on. It doesn't matter that an iPad doesn't feel or sound like a trumpet. If someone buys their product to learn to play a trumpet or a piano, then they were the fool parting with their money that Apple was hoping to find, and there's a lot of them apparently.
Yeah, it looks super CGI to my eyes. Especially the desk and the piano. I also can't imagine anyone trying to direct this kind of a video without having precise control on what the destruction looks like.
I don't think these objects being real or not makes much (if any) difference to those who view the ad negatively. The underlying idea that Apple is crushing these tools of human entertainment and creative expression, only to replace them with their own "jack of all trades" remains the same.
Can confirm. I reacted negatively to the ad (in a "this ad causes emotions which the creators absolutely does not want an ad to cause" kind of way), and for me it's all about the imagery and symbolism. I hope and assume that the destruction is primarily CGI, but the visuals of destroying positive "soulful" things like instruments and replacing it with a lifeless slab of glass just doesn't sell the product to me.
In fact, I think this would have been an excellent art piece if the message was "heartless tech corporations want to destroy the good things in life and replace it with a cold slab of glass".
At first I had a negative reaction. Then, looking for comfort, noticed that the video is mostly CGI. But then again, I felt the same. It is what you say: the image of destruction of beautiful objects is bad per se, it's not what the objects are, it's what they represent.
Without expertise I would just casually guess that a hydraulic press this size does not exist, or if it did, it would not be used for that. So at least that part is CG.
Exactly my thoughts - this ad does very little to invoke the desire for the product, unlike many other Apple ads.
It's not like Apple has forgotten how to make such ads - the recent one for iPhones with family members asking to not be let go while the owner tries to delete photos represented a familiar experience of people trying to free up storage, and how they wouldn't have to do that if they bought a new iPhone.
On the other hand, this ad just shows stuff being destroyed, just like some of those useless Youtube videos which shows perfectly usable stuff being destroyed under the pretext of "ASMR" or whatnot. Not only is it very difficult to watch as someone who didn't have a lot of money and was taught to make careful use of it from an early age, it just invokes negative vibes, as if possessing a musical instrument is something to be ashamed of.
Their marketing team has been missing the mark for a while. The “big and bigger” billboards with people in the distance holding up phones to the camera with a giant hand tiny body look feels like something Samsung would have done in the early 10’s
I'm not bothered by the destruction. Destruction itself can have artistic value. For example, you can't portray the Nazis on screen without showing how destructive they were.
What bothers me is the arrogance to say that an iPad, a device which will be obsolete in a few short years, can replace all those instruments and tools that last more than a generation.
This is similar to the history channels which use AI colorized historical footage which wildly shifts objects from red to blue in a few frames and have the audacity to claim this is an improvement over the original.
I had same reaction to the 'niceness' of what they were crushing. Things looked too good, like still usable. What if they were slightly older and dinged, scuffed up, looked more like they were done being useful.
I haven’t seen anyone mention this yet, but I think the concept here was inspired by all the viral hydraulic press videos on Instagram and TikTok. Here’s a similar video showing random objects and consumer products being crushed in slow motion with similar upbeat music: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q9BtYEnrkg4
Sure, maybe that was the intent. But most of the objects I see in the linked video are cheap and mass-produced (a water bottle, some sticky notes, some plastic toys), which makes it feel totally different
For me it was just because of the damage it caused. I guess if I heard someone was throwing out a piano I wouldn't think much of it, but the destruction of everything in the ad made me uneasy. I just felt like it was so wasteful to destroy things in the way they did. But again, maybe I have a double standard, because if I saw someone throw a trumpet or an old camera in the dumpster I probably would not care as much.
I agree that the comments on Japanese culture were unwarranted, off-topic, unnecessary, offensive… and while I know very little about Japan, I feel I should ignore random internet opinions on it.
But can you elaborate on your second paragraph? Should culture always be immune to criticism?
I always understood the whole point of political correctness was to not spew hateful words about anyone and that should be the standard.
Criticism is one thing, but the poster felt the need to "educate" all of us about how an entire country's opinion is invalid because "it's not an utopia". Nobody brought that up, and disregarding an entire culture's opinion of an advertisement campaign because weebs have unrealistic expectations, in a discussion with a valid and informative point about said culture, is tastelessly petty. And why belittle liberal arts majors anyway?
Let's call it what it is: racism and intolerance of other cultures.
I feel like this ad is also a litmus test for empathy: if someone can't spot the inferred symbolism or understand why people have a problem with it...they are very impaired in that regard.
I guess I wasn’t sure what you meant by “target”. I agree with you on all counts, except that I’m not sure I interpret the comment as “hateful”. Wrong and offensive, yes.
I think they didn’t really understand the criticism of the ad, and decided that the reason people were so opposed was out of some irrational reverence for the Japanese, themselves irrational due to some spiritual heritage.
Absolutely no offense - I don't see what this has to do with Japan at all although this has been repeated everywhere. I think this is just an unfortunate natural intuition.
Japanese users normally aren't exposed to the rest of WWW at all, even on social media, so there's intuition that any notable interactions observed has to do with the four-seasons and egg sandwiches way. But it's also true that there are 0.35x as many of the people here as there are US Americans, or 1.5x more than Germans, which creates a lot of presence in itself, possibly even grossly exaggerated on Twitter due to cultural fit and ongoing collapse of its en-US bubbles. I think this instance is example of the latter being the case mistaken as the former.
The popular sentiment has changed from enthusiasm about "digital", to disillusionment about big tech inserting themselves into our lives to monetize everything.
In 2009, smartphones were a novelty, and the iPad has not been announced yet. People were wowed by the new capabilities that "multimedia" devices were enabling. They were getting rid of the old, outdated, less capable tools.
Nowadays "multimedia" is taken for granted. OTOH generative AI is turning creative arts into commoditized digital sludge. Apple acts like they own and have the right to control everything that is digital. In this world, the analog instruments are a symbol of the last remnants of true human skill, and the physical world that hasn't been taken over by the big tech yet. And Apple is forcefully and destructively smushing it all into AI-chip-powered you-owe-us-30%-for-existing disneyland distopia.
It aired on the Internet, which is available in Japan. You can see some examples of backlash from Japanese people in the replies to this tweet, if you have a twitter account. https://twitter.com/tim_cook/status/1787864325258162239
I see several people stating they're ashamed to owning an iPad, and will never buy one again. Is this a form of hyperbole to push a message, or is there really this much emotion?
The skepticism is strange to me. I think the ad is actually compelling enough that it's making some of us really examine the question of whether or not the iPad really can (or should) replace these things. Apple is making a bold statement, so strong reactions are expected.
I've known for a while now that I'm more creative with a 2H pencil and a sketchbook than I am on my iPad. I'm more creative noodling around on real strings than in an app. This has made me pause to consider whether I should ever again plug in my currently uncharged iPad.
> really examine the question of whether or not the iPad really can (or should) replace these things.
> This has made me pause to consider whether I should ever again plug in my currently uncharged iPad.
I can't comprehend this. It's not an either or scenario, and I don't believe destruction/replacement was the intended message of the commercial. These things can be (somewhat) emulated with the iPad (are inside it). You can use an iPad for those, while riding on the bus, eating lunch, whatever, or when creativity does strike you. But, I don't think any reasonable person is thinking an iPad is a parity replacement for piano or a physical paint brush, or will use it to replace those. It's a tool, available when someone wants to use it. I have trouble believing this much, and fairly profound, introspection is only happening because of a silly commercial showing things being compressed into an iPad. I think it must be something else/indirect/unrelated, possibly something to do with identity. But, I suppose this is evidence that these emotions are real, which is fascinating to me, seeing the iPad as a small form factor computing device/useful tool.
I'll just say that I have a piano at home that exists, and I can happily use, regardless of the charge state of my iPad. I can go between them, without issues. But, I will say, the objective limitations/irreproducibility of compositions that come with using musical notation is much better handled with sequencers (which can then be used to produce the under-expressed notation).
Good, the ad was really disturbing. An ad is just an ad and not the biggest deal in the scheme of things but that was really unpleasant to watch. For me, it was the visual of needless destruction and waste as much as the meta-message.
It's the needless destruction that really gets to me. I have a fairly visceral reaction to seeing things that someone put time, effort and scarce resources into making get destroyed for no reason, and Apple's ad hit so many nerves in that respect. It's just a complete waste, and that's before we get into the whole subtext of "tech is going to destroy 'IRL' art forms" that many people got.
What baffles me the most is the choice to include human figurines (the bust, the statue, the smiley right at the end). The imagery of human figures getting crushed is going to look disturbing even to the least environmentally conscious viewers.
I saw it felt nothing other than a morbid kind of "will it blend?". I think the ad is fine. It did its job. I mean, people are talking about it. They just can't use the same schtick again. But there's no need to apologize for it.
This really shows how much sentiments about technology have changed in the last five or so years. If this ad came out in 2018 it would have been received differently, I think. The buzz has worn off. People don't see doing everything on your device as progress. iPads are no longer novel.
Apple has been so used to growing new markets that I don't think they even know how to market when they're on top. All their best ads have been when using their products speaks to being a rebel. Nowadays the least rebellious thing you could be is an Apple user.
Many artists now view the tech industry as a credible threat to their work and livelihood, because of AI. If you want them to buy your products, it’s probably a good idea to show some sensitivity to that concern.
> This really shows how much sentiments about technology have changed in the last five or so years. If this ad came out in 2018 it would have been received differently, I think. The buzz has worn off. People don't see doing everything on your device as progress. iPads are no longer novel.
I think not. 2018 was not so different. People talked about what is now called enshittification. Apple, Google, and Facebook introduced screen time controls because concerns had grown year after year.
I think an ad showing the same objects sucked into a tablet would have been received much better now. I doubt the lurid destruction of art, creative tools, and symbols of culture and history would have been received much better in 2004.
>I think an ad showing the same objects sucked into a tablet would have been received much better now. I doubt the lurid destruction of art, creative tools, and symbols of culture and history would have been received much better in 2004.
Except that the opposite appears to be true. There are numerous examples throughout this HN thread of companies like LG and Nintendo doing similar things (LG back in 2018, Nintendo I'm not sure when) without receiving the same kind of flack as this ad is.
You have to remember that it was only in the past year or two that AI has really scared the shit out of the creative community. That sentiment didn't exist in the past when these kinds of commercials were previously made. There has been a shift, and right now, whether you like it or not, or whether you think artists should be scared or embrace it, to artists it feels like the tech community is pointing a giant middle finger at them.
In 2004, this kinda thing was brand new, and you could spin it as promising to artists. Now that 20 years have passed and people have seen the reality of how things have played out, there is a lot more negativity and apprehension towards it.
How many people saw LG UK's ad? Very few Japanese people probably. Social media as it exists today was new. Reporting on social media trends was rare. And artists were not important to LG.
Nintendo's ad was not similar. The animated characters were clearly not real and shown unharmed. The bus was not a creative tool or a symbol. Destruction was implied through editing. The target audience was children.
I know artists. I know their concerns about AI. I think you over estimate how many musicians would have celebrated an advertisement luridly destroying instruments in 2004.
It felt so sad and tone deaf, a celebration of disposability. I don't think Google ever felt the need to apologize for that one, but then again it was a lot less... graphic than this new Apple ad. It's safe to say Apple outdid Google in this competition.
Are you suggesting the emoji squeeze toy conveniently rolled perfectly to the edge of the hydraulic press at exactly the right moment and then its eyes uniformly popped out? A perfectly uniform explosion of dust actually burst out the press? Seems doubtful.
I don’t know if that’s the case here, but Apple has a long history of doing real-life photoshoots of their products that end up looking like CGI. It’s an extremely clean, perfectionist aesthetic. Realistically, it’s probably a real-life shot with CGI sprinkled in.
1,618 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 504 ms ] threadI suppose it would have been cooler if it was the other way around: "iPad somehow expands outwards, filling the room with those things"
People can’t emotionally separate their hatred and disgust at corporate social media taking over and censoring and monetizing the public square with the physical device that it leverages.
On one hand, we have Facebook and Instagram. On the other, every person interacting with a cop has a cloud-uploading HD camera at the ready.
For every Twitter, everyone can video call their parents/grandparents at any time for as long as they want for ~free from ~anywhere.
my comment was clearly hyperbole.
Strictly speaking about the article, it feels more like 'go away' lip-service, especially seeing as the bottom contains the ad - still up on Apple's official YouTube. If they really felt it 'missed the mark' and were sorry about it, they'd have probably taken it down.
I personally don't care if the ad was good or bad. I'm not an interested shareholder and I'm not in the Apple ecosystem.
But I just learned there's a new iPad via HN.
Maybe they'll take down the ad next week for a third bite at the apple. The first line of the article might read: 'Apple has cracked under pressure after the company's botched launch of the thinnest M4 iPad ever. The company took down its "Crush!" ad on Monday.'
https://youtu.be/15HTd4Um1m4
It's just "we take your concerns very seriously" fluff reply.
Silicon Valley on a mission
Jobs' death is truly tragic in the context that Apple - and by extension, the rest of the tech world - could have gone in a very different direction if he were still around. He would probably be screaming his head off at the idea of generative AI.
Seriously and sincerely, I'd like to hear a dozen definitions of what people think that "mission" is in 2024.
I think we long departed from "making the world a better place". And yet the change simply cannot be explained by greed, money, or obsession with growth.
Surely a lot of the venture capitalists that frequent this forum must be as confused as the next person if they still hold on to the ideal of "doing good with money".
What I see is the rise of a terrifying quasi-religious anti-humanist cult with overtones of masochism and self-hatred (of human life).
I'm no big fan of Steve Jobs, but clearly he would be horrified by many of the anti-human sentiments expressed daily in forums like this.
Is it too late to redefine digital technology as humane, and return to the roots of SV [0] ?
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology
Too bad it's a big club and everybody here won't be in it, eh.
There is some uncomfortable truth in this.
Those who identify with technology, and take for granted being its masters, controllers and benefactors, end up the most disappointed.
The hoi polloi are happily indifferent to the cargo cult of shiny stuff that comes and goes, which they buy because their friend got one.
But those intelligent enough to know what we could have had, what's possible and what's lost, will feel betrayed by larger forces that nobody controls, whatever "big club" you imagine yourself in.
It's one thing for a man to lose to lose his faith. It's something else when a priest does.
Here's the ad:
https://youtu.be/ntjkwIXWtrc
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cld0rxlqgggo
> People based in Japan appear to be prominent amongst the critics, which some said "lacked respect".
> Some said this was based in "tsukumogami” - a term from Japanese folklore describing a tool which can contain a spirit or even soul of its own.
> "The act of destroying tools is arrogant and offensive to us Japanese," one person explained, while another said musicians value their instruments "more than life itself".
https://twitter.com/AngelicaOung/status/1788241764383678900
> Everybody hated That Apple Ad but the Japanese REALLY hated it. I’ve never seen so many upset Japanese ppl commenting on a single thread
Would that deserve a news article and a statement from the company?
I think the closest thing I can think of is Sony, perhaps, doing an offensive ad(to Americans) with the PS5/6. I do think it'd be written about and they'd apologize, though it's a little different because Sony has a specific US subsidiary which acts like its own company.
Apple is essentially saying 'Don't worry about learning to play an instrument, use an iPad instead!' which is just disgusting. The modern world has lost too much dicipline and creativity already. It doesnt need more people being encouraged to take the lazy option.
It's not just general sensibilities, it's comically topical.
They're just playing "earth". To make diamonds you apply pressure. The iPad is the diamond resulting from crushing all that creativity into a tiny form factor.
Or something like that.
It's a bit like if you made a video that showed my dog getting crushed in a hydraulic press and replaced with a tamagotchi-like device. Like, I get the idea, but it still makes me want to cry.
While shorter than the very short "article" your comment actually explained it and makes me understand. The article did no such thing.
Which definition applies here?
Outrage:
1. An act of extreme violence or viciousness.
2. Something that is grossly offensive to decency, morality, or good taste.
3. Resentful anger aroused by a violent or offensive act, or an instance of this.
I think people are just a little critical, more than they are outraged. I have a deep hope that you're not outraged.
I'm typically critical of Apple's value and technology, but I am far more offended by what is a clear oversensitivity to art, and expression, which is by far the greater crime to the arts and to society as a whole.
The idea that people can't make art or express themselves for fear of other artists' outrage is what's truly outrageous.
To set my bias, I'm surrounded by music people and their instrument is basically an extension of themselves, they spent hours everyday touching it, for their whole life since 4. For some it's also the most expensive thing they own.
Some violinists are put off by music videos with violins played in the rain. Apple's ad would be traumatic.
> The idea that people can't make art or express themselves for fear of other artists' outrage is what's truly outrageous.
Eliciting a reaction is part of art, and people getting outraged is par for the course. You're also totally free to outraged at the outrage, that's the cycle.
Meh. I was very into music growing up, and still play. It doesn't bother me in the least to see a musical instrument that is not my own being destroyed, any more than I have a reaction to seeing a car being destroyed in a movie ("some people really love cars!") or someone blowing up a building ("some people really love architecture!") or an artwork being burned/modified/mutilated ("some people really love art!"), or food being wasted/destroyed ("some people really love cooking!") all of which are more-or-less common in mass media.
(To wit: someone else here pointed out the OK Go music videos where they -- professional musicians! -- destroy all sorts of things, including musical instruments. Those were great, btw.)
While I do not exclude the possibility that some people may have feelings in reaction to seeing a generic musical instrument being destroyed, you can extend this metaphor to any number of areas where it's completely accepted to see similar acts of destruction.
> Some violinists are put off by music videos with violins played in the rain. Apple's ad would be traumatic.
More likely is that a few people are truly bothered, but lots of people engage in performative outrage for attention, which is so common that we have a name for it: pearl-clutching.
I think everyone has their pet irritating thing.
That said, this is exactly what is interesting and "triggering" to many about the ad, IMO. That it emphasises destruction, and therefore is a metaphor for the replacement of material expression with the immaterial, or something along those lines.
Just to add, I play guitar every day. I don't handle my guitar with care: I ding it against walls, toss it onto the couch, fail to clean it as regularly as I should, drive with it in my car using no case to do so. But I love my guitar very much, because it enables me to play beautiful (to me) music. I don't want to be burdened by the "perfection" of my guitar. To each their own, I say.
I kinda feel it's not so far from synthesizers in a way.
Wind instruments will also probably fall in the "handle casually" space, while still sensible to being dinged and needing care ?
Classic instruments have a harsher split between the centuries old instruments that just can't be replaced [0], and the modern versions that are left mostly for amateurs or pros expanding their range and aiming for different sounds. That's where pro instruments end up at five~six figures prices, and are definitely not tossed around.
[0] I remember being told by a player that their instrument was there before their birth and will still be in people's hands way after they die.
[0]: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQX0RCg...
You can dislike something without being outraged. Well, right up until someone is outraged with you. Then you can't say that you like or dislike things anymore.
That seems like a terrible society to live in. It's the one we're experiencing.
The society you want is the one we have - an expression was made by Apple, and in response, thousands of artists have made their own expressions. This is what a society of free expression looks like.
The world you're arguing for would be one where the expressions of tech companies are beyond reproach and other people are not allowed to express themselves in response. Why should tech companies get that special treatment?
In my opinion, it says something about your mentality that you value the expression of one group but not the other.
I hate this idea - this apparent concern that Apple is getting "silenced". There is no such thing as being "silenced" when you're a billion dollar company. Moreover, the apparent "silencing" is simply people using their freedom of expression to voice an opinion of opposition. It is the core feature of being able to express oneself.
The ability of these common artists being able to speak their true thoughts against a billion dollar institution - and the institution feeling pressure to respond to them - is the whole point of having the freedom of expression. What else is even the point of allowing discussion, dissent, and expression if you don't want those to have any chance of affecting some outcome?
I presume you're a technology person, so maybe it's a good illustration of how tech sensibilities are far from universal and can be extremely tone deaf.
What I neglected to add there is exactly what you mention. I'm a tech person.
What's interesting is that an ad department was so tone deaf. Those aren't techies.
Ostensibly yes. Or maybe Apple has missed the mark on their apology too...
that's a bit extreme. yeah, many of us had hoped ipad would be more of a laptop w no keyboard (vs a huge smartphone), but macbooks have long been the most capable dev laptops on the planet
I personally don't find that to be true. The jobs that forced Macbooks on me were fraught with development issues all stemming from macOS.
In Windows, I am currently running Windows 11, several versions of Ubuntu, and even NixOS. WSL vastly outclasses VMs on macOS (which barely work anyway on macOS) and the "Linux but not Linux" nature of macOS.
The whole point of apple is that its aimed at the "creative" segment. Whether they are actually creative or not is another matter. One of the core pillars of apple's appeal is that creative people use it's stuff.
The main pitch is that Apple helps you be creative as an augment. Look at all the other Ads they pitch to creatives.
The ironic thing is that the advert neatly sums up what the tech/media giants are trying to do to the creative segment (and have been doing for a while)
Apple probably looked at usage stats and saw that 100x as many people use the ipad as piano than hook up an actual piano.
The error here, on Apple’s part, is that they made an ad that people can so easily lean into hating and publicly attribute it to some sort of intelligent, intellectual attribute that they want to signal to others.
And for the record, I don’t really care about the ad one way or another. It struck me as unremarkable for an Apple ad. It’s blindingly obvious that the right person lit a match at the right time, and this quickly turned into something else. I truly can’t believe that Apple chose now to engage with the peanut gallery.
Most company in the same situation would've done the same. Apple didn't have a choice.
https://www.fastcompany.com/40574083/facebook-uber-wells-far... (From 2018)
But in the grand scheme of things it might sell more iPads due to the Streisand effect.
Apple really fucked up here. Did no one on their marketing team bring this up?
Marketing was driven by ideas like avoiding "speeds and feeds", in the words of Steve, and emotionally connecting with users: ex. famous lore is an Apple ad is never "Buy the New Galaxy Plus Pro S6 with the 120 megapixel 240x Zoom!" it's "Soft tinkling music as smiling father takes video of 5 year old sledding down hill in snow"
I'm not saying they always obeyed those principles in every single ad until yesterday, but you'd be hard pressed (lol) to explain to someone a decade ago why Apple's first ad for a once-in-3-years iPad launch was...crushing a bunch of creative tools to communicate they shaved half a millimeter off.
It's funny being old because the thing that confuses me is why people have reactions to reactions, ex. people saying "based, why should they have to apologize anyway, it wasn't offensive"...it clearly wasn't offensive in that sense! It was just bizarrely off-brand.
Some people just really seem to object to the idea that anyone could ever experience an emotion and have it not be based on some kind of cold rationality.
The idea of feeling something in your gut, something visceral, is anathema to them.
For many, musical instruments and artists tools carry not just their functional nature but a spiritual or cultural identity. A piano isn't just a box with some metal strings inside, it represents something. That guitar could have been played, instead it's destroyed.
The as is also needlessly wasteful. It communicates a sense of disregard for the value of stuff. If apple burned a hundred grand and then showed us an iPad, many folks might be like, "what the fuck?" Same sort of vibe.
But you never want to tell a story about shooting a happy young dog, and then ask people "Vote for me, I do tough things"!! Don't. do . that.
As humans, we all get lost in our own context sometimes
(Not making any larger political point.)
People are mad when you crush their dog because it feels pain and experiences things and has some sense of self, things that inanimate objects cannot have. Not because they no longer have a dog or because of their emotional connection to that particular dog.
Perhaps a better analogy would be putting the corpse of an already deceased family dog in the hydraulic press but that isn’t too dissimilar from cremation.
Probably best to avoid the crushing dogs analogy all together.
I thought it was gonna be something else.
BMW, too, used to have an impeccable brand.
Minimalism doesn't sell everywhere.
I hear this said a lot, but know of no psychological evidence that people have actually become more "sensitive" (by which I mean neurotic, defensive etc).
What's happened is that people became better informed, educated, and communicative. They're more comfortable with expressing. And that's mainly down to technology which facilitated cultural change.
It is natural for that to turn inward. This is the evolution of critique. It took many years from Gutenberg to Vanity Fair. Literary criticism only emerged once the medium itself was mature.
The same thing is happening in technology as Lewis Mumford predicted. Technological critique. has come of age with AI.
Anybody so unsophisticated as to ignore that, like Apple, is doomed.
No one gives a shit how "thin" or "powerful" your gadget is. They care what it means to them and their values. Apple, of all organisations, should be mindful of that.
My identity? Why, I'm an iPhone™ product(RED)© AIDS (or as I've recently taken to calling it, HIV+AIDS) REALief-Responder® and I can assure you Zero (0) of the child laborers have STDs.
Stop being so sensitive about people "being sensitive" and engage in the discussion instead of dismissing it.
All this complaining about "cancel culture" is just complaining that other people are using their freedom of speech in a way that you don't like. This is what freedom is speech means - disagreement. Stop whining about people disagreeing with you. Either address the arguments they're making to further the conversation, or deal with it.
I don't think the world is going to end because some people are upset about an ad.
But I absolutely am going to laugh at and belittle those who are having an extreme and irrational emotional reaction to something this dumb.
> Either address the arguments they're making to further the conversation, or deal with it.
You missed the other option. Dismiss them and make them feel bad and embarrassed for overreacting.
It’s attacking someone relentlessly, canceling their contracts, getting them fired, kicked out of institutions, debanked.
I’m not sure if you are pretending to not know that, or really just don’t know anything on the topic at all. But either way, it’s kind of showing your cards.
Employers don't just fire you because a Twitter mob told them to. They do it because they learned about your bad behavior and no longer have faith in you.
If you don't like being fired: - Don't do stuff your employers will find distasteful - Vote for candidates to end at-will employment and give stronger employee rights
So, start off with a blatant misdirection. They shouldn’t, but the evidence is this works.
> that is your (or your associates') fault, not the whistleblowers
Frame cancel culture as a noble effort, ok, go on…
> Don't do stuff your employers will find distasteful - Vote for candidates to end at-will employment and give stronger employee rights
Just don’t disagree with liberals and vote the way they want you to! SIMPLE SOLUTION! Why didn’t I think of that!?
It's not about liberals or conservatives, it's about ordinary people not liking things and spreading the word, ideally so people with the power to change things hear it. Conservatives cancel too, e.g. the Bud Light / Dylan Mulvaney boycott.
Things seem to escalate quite quickly now with no rationale. There seem to be no middle ground these days. My reference to cancel culture is that while it isn't there yet, Apple may have felt the need to apologize before it got there.
I have come to loathe and disdain this kind of person I did not think even existed a decade ago. The sad truth is that a lot of people of a certain demographic will prefer to die before even switching to Windows, let alone Linux or something open. And sadly, a small part of the tech world is the same; they think that their experience with Windows and Android more than a decade ago is reflective of how they work now. Thus, Apple could spit on their faces, and yet they will still like it. Sadly, nothing to do with people who just suck up to modern Apple.
https://twitter.com/cuniiform/status/1788013085392859171
And it's actually already been done before, by Nintendo:
https://twitter.com/rsnous/status/1788047377556791321
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzAo9HzOgtQ
The Apple ad taps into that xtreme vibe by embracing destructive energy to depict a physical contrast. Which is visually attention-grabbing, but it puts the focus on the act of destruction, and reduction, and people who like the destroyed objects feel miffed.
"1984" I'd say was edgy in a rebellious way as you point out, which I'd argue gives it more substance. The sledgehammer hitting the screen isn't even the focus, it's the climax to a sequence that carries more of a meaningful message than "wow look how much functionality we fit into this thin shell."
Well, it just wasn't focusing on empty slowmo destruction of a big screen. It had an emotional message behind it. A bit like original Star Wars vs Rebel Moon.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtvjbmoDx-I
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntjkwIXWtrc
[3] - https://twitter.com/rezawrecktion/status/1788211832936861950
For everyone here that loved our C64 or DOS PC, how many of our peers actively rejected early computers because they weren't fun to use?
Apple today is the one size fits all megacorp the 1984 ad railed against.
It’s like if the Pokémon one showed each Pokémon getting crushed with splattering and gore…
This was really poorly worded and sounded very elitist and dismissive, I trust this was not the intention.
It is an absolutely good thing that an inexpensive device is replacing an expensive one, and that impoverished children will be able to create music with an inexpensive iPad and will not be forced to learn obsolete methods to "finger" an instrument.
If your use case is really covered by the iPad, you could also make do with a refurbished corporate DELL costing half the price or 3 years ago's Surface Pro, same way the track makers were doing 2 decades ago.
So no, Apple's marketing would sure want us to think so, but impoverished children are probably not saved by 2024's thinner iPad in any significant way.
What artistry! What musicianship! Thank God for Apple and the new iPad!
I don't foresee it being the norm any time soon (if ever) but as a novelty it'd be fun to see.
I'm not touching the first part of your post.
Guitars that cheap are similar to crappy small-key $40-80 electronic keyboards that can only sound like three notes at a time and sound terrible doing it—they’re so bad that they will tend to frustrate and turn off even a beginner.
Buy an ipad mini for 500 USD: you might be able to replicate the sound, but you will need to replace it in two.
Yes, this is very over the top, but the iPad is neither inexpensive (compared to your $50 garage sale guitar and synthie) nor is it sufficient to make music.
People enjoy music from instruments not only because someone was able to compose a song on it, but because the instrument carries emotion, there is sweat and pain in learning it, people become masters of their instruments and have actual connections to them. The iPad is a powerful device for making music, sure. But it's not exactly the device I would choose to allow impoverished children to create music. And I, personally, enjoy music more when I know it's actual people playing instruments rather than just a producer mixing some stuff and only recording the singing. Calling playing an instrument obsolete and "fingering" is insulting.
I mean that's just a nonsense statement. You can say "make music (that I don't like)" but you 100% cannot say that an iPad is insufficient to make music when thousands of people do that every day and tens of thousands of people enjoy their output.
In fact on some of the synthesizers you gain an additional mode of expressiveness because you can adjust your input as you're playing notes, similar to MPE synthesizers like the Osmose.
An iPad is more than sufficient for making music.
I say this as someone that really enjoys playing my instruments (mostly guitars) and wouldn't trade the experience for an iPad ever.
Luckily, I can have both.
Professional musician (pianist) here. It’s an outlandish take on solving affordability by destroying acoustic instruments and replacing them with iPads. Let’s see someone play the Prokofiev Toccata in real time using Garageband, no MIDI files allowed.
It'll always be up to date, I'll always find the parts to fix it, and even if one-day it somehow gets damaged beyond repair I can recycle it in my fireplace in about 30 seconds
I feel like people making your point don't see the fundamental difference between a functional tool like a hammer and an artistic tool like a musical instrument, and it's kind of scary tbh.
not disagreeing w/ anything else (beside responding to a sarcastic comment, usually 'caring for the children' [esp. out of place] is a decent giveaway + repeating 'inexpensive'); however burning stuff is not recycling. If anything it releases all the carbon (CO2 + CO) in the atmosphere, compositing in the ground is a tad better option, but the lacquer might prevent that part... for a while.
Not more than burning my regular fire wood, and infinitely better than fossil fuel
> compositing in the ground is a tad better option
It releases the same amount of carbon in the atmosphere, burning it is just a tiny bit faster than having termite digest and fart it away
The problem with carbon is when you take it from outside of the system (deep in the ground) and put it back in the cycle, anyways, you get the idea
Not recycling still, recycling would be making something out of it, e.g. a plate, a toy, whatever. Another option is making fiberboard alike material out of it from sawdust.
Dunno about termites, it'd depend where you live, but then again, I am not sure how that came into the discussion. Anyway compost is used in gardening, so it's a form of recycling.
Low/medium end music instruments are certainly cheaper than ipads, and last way way more.
Learning to use your own body is now obsolete? Ok… sure…
Just... yikes. I hate to be flippant, but you're so out of touch that my only thought is to tell you to touch grass.
The other half, sure. To think that all tech people are welcoming the current portrayal of AI/LLM's/Generative Art is simply tone deaf. Some of the most cynical detractors are in fact highly technical people.
604 comments on this HN post (at the time of writing this), the bulk of which appear to be opposed to this video, and you're trying to tell me that tech folk aren't, to use your word, "triggered"? C'mon now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mottainai
Makes me wonder if this is why Apple went out of their way to apologize for the ad. I think if this ad just had non-culturally-specific backlash, they would've simply moved on. But because this impacted a specific market's sensibilities, maybe they felt the need to do a public mea culpa.
They felt that it would be disrespectful to just dump somewhere the main tools of their work, after they had used those every day for decades.
In garden's silent nook, Beneath cherry's tranquil look, Blades retire from the cook.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3846402/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8...
Not because eg one piano got destroyed; surely that happens all the time, even on camera for eg movies and such. But there was something about watching beautiful objects be destroyed, in slow motion, gratuitously, and with an upbeat/sunny tone, that just aesthetically made me squirm in my seat
They predicted/showed us the future that is coming. They said/showed the quiet part loud.
In fact, I think this would have been an excellent art piece if the message was "heartless tech corporations want to destroy the good things in life and replace it with a cold slab of glass".
It's not like Apple has forgotten how to make such ads - the recent one for iPhones with family members asking to not be let go while the owner tries to delete photos represented a familiar experience of people trying to free up storage, and how they wouldn't have to do that if they bought a new iPhone.
On the other hand, this ad just shows stuff being destroyed, just like some of those useless Youtube videos which shows perfectly usable stuff being destroyed under the pretext of "ASMR" or whatnot. Not only is it very difficult to watch as someone who didn't have a lot of money and was taught to make careful use of it from an early age, it just invokes negative vibes, as if possessing a musical instrument is something to be ashamed of.
What bothers me is the arrogance to say that an iPad, a device which will be obsolete in a few short years, can replace all those instruments and tools that last more than a generation.
This is similar to the history channels which use AI colorized historical footage which wildly shifts objects from red to blue in a few frames and have the audacity to claim this is an improvement over the original.
It would still bother a lot of people for other reasons, but it's the wanton destruction that bothers me the most.
Let me take something of your prize possession and crush it for an iPad. Not all can afford one and such items brings them entertainment.
For some advert to advertise, "your a schmuck for having these, buy an ipad" is just out of order.
It's not that they will go and do so. But more the symbolism of "you don't need any of these ever again because you can do it on this!"
While okay; sure but again those who can't afford an iPad, were instruments are of an important value to see them destroyed is heart breaking.
There are no acceptable targets when it comes to culture.
But can you elaborate on your second paragraph? Should culture always be immune to criticism?
Criticism is one thing, but the poster felt the need to "educate" all of us about how an entire country's opinion is invalid because "it's not an utopia". Nobody brought that up, and disregarding an entire culture's opinion of an advertisement campaign because weebs have unrealistic expectations, in a discussion with a valid and informative point about said culture, is tastelessly petty. And why belittle liberal arts majors anyway?
I feel like this ad is also a litmus test for empathy: if someone can't spot the inferred symbolism or understand why people have a problem with it...they are very impaired in that regard.
I think they didn’t really understand the criticism of the ad, and decided that the reason people were so opposed was out of some irrational reverence for the Japanese, themselves irrational due to some spiritual heritage.
Japanese users normally aren't exposed to the rest of WWW at all, even on social media, so there's intuition that any notable interactions observed has to do with the four-seasons and egg sandwiches way. But it's also true that there are 0.35x as many of the people here as there are US Americans, or 1.5x more than Germans, which creates a lot of presence in itself, possibly even grossly exaggerated on Twitter due to cultural fit and ongoing collapse of its en-US bubbles. I think this instance is example of the latter being the case mistaken as the former.
https://www.theregister.com/2012/10/12/apple_licenses_swiss_...
In 2009, smartphones were a novelty, and the iPad has not been announced yet. People were wowed by the new capabilities that "multimedia" devices were enabling. They were getting rid of the old, outdated, less capable tools.
Nowadays "multimedia" is taken for granted. OTOH generative AI is turning creative arts into commoditized digital sludge. Apple acts like they own and have the right to control everything that is digital. In this world, the analog instruments are a symbol of the last remnants of true human skill, and the physical world that hasn't been taken over by the big tech yet. And Apple is forcefully and destructively smushing it all into AI-chip-powered you-owe-us-30%-for-existing disneyland distopia.
So the ad was probably punching up in a way back then.
Today there is a real recognition of how pervasive digital devices and AI tech is becoming.
With all the might and influence Apple and tech companies now have - this ad might have evoked a sense of punching down.
If not, then I am not sure what you're talking about.
I've known for a while now that I'm more creative with a 2H pencil and a sketchbook than I am on my iPad. I'm more creative noodling around on real strings than in an app. This has made me pause to consider whether I should ever again plug in my currently uncharged iPad.
> This has made me pause to consider whether I should ever again plug in my currently uncharged iPad.
I can't comprehend this. It's not an either or scenario, and I don't believe destruction/replacement was the intended message of the commercial. These things can be (somewhat) emulated with the iPad (are inside it). You can use an iPad for those, while riding on the bus, eating lunch, whatever, or when creativity does strike you. But, I don't think any reasonable person is thinking an iPad is a parity replacement for piano or a physical paint brush, or will use it to replace those. It's a tool, available when someone wants to use it. I have trouble believing this much, and fairly profound, introspection is only happening because of a silly commercial showing things being compressed into an iPad. I think it must be something else/indirect/unrelated, possibly something to do with identity. But, I suppose this is evidence that these emotions are real, which is fascinating to me, seeing the iPad as a small form factor computing device/useful tool.
I'll just say that I have a piano at home that exists, and I can happily use, regardless of the charge state of my iPad. I can go between them, without issues. But, I will say, the objective limitations/irreproducibility of compositions that come with using musical notation is much better handled with sequencers (which can then be used to produce the under-expressed notation).
Cite?
Not everything has to be perfectly rational.
Apple has been so used to growing new markets that I don't think they even know how to market when they're on top. All their best ads have been when using their products speaks to being a rebel. Nowadays the least rebellious thing you could be is an Apple user.
Alienating them is (or should be) a huge mistake in my mind.
But it's 2024, everything is enshittified, God has forsaken us.
I think not. 2018 was not so different. People talked about what is now called enshittification. Apple, Google, and Facebook introduced screen time controls because concerns had grown year after year.
I think an ad showing the same objects sucked into a tablet would have been received much better now. I doubt the lurid destruction of art, creative tools, and symbols of culture and history would have been received much better in 2004.
Except that the opposite appears to be true. There are numerous examples throughout this HN thread of companies like LG and Nintendo doing similar things (LG back in 2018, Nintendo I'm not sure when) without receiving the same kind of flack as this ad is.
You have to remember that it was only in the past year or two that AI has really scared the shit out of the creative community. That sentiment didn't exist in the past when these kinds of commercials were previously made. There has been a shift, and right now, whether you like it or not, or whether you think artists should be scared or embrace it, to artists it feels like the tech community is pointing a giant middle finger at them.
In 2004, this kinda thing was brand new, and you could spin it as promising to artists. Now that 20 years have passed and people have seen the reality of how things have played out, there is a lot more negativity and apprehension towards it.
Nintendo's ad was not similar. The animated characters were clearly not real and shown unharmed. The bus was not a creative tool or a symbol. Destruction was implied through editing. The target audience was children.
I know artists. I know their concerns about AI. I think you over estimate how many musicians would have celebrated an advertisement luridly destroying instruments in 2004.
a stupid ad.
It felt so sad and tone deaf, a celebration of disposability. I don't think Google ever felt the need to apologize for that one, but then again it was a lot less... graphic than this new Apple ad. It's safe to say Apple outdid Google in this competition.
The Apple ad is showing things people love being destroyed and replaced by a inferior replacement
The reports of fear about that movie have been greatly exaggerated.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/did-a-silent-film-abou...