Creativity-crushing iPad ad sparks unity
In times as polarized as our own, it can sometimes feel like we live in a different reality than those with whom we disagree. Moments of unity are thus rare, and when they do occur, it must be a big deal.
Unfortunately for Apple, this week saw such unity emerge in utter disdain, contempt and disgust toward an ad for the company’s latest iPad Pro. Promoted on X by CEO Tim Cook himself, the ad shows an array of creative objects — musical instruments, a record player, an easel, an arcade — crushed by an enormous industrial press. In the end, voila, one is left with an iPad. It has been viewed over 50 million times just on Cook’s X account alone.
The thinking behind the ad seems plain enough: an iPad is so functional and so filled with limitless possibility, it essentially compresses a hundred different tools into one thin slab.
But almost immediately, everyone from tech’s more vocal critics to normally ardent Apple fans were put off. Social media was ablaze with outrage — and for once it seemed justified. In this new, nascent stage of the AI era, there is an understandable anxiety around the fate of human creative endeavour. As artists and creators of all sorts fret about the sort of future a world full of AI-produced dreck might create, Apple’s ad felt darkly symbolic. Whether or not the response was irrational was besides the point. The ad was ill-timed, ill-considered and an obvious blunder on Apple’s part.
Apple later apologized for the ad, telling marketing media outlet Ad Age in a statement Thursday that it had “missed the mark” with the video. But that Apple’s usually astute marketing team failed to foresee this entirely predictable reaction is odd, to say the least. Perhaps it was just a one-off error. But given the context of the ad itself, coming just after an iPad update that felt mostly pointless, it does feel that Apple, in more than one area, appears to be slightly lost at the moment.
First, the iPads themselves in question. Yes it’s true, they are in certain ways very nice. They have brilliant new screens and almost assuredly have more computing power packed into their svelte fivemillimetre-thin frames than 90 per cent of laptops in use today.
One problem, though: so what? A modern iPad Pro retails for $1,400 (Canadian) at minimum and does almost nothing you couldn’t do on the $500 slab used by a child that you bought four years ago. The iPad has for years been stuck in this strange limbo where it is increasingly pitched as a new sort of superproductive computer, with a price tag to match, while never actually delivering any meaningful change.
I myself naively bought the hype about the iPad being a laptop replacement until I was forced to admit I had made a very expensive error. (This column has been brought to you by a boring, regular laptop.)
If the iPad lineup feels a bit adrift, Apple’s supposed next big thing is off to a shaky start. The Vision Pro headset is Apple’s take on augmented reality and was supposed to represent the future of computing. It is conceptually fascinating, but also very expensive and, for now at least, is of dubious utility. Apple reportedly slashed production after even modest targets were not met.
No-one expected a $3,500 (U.S.) headset to be the next iPhone. But there was a sense that the technology was pushed out perhaps before it was ready so that the company could claim to have the next thing, and perhaps so that Cook — who is rumoured to be stepping down in the next couple of years — might have a legacy.
It’s thus part of a trend in which Apple seems to be operating on cruise control. As one more example: after billions in research over the past few years, Apple recently killed a “secret” car project it had been working on.
Apple has weathered down periods just fine before. In fact, commentators questioning Apple — only to then see the company rake in ever higher record revenues and profits — has a long tradition in tech.
But Apple is simply too entrenched into people’s lives, and in the lucrative parts of the market that have it producing more in revenue than most countries’ entire GDP.
All the same, perhaps the reason Apple produced an advertisement that seemed to attack so many people’s anxieties around AI is precisely because the company appears to be significantly behind on AI, too. As Meta, Microsoft, Google and OpenAI race ahead, Apple has up until now seemed to almost entirely avoid AI — except to say that its technology and chips are in theory very good at doing it.
You should never count Apple out, in part because of its history of creativity, and in part because it is among the world’s largest companies. That sort of capital can do an awful lot. And as the company’s annual developer conference approaches, perhaps we’ll hear more about how Apple intends to shift from the era of the smartphone to the era of AI.
There was a time Apple was seen by many as a gateway to creativity, not an entity that would crush it, even metaphorically. Time will tell if that ad was a mere misstep — or if perhaps it is the spirit of novelty and innovation at the company that is the thing that has been flattened.
‘‘ It does feel that Apple, in more than one area, appears to be slightly lost at the moment. — Navneet Alang