It’s time to smash the iPad, the tool that makes us lazy morons

In the advert, the device emerges from a crusher that has just obliterated every decent thing you can think of

It’s uniting actors and artists, musicians and writers, with

Hugh Grant describing it as “the destruction of the human experience, courtesy of Silicon Valley”. I’m talking about the advert for the new iPad Pro, heralded by Apple as “the most powerful iPad ever [which] is also the thinnest”.

And this delicate little genius of computer engineering, in that advert, emerges from a giant crushing machine that has just obliterated every decent thing you can think of: paint and cameras, musical instruments

– a trumpet, a piano, a guitar – lamps, sculpture, record players, all sorts of toys, a metronome and books. Someone seemed to think that this advert was somehow a good idea.

The iPad escapes the crush because it can count time; can offer a canvas for artists, instruments for musicians; is a torch, a camera, a photo album, a music machine, a game, and a toy. But it’s also the most terrible electronic device ever invented. And I was surprised by the advert because firstly, I thought they were already obsolete. For me the iPhone is essential – along with all its glorious accessories from train ticket buying and banking to communicating and frivolity. And then I have a Mac, my personal computer on which I write. And the iPad sits somewhere, miserably, pointlessly, in between. Which is where it should remain.

For child management, the iPad should be the last resort, that weapon to silence an annoying infant, for long car journey management or plane peace. It is brought out reluctantly

– for it is a slippery slope, a habit that is hard to break that stops a child from looking around them at the real world.

Someone has put a video of the advert in reverse on social media and it’s magnificent. The iPad disappears and all these majestic inventions spring back to form and life.

This could be the tipping point for the awful iPad. Let’s smash them in that giant crusher, to smithereens and embrace real objects; inventions that celebrate and encourage the best of human endeavour.