Posted in: Apple, Opinion, streaming, TV, TV, YouTube | Tagged: apple, ipad, ipad pro, opinion, tim cook

Apple iPad Ad Backlash: Seen as Proudly "Crush"-ing Human Experience

We're guessing that Apple wasn't quite expecting the reaction it's receiving for its iPad Pro commercial "Crush!" - but we get the backlash.

Did Apple go from "raging against the machine" to becoming "the machine"? That's one of the many ways to interpret the commercial for the new iPad Pro tablet that was released in the past 14 hours – one that has already made a lot of people "Think Different" about the company. Remember when Apple was represented as a "resistance runner," throwing a hammer in the George Orwellian face of the status quo (to sell Macintosh to the public, of course)? In 2024, Apple is proudly represented by… a very large & destructive hydraulic press? Yup. To the tune of Sonny and Cher's "All I Ever Need Is You," the promo "Crush!" features a large display of televisions, musical instruments, books, video game consoles, and a whole lot more creative things being slowly crushed under the press. And it takes its time – taking up over 50 seconds of the 1:08 ad – making it all that much more disturbing. From there, the press rises to reveal that from that destruction comes – a new (and really thin) iPad Pro.

Now, we're going out on a limb here, and we're going to assume that the message that Apple CEO Tim Cook was going for was that the iPad Pro packs a lot of creative artistry into such a small package. In fact, Cook wrote in the tweet/x he posted to promote the company's new hardware, "Just imagine all the things it'll be used to create." Except even Cook's can be taken in a very bad way – and that's exactly what we've been seeing on social media. While the Apple CEO may be thinking in tech terms, a lot of folks who use the very things that were destroyed see the commercial as a cynical metaphor for removing the human experience from the creative process – and devaluing the importance of the artist in that process. While there were a number of posts to choose from, it was this one from writer, producer & actor Luke Barnett that stood out for finding a way to put a twistedly humorous perspective on the matter that makes a strong point:

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