Apple apologises for crushing ad
NewsApple has withdrawn its iPad campaign after protests from the arts world.
The company said: ‘Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world. Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.’
Swift, and smart.
Missed the mark by a mile!
From my iPad
“Creativity is in our DNA at Apple”
That’s a very special definition of “creativity”.
The objectionable content of the ad aside — apparently, it’s even not more than an almost literal copy of a competitor’s 2008 video.
From a short, scathing review: “Sixteen years ago, LG released a commercial to advertise its new Renoir phone. It features various musical instruments being mercilessly squished in a hydraulic press until, voilà, an LG smartphone materializes from their mangled remains. They are completely different, though. In the LG video, the press is arranged to squeeze from the sides, but in the much more original and creative Apple ad, the press is vertical.”
https://boingboing.net/2024/05/09/apple-blatantly-rips-off-2008-lg-phone-ad-in-latest-ipad-commercial.html
lol
So when Netrebko apologizes it’s not “swift and smart”, but for Apple you’re ok?
Hurrah! It was so depressing, negative and tasteless. Keep Music Live
Hmm. I work for an American Fortune 100 company that advertises heavily. Before any of our print, tv, or streaming ads see the light of day, the ad is shown to a focus group which then discusses it. If the reaction is negative, the ad is not used.
Does Apple not have access to a focus group? If so, of what kind of people does it comprise?
They only have access to their secretive echo chamber. Some speculate the chamber is situated around the corner from the Kool Aid drinking fountain.
When Steve Jobs ran the place they had a focus group of one person… Steve Jobs.
I’m sure their focus group has doubled or even tripled in size since then.
They use focus groups. What proportion of planet earth do you think is made up of classical musicians sensitive to this advert?
It’s easier for Apple just to scrap it than have even a tiny minority making a fuss.
The ad doesn’t bother me. For one thing, it’s an accurate assessment of what happens when we try to digitize the tools and methods of art, how those tools can be helpful but also how they lean toward an art that is sanitized and canned into the conformity of apps.
Another reason it didn’t bother me is that creativity and innovation are always destructive. For better or worse, new worlds are usually built on the ruins of old ones. History is a boneyard of great civilizations.
When effective, affordable synthesizers came along, TV producers embraced them to create more economical background music. So many musicians were put out of work the union membership in LA fell by about two thirds over the next 15 years or so.
Think of how classical music changed when the transnational feudalistic dynasties that funded everything from Monteverdi to Mozart were replaced with the rise of nation-states and the cultural nationalism they promoted, Wagner, Brahms, Dvorak, Mahler, Janacek, Stravinsky, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Debussy, Ravel, Respighi, etc.
Think of the aristocrats of Vienna fleeing before the armies of Napoleon and the new world that was created on the ruins of the old. The history of classical music is a story of creativity and the destruction that results from it. Today, classical music is to a large degree the curation of ruins. And sadly, we now see very little of substance being built on those old ruins.
It might be accurate as critique or commentary, but as a marketing piece that’s intended to _woo_ users (including, for the iPad Pro demographic, a strong proportion of users who intend to adopt it for creative purposes rather than media consumption or routine work) it was tone deaf and missed the mark. The misstep probably won’t necessarily stop people buying it, but it’s worrying. As someone else wrote, where was the focus group who could have warned them of this reaction?
Yet another reminder that corporations are not your friends.
The ad was brilliant. There was nothing to apologize for.
It was a cheap shot, not brilliant.
Infantile. But that’s not surprising from a bunch of computer geeks with self inflated messianic egos.
Nobody was offended by the ad Apple, I’m sorry you felt like you had to recapitulate to the PC police…
No doubt, Apple used AI to write and design its commercial. After all, AI just vacuums up what’s already out there on
the internet. Folks, we are in for a barren future with endless regurgitation of other people’s regurgitation of other people’s regurgitation…back to the movement of the tectonic plates in Deep Time.
If so, it would be a great example of the lack empathy in AI. More to come…