Apple’s new ad runs into arts storm

The video promoting the latest iPad shows a crushing machine domolishing a trumpet, a piano, a head of Beethoven, a metronome, among other building blocks of our culture.

Meet the new iPad Pro: the thinnest product we’ve ever created, the most advanced display we’ve ever produced, with the incredible power of the M4 chip. Just imagine all the things it’ll be used to create. pic.twitter.com/6PeGXNoKgG

— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) May 7, 2024

Hugh Grant called it ‘the destruction of the human experience.’

Author Austin Kleon wrote: ‘As a “fuck you” to @tim_cook and that atrocious iPad ad, here’s a picture of my son in front of the old used piano I bought before he was born, so he’d know the joy of growing up in a house with a piece of furniture you could play music on.’

FT columnist Robert Shrimsley added: The most telling things about this ad is that clearly everyone at Apple, including Tim Cook, who saw this. Went “YES, that’s who we are. We crush everything joyful”.

Conservatoire chief Stephen Maddock opined: Sorry @tim_cook but this is a HORRIBLE ad. Just think about all the ways in which your – brilliant – @Apple products have crushed & destroyed creative industries & people’s livelihoods. Is this really a healthy visual metaphor?

Filmmaker Justine Bateman said Apple was ‘crushing the arts’.

My own view? The ad defines the distance between California and the rest of us. California is counter-cultural, eager to recreate the universe, only better. Think John Cage, Francis Ford Coppola, Sergey Brin, Steve Jobs.

The iPad is California writ small. Erasing history comes with the territory.

NL

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Tim Cook just strutted onto the #AppleEvent stage like he’s about to drop the hottest tech album of 2024. pic.twitter.com/6NneG38q53

— Satan (@Scentofawoman10) May 7, 2024