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It's a bit insane to me that Apple felt the need to "apologize"... so they made a crappy AD that didn't appeal to some audiences... is this really grounds for r
by noitpmeder 2y ago
It's a bit insane to me that Apple felt the need to "apologize"... so they made a crappy AD that didn't appeal to some audiences... is this really grounds for retractions/apologies these days?
- thorum 2y agoIt didn’t just not appeal to some audiences. It actively alienated one of the primary audiences of their product. Of course that requires a response.
- thsksbd 2y agoAnd alienated them in a very very primal way. Artisans love their trade tools.
- rob74 2y agoYeah, imagine telling a guitar or piano player that they can trash their respective instruments, because "all they need now is an iPad". Doesn't sound good, does it?
- guappa 2y agoFeels good to the people who can't play an instrument :)
- thsksbd 2y agolol, touche
- alt227 2y agoYep, thats the other horrible part of this ad. Apple is essentially saying 'Don't worry about learning to play an instrument, use an iPad instead!' which is just disgusting. The modern world has lost too much dicipline and creativity already. It doesnt need more people being encouraged to take the lazy option.
- blargey 2y agoI'm confused about the confusion, really. It's not hard to imagine how "tech company compressing all your traditional art tools into a blackbox" imagery would have struck some nerves that were already rubbed raw by the AI-Art Discourse. It's not just general sensibilities, it's comically topical.
- wombat-man 2y agoWell, we're talking about it
- rvnx 2y agoDoesn't create the urge to buy an iPad, the same way that Elon speeches don't make people want to buy a Tesla.
- wombat-man 2y agoIf I'm being real I do kind of want an OLED iPad. But I'm almost positive it's not because of that ad.
- tharkun__ 2y agoI had no idea this ad existed until this came through here. But having watched it: seems totally fine. They're just playing "earth". To make diamonds you apply pressure. The iPad is the diamond resulting from crushing all that creativity into a tiny form factor. Or something like that.
- pesfandiar 2y agoThe ad had multiple shots where the creative tools were crushed. There was too much emphasis on destruction as opposed to compression.
- marklyon 2y agoExactly. Had they invoked the idea of a shrink ray and knolled the tiny items, then pressed those into a unified object, revealed to be the latest iPad (with a needlessly spec-bumped processor and inflated price) then it might have accomplished their objective.
- dorkwood 2y agoI've seen a few people mistake the outrage felt by artists as them misunderstanding the concept. I'm an artist, and I understand the concept just fine (all these tools are squeezed into the form factor of an iPad! Our thinnest one ever!) but the visual itself is tone deaf. Especially with artists feeling so threatened by tech companies this year, using a metaphor that shows their tools quite literally being crushed is insensitive. It's a bit like if you made a video that showed my dog getting crushed in a hydraulic press and replaced with a tamagotchi-like device. Like, I get the idea, but it still makes me want to cry.
- tharkun__ 2y agoNow if you say it like that it does make sense to me why people would be outraged. While shorter than the very short "article" your comment actually explained it and makes me understand. The article did no such thing.
- trimethylpurine 2y ago
- nxobject 2y agoAds target specific audiences, and I think they forgot to test theirs with very specific ones...
- TaylorAlexander 2y ago> is this really grounds for retractions/apologies these days? Ostensibly yes. Or maybe Apple has missed the mark on their apology too...
- powersnail 2y agoThe point of advertisement is to attract people to the product. If the ad alienates enough of their potential user base, it totally makes sense to try to take that back, and make amends. To me, that alone is enough ground for retraction/apologies.
- mjbamford 2y agoI have been an Apple user since June 1983, and have repeatedly sung the praises of the company, its technology and its vision for decades to friends, family employers and employees. Some of my own identify is strangely drawn from being an Apple aficionado for so long. Personally, this ad was very disappointing, very crushing - to purposefully destroy instruments of creativity is rudely incongruous to my understand of the meaning of Apple.
- bmitc 2y agoApple is the most draconian company and operating system maker. It's astounding that they're associated with creativity. They make it really hard to even use their devices as computers. And they've made the same aluminium rectangles for decades now. Literally, where is the creativity?
- boxed 2y agoYou are talking about things that are unrelated to creating visual art and music.
- bmitc 2y agoNo, I'm not. Apple breaks music applications with every new release. They're all being held hostage due to OpenGL being deprecated on macOS. Apple is the hardest platform to develop creative applications for.
- globular-toast 2y agoAny publicity is good publicity. "Some people find advert offensive" isn't a story. "Apple apologises for advert" is.
- willis936 2y agoThis wasn't true before the internet and it is especially wrong today.
- KaiserPro 2y agoIts more that it pissed off its core market. The whole point of apple is that its aimed at the "creative" segment. Whether they are actually creative or not is another matter. One of the core pillars of apple's appeal is that creative people use it's stuff. The main pitch is that Apple helps you be creative as an augment. Look at all the other Ads they pitch to creatives. The ironic thing is that the advert neatly sums up what the tech/media giants are trying to do to the creative segment (and have been doing for a while)
- Workaccount2 2y agoI think the real sore spot it hit is outing all the faux creative types who think owning an Apple product makes them creative. Apple probably looked at usage stats and saw that 100x as many people use the ipad as piano than hook up an actual piano.
- pompino 2y agoYeah, apparently its hard to just move on with your life after watching something you dont like. This making front page on HN is wild. The echo chamber is sealed tight.
- guappa 2y agoI have a hard time taking seriously the opinion of someone named "blow job" in italian.
- anon373839 2y agoI don’t think that’s what’s driving the attention. Plenty of companies make tasteless or unpleasant ads. But Apple? It’s just bewildering.
- pompino 2y ago10 people on twitter are complaining so Apple must apologize.
- cqqxo4zV46cp 2y agoHonestly, yes. Reading the overly emotive language in these comments, it’s pretty clear that many people here are just looking to be outraged and / or got caught up in the herd mentality of it all. I genuinely don’t think that most of the people here would feel this strongly if they hadn’t seen it through the lens of some tweet or click-hungry Apple blog exclaiming “what the hell!” The error here, on Apple’s part, is that they made an ad that people can so easily lean into hating and publicly attribute it to some sort of intelligent, intellectual attribute that they want to signal to others. And for the record, I don’t really care about the ad one way or another. It struck me as unremarkable for an Apple ad. It’s blindingly obvious that the right person lit a match at the right time, and this quickly turned into something else. I truly can’t believe that Apple chose now to engage with the peanut gallery.
- pcurve 2y agoThey could say nothing. They could double down and explain. Or they could apologize, cut their losses and move on. Most company in the same situation would've done the same. Apple didn't have a choice.
- xyst 2y agoIs it even a real apology? Apple has joined the ranks of issuing corporate apologies https://www.fastcompany.com/40574083/facebook-uber-wells-fargo-and-the-new-wave-of-apology-ads https://www.fastcompany.com/40574083/facebook-uber-wells-far... (From 2018)