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I didn't like the ad. I think the people creating it wanted to imply that it's as if they took all these things and put it in an iPad, where you can still achie

I didn't like the ad. I think the people creating it wanted to imply that it's as if they took all these things and put it in an iPad, where you can still achieve all the creativity while carrying a thin device. I don't think it's impossible to convey that message without destroying instruments and creative tools that are precious to so many. Maybe if they had made the animation very fast it would've appeared as a joke and not something intended to be taken literally. Also could've had some artist exit a studio, take the iPad, do a whole bunch of stuff, then go back to the studio and kind of test out/use the tools while reading from the iPad or something like that. I know some people are saying the reaction is too strong, but trust me if you practice on a piano daily you will not feel good watching it get crushed. I don't even work in marketing or own any Apple devices.

mateus1 2y ago
It is also a false equivalence. An iPad will never replicate the beauty of a human playing a piano or a violin. It’s dumb consumerism trying to make us believe that life comes down to buying rather than living.
- wilsonnb3 2y ago
  > An iPad will never replicate the beauty of a human playing a piano or a violin. I mean, one of its primary uses is to replicate the beauty of a human playing piano or violin via videos and recordings. Aside from that, isn’t this just an appeal to tradition? An iPad is a tool just like a piano or the violin, people make beautiful music with them all the time. I am sure there were curmudgeons saying that the piano and violin would never replicate the beauty of the human voice when they were the top technology of the day.
  - eweise 2y ago
    They might make beautiful music but not beautiful piano music. The piano must exist in order to be recorded into the ipad, and recording isn't unique to ipads. You could play the piano samples via midi from the ipad but hundreds of other devices can also do that and that still wouldn't replicate from the player's perspective, actually playing a piano or and audiences experience of actually hearing a piano.
  - graypegg 2y ago
    I don't personally play an instrument, but I can also understand that the physicality of keys, strings and pedals is innately different from tapping on a glass screen. A digital piano aims to replicate the sound a specific piano, and provide a piano-inspired interface for playing it. A real piano is a big single use device, in theory yeah, but I imagine for the people playing it the direct control over the things making the sound that is irreplaceable. There's things that will always be impossible on a VST instrument because it's construction (Prepared Piano [0]), and vice versa [1]. They seem like two different avenues of artistic expression to me. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepared_piano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepared_piano [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesizer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesizer
    - wilsonnb3 2y ago
      > They seem like two different avenues of artistic expression to me I agree completely, this is the point I was trying to make. People are treating the iPad and the piano as fundamentally different despite both being tools that are equally as capable of making beautiful music in the hands of a talented musician in my eyes.
  - fnordpiglet 2y ago
    It’s for this reason I have a minstrel that follows me everywhere. There’s really no substitute for the original analog sound - it’s warmness and the subtle imperfections of the original - can’t be substituted with a consumer device manufactured by a soulless megacorp. It does become problematic on flights as the imperialist cryptofascist lackies of capitalism require my minstrel buy a full ticket and doesn’t let her play my tunes on the flight. People at work get pretty irritated and complain about flow and focus and whatnot and keep insisting I submit to the consumerist mediocrity of a sound cancelling headphone - and I’ve tried in honesty to build a portable sound proof booth with an ear trumpet attached but it’s kind of bulky and I’m not really that handy with tools to begin with. It was also really hard to get a badge for the minstrel but eventually HR just gave me a neurodiversity exemption and classified her as a support animal, which in my opinion is kind of sexist but there’s only so many things one can get outraged about. The real issue is that a single instrument is kind of insufficient to fully capture a wider range of sound and experience so I’ve been trying to figure out how to pull off a quartet - really some of the best music is done by a four piece band anyway - but the above problems just seem to get worse but I’m sure I’ll figure out how to scale this solution.
    - teddyh 2y ago
      Minstrels are also useful in the event you travel through the frozen land of Nador.
    - mncharity 2y ago
      Minstrel "music" is perhaps problematic itself. On the one hand, you have music as an emergent property of the gathered individuals' culture and skills. That blurs when a tavern sings to a traveling minstrel rather than a neighbor. But professionals can enhance rather than displace. Consider European acting troupes traveling a US West steeped in discussion of Shakespeare. Or printed "poems" to be spread and read in support of real spoken poetry. And minstrels do collaborate with local players... but they can also displace. Something is lost to a community when the local kid or elder can no longer make a bit of money piping in the harvest. Or neighbors play the gather fiddles. When music becomes for a community a spectator sport, rather than something embedded. A train car singing together, versus an occasional platform busker. Like trust-fund kids who see strength of knowledge and skills as something to buy not build in themselves. Or a merchant who doesn't value strength of body for farming. And then there's the my-tower-is-taller-than-yours of court "professional music". With richly textured diversity, complexity, nuance, and surprise consequences, these can be hard to think and discuss clearly. Like struggling now to appreciate the impoverished isolation of people's un-musical experience of tunes before AR's ambient-rendezvous-and-collaborate jamming apps.
  - coldtea 2y ago
    >Aside from that, isn’t this just an appeal to tradition? No. It's an appeal to something that is eternally true.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    > I mean, one of its primary uses is to replicate the beauty of a human playing piano or violin via videos and recordings. Videos and recordings don't actually replicate those things. They approximate them. Recordings leave out tons of really important expression.
- LeifCarrotson 2y ago
  I am quite confident that a skilled musician with an iPad (or, even more obviously, an electric keyboard with a MIDI cable to the iPad) can create music that is indistinguishable from a human playing a piano. The synthesizer will be able to replicate the sound of the best concert grand in the best auditorium, direct to your studio headphones. I'm also quite sure even unskilled musicians will prefer the feel of practicing and playing on a slightly out-of-tune old upright to a cheap electric synth-action keyboard or (ugh) a glass touchscreen. It's just a tool.
  - jaywcarman 2y ago
    > I am quite confident that a skilled musician with an iPad (or, even more obviously, an electric keyboard with a MIDI cable to the iPad) can create music that is indistinguishable from a human playing a piano. The synthesizer will be able to replicate the sound of the best concert grand in the best auditorium, direct to your studio headphones. Perhaps this is true, but it is entirely limited to replicating a _recording_ of the instrument. An iPad cannot replicate (or even come close to) the sound of a human playing a piano that you hear in person.
  - yungporko 2y ago
    are there actually any good piano sample libraries on ipad? the ios music ecosystem is pretty dire
    - Foobar8568 2y ago
      Best would be pianoteq, but let's be serious, nothing will come close to an acoustic piano. After for YouTube consumption and for the mass, yeah, it will be good enough, afterall most people don't realize that Rousseau is/was not only a team but rearranging midi for their output and still are playing poorly.
  - danjoredd 2y ago
    Have you ever listened to the difference between a piano and a digital keyboard? The difference is night and day. Digital tech can only imitate the sound of a string piano, but it can never truly be the real thing. its like smelling fresh apple pie vs smelling an apple pie car freshener. The idea gets across, but it can never be the same.
- suyash 2y ago
  That can be said for most of all tech companies who are just trying to sell you shiny app that will supposedly fix all your problems.
  - chillingeffect 2y ago
    Also all of the artistic stuff they crush will still work in 5, 10, 50, or more years. Especially without subscriptions. Apple's destruction of the real and of tradition is also a bid against longevity and ownership. And now through this global marketing effort, everyone who proudly displays apple gear is complicit in their desire to crush tangible media.
- chrisjj 2y ago
  I think we're supposed to believe the human plays the tablet as beautifully as s/he plays a violin. Might boost sales to everyone who has never heard a violin...
  - hot_gril 2y ago
    I'm actually surprised how fake the fake violins still sound.
toyg 2y ago
The original idea is sound: "we are squeezing all tools into the iPad". The problem is that you can't squeeze an object without resorting to animation. So instead they went for crushing, which carries destructive undertones. A lot of people have strong emotional attachments to objects like pianos and vinyl players; destroying them is a powerful trigger. If this had been done with animation, with some djinn magically squeezing everything into an iPad, it would have been just fine. This said, there is no such thing as bad publicity - here we are, talking about the umpteenth version of a product we would otherwise take for granted. The ad might have been distasteful but it did the job.
- Uehreka 2y ago
  There definitely is such a thing as bad publicity, I wish people would stop using that phrase to make dumb things sound smart. Of all the companies out there, Apple definitely doesn’t want to trade on negative sentiment, it clashes with their overall brand strategy. In particular this iPad Pro launch is riskier than normal, given that it has brand new screen tech and is the thinnest device they’ve ever made, and it’s possible they pulled this commercial to avoid creating associations between this iPad and the act of “crushing” things. Furthermore I doubt that anyone on HN (except like 2 people who will definitely reply to this comment) who didn’t know about the new iPad Pro before this commericial learned about it from this post.
  - emasirik 2y ago
    Allow me to be the first of the two to announce themselves. I agree, though. Although I only learned of the product because of the outrage over the ad, it certainly hasn't moved me toward wanting to purchase one. And I'll actually be in the market for a tablet in a few months.
    - john-radio 2y ago
      #2 checking in. I pay almost zero attention to what Apple does. I'll pay attention if they start allowing Mozilla to ship add-ons with Firefox so I can run adblock on mobile like on Firefox!
citizen_friend 2y ago
If you think of yourself as skeptical, agnostic, materialist. I don’t understand how you can be upset about cheap in-animate objects get destroyed for an entertaining video.
- skywhopper 2y ago
  No one is actually upset about any specific objects that were destroyed in the making of this ad. This sort of advertising is all about eliciting emotions and shaping a message--a vibe--about a particular product. This ad triggered visceral feelings related to the emotional connection a lot of people--even skeptical agnostic materialists!--have with the tools, instruments, and products of creativity and art. And based on the reaction, the ad clearly elicited a lot of negative emotions and a negative vibe in what is presumably the iPad Pro's target audience. Thus, I'd say that even from your ultra-rationalist point of view, it's a bad ad.
  - citizen_friend 2y ago
    I mostly agree. My point is I don’t think the audience here would give the same empathy to flag burning, Christian trolling etc. just want to be clear if these are the gods we worship here
    - mulmen 2y ago
      As a recovering christian I don’t “worship” anything, especially a god.
      - real0mar 2y ago
        no one asked
        mulmen 2y ago
        > just want to be clear if these are the gods we worship here “We” don’t worship anything here.
BuyMyBitcoins 2y ago
Why not show all of these objects being put into a magicians top-hat and then pulling out the iPad at the end?
- Rinzler89 2y ago
  Because that would have been too 2001 and the ad company paid for this couldn't have justified it's budget like that.
- kevinmchugh 2y ago
  Or have a giant scale, show people loading all this stuff into one side of the scale, and then placing the iPad on the other side, and the iPad side sinks. There's a million ways to do this idea
- withinrafael 2y ago
  Agreed. I was thinking along the same lines. Some Wonka-like contraption where all this on-going creativity in a room was captured, fed into a whimsical pipes leading to an assembly line, with an iPad reveal at the end.
caycep 2y ago
Some filmmaker just ran the video backwards and it worked so much better
- ethbr1 2y ago
  Backwards: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XYB6JJoDSuk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XYB6JJoDSuk That is, hilariously, an excellent ad. It's gotta sting when someone says "No, actually just reversing your terrible thing makes a wonderful thing. Didn't you think of that?"
  - caycep 2y ago
    is why I think Tim needs to get a forceful visionary as head of both design and marketing...the 2 departments where there seems to be a ton of turnover. Would this ad have passed muster w/ people like Katie Cotton/Lee Clough? At the very least, have someone w/ a better sense of this be the final editor before releasing...
  - Almondsetat 2y ago
    The funny thing is that reversing the ad doesn't change the fact that all those things were destroyed. If people like the reversed version it means they actually never cared about the destruction in the first place
    - HDThoreaun 2y ago
      Obviously no one cared about the literal destruction but the message it was sending. Pianos are destroyed all the time
      - Almondsetat 2y ago
        >obviously no one reading just this HN submission's replies begs ti differ
    - JohnFen 2y ago
      > they actually never cared about the destruction in the first place For the most part, they don't. I think what people are reacting to is the perceived symbolism of the whole thing. Reversing the video in this case is kind of reversing the symbolism to something more like what I assume Apple was going for in the first place.
pohl 2y ago
It seems odd to complain about one old upright piano being crushed for the video when thousands upon thousands of them are out on the streets, living under bridges, because no one wants to move the piano anymore, or wanted the convenience of an electronic keyboard. I implore you all: adopt a piano today! You may find yourself saying "I didn't rescue it, it rescued me."
- killjoywashere 2y ago
  We adopted a piano while we were overseas and moved it to San Francisco. We ended up giving it to a church after my son decided he couldn't abide the high notes that could never quite get into tune. Still have fond memories of it though.
- rfw300 2y ago
  I think this misses the mark. The ad is inherently symbolic—it’s not this particular piano, but the fact that they’re destroying all of these beloved instruments of creativity in such a gratuitous and evocative manner. That’s what upsetting, not the literal fact that one piano was destroyed in the making of the ad.
- hinkley 2y ago
  See also Jimi Hendrix, the Clash, The Who, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana…
prattatx 2y ago
I would have preferred the reverse of crushing our tools into something. I would have preferred pulling them out of the iPad to create. As a d&d fan, I could imagine a bard with a black hole pulling instruments and creative tools out in order to render magic. I felt like I was watching the end of Terminator 1 when watching that iPad commercial.
- Avamander 2y ago
  I saw a tweet that did exactly that, reversed the ad. The subtext was really different.
deleted 2y ago
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ethagknight 2y ago
“Honey, I shrunk the iPad. And the composer. And the orchestra.” would have been a better angle
idontpost 2y ago
[dead]
hinkley 2y ago
I just watched this ad for the first time. It’s odd but I don’t have a reaction to it. What I am having a reaction to is all the reactions about destroying instruments. Which in turn reminded me of the song by Cake. Rock n’ Roll Lifestyle: … How much did you pay For the chunk of his guitar The one he ruthlessly smashed at the end of the show? And how much will he pay For a brand-new guitar One which he'll ruthlessly smash at the end of another show? And how long will the workers Keep building him new ones? As long as their soda cans are red, white, and blue ones …
EGreg 2y ago
Anyone remember the original awesome Google Chromebook ad where they meticulousoy showed destruction of several laptops? I know it’s not the same thing but it reminded me of it and I can’t find it anywhere in YouTube! Anyone got a link who knows what I’m talking about?
whiteboardr 2y ago
It was painful to watch and i won’t have a second look. It would have been as simple as adding a short “Professional CGI Artists. No actual instrument and tools were harmed.” to set a lighter tone and take the pain away. Given the raging discussion and thus reach, this won’t hurt sales in the slightest - pretty much the opposite and i guess we’re left with giving kudos to marketing well played.
ericmcer 2y ago
They probably figured it would be really strong imagery to see the items being physically crushed in a giant press. It definitely invokes feelings, but not good ones.
flanbiscuit 2y ago
> I don't think it's impossible to convey that message without destroying instruments and creative tools that are precious to so many. This is how I felt seeing rock musicians destroying perfectly good instruments and amps. Growing up my parents didn't have the money to buy me a guitar (or didn't want to buy me one), so I would see these performances and would just think, can't they just donate that guitar to some poor kid or a school instead of destroying them? It really annoyed me, but it didn't stop me from loving the band and their music. I'm a late Gen-Xer and watching Nirvana destroy the stage after a performance just made me go "aw, those were good instruments someone else could have used". I don't know if it's "cool" to do that anymore, but I never see any other artists calling that out like they are for this ad, and it's been going on since the 70s.
- bnralt 2y ago
  Interesting point. The Clash even celebrated the destruction of instruments on the cover of London Calling (the cover being a photo of their bassist smashing his bass). And though the Apple ad seems like it’s trying to convey they idea that all these devices are within the iPad, the smashing of instruments and equipment by rockers seems to just be about…reveling in the destruction of instruments and equipment. You see this in other art as well. For example, the Dadaists took a lot of functional tools, messed them up, and displayed them as art. Moving beyond art, destruction that accompanies political unrest is often dismissed. It’s interesting that the Apple ad is what touched off this discussion, because it’s actually fairly tame with regards to a lot of intentional destruction of equipment.
lotu 2y ago
I'm not sure but I think this ad was fully animated and nothing was actually destroyed. A hydraulic press of this size, if any even exist, is going to look a lot bulkier and not like a cartoon stomper coming down from the ceiling. We don't see the side bracing which would needed if you didn't want your hydraulic press to rip a hole in your ceiling. Especially with all the angles they have it would have been incredibly difficult and dangerous to get all the shots, and every shot came out perfectly.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

mateus1 2y ago

It is also a false equivalence. An iPad will never replicate the beauty of a human playing a piano or a violin. It’s dumb consumerism trying to make us believe that life comes down to buying rather than living.

wilsonnb3 2y ago
> An iPad will never replicate the beauty of a human playing a piano or a violin. I mean, one of its primary uses is to replicate the beauty of a human playing piano or violin via videos and recordings. Aside from that, isn’t this just an appeal to tradition? An iPad is a tool just like a piano or the violin, people make beautiful music with them all the time. I am sure there were curmudgeons saying that the piano and violin would never replicate the beauty of the human voice when they were the top technology of the day.
- eweise 2y ago
  They might make beautiful music but not beautiful piano music. The piano must exist in order to be recorded into the ipad, and recording isn't unique to ipads. You could play the piano samples via midi from the ipad but hundreds of other devices can also do that and that still wouldn't replicate from the player's perspective, actually playing a piano or and audiences experience of actually hearing a piano.
- graypegg 2y ago
  I don't personally play an instrument, but I can also understand that the physicality of keys, strings and pedals is innately different from tapping on a glass screen. A digital piano aims to replicate the sound a specific piano, and provide a piano-inspired interface for playing it. A real piano is a big single use device, in theory yeah, but I imagine for the people playing it the direct control over the things making the sound that is irreplaceable. There's things that will always be impossible on a VST instrument because it's construction (Prepared Piano [0]), and vice versa [1]. They seem like two different avenues of artistic expression to me. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepared_piano https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prepared_piano [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesizer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesizer
  - wilsonnb3 2y ago
    > They seem like two different avenues of artistic expression to me I agree completely, this is the point I was trying to make. People are treating the iPad and the piano as fundamentally different despite both being tools that are equally as capable of making beautiful music in the hands of a talented musician in my eyes.
- fnordpiglet 2y ago
  It’s for this reason I have a minstrel that follows me everywhere. There’s really no substitute for the original analog sound - it’s warmness and the subtle imperfections of the original - can’t be substituted with a consumer device manufactured by a soulless megacorp. It does become problematic on flights as the imperialist cryptofascist lackies of capitalism require my minstrel buy a full ticket and doesn’t let her play my tunes on the flight. People at work get pretty irritated and complain about flow and focus and whatnot and keep insisting I submit to the consumerist mediocrity of a sound cancelling headphone - and I’ve tried in honesty to build a portable sound proof booth with an ear trumpet attached but it’s kind of bulky and I’m not really that handy with tools to begin with. It was also really hard to get a badge for the minstrel but eventually HR just gave me a neurodiversity exemption and classified her as a support animal, which in my opinion is kind of sexist but there’s only so many things one can get outraged about. The real issue is that a single instrument is kind of insufficient to fully capture a wider range of sound and experience so I’ve been trying to figure out how to pull off a quartet - really some of the best music is done by a four piece band anyway - but the above problems just seem to get worse but I’m sure I’ll figure out how to scale this solution.
  - teddyh 2y ago
    Minstrels are also useful in the event you travel through the frozen land of Nador.
  - mncharity 2y ago
    Minstrel "music" is perhaps problematic itself. On the one hand, you have music as an emergent property of the gathered individuals' culture and skills. That blurs when a tavern sings to a traveling minstrel rather than a neighbor. But professionals can enhance rather than displace. Consider European acting troupes traveling a US West steeped in discussion of Shakespeare. Or printed "poems" to be spread and read in support of real spoken poetry. And minstrels do collaborate with local players... but they can also displace. Something is lost to a community when the local kid or elder can no longer make a bit of money piping in the harvest. Or neighbors play the gather fiddles. When music becomes for a community a spectator sport, rather than something embedded. A train car singing together, versus an occasional platform busker. Like trust-fund kids who see strength of knowledge and skills as something to buy not build in themselves. Or a merchant who doesn't value strength of body for farming. And then there's the my-tower-is-taller-than-yours of court "professional music". With richly textured diversity, complexity, nuance, and surprise consequences, these can be hard to think and discuss clearly. Like struggling now to appreciate the impoverished isolation of people's un-musical experience of tunes before AR's ambient-rendezvous-and-collaborate jamming apps.
- coldtea 2y ago
  >Aside from that, isn’t this just an appeal to tradition? No. It's an appeal to something that is eternally true.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  > I mean, one of its primary uses is to replicate the beauty of a human playing piano or violin via videos and recordings. Videos and recordings don't actually replicate those things. They approximate them. Recordings leave out tons of really important expression.
LeifCarrotson 2y ago
I am quite confident that a skilled musician with an iPad (or, even more obviously, an electric keyboard with a MIDI cable to the iPad) can create music that is indistinguishable from a human playing a piano. The synthesizer will be able to replicate the sound of the best concert grand in the best auditorium, direct to your studio headphones. I'm also quite sure even unskilled musicians will prefer the feel of practicing and playing on a slightly out-of-tune old upright to a cheap electric synth-action keyboard or (ugh) a glass touchscreen. It's just a tool.
- jaywcarman 2y ago
  > I am quite confident that a skilled musician with an iPad (or, even more obviously, an electric keyboard with a MIDI cable to the iPad) can create music that is indistinguishable from a human playing a piano. The synthesizer will be able to replicate the sound of the best concert grand in the best auditorium, direct to your studio headphones. Perhaps this is true, but it is entirely limited to replicating a _recording_ of the instrument. An iPad cannot replicate (or even come close to) the sound of a human playing a piano that you hear in person.
- yungporko 2y ago
  are there actually any good piano sample libraries on ipad? the ios music ecosystem is pretty dire
  - Foobar8568 2y ago
    Best would be pianoteq, but let's be serious, nothing will come close to an acoustic piano. After for YouTube consumption and for the mass, yeah, it will be good enough, afterall most people don't realize that Rousseau is/was not only a team but rearranging midi for their output and still are playing poorly.
- danjoredd 2y ago
  Have you ever listened to the difference between a piano and a digital keyboard? The difference is night and day. Digital tech can only imitate the sound of a string piano, but it can never truly be the real thing. its like smelling fresh apple pie vs smelling an apple pie car freshener. The idea gets across, but it can never be the same.
suyash 2y ago
That can be said for most of all tech companies who are just trying to sell you shiny app that will supposedly fix all your problems.
- chillingeffect 2y ago
  Also all of the artistic stuff they crush will still work in 5, 10, 50, or more years. Especially without subscriptions. Apple's destruction of the real and of tradition is also a bid against longevity and ownership. And now through this global marketing effort, everyone who proudly displays apple gear is complicit in their desire to crush tangible media.
chrisjj 2y ago
I think we're supposed to believe the human plays the tablet as beautifully as s/he plays a violin. Might boost sales to everyone who has never heard a violin...
- hot_gril 2y ago
  I'm actually surprised how fake the fake violins still sound.

toyg 2y ago

The original idea is sound: "we are squeezing all tools into the iPad". The problem is that you can't squeeze an object without resorting to animation. So instead they went for crushing, which carries destructive undertones. A lot of people have strong emotional attachments to objects like pianos and vinyl players; destroying them is a powerful trigger. If this had been done with animation, with some djinn magically squeezing everything into an iPad, it would have been just fine. This said, there is no such thing as bad publicity - here we are, talking about the umpteenth version of a product we would otherwise take for granted. The ad might have been distasteful but it did the job.

Uehreka 2y ago
There definitely is such a thing as bad publicity, I wish people would stop using that phrase to make dumb things sound smart. Of all the companies out there, Apple definitely doesn’t want to trade on negative sentiment, it clashes with their overall brand strategy. In particular this iPad Pro launch is riskier than normal, given that it has brand new screen tech and is the thinnest device they’ve ever made, and it’s possible they pulled this commercial to avoid creating associations between this iPad and the act of “crushing” things. Furthermore I doubt that anyone on HN (except like 2 people who will definitely reply to this comment) who didn’t know about the new iPad Pro before this commericial learned about it from this post.
- emasirik 2y ago
  Allow me to be the first of the two to announce themselves. I agree, though. Although I only learned of the product because of the outrage over the ad, it certainly hasn't moved me toward wanting to purchase one. And I'll actually be in the market for a tablet in a few months.
  - john-radio 2y ago
    #2 checking in. I pay almost zero attention to what Apple does. I'll pay attention if they start allowing Mozilla to ship add-ons with Firefox so I can run adblock on mobile like on Firefox!

citizen_friend 2y ago

If you think of yourself as skeptical, agnostic, materialist. I don’t understand how you can be upset about cheap in-animate objects get destroyed for an entertaining video.

skywhopper 2y ago
No one is actually upset about any specific objects that were destroyed in the making of this ad. This sort of advertising is all about eliciting emotions and shaping a message--a vibe--about a particular product. This ad triggered visceral feelings related to the emotional connection a lot of people--even skeptical agnostic materialists!--have with the tools, instruments, and products of creativity and art. And based on the reaction, the ad clearly elicited a lot of negative emotions and a negative vibe in what is presumably the iPad Pro's target audience. Thus, I'd say that even from your ultra-rationalist point of view, it's a bad ad.
- citizen_friend 2y ago
  I mostly agree. My point is I don’t think the audience here would give the same empathy to flag burning, Christian trolling etc. just want to be clear if these are the gods we worship here
  - mulmen 2y ago
    As a recovering christian I don’t “worship” anything, especially a god.
    - real0mar 2y ago
      no one asked
      - mulmen 2y ago
        > just want to be clear if these are the gods we worship here “We” don’t worship anything here.

BuyMyBitcoins 2y ago

Why not show all of these objects being put into a magicians top-hat and then pulling out the iPad at the end?

Rinzler89 2y ago
Because that would have been too 2001 and the ad company paid for this couldn't have justified it's budget like that.
kevinmchugh 2y ago
Or have a giant scale, show people loading all this stuff into one side of the scale, and then placing the iPad on the other side, and the iPad side sinks. There's a million ways to do this idea
withinrafael 2y ago
Agreed. I was thinking along the same lines. Some Wonka-like contraption where all this on-going creativity in a room was captured, fed into a whimsical pipes leading to an assembly line, with an iPad reveal at the end.

caycep 2y ago

Some filmmaker just ran the video backwards and it worked so much better

ethbr1 2y ago
Backwards: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XYB6JJoDSuk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XYB6JJoDSuk That is, hilariously, an excellent ad. It's gotta sting when someone says "No, actually just reversing your terrible thing makes a wonderful thing. Didn't you think of that?"
- caycep 2y ago
  is why I think Tim needs to get a forceful visionary as head of both design and marketing...the 2 departments where there seems to be a ton of turnover. Would this ad have passed muster w/ people like Katie Cotton/Lee Clough? At the very least, have someone w/ a better sense of this be the final editor before releasing...
- Almondsetat 2y ago
  The funny thing is that reversing the ad doesn't change the fact that all those things were destroyed. If people like the reversed version it means they actually never cared about the destruction in the first place
  - HDThoreaun 2y ago
    Obviously no one cared about the literal destruction but the message it was sending. Pianos are destroyed all the time
    - Almondsetat 2y ago
      >obviously no one reading just this HN submission's replies begs ti differ
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    > they actually never cared about the destruction in the first place For the most part, they don't. I think what people are reacting to is the perceived symbolism of the whole thing. Reversing the video in this case is kind of reversing the symbolism to something more like what I assume Apple was going for in the first place.

pohl 2y ago

It seems odd to complain about one old upright piano being crushed for the video when thousands upon thousands of them are out on the streets, living under bridges, because no one wants to move the piano anymore, or wanted the convenience of an electronic keyboard. I implore you all: adopt a piano today! You may find yourself saying "I didn't rescue it, it rescued me."

killjoywashere 2y ago
We adopted a piano while we were overseas and moved it to San Francisco. We ended up giving it to a church after my son decided he couldn't abide the high notes that could never quite get into tune. Still have fond memories of it though.
rfw300 2y ago
I think this misses the mark. The ad is inherently symbolic—it’s not this particular piano, but the fact that they’re destroying all of these beloved instruments of creativity in such a gratuitous and evocative manner. That’s what upsetting, not the literal fact that one piano was destroyed in the making of the ad.
hinkley 2y ago
See also Jimi Hendrix, the Clash, The Who, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana…

prattatx 2y ago

I would have preferred the reverse of crushing our tools into something. I would have preferred pulling them out of the iPad to create. As a d&d fan, I could imagine a bard with a black hole pulling instruments and creative tools out in order to render magic. I felt like I was watching the end of Terminator 1 when watching that iPad commercial.

Avamander 2y ago
I saw a tweet that did exactly that, reversed the ad. The subtext was really different.

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ethagknight 2y ago

“Honey, I shrunk the iPad. And the composer. And the orchestra.” would have been a better angle

idontpost 2y ago

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hinkley 2y ago

I just watched this ad for the first time. It’s odd but I don’t have a reaction to it. What I am having a reaction to is all the reactions about destroying instruments. Which in turn reminded me of the song by Cake. Rock n’ Roll Lifestyle: … How much did you pay For the chunk of his guitar The one he ruthlessly smashed at the end of the show? And how much will he pay For a brand-new guitar One which he'll ruthlessly smash at the end of another show? And how long will the workers Keep building him new ones? As long as their soda cans are red, white, and blue ones …

EGreg 2y ago

Anyone remember the original awesome Google Chromebook ad where they meticulousoy showed destruction of several laptops? I know it’s not the same thing but it reminded me of it and I can’t find it anywhere in YouTube! Anyone got a link who knows what I’m talking about?

whiteboardr 2y ago

It was painful to watch and i won’t have a second look. It would have been as simple as adding a short “Professional CGI Artists. No actual instrument and tools were harmed.” to set a lighter tone and take the pain away. Given the raging discussion and thus reach, this won’t hurt sales in the slightest - pretty much the opposite and i guess we’re left with giving kudos to marketing well played.

ericmcer 2y ago

They probably figured it would be really strong imagery to see the items being physically crushed in a giant press. It definitely invokes feelings, but not good ones.

flanbiscuit 2y ago

> I don't think it's impossible to convey that message without destroying instruments and creative tools that are precious to so many. This is how I felt seeing rock musicians destroying perfectly good instruments and amps. Growing up my parents didn't have the money to buy me a guitar (or didn't want to buy me one), so I would see these performances and would just think, can't they just donate that guitar to some poor kid or a school instead of destroying them? It really annoyed me, but it didn't stop me from loving the band and their music. I'm a late Gen-Xer and watching Nirvana destroy the stage after a performance just made me go "aw, those were good instruments someone else could have used". I don't know if it's "cool" to do that anymore, but I never see any other artists calling that out like they are for this ad, and it's been going on since the 70s.

bnralt 2y ago
Interesting point. The Clash even celebrated the destruction of instruments on the cover of London Calling (the cover being a photo of their bassist smashing his bass). And though the Apple ad seems like it’s trying to convey they idea that all these devices are within the iPad, the smashing of instruments and equipment by rockers seems to just be about…reveling in the destruction of instruments and equipment. You see this in other art as well. For example, the Dadaists took a lot of functional tools, messed them up, and displayed them as art. Moving beyond art, destruction that accompanies political unrest is often dismissed. It’s interesting that the Apple ad is what touched off this discussion, because it’s actually fairly tame with regards to a lot of intentional destruction of equipment.

lotu 2y ago

I'm not sure but I think this ad was fully animated and nothing was actually destroyed. A hydraulic press of this size, if any even exist, is going to look a lot bulkier and not like a cartoon stomper coming down from the ceiling. We don't see the side bracing which would needed if you didn't want your hydraulic press to rip a hole in your ceiling. Especially with all the angles they have it would have been incredibly difficult and dangerous to get all the shots, and every shot came out perfectly.

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