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Gross Apple Marketing

jonathanbuys.com

211–220 of 270 posts

Re: Gross Apple Marketing

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the write up seems to bring the indirect point that AI has limited use cases currently. So instead of taking the traditional Apple approach with showcasing the technical aspects of the product (an example being Apple has highlighted photography and video a lot in the last few generations of iPhone), instead Apple falls back on cheeky ads, which to be fair, are also not new to Apple marketing. I do think that…

> I'm, personally not a fan of the current generation or implementation of AI and do not want to use it. Why not? It gives vastly better than human performance across a wide range of problems. Just this morning I asked Chat GPT to find me the smallest set of positive integers whose median is 2 and whose average is 3.75, and it just spit out the correct answer instantly. That would have been an enormous pain in the as…

In case anyone is curious how you would solve this manually, here it is. In what follows assume all lists are sorted from low to high.

For a list of just one or two integers the median and mean are the same so we can rule those out.

For a list of 3 integers the average is their sum divided by 3. But 3 times the average we want (3.75) is 11.25 which is not an integer. That eliminates lists of length 3.

On to lists of length 4. In a sorted list of length 4 the median is the average of the middle two numbers. The only pairs of 2 positive integers that average 2 are {2, 2} and {1, 3}. That gives us these templates for possible lists:

  {a, 1, 3, b}
  {a, 2, 2, b}
Remember, these are sorted and they are positive integers. In the first then the only possible value for a is 1. In the second a could be 1 or 2. Our templates are now

  {1, 1, 3, b}
  {1, 2, 2, b}
  {2, 2, 2, b}
For 4 positive integers to have a mean of 3.75 their sum must be 15. Setting b to make the sums 15 we get these as the possible solutions:

  {1, 1, 3, 10}
  {1, 2, 2, 10}
  {2, 2, 2, 9}
A quick glance to make sure that the 4th number didn't end up smaller than the 3rd number, and we are done.

Re: Gross Apple Marketing

#212
post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget about lying, this is just amorally stupid and pandering. I find the hypothetical universe where that guy is going to get anywhere good suggesting what his boss should “undertake” unbelievable. (Also not a good demo). And we’ve been in this GPT world nearly 2 years. The boss is obviously supposed to be smart, he’s a black guy in a suit after all. Is this the first time he’s ever received something that was obvi…

> The boss is obviously supposed to be smart, he’s a black guy in a suit after all. Is this the first time he’s ever received something that was obviously from an AI. What’s he confused about? Ironically, you're doing the same thing as the actor in the skit - pretending to be confused, for effect. Obviously, the boss is used to receiving unprofessional responses from the employee in question. Obviously, the boss is t…

The idea that a shlub like this would only just now for the first time be using an LLM like this is what is unbelievable. And as a joke it is simply stale. I get it, Apple has to at least pretend to themselves like they are groundbreaking in these things that are now years old. It's cringe because Apple thinks this is a novel premise for humor.

Re: Gross Apple Marketing

#213
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember iPods being advertised as, like, very cool. Remember all the ads with, like, the silhouettes dancing on colorful backgrounds? I can see thinking these ads were a bit over the top and silly, like a corporate ad exec’s idea of what is cool, but they definitely intended to be cool. The people in these new ads are lame and clearly Apple intends to portray them as lame.

Apple have a range of ads to appeal to a range of people. Even back then they had the Mac vs PC or a variety of other ads too that weren’t “cool” but were funny. Tongue in cheek ads have been in their DNA since forever. Take for example the new Mac mini ad which is cute https://youtu.be/JjpGvjy0Gxk?si=Gk1cU80FiJX2KYbC Or just scrolling through their YouTube channel now to find a few over the years Find your Friends h…

Eh, but even in the Find Your Friends ad, where the guy is pretty nerdy and not conventionally cool (I mean he’s going to some cosplay festival), it is still portraying the main character as kind of… somebody you wouldn’t mind being, right?

Like he’s doing something nerdy, dressing up in cosplay, but he’s doing it well, he’s got friends, businessmen get out of his way as he strides down the sidewalk. Some of the people he interact with don’t get him, but he doesn’t care. He’s nerdy but he’s living his best life.

The Mac Mini ad is cute, and it portrays the Mac Mini as a sort of… little computer with over-the-top bravado. It is sort of self-effacing and tongue in cheek, like clearly the little computer is over-compensating for its small size with attitude. But it works somehow. Partly because it is the device, I think. I’m not imagining being the computer, I’m imagining being the user, so the over-eager awkwardness of the computer doesn’t reflect poorly on the “me” character. Partly I think because the computer is like… awkward but not unpleasant.

There’s a big difference between being nerdy/awkward but embracing it, and being nerdy/awkward and a loser.

Some of these new ads look more like the latter to me. The Bella Ramsey ones, IMO, they are not so bad, like she’s doing a “forgetful/absent minded but still successful” character and it kinda works. But one with the guy who can’t write a professional email and the lady who forgot a gift but wants to sneak into the nice moment, they didn’t work for me. You don’t want to be those characters, right?

Re: Gross Apple Marketing

#214
Ahh. "Gross", meaning, the author thinks they should do a better job selling their products from a practical standpoint.

At a push, if we wanted to try maintain a more essential meaning of "gross", I guess we could imagine that the author is saying that not doing an optimal job of selling your products is morally repugnant to them. Maybe that's true, I suppose.

An example of Apple actually being gross in their marketing is using the word "privacy" to mislead people into thinking they have privacy when they use Apple's devices. It's security they are attempting to offer to users, not privacy.

This intentional and somewhat subtle conflation of two terms in order to give people a false impression of Apple products is, in my opinion, properly gross.

Re: Gross Apple Marketing

#215
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it doesn’t even tell me it’s about the OS at all unless I already know what Ubuntu is. Try watching the iPhone ads assuming you don't know what Apple does nor what an iPhone is. They make absolutely no sense. Ads are targeted at a market, and these in particular assume some degree of familiarity. I guess the Ubuntu one in particular is to celebrate the 20 years, so it's a different vibe from a sheer call to action…

Which iPhone ad can you point me to that doesn’t have a story around a feature at the least? Also since you bring up familiarity, does that Ubuntu ad tell you which version it’s about? What’s it telling even a seasoned Ubuntu veteran? And lastly, there’s a much larger percent of the population that knows what an iPhone is but even if they didn’t, it’s in the name. The ads end with iPhone, by Apple and show the produc…

If you don't know what an iPhone is, what Siri is, this ad spot's is this girl asking on the phone for someone's name and faking remembering the guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPe8revsg3k

Is that a story or one single scene ? Was there someone on the phone ? Is the text bubble that person answering ? or is it just movie magic like so many over ads?

It only makes sense as an ad if you know the product, otherwise you wouldn't even understand it's the phone doing it all.

We're in agreement that the Ubuntu movie isn't selling it either. My point was that it's probably not aimed at that, you aren't suppose to rush to Ubuntu's site to download an ISO on the spot after watching it, it's probably more of a branding act than a push to action. Precisely to seed the Ubuntu name perhaps ?

Re: Gross Apple Marketing

#216
post #119

The really funny thing about the "lies about birthday present" one is that the wife asks the AI to make a Woodworking Memory Video, and while they're watching it, it looks like a beach vacation photo is included in the mix. For a second I forgot where I was, and thought she'd be found out, then remembered it's an ad, and everyone is impressed. Maybe the image is actually related to the woodworking? But I couldn't hel…

>the wife asks the AI to make a Woodworking Memory Video, and while they're watching it, it looks like a beach vacation photo is included in the mix What's funny is that google photos sorta makes these sort of random little videos all the time for you and asks if you want to see them. It also suffers from the issue of not really understanding the context from some of the pictures it pulls in. But this is a thing that…

I love google photos little albums and creations. I am the kind of person that almost nevers looks at pictures on their own, so when I get a google photos notifications I always get watch them and get to remember cool memories.

Re: Gross Apple Marketing

#217
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple also shows while Canonical tells. The average person doesn't care about an animation of a terminal or a chip with 3d composited "Performant" or "Secure" text. They care about "what can this thing do".

The Ubuntu ad could also have been for any version of Ubuntu since 14.04, or maybe even earlier. There's nothing that distinguishes 24.04 in there from what I can tell.

Clearly you missed the change to the background image then.

Re: Gross Apple Marketing

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the write up seems to bring the indirect point that AI has limited use cases currently. So instead of taking the traditional Apple approach with showcasing the technical aspects of the product (an example being Apple has highlighted photography and video a lot in the last few generations of iPhone), instead Apple falls back on cheeky ads, which to be fair, are also not new to Apple marketing. I do think that…

> I'm, personally not a fan of the current generation or implementation of AI and do not want to use it. Why not? It gives vastly better than human performance across a wide range of problems. Just this morning I asked Chat GPT to find me the smallest set of positive integers whose median is 2 and whose average is 3.75, and it just spit out the correct answer instantly. That would have been an enormous pain in the as…

[deleted]

Re: Gross Apple Marketing

#219
post #69
post #43

I think this is mostly just a problem of not having good reasons to sell AI products to consumers in the first place. I recently saw some Ray Ban Meta glasses ads. One of them had a guy ask the glasses to describe what was in front of his face, and then he remarked “wow that’s accurate” (there are people skateboarding). The guy wasn’t blind. His use of the glasses made little sense. Another ad has a young man asking…

No way! There are definitely legitimate use-cases for all of the features demoed in these ads, but Apple's marketing took a darker path. Email to boss: could've been someone who had a genuine struggle with language using it to finally get their boss to notice the effort they put into their work. Remembering a name: could've used it to get the name and left it at them being impressed rather than making it a lie. Summa…

The fact that lying is a core element of the ads is what makes them so gross to me.

The guys says he's surprised she remembers him. She could just look straight at the camera, say what can I say, I'm very intelligent, wink, and it wouldn't be gross.

Re: Gross Apple Marketing

#220
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yesterday I was walking in Greece and saw a sign I couldn't read so asked my Meta glasses and it gave me a translation and short explanation quickly, which was very helpful. But generally, yes the uses aren't there. In the Apple AI video, the worst is that the 'more professional' text, actually reads much less professional. If someone in a business situation sends you an AI generated email (and it's obviously AI it's…

> In the Apple AI video, the worst is that the 'more professional' text, actually reads much less professional. The original text is: > Hey J, > Been thinking, this project might need a bit of zhuhzing. But you're the big enchilada. > Holler back followed by the sender's first name in lower case surrounded by flexed bicep emoji. The AI rewritten text keeps the "Hey J,". It changes the rest to > Upon further considera…

Sorry for moving the goal post... it is just that this example in the ad illustrates path to idiocracy.
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