Apple apologizes for iPad 'Crush' ad that 'missed the mark' • Hacker News Board

Re: Apple apologizes for iPad 'Crush' ad that 'missed the mark'

#921

Post by creer » Fri, May 10, 2024, 9:45 PM UTC

maxrobeyns wrote: post #506

My initial reaction to the ad, upon watching it in the launch event was "huh, that's a fun reference to the Hydraulic Press Channel". The slapstick elements (trumpet noise, squishy balls) made it come across as light-hearted, rather than an ominous display of force by a large company crushing artists' tools. This idea of 'squashing all these tools down to a thin slab of glass' made sense given their somewhat unusual…

How much of a blowback was that really anyway? I mean a social media headline that a few others pile on... is rather limited as a blowback.

If anything both ad idea and implementation are mediocre - and perhaps should have been rejected on that account. This is indeed Youtube shorts stuff. And someone pointed out the exact same ad idea from LG 15 years ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcUAQ2i5Tfo with even more musical instruments.

Re: Apple apologizes for iPad 'Crush' ad that 'missed the mark'

#922

Post by decafninja » Fri, May 10, 2024, 9:45 PM UTC

jayd16 wrote: post #611

hartator wrote: post #268

I think the part that was really upsetting is they crushed real good objects. After all of that talks about climate friendly. They could have crushed 3D renderings and up the clip with “rendered on iPad. No harm was done on real objects.” And that would have been a good ad.

It's almost certainly mostly CGI but even if it was done with practical props, they are still not "real good objects." They are props. No one crashes real Ferraris in an action movie. You use fakes and empty chassis.

If it is CGI, then this outrage is stupid. There are a lot more important things to be outraged over than some virtual objects being crushed.

Re: Apple apologizes for iPad 'Crush' ad that 'missed the mark'

#923

Post by zeteo » Fri, May 10, 2024, 9:46 PM UTC

because_789 wrote: post #900

kenjackson wrote: post #879

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This outrage feels so manufactured. I'm a huge basketball fan, coach, ex-player. If they included a basketball in the ad my thought would've been "yeah, you can play NBA2k on it". I'm not mad about the destruction of a single basketball. I don't feel like its disrespect to the game. It's showing that this single device has captured elements of basketball into a small form factor. As you note this may hint at a larger…

Interestingly, basketballs are designed to be as standardized and replaceable as possible (so there’s no question about whether they affected the game.) Whereas musicians do not think of instruments that way. Nor photographers and their cameras, etc. The reaction might be specific to artists. They’re represented on HN, but not as much as non-artists, I bet.

Yes, a closer analogy would be "look, this guy had a basketball signed by Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant in 1996, and now it's being blown to smithereens and replaced by a 3D model on his iPad".

Re: Apple apologizes for iPad 'Crush' ad that 'missed the mark'

#924

Post by type0 » Fri, May 10, 2024, 9:46 PM UTC

blhack wrote: post #813

edkennedy wrote: post #28

Missing from this extremely short and underreported article is how badly this played out in Japanese market. The culture they have states that musical instruments, creative tools have some energy and imbued sense of spirit to them. So destroying these elements of culture is really really blunt and gauche to them. The majority of the push back came from Japanese people, and then artists empathizing with their sentimen…

Was there a similar backlash to this identical ad from LG in 2009? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcUAQ2i5Tfo

Apple ads team should apologize to LG for stealing their ad

Re: Apple apologizes for iPad 'Crush' ad that 'missed the mark'

#925

Post by unreal37 » Fri, May 10, 2024, 9:48 PM UTC

Since Apple apologized for the ad, it seems they, too, agree that it wasn't a good ad.

They wouldn't apologize for something if there were nothing wrong with it.

Personally, it was too real. It was CGI, sure. But that hydraulic press crushed (destroyed) the tools humans use to create every handmade thing we consider beautiful.

Apple absolutely intended to convey the meaning that Apple an iPad can replace a piano or a trumpet or paint.

Re: Apple apologizes for iPad 'Crush' ad that 'missed the mark'

#926

Post by Nition » Fri, May 10, 2024, 9:50 PM UTC

xnx wrote: post #51

9to5Google pointed out that the Apple ad is a near exact copy of this LG ad from 2008: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NcUAQ2i5Tfo The (accidental?) plagiarism of the ad is nearly as bad as the vibe.

And that one looks actually real, whereas I'm pretty sure the Apple ad is 100% CGI with no objects actually destroyed.

Re: Apple apologizes for iPad 'Crush' ad that 'missed the mark'

#927

Post by kristjank » Fri, May 10, 2024, 9:51 PM UTC

We really should get telling people to kill themselves back into fashion when they produce such culturally deaf and offensive content just to promote the newest consooomerism gadget. I hate everything this whole phenomena represents

Re: Apple apologizes for iPad 'Crush' ad that 'missed the mark'

#928

Post by recursive » Fri, May 10, 2024, 9:51 PM UTC

fl0ki wrote: post #783

some_random wrote: post #670

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the big thing here is that if you don't have an attachment to any of the items being crushed you probably don't feel as strongly. If you're a trumpet player, seeing a trumpet being crushed is going to be a bit distressing. If you're a photographer, you're putting a monetary value on those lenses being destroyed. If you're into old arcade machines, you're thinking about how many of those cabinets are left in t…

So if you own a house or car then it's distressing to see one destroyed in a movie? Both of those cost much more than a trumpet, and for many people are more personal and unique, but somehow most people manage to keep their eyes on the screen.

Not a movie. If it was an ad trying to sell me something that was going to replace my house, that would be closer.

Re: Apple apologizes for iPad 'Crush' ad that 'missed the mark'

#929

Post by thomasahle » Fri, May 10, 2024, 9:57 PM UTC

dnissley wrote: post #872

JohnFen wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The clear meaning I got from the ad was: we want to destroy everything and make you buy our product instead. I know that wasn't what they were going for (I'm pretty sure, anyway), but it's very hard for me to interpret it differently. I never connected it to the hydraulic press channel at all for some reason.

Maybe you can go into that more. Where's that intuition coming from that tells you "Apple wants to destroy everything"?

If you are already weary of too many screens; and you find a world with more physical objects less bleak.

It's not so much that Apple "wants to destroy everything". It's just that they care more about the digital world than the real world. This is the same intuition that makes people weary of virtual reality.

See also this image of Steve Jobs' office vs Tim Cook's: https://www.instagram.com/starworldlab/p/C5TRLqAujPJ/

Re: Apple apologizes for iPad 'Crush' ad that 'missed the mark'

#930

Post by thomasahle » Fri, May 10, 2024, 9:57 PM UTC

Nition wrote: post #894

hot_gril wrote: post #785

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simply uncomfortable to see a lot of valuable creative tools being slowly destroyed for no reason, especially a piano. I'm not even thinking about the symbolism.

I thought it was obvious that the entire ad is CGI. Nothing really breaks how it would. When the top of the piano breaks, all the dampers magically fall off.

Making that ad with CGI would be way more expensive than buying the real objects.