No, not at all. Clearly, in recent years Apple's keynotes and adverts have been making a clear diversity statement, in particular an optical one, that is pretty much opposite to reality.

They've taken it so far that in a way, they've swung to the other end of the extreme. Less diversity by emphasizing diversity too much, if that makes sense.

Since discussing gender and skin color always gets people worked up, let me pick a less controversial one: wealth.

When you check Apple's adverts and see the actors using their products, they're clearly living the Valley lifestyle. They're all young, fit, filthy rich, have fantastic work spaces and living rooms, carefully designed by fashionable architects, lead an inner city lifestyle where they hop on Ubers to go to Starbucks, you get the idea.

...none of which represents even a fraction of the actual customer base. The working class is not featured, rural people are not featured, other countries are not featured, which leads me to conclude that Apple's signaling is not diverse. It's fashion for the elite, with a vast distance to their actual users.

Apple's products are desirable enough for it to not matter, but it's fine to spot it. It's hard to miss.

Just don't misread it as anything but optics. Have a look at leaked tech memos to understand how Apple really thinks. They're predatory towards competitors. They'll do anything to dodge taxes and bypass consumer protection laws. They sabotage open standards. They rely on exploitation for their manufacturing. They make secret deals so that employees can't switch. They treat their store staff as garbage.

Apple is a deeply unethical, predatory, neoconservative company. Yet if you feature lots of black women in your ads, you optically look progressive and good.

Woke capitalism from the world center of hypocrisy: California.

> fashion for the elite

I agree completely. I also believe that hackernews is the exact target audience for Apple products. People who can argue that $250,000 for a non-manual, 9-5 job is somehow not a good salary.

Apple like to show people (all people from all backgrounds) as if they are normal or average rather than the hyper-elite that they are. If Apple had an advert with the average family in an average home it would probably be distressing to most people.

I'm lucky enough to be in the top 20% of earners in my country and I am in my 30s, but I still would never be able to afford a house as depicted in Apple's advertising. Or have the budget to spend $5,000 on a computer for my work.

there is quite a difference between noticing something (and then correctly noting it is international women's day) and making a strange note of it in an article that is entirely about the CPU. It really doesn't have a place there.

> It really doesn't have a place there.

Where is the correct place for this "strange note"?

I think you are attaching some message to the author that wasn't there, labeling it as "strange". It was a conscious decision by Apple during a presentation that is ostensibly one long advert. The goal is for people to talk about their products and their brand and their "image". Goal achieved because here we are.

At minimum, it gives you a taste of what it feels like to be a woman in tech, and everybody around you is male.

I don't need a "taste". I have basic empathy for other human beings, regardless of gender.

You have sympathy for experiences you haven’t had. You have empathy for ones you have.

If you cannot be empathetic without directly experiencing something yourself then I would argue you actually lack empathy. Sympathy is not empathy. I can be empathetic to people I have no sympathy for.

I haven't watched the event, although, I would notice the all female cast just like I would notice the all male cast. It is a simple anomaly to have every caster to be male or female.

I'm sure you're writing in good faith, but you may be interested to know that in internet slang "noticing" is a racist and possibly sexist dog-whistle[1].

[1] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Noticing

Are you implying I'm racist or sexist for using a normal word in it's usual context?

I don't particularly care if a normal word, which is in plenty of dictionaries, is co-opted by a small group of people. My friends won't know this secret meaning, my family won't know that, whatever is on the TV, Radio, or Cinema won't know that.

And now this conversation is completely off topic.

The internet is so hyper partisan that even normal, boring usage of the English language is now weaponised as shibboleths.

I find the concept of calling people out for using terms that are dog whistles quite problematic. By their very nature, dog whistles are terms in widespread innocent use, and as such the majority of the people using the term will using it in its ordinary usage in good faith. We shouldn't assume people are using these terms as dog whistles unless we have some other evidence to suggest that.

Interesting. Could you suggest how to rewrite that comment and express that a person noticed something (in the literal sense of the word) without using a dog whistle?

Interested to know this as well. I am not sure if pointing to a definition on Urban Dictionary with ~100 thumbs is enough to redefine a word let alone assume that the average person is using it as a dog whistle.

It occurred to me that...

I realized that...

I became aware...

That's without even looking for a thesaurus. Not that I'm supporting this alt-definition of noticing, but your question seemed pretty trivial to answer.

Thanks, that does answer the question I wrote, however my point was that I'm very uncomfortable with this environment where any innocent word could be interpreted as a dog-whistle, and was curious if any "notice" synonyms are also considered dog-whistles.

Then it's 5 seconds before all those are "bad words" too.

Maybe it's better to assume that most people in the world aren't evil degenerates unless there's hard evidence to the contrary.

Welcome to the "woke" world. You'll be learning a lot about what people totally unfamiliar to you do that you've also done at some point without knowing it. We're all sinners in a woke world

What a strange culture we've trapped ourselves in.