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.
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.
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.
My 2c: when that addage was first coined, public outrage was much harder to mobilize.
Social media and globalization work hand in hand to make it easier for people to have an outsized impact.
Two recent instances I can think of: Budweiser and US campus protests regarding the war in Gaza.
After putting $85-110M into the production of the movie, Universal released a trailer that went super viral and had every person on the internet talking about how terrible it looked. When the movie actually came out there was a second viral wave of gawking. Did this drive tons of people to the theater so they revel in the movie’s epic badness for themselves? No, the movie (which had over a dozen stars and was based on a hit musical that is popular around the world) failed to make back its budget at the box office. For reference (in case someone tries to pull the “maybe it would’ve made less money without the negative publicity” card) Tom Hooper’s previous movie musical Les Miserables earned $442M on a $61M budget.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cats_(2019_film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables_(2012_film...
Mission accomplished.
There is really no such thing as bad publicity.
Number of people who will stop buying Apple products due to this Ad : ZERO
Number of people who are aware of iPad Thin due to controversy : > ZERO
A small number of people shit on Apple/Google/Meta/Amazon all the time for every little thing
Edit : HN crowd downvoting a marketing concept. I must be right!
Although it no doubt produced tons of brand awareness among people who had never heard of them, I doubt that the folks at Humane AI would argue that the recent flood of bad reviews or even the backlash against the bad reviews were helpful to them in the long term. Like sure, tons of people know about them now, perhaps they even sold a pin or two to the folks who heard about them through the controversy. But there’s a good chance they may not be able to stay solvent as a company long enough to actually capitalize on their increased brand recognition.
By all accounts, the new iPad Pro is a good, solid product. The problem is that people don't like the ad.
The problem with Humane AI is not really "bad PR", it's fundamentally bad products. Or perhaps to put it a little more generously: as has been very common of late in the tech world, the Humane AI products are technologically interesting marvels that solve literally 0 problems people actually have and are basically worse in every way compared to a smart phone.
That is, the iPad Pro's problem is really just the PR. No amount of good PR could save Humane AI's products.
I was looking at ipads, but this ad and the comments have reminded me why I dont like putting money in Apples pockets. So I shall definitely be buying android when I buy one.
This is false, not least because this is something companies declare on financial reports.
I wouldn't have paid any attention to a new iPad launch or known that it was the thinnest one yet, without this 'bad' press.
If anything, I'd say I'd be more likely to purchase a new iPad as a result
Like saying that using the color red makes people think of a stop sign, so they won't buy your product.
the phrase "there's no such thing as bad PR" is meant to make you realize that there's more to PR than you... realize. It's in the style of something like a Buddhist koan. it's not meant to be taken literally or to an extreme. It's not a proof but it does describe a real phenomenon. You can't reject the phrase without rejecting its wisdom.
I hope, on that hill, you don't die as you plan to. Because you are very literal, aren't you.
I think the phrase has outlived its usefulness. Nowadays when I see it used it’s often in exactly the kind of extreme or overly literal way you yourself criticize.
It's not saying literally that no publicity can ever be bad. That's obviously not true and is easily disproven nearly every single day by current events. It's a broader conveyance of truth regarding the difficulty of getting noticed in a world crowded with content. Even if it's "bad publicity" there are still benefits of becoming more well known, for example. Apple is one of the few companies where that probably won't help, but it doesn't "disprove" the saying and mean we should reject it.
Apple ad isn’t controversial because people react indifferent at best and very negative at worst. Everyone already knows what an ipad is.
Hard disagree. Yes, I do agree that a big part of the emotional reaction to the ad were seeing all these beloved tools of craftsmanship being destroyed.
But another underlying current is people reaching the conclusion that they do not want all of their individual, sometimes quirky tools being subsumed under a single flat silicon panel. I'll just speak for myself, but I often find myself craving more real, physical interaction and not just something that exists on a screen.
Some of us actually crave a little more of the chaotic, interesting world of WALL-E over the sleek perfection of EVE (which was, somewhat unsurprisingly, reviewed and blessed by Jonathan Ive).
They don't need to be known, but they need to maintain the positive values associated with their brand.
The Apple brand is their most valuable asset, they probably destroyed billions in brand value with the shitstorm around this horribly distasteful ad.
Waiting for something like that for Apple. Let me get my popcorn...
And if the company fails to know its own history well enough that even they are missing the point that speaks volumes about how they value institutional knowledge.
So go short AAPL, Jim Cramer. My bold prediction is this ad does diddly to their bottom line. You really think people are going to boycott Apple over it?
Stock is short-sighted, and I don't expect any boycott.
The consequences of the slow degradation of a brand are measured in decades.
If you take a look at the Vision Pro, they didn't expect selling them like hot cakes, given the price, but from what I've heard they still missed their projections, by a long shot.
This pattern will repeat, one failed or tepid product launch at a time, eroding confidence, and ultimately, yes, the stock will plunge.
Maybe the strongest sense is that the iPad comes from the island of broken toys?
Slightly less emphatic but more sinister is that an iPad cannot help but involve itself in the destruction of the arts.
I do agree that the ad does not have any observable moral upside, and it was a mistake to run it.
But then again, if Apple did have a YouTube collection of ads that they chose not to run and discussion of why, it might be easier to trust them. They are so opaque at the moment that trust is a very big ask.
Parent is talking about brand goodwill.
You're talking about revenue.
The two are different, but not unrelated. One reason Apple can run the margins and move the product that it does is because it's Apple. If it were "random company" and didn't benefit from its RDF, those numbers wouldn't be sustainable.
Which, in a nutshell, is the Tim Cook problem -- you can make all the sales numbers go in the right direction, but that's not the product magic that Apple has historically benefited from (and been valued at).
But I think they have a leadership problem. Tim Cook is a glorified bean counter, not a creator, not a visionary, and it shows.
I know that most people are looking at the stock and will say that everything is fine. Sure. I am looking at the products, and except for M series of SoC, this is all boring.
All empires fall, but today is not that day for Apple.
GE's valuation was up ~4500% during Jack Welch's tenure as CEO.
Apple is the default choice for grandparents again, but they don't even have the schools anymore (Google conquered edu with Chromebooks).
stock is not short sighted. It does react quickly to information (which means it was too late to short a while ago) but to think that you can make money by not buying stock now, but waiting to buy it at another time is really terrible advice, and it's been refuted.
To believe that stock is short-sighted is to believe that investers as a group are dumber than you are because they've put their money into the market but you know better.
There is a saying you may not be familiar with, "Markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent."
the market doesn't know the future, it just incorporates current knowledge and opinion. Is AI a bubble right now? the vast riches afforded those who make the right call when AI is ready is justification enough for current enthusiasm, no irrationality needs to be hypothesized. And like people who lost their bet on the 49ers to win the Superbowl, there's no reason to posit irrationality if a bet doesn't pay.
It is incredibly good at doing that. But it is short sighted. It is able to integrate risks to some extent, on a short time scale, but it is very bad at processing second or third order effects, and can't do strategy.
In other words, the famous invisible hand is completely unable to predict the future.
Humans are also notoriously bad at that, but still better. This is why we have states and CEOs.
Therefore, your money should always be "in the market", not out of the market. Therefore, it's very difficult to make the case that the market is short sighted. I think what you are trying to say is that immediate risks are better understood than longer term, so the more distant future has higher volatility.
Consider that when talking about something measured in decades the examples that come to mind are things people said in the last few weeks. But what were people talking about a decade ago? Which of those things actually reflected the long term trajectory of the company?
To the extent that someone high up who greenlit it should be fired.
How do you know...
- Creatives are a target customer
- Creatives are concerned about AI
- Everyone is concerned about AI
That'd be like making a tobacco ad that features a pair of lungs aging...
That would have have looked nice, but it wouldn't have touched people.
This is very graphic and elicits a much stronger emotion. I think that's why it was chosen.
The irony is that it know kind of feels like more honest then it's supposed to be, digital tools crushing tradition artistry.
I mentioned in another thread, if they showed AI “crushing” the artist (ie replacing) that would have been the powder keg.
The astronomical user base of companies like Google and Apple should not be an indicator about the actual goodwill of people towards these brands. Getting away with something does not mean your behaviour isn't causing increasing animosity and feeding general discontentment.
Really? I wonder how it got titled Crush! then.
> The problem is that you can't squeeze an object without resorting to animation.
Not a problem. The ad isn't short of animation.
> there is no such thing as bad publicity
I's say the apology shows Apple disagrees.
It already was an animation. So they could have taken your approach instead.
Like if this was hand drawn animation, would anyone care? I think people think real instruments (even ones that were junk, ie old pianos are worthless) were destroyed.
If, and if think that’s a big if that was mainly practical effects, then those props would almost certainly be fake instruments made from different materials that crush in more visually appealing ways.
Could be extrapolating this incident too much but it feels it encapsulates the transformation of Apple from this quirky, unconventional upstart into a monopolistic leviathan the past 2 decades. There's also a sense of hubris at suggesting your single electronic device can replace all those creative tools.
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.
Might boost sales to everyone who has never heard 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.
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 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesizer
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.
Videos and recordings don't actually replicate those things. They approximate them. Recordings leave out tons of really important expression.
(In all seriousness I do agree btw, there’s value and worth in all the art and forms of art we’ve created … but I’m reacting a bit to the “one step backward in historical progression is the pinnacle of achievement” … plus I have to say I’m pretty impressed with the visual and cinematic quality of the Apple ad itself and find the contextual outrage a bit weird - comparing it to the Ridley Scott ad is wild too - not every creation has to be an iconic achievement of a master, but is untrue this particular ad wasn’t interesting and well executed and I feel bad for the creative crew that developed and produced it)
Anything less is a crude shortcut afforded us by our decadent culture of consumption.
No. It's an appeal to something that is eternally true.
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.
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.
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.
its like smelling fresh apple pie vs smelling an apple pie car freshener. The idea gets across, but it can never be the same.
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?"
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.
reading just this HN submission's replies begs ti differ
It’s a metaphor.
I felt like I was watching the end of Terminator 1 when watching that iPad commercial.
I implore you all: adopt a piano today! You may find yourself saying "I didn't rescue it, it rescued me."
The entire point of the ad is that the entire human creative experience is consolidated into the ipad, which is a pretty dystopian way of looking at things. Even if you ignore the cost and rarity of these items, the symbolism is pretty horrible.
A guitar, sure. I tried getting an used string piano and couldn't find one...used...for less than five grand. Used violins and other instruments are also usually very highly priced.
[1] e.g. https://www.actionpianomoving.com/used-pianos if you're in the greater NYC area
But used pianos go unsold for under a hundred dollars all the time within an hour's drive of major US cities.
Everything in that press was a representation of a real and useful thing, and the people who hate this commercial the most seem to have substituted a real and useful thing for the simulation of one. Whereas the moment the cans on the piano were crushed, I thought, "wow that old (busted?) piano is holding up well."
Practical effects are not only full of fakery, they're also the origin of a lot of the tricks known to the world.
Someone bought me a broken piano once thinking I would be able to repair it. We ended up letting someone else have it for free. It wasn’t expensive to begin with because it didn’t work.
Apple, on the other hand, will never be punk. They left that path when they realized it was more profitable to become the guy on the screen in their earlier ad.
A better comparison might be to Spike Jonze's famous Ikea ad ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBqhIVyfsRg ), which was also sort of disturbing to watch.
At least Billie Joe Armstrong showed that Gibsons are very durable and you really have to put your back into destroying it.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8838159/amp/The-Who...
Because of the connection that the players have with the instruments.
Could you do that with an iPad?
Well, the article says it was because of the money of having to buy new equipment.
If I put my skill and effort crafting something and it is destroyed, I'll feel sad.
Feeling that way even for things other made is called empathy.
“We” don’t worship anything here.
People are being babies about this.
If it has to be explained to you, you won't get it.
But yes, if you are losing your mind over it and crying about it, with an extreme emotional reaction, yes that makes you a baby.
I have no problem with someone who merely didn't like the ad. What I do have a problem with is this extreme freakout response.
Somewhere within Apple there was a failure of taste, and that was always the proverbial "sin unto death" from Steve Jobs's perspective. Doesn't happen every day. You hate to see it, but you can't help but watch.
Then I guess you didn't see the social media response. There were absolutely a lot of people who were extremely upset.
Define “losing your mind” and “crying about it with extreme emotional reaction”.
The people I am seeing on Twitter who are very upset.
So, if would be anyone who instead of merely thinking that the ad is bad, instead are actually angry about it.
Thinking an ad sucks is different from being significantly offended by it.
I am glad that you seem to now agree with me that it would be dumb to be personally offended by this in a significant way.
You agree with me so much, that it is so dumb to be mad about this, that you actually don't think that people were!
You actually believe this argument even more that I do, because it isn't even conceivable to you that people were very upset about this.
I am glad that I convinced you at how dumb it would be to very mad about this ad.
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
…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.