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 sentiment.
Not because eg one piano got destroyed; surely that happens all the time, even on camera for eg movies and such. But there was something about watching beautiful objects be destroyed, in slow motion, gratuitously, and with an upbeat/sunny tone, that just aesthetically made me squirm in my seat
It goes beyond aesthetics for me. It's like they took everyone's deepest fears about technology and AI, that it will replace or "crush" authentic human experience and creativity, and they just embraced and celebrate it by literally crushing representations of human creativity. At least I'm glad the corporate types were actually honest about their goals, though, instead of their typical doublespeak
This was what I understood it to be as well, they let it split out by accident/enough group think. I’ve worked in tech long enough to firmly believe this sentiment exists.
Agreed, that's exactly how tech companies are, and Apple is one of the biggest. Apple doesn't really care what people create, so long as they are buying an Apple product to create it on. It doesn't matter that an iPad doesn't feel or sound like a trumpet. If someone buys their product to learn to play a trumpet or a piano, then they were the fool parting with their money that Apple was hoping to find, and there's a lot of them apparently.
Exactly my thoughts - this ad does very little to invoke the desire for the product, unlike many other Apple ads.
It's not like Apple has forgotten how to make such ads - the recent one for iPhones with family members asking to not be let go while the owner tries to delete photos represented a familiar experience of people trying to free up storage, and how they wouldn't have to do that if they bought a new iPhone.
On the other hand, this ad just shows stuff being destroyed, just like some of those useless Youtube videos which shows perfectly usable stuff being destroyed under the pretext of "ASMR" or whatnot. Not only is it very difficult to watch as someone who didn't have a lot of money and was taught to make careful use of it from an early age, it just invokes negative vibes, as if possessing a musical instrument is something to be ashamed of.
Their marketing team has been missing the mark for a while. The “big and bigger” billboards with people in the distance holding up phones to the camera with a giant hand tiny body look feels like something Samsung would have done in the early 10’s
I haven’t seen anyone mention this yet, but I think the concept here was inspired by all the viral hydraulic press videos on Instagram and TikTok. Here’s a similar video showing random objects and consumer products being crushed in slow motion with similar upbeat music: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q9BtYEnrkg4
Sure, maybe that was the intent. But most of the objects I see in the linked video are cheap and mass-produced (a water bottle, some sticky notes, some plastic toys), which makes it feel totally different
I'm not bothered by the destruction. Destruction itself can have artistic value. For example, you can't portray the Nazis on screen without showing how destructive they were.
What bothers me is the arrogance to say that an iPad, a device which will be obsolete in a few short years, can replace all those instruments and tools that last more than a generation.
This is similar to the history channels which use AI colorized historical footage which wildly shifts objects from red to blue in a few frames and have the audacity to claim this is an improvement over the original.
I had same reaction to the 'niceness' of what they were crushing. Things looked too good, like still usable. What if they were slightly older and dinged, scuffed up, looked more like they were done being useful.
For me it was just because of the damage it caused. I guess if I heard someone was throwing out a piano I wouldn't think much of it, but the destruction of everything in the ad made me uneasy. I just felt like it was so wasteful to destroy things in the way they did. But again, maybe I have a double standard, because if I saw someone throw a trumpet or an old camera in the dumpster I probably would not care as much.
I don't think these objects being real or not makes much (if any) difference to those who view the ad negatively. The underlying idea that Apple is crushing these tools of human entertainment and creative expression, only to replace them with their own "jack of all trades" remains the same.
Can confirm. I reacted negatively to the ad (in a "this ad causes emotions which the creators absolutely does not want an ad to cause" kind of way), and for me it's all about the imagery and symbolism. I hope and assume that the destruction is primarily CGI, but the visuals of destroying positive "soulful" things like instruments and replacing it with a lifeless slab of glass just doesn't sell the product to me.
In fact, I think this would have been an excellent art piece if the message was "heartless tech corporations want to destroy the good things in life and replace it with a cold slab of glass".
At first I had a negative reaction. Then, looking for comfort, noticed that the video is mostly CGI. But then again, I felt the same. It is what you say: the image of destruction of beautiful objects is bad per se, it's not what the objects are, it's what they represent.
Without expertise I would just casually guess that a hydraulic press this size does not exist, or if it did, it would not be used for that. So at least that part is CG.
Yeah, it looks super CGI to my eyes. Especially the desk and the piano. I also can't imagine anyone trying to direct this kind of a video without having precise control on what the destruction looks like.
Really interesting to consider that this might be one of the few incidents that Shintoists, or at least "cultural Shintoists," have gotten offended at a western production.
Makes me wonder if this is why Apple went out of their way to apologize for the ad. I think if this ad just had non-culturally-specific backlash, they would've simply moved on. But because this impacted a specific market's sensibilities, maybe they felt the need to do a public mea culpa.
I have seen recently a documentary about Japanese food, and an interesting fact was that the chefs at some big Japanese restaurant had a special decorated grave, in some nice yard, in which they deposited their old kitchen knives, when those were so worn out that they could no longer be used.
They felt that it would be disrespectful to just dump somewhere the main tools of their work, after they had used those every day for decades.
I think a lot of people are a little bit Shintoist. That's one of the reasons why we have museums - we regard things as some kind of reflection on people and events, and a chair in which a famous person sat or an instrument they played is different for us than otherwise identical object that doesn't bear that imprint. We may not literally believe in things having spirits, but for many the things have some qualities that go beyond their physical structure. Emotional value, etc.
The popular sentiment has changed from enthusiasm about "digital", to disillusionment about big tech inserting themselves into our lives to monetize everything.
In 2009, smartphones were a novelty, and the iPad has not been announced yet. People were wowed by the new capabilities that "multimedia" devices were enabling. They were getting rid of the old, outdated, less capable tools.
Nowadays "multimedia" is taken for granted. OTOH generative AI is turning creative arts into commoditized digital sludge. Apple acts like they own and have the right to control everything that is digital. In this world, the analog instruments are a symbol of the last remnants of true human skill, and the physical world that hasn't been taken over by the big tech yet. And Apple is forcefully and destructively smushing it all into AI-chip-powered you-owe-us-30%-for-existing disneyland distopia.
It aired on the Internet, which is available in Japan. You can see some examples of backlash from Japanese people in the replies to this tweet, if you have a twitter account. https://twitter.com/tim_cook/status/1787864325258162239
I see several people stating they're ashamed to owning an iPad, and will never buy one again. Is this a form of hyperbole to push a message, or is there really this much emotion?
The skepticism is strange to me. I think the ad is actually compelling enough that it's making some of us really examine the question of whether or not the iPad really can (or should) replace these things. Apple is making a bold statement, so strong reactions are expected.
I've known for a while now that I'm more creative with a 2H pencil and a sketchbook than I am on my iPad. I'm more creative noodling around on real strings than in an app. This has made me pause to consider whether I should ever again plug in my currently uncharged iPad.
> really examine the question of whether or not the iPad really can (or should) replace these things.
> This has made me pause to consider whether I should ever again plug in my currently uncharged iPad.
I can't comprehend this. It's not an either or scenario, and I don't believe destruction/replacement was the intended message of the commercial. These things can be (somewhat) emulated with the iPad (are inside it). You can use an iPad for those, while riding on the bus, eating lunch, whatever, or when creativity does strike you. But, I don't think any reasonable person is thinking an iPad is a parity replacement for piano or a physical paint brush, or will use it to replace those. It's a tool, available when someone wants to use it. I have trouble believing this much, and fairly profound, introspection is only happening because of a silly commercial showing things being compressed into an iPad. I think it must be something else/indirect/unrelated, possibly something to do with identity. But, I suppose this is evidence that these emotions are real, which is fascinating to me, seeing the iPad as a small form factor computing device/useful tool.
I'll just say that I have a piano at home that exists, and I can happily use, regardless of the charge state of my iPad. I can go between them, without issues. But, I will say, the objective limitations/irreproducibility of compositions that come with using musical notation is much better handled with sequencers (which can then be used to produce the under-expressed notation).
Absolutely no offense - I don't see what this has to do with Japan at all although this has been repeated everywhere. I think this is just an unfortunate natural intuition.
Japanese users normally aren't exposed to the rest of WWW at all, even on social media, so there's intuition that any notable interactions observed has to do with the four-seasons and egg sandwiches way. But it's also true that there are 0.35x as many of the people here as there are US Americans, or 1.5x more than Germans, which creates a lot of presence in itself, possibly even grossly exaggerated on Twitter due to cultural fit and ongoing collapse of its en-US bubbles. I think this instance is example of the latter being the case mistaken as the former.
I agree that the comments on Japanese culture were unwarranted, off-topic, unnecessary, offensive… and while I know very little about Japan, I feel I should ignore random internet opinions on it.
But can you elaborate on your second paragraph? Should culture always be immune to criticism?
I always understood the whole point of political correctness was to not spew hateful words about anyone and that should be the standard.
Criticism is one thing, but the poster felt the need to "educate" all of us about how an entire country's opinion is invalid because "it's not an utopia". Nobody brought that up, and disregarding an entire culture's opinion of an advertisement campaign because weebs have unrealistic expectations, in a discussion with a valid and informative point about said culture, is tastelessly petty. And why belittle liberal arts majors anyway?
Let's call it what it is: racism and intolerance of other cultures.
I feel like this ad is also a litmus test for empathy: if someone can't spot the inferred symbolism or understand why people have a problem with it...they are very impaired in that regard.
I guess I wasn’t sure what you meant by “target”. I agree with you on all counts, except that I’m not sure I interpret the comment as “hateful”. Wrong and offensive, yes.
I think they didn’t really understand the criticism of the ad, and decided that the reason people were so opposed was out of some irrational reverence for the Japanese, themselves irrational due to some spiritual heritage.
