Worst Practices | Case Studies | Newsjacking | Fanocracy | Artificial Intelligence
In a massive fail, Apple used a truly heartbreaking video to launch its new iPad Pro yesterday. I’m not the only one who is disappointed in a company that was founded to aid in creativity.
The video titled CRUSH shows tools of human creativity being destroyed one by one: a vintage trumpet, guitar, and piano, analog cameras, books, paint, an artists’ model, and much more.
As a collector of various vintage objects as well as a lifelong creator, this video makes me deeply sad.
My wife Yukari says that for Japanese people, who believe that beautiful objects like those crushed in this video have a spirit, this video is in especially poor taste. Tsukumogami can roughly translate that tools and instruments after a useful life of many years receive souls and shouldn't be wasted or disposed of thoughtlessly.
And the end result, the video’s payoff, is just a new computer? Really?
Apple CEO Tim Cook tweeted: “Meet the new iPad Pro: the thinnest product we’ve ever created, the most advanced display we’ve ever produced, with the incredible power of the M4 chip. Just imagine all the things it’ll be used to create.”
I wonder if Cook even watched the video? I wonder if the marketing team showed it to people outside the Apple California bubble?
The several thousand replies to Cook’s tweet are mostly negative.
However, the negativity is super interesting. It's not hate. It comes from Apple fans around the world. Its more like a profound sadness and disappointment.
This is a perfectly soul crushing, creator destroying metaphor for what AI can do to society. And coming from Apple, a company that should know better, it is especially demoralizing.
