Almost exactly 40 years ago, Apple released its most famous ad, “1984”, in which a monochrome society of shambling drones is under the spell of some kind of computerized dictator. The prisoners of this terrible society are then liberated from their monotony by a hammer-throwing savior representing the Macintosh computer, and a glorious, colorful future is unleashed.
Fast forward 40 years, and Apple is the most valuable company in the world, releasing a commercial in which symbols of creativity, color, joy, human passion, and playfulness are piled into the center of a grey concrete void, and crushed by an industrial machine until they become a little Apple-branded rectangle.
The message is not playing well.
Mike Pearl
I remain forever perplexed at how much attention some people pay to Apple’s advertisements. This one is a rare case of a negative, visceral reaction so strong the company actually felt the need to release an apology – quite a rare occurrence on Apple’s part. I don’t share the sense of esteem and almost mystical reverence towards Apple that I see displayed by others, but even so this commercial felt like a pretty low point from them. It’s nearly impossible not to notice the parallels between this ad and generative AI gathering individual creative works, crushing them together, and throwing out a mass-produced generic product that’s supposed to replace the source material.
It might have generated the buzz that the iPad sorely needs for a launch with no compelling upgrades besides faster and thinner, but I suspect that nobody in the decision chain at Apple ever considered a backlash, let alone one of this extent. Being dominant for so long has made Apple both complacent and thoroughly out of touch with the creatives they love to tout as their most cherished customers.
Odds are, people aren’t really furious at Apple on behalf of the trumpeters—they’re mad because the ad says something about the balance of power. Apple is a great technology company, but it is a legendary marketer. Its ads, its slickly produced keynotes, and even its retail stores succeed because they offer a vision of the company’s products as tools that give us, the consumers, power. The fundamental flaw of Apple’s commercial is that it is a display of force that reminds us about this sleight of hand. We are not the powerful entity in this relationship. The creative potential we feel when we pick up one of their shiny devices is actually on loan. At the end of the day, it belongs to Apple, the destroyer.
Damon Beres & Charlie Warzel
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