Dystopian Apple iPad Pro ad appalls creatives (and even celebrities)

Unless you've been away from the internet for an entire 48 hours, you probably know that Apple has launched new iPad Pros for 2024. They're very thin. The thinnest Apple product ever, in fact. But more startling than the tablets' specs is the horrifically misjudged video created for their launch.

Apple has invested so much in emotional branding over the years, and it had been getting it so right. So how did it think that depicting itself as a big industrial machine crushing art and creativity would be a good look?

The video created to launch the new 2024 iPad Pros shows a pile of musical instruments, paint tins, camera lenses, books, arcade machines and more flattened by a massive crushing machine to create the shiny new tablet. The message? You don't need any of that old junk because you can do it all on an iPad Pro.

I get the idea. The iPad Pro is very thin (did I mention it's Apple's thinnest product yet?). The piece does communicate that fact clearly and in a memorable way. But there's so much that's wrong about it. First, an iPad clearly can't replace all of those things. Yes, you can produce music on it, but it isn't a musical instrument. You can take photos with it too if you really want to, but it's clearly got nothing on the lenses crushed in the video.

But what feels so misjudged is the dystopian connotation of showing creativity and tradition being destroyed by a machine to create a tech product. It feels like Apple was somehow trying to hark back to its famous 1984 Macintosh advert (below) but ended up saying the opposite. It could have made shrinking things fun, but instead the execution is dark and oppressive, from the eerily incongruous choice of music to the almost painfully gratuitous shot of the eyes popping out of a stress ball. Mother Earth from Apple's iPhone 15 event surely wouldn't approve of so much waste to make an advert either.

As one person wrote on X, it could have been "a Wonka-like location, with a whimsical machine that someone hand cranks, turning all the paint and instruments into an iPad. But no, it's a grey Saw room with a hydraulic press."

Observers on social media can't understand how it got made. "I can’t recall the last time I saw a promo that so immediately and completely turned me against the product it was supposed to be selling," the writer and editor Chris Shilling wrote on X. "Did they make this obviously abhorrent for engagement?" someone else wondered. "Actually tuned my stomach, I had a proper feeling of revulsion," another person wrote. 

Celebrities were also critical. The actor Hugh Grant tweeted: "The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley." Men in Black screenwriter Ed Solomon wrote: “Who needs human life and everything that makes it worth living? Dive into this digital simulacrum and give us your soul. Sincerely, Apple.” And Handmaid’s Tale director Reed Morano put things bluntly, saying, "THIS SHIT IS ACTUALLY PSYCHOTIC".

It is possible that Apple intentionally aimed for controversy to try to break through the online noise, but I suspect the reality is that in its bubble it just didn't realise how bad it looked to literally flatten various forms of human creativity. It reminds me of how Adobe has been using the line "skip the photoshoot" to sell its new AI tools despite the amount of custom it gets from photographers. Sometimes even the biggest brands have a terrible grasp of optics.

I also wonder whether thinness is really the most exciting sales pitch for a tablet today. The OLED display, sure. The new, even faster chip too. But of all the wishes we hear from creatives who use iPads and other tablets, "make it thinner' isn't one that tends to top the list these days.

If you still want to buy a new iPad Pro after the trauma of watching the video, you can order it at Amazon and Apple now ahead of the 15 May release.