So you've built the best tablet, Apple. Show us why it matters
- Reference: 1716193813
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/05/20/opinion_column_apple_ad/
- Source link:
Said iPad is a little bit thinner than the last one, so the advert showed all the creative, lovely things in the world being squashed flat by a giant metal press. Books, pianos, paints – all crushed like scrap cars in a breaker's yard. At the end, 3D animated emoticons are snuffed out, their eyeballs popping out in a shower of smiley juice. It is truly gruesome.
Compare it to Apple's launch ad for the Mac in 1984. It too had heavy metal destruction – only that time it was a young athlete hurling a hammer through a giant glowering Big Brother video screen lecturing a gray, thuggish audience. Liberate yourself from the chains of conformity – a pretty good sell, given the IBM PC of the time had the creative potential of a tax bill.
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[2]Youtube Video
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The latest ad, 40 years later, seems a cruel, cynical parody. It has already inspired [5]parodies from the competition.
There are of course lots of theories of how this happened. Apple has completely lost touch with its customers. Apple creates all its advertising in-house instead of using external agencies, and nobody dares criticize bad ideas from above. There are brainworms in the Cupertino water supply. Almost all are plausible, yet there's one more chilling than any other: What if Apple meant it to be that bad?
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Simply put, the iPad Pro M4 is the thinnest, fastest, brightest iPad – but the only thing that matters is the iPad part. Most of the market will balk at the four-digits-for-starters price tag. Engineering miracle or no, it won't tablet any better than its far cheaper forebears.
It is not news – not in the real world. Until Apple fits the damn things into Star Trek transporter pads, they won't be news. Unless … something terrible happens. Oops. Is that our latest super-product all over the news? How did that happen?
We can't exclude the idea that we've been trolled – and successfully. Here we are, after all. Were this to be the case, it would be the worst option of them all – worse even than the Cupertino cerebro-nematodes. It would mean two things: that putting what would have been a supercomputer not so long ago in a portable device is pointless; and that Apple is prepared to further alienate a society already nervous about new technology. The latter is truly dangerous.
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This isn't about Apple's core creative customer base being worried about AI – although that's certainly part of the marketing misfire. It's that while people genuinely love the way digital delivers so much so easily – all the shopping, all the content, all the searching – they're also keenly aware that it takes away privacy, security and control. Now here's Apple gleefully demonstrating that all the lovely things are just there to be ground down and smushed up to feed the maw of Big Tech.
Unease is cumulative, especially in uneasy times. You were the brand of liberation, of promise, and you've broken both. Way to poison the well, guys.
Apple could have sold its iPad the other way around: as the wafer-thin science fiction portal from which all good things come. As the back of the Narnia wardrobe. As the place where you get so much out of almost nothing. Want to make the news? Buy all the ads for 24 hours on a big TV network. On all the TV networks. Make the adverts good enough to watch. It'd be far more expensive a media stunt than having Timbo X-tweet out a single horrible thing just one time, but Apple can afford it. More than it can afford to look like, act like or be an actual force for evil technology.
[8]Samsung takes bite out of Apple over its mega marketing misstep
[9]You OK, Apple? Seriously, your silicon lineup is … a mess
[10]Apple unveils M4 chip with neural engine capable of 38 TOPS, and some other kit
[11]Apple's pleas ineffective: iPadOS on EU's gatekeeper list
An even bolder move would be to demonstrate why something like an M4 iPad has a genuine reason to exist – not just because . High performance computing is the bedrock of much that makes positive, exciting, inspiring news.
Make a Science Edition iPad and send a few to the people who make the astronomical images that pack the wow factor. Send some to those [12]using machine learning to crack whale language . There are people using big, compute intensive models in sport, in music, in medicine – all over the place. They make news, they inspire, and for them an M4-based tablet could well out-tablet all other tablets. Find these people. Help them. Be proud of it.
In the end, it doesn't much matter whether Apple is out of ideas, is utterly tone deaf, or is so desperate for attention it'll do anything. It's a broken promise that's bad for the brand, for technology in general, and for the future health of the symbiosis between ourselves and our silicon offspring.
Broken promises can scar generations. Just look at nuclear power – still fighting for acceptance just when we need it most. One bad tech advertisement is not the end of the world, any more than one small crack in a reactor pressure vessel. But it is very wise to take notice. ®
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[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZksfRpQZv8RqBP@7wxpxlAAAAIw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXNpzE1t04
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZksfRpQZv8RqBP@7wxpxlAAAAIw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZksfRpQZv8RqBP@7wxpxlAAAAIw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/samsung_takes_a_bite_out/
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZksfRpQZv8RqBP@7wxpxlAAAAIw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZksfRpQZv8RqBP@7wxpxlAAAAIw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/16/samsung_takes_a_bite_out/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/13/apple_silicon_roadmap/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/07/apple_m4_ipad/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/29/apple_ipados_dma_gatekeeper/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/09/ai_whale_language/
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Just think
The point is that iPad is to thin that you can ask someone to slide it under the door.
Re: Just think
The battery life is already more than sufficient for the vast majority of users. No point (at least, marketing-wise) extending it any more. Thicker also means heavier, which means it's a pain in the wrist to hold, so thinner & lighter is genuinely better here.
It also doesn't bend easily. Soo...
The issue, it seems to me, isn't with Apple but with what advertising is in and of itself.
Whether an advert is successful or not depends on whether sales go up, and that's dictates how much adland gets paid, and that's all they really care about. As much as anyone who remembers the Shake'N'Vac woman is unlikely to do so fondly, the reason that ad ran for years is every time it played sales of the product went up by a ridiculous amount. That's why an inferior brand of crisps dominates the UK market (thanks to Gary Lineker), why the one of the very insurance comparison sites still going has a thing for meerkats and why biscuits named Fox are marketed by a panda that appears to be a member of the mafia for some reason (or were - don't remember seeing any in a while).
> Whether an advert is successful or not depends on whether sales go up
It’s been social media coverage for some time now, naturally, this can achieved by either a really good ad or, more easily, by a really bad ad…..
Exactly this. Everything's been curated, right down to the fake ass apology. They even got Samsung to make people think of apple whilst trying to advertise their product.
Oh thanks a bunch. I've now got the Shake'n'Vac jingle as an earworm...
https://youtu.be/4q8inM0gKVo?si=xA72xwNCJruo3G38&t=9
If it had MacOS instead of a phone OS then it would be an interesting prospect for me, although the price with the keyboard is a bit steep. They'd have to add the touchscreen interface I guess, but I assume there's no technical reason why MacOS couldn't be run on it.
Shiny for fanboys with too much disposable income
If Apple were at all bothered about making useful products, the Mac would be at M4 first, not their thinnest ever tablet which sits in the living room and is picked up from time to time to browse the Internet on Safari which is gimped anyway.
I'm sure someone will be along to say they use an iPad for Photoshop. Great, aren't you special.
Re: Shiny for fanboys with too much disposable income
> not their thinnest ever tablet which sits in the living room and is picked up from time to time to browse the Internet on Safari
This last year I have been able to use both my ancient iPad Air with ~10 inch screen and a newer Pro with the ~13 inch screen.
The smaller, lighter (and thinner) Air is still my preference for the backpack etc. The larger one is almost permanently on a stand and gets used for Zoom etc.; it rarely moves from my desk…
Nuclear
What makes you think we need nuclear now.
The 1984 meme
"hurling a hammer through a giant glowering Big Brother video screen lecturing a gray, thuggish audience"
But surely the recent advert was just carrying on that "1984" meme: unfortunately they hopped into the audience.
Were they intimating that, like Winston Smith's job, they could destroy the historic record at will and re-write it in their imagining ?
(Then, like WS, they would have to keep on re-writing it. Result: a job/market for life.)
I don't get it
I don't use apple products, too overly controlled and priced. That said I think the complaining about this advert is equally inflated.
Troll, because you're giving them unwarranted free advertising.
"Apple has completely lost touch with its customers."
No. I think they are pretty much on the money there. The typical Apple fetishist is certainly unfazed by the gratuitous destruction portrayed in the advert. Truly creative individuals that (still) use Apple kit would have found it uncomfortable viewing, I should think.
As the back of the Narnia wardrobe. As the place where you get so much out of almost nothing.
An allegorical allusion with Apple represented by Jadis of Charn? And their clients by Edmund? ;)
Curiously the wardrobe was built from apple wood taken from a tree grown from the seed of another more notorious and fateful tree.
No such thing as bad publicity ?
It can be a stroke of genius to make your ad campaign "news" and therefore carried for free. Who needs adwords ?
Re: No such thing as bad publicity ?
Especially so for Apple, where the reach of their normal advertising is probably largely to existing customers. I'd imagine for non-Apple owners, they'll simple register Apple as an expensive brand they have heard of but don't own, glaze-over and won't register Apple ads even when they nominally see them.
By getting into the news, that broadens the reach of the brand and product, will get some potential consumers to talk about the advert, the brand, the product. And also gets past ad-blockers or targeting algos. The trick is not to over-use the tactic or to be caught knowingly using it, as either will backfire and undermine the brand. As a high risk, high return tactic, when would you use it? Well perhaps if your sales appeared in danger of plateauing, as Apple's did in 2023, or if you were introducing something so unfeasibly expensive that simple adverts may struggle to shift.
I've been had
I've agree with the article and I've been had. I replaced my 2020 iPad Pro and Magic Keyboard with the latest iPad Pro M4 and keyboard. I've gained only guaranteed security updates for 4 years.
Despite the amazing claims about how thin and light the new one is, I've lost just 80g in weight from the iPad and keyboard combo.
Significantly, I've lost the use of the Apple Pencil. The Pencil 2 that was compatible with the iPad pro 2020 doesn't charge from the iPad Pro M4 and doesn't even pair with it fully charged. The older original Apple Pencil with USB C pairing and charging does work! There's no exchange or trade in offered for the defunct Pencil 2. Awful.
Screen looks the same to me, except that there's an odd wobble/shimmer from the background when an app is closed. Whether this is a bug or feature is entirely unclear.
I should have bough the iPad Air.
Just think
Just think how long the battery could last if they had had made it a little thicker (easier to hold and less likely to bend too!)