One Apple Fanboy's White-hot Anger at the iPad Commercial

I've been a die-hard Apple guy since 2006, and the art crush commercial has me livid

Author

Daniel Miessler
May 12, 2024

Before I go into this, I want to articulate exactly how much of an Apple fanboy I am.

  • I camped for the first iPhone

  • I have camped for every single one since

  • I also camp for all other major releases, like new watches, etc.

  • I’ve been writing about Apple and how it’s better than its competition since 2006

  • I worked there for three years and it was wonderful

My whole home-tech ecosystem is Apple. I probably own 30-something of their devices, and have given away at least triple that. I spread the religion.

Anyway. Fanboy.

And that’s why I’m so fucking mad right now.

The ad

If you haven’t seen it it’s basically this visually impressive crushing scene as we’ve seen before in various other places. Where you have a giant compressor and can you put things inside of it and you smash them.

They decided to put a whole bunch of creative instruments inside instead. So we’re talking like:

  • Pianos

  • Guitars

  • Record Players

  • Video Games

  • Paint

  • Books

  • Fucking books

You know, the things that humans actually use to create art.

And then they proceeded to fucking smash them into smithereens.

Did I mention books? They crushed books.

I actually just figured out what bothers me so much about the whole thing.

It’s like opening an ad to a violent snuff film of a whole family being killed on camera. Graphically. In detail.

Then at the end—as the punchline—they fade to black and put text on the screen.

WE PREVENT THIS

Oh, fantastic. Like the message is strong enough to counter what you just put me through.

Too fucking late guys. You just made me watch that.

You didn’t compress the instruments, and somehow put all their goodness into the iPad. That would have been kind of cool.

No. You fucking destroyed them.

And made me watch.

And then:

Ta-da! The iPad is the same! It’s the replacement!

No. It’s not. And fuck you for implying so.

This the opposite of what the company stands for. Which is human art. Human creativity.

The tech is a lens for focusing and magnifying that human creation, not for snuffing out the humanity and replacing it.

Jesus.

I worked at Apple. How did this get through the many levels of people required to approve something?

Cool so we destroy all this beautiful artistic stuff. But then we show an iPad that nobody will be able to tell the difference from the one from two years ago? Yeah, sounds good.

Someone who’s since been stuffed in a box and launched at the moon

I’m fucking ashamed. As an Apple person. Like I’m reaching out to my people and apologizing for us. Because they know how Apple I am.

Why did you make me do that?

No. Bad. Goddammit. Shit. Damn. Shit.

Anger.

—

NOTES

  1. If I try to think objectively about how this could have happened, I see the two threads. First, compacting things is cool. Second, showing that they all fit in an iPad is cool. Nice. Two cool things. But they fucking missed that compactors DESTROY.

  2. I saw a brilliant analysis online that said a commercial should never be better in reverse, which this one was. Nailed it.

  3. No, I’m not worried Apple has lost its way. Shit like this happens. And when it does, people like me write pieces like this. It would take a trend to get me worried.