The usual mechanics of Apple, year after year, you already know what it is: they announce a new model of a device that slightly improves on the previous one, launch a flashy ad, and wait for all their loyal customers to buy it. And repeat ad infinitum. The latest to fall has been the iPad Pro, which is born as the thinnest tablet on the market for those who care about such things. The problem has not been that, but the announcement to present it, which has been too destructive even for the company’s fans.
iDestruction
The key to the announcement of the iPad was clear: everything fits in the tablet, from musical composition to WhatsApp. And, for this, its creatives have been inspired by these fascinating videos that TikTok occasionally recommends to you, in which a hydraulic press destroys all kinds of things. The problem is that this time what a very rich company has destroyed are cultural goods, and the bravado has not been well received precisely.
The hydraulic press breaks a trumpet, a piano, an arcade machine, several paint cans, a metronome, or a mixer table, among others, to press them into an iPad. And what Apple thought would be read as “Everything is inside”, many have read it as “The iPad wants to destroy art” or simply as a crude way to destroy objects for promotional purposes that could instead be used by people with limited resources to create it.
Obviously, the problem comes from one of the biggest companies in the world wanting to enter a meme based on destroying things valued at thousands of euros as if it were just loose change for them. Personally, I don’t think it’s a big deal, it’s just an advertisement, but I understand where all this is coming from: Apple has no right to make this kind of viral ads showing the obscene amount of money they can destroy just for fun. It’s not the end of the apple company, far from it, but it is a gesture of disgust that would have been unthinkable years ago. The times are changing.