Apple iPad Pro
Screengrab/Apple
Apple is apologizing for an iPad Pro ad that was widely criticized when it debuted earlier this week.
The dystopian spot, titled “Crush,” shows several instruments, including a guitar and piano, being crushed by a hydraulic press. Also among the items being smashed flat are balls that look like emojis and an Angry Birds statue.
“Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad,” Apple marketing vp Tor Myhren said in an interview with Ad Age. “We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.”
Apple CEO Tim Cook posted the spot on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday (it also was posted on YouTube).
“Meet the new iPad Pro: the thinnest product we’ve ever created, the most advanced display we’ve ever produced, with the incredible power of the M4 chip. Just imagine all the things it’ll be used to create,” Cook wrote.
Upon its debut, the clip immediately received blowback, with social media followers asking why the company thought it was a good idea.
“I can’t relate to this video at all. It lacks any respect for creative equipment and mocks the creators,” wrote one person.
Posted another: “Crushing symbols of human creativity and cultural achievements to appeal to pro creators, nice. Maybe for the next Apple Watch Pro you should crush sports equipment, show a robot running faster than a man, then turn to the camera and say, ‘God is dead and we have killed him.’”
“It is a heartbreaking, uncomfortable, and egotistic advertisement. When I see this result, I’m ashamed to buy Apple products since nineteen years,” wrote another.
In a story for THR, senior features editor Julian Sancton agreed with those sentiments.
“Indeed, at a time of bipartisan skepticism about tech and its destructive effects on society — and, in the case of generative AI, its callous disregard for human creators — it seems designed to offend as many people as possible,” Sancton wrote about the ad.
Sancton added: “All of that destruction, it seems, is meant to promote the release of … a new, extra thin iPad, revealed when the clamps open back up. You can imagine the pitch: ‘All of human creation compressed into one impossibly sleek tablet.’ But the end result feels more like: ‘All of human creation sacrificed for a lifeless gadget.’”
