Nick Kapur: Seeing this horrific Apple ad, I can't help thinking how we're destroying the humanities and arts at universities in order to force everyone into vocational majors like "marketing" where they'll learn to produce soulless crap like this. The replies are 100% negative. twitter.com/tim_cook/sta...

Seeing this horrific Apple ad, I can't help thinking how we're destroying the humanities and arts at universities in order to force everyone into vocational majors like "marketing" where they'll learn to produce soulless crap like this. The replies are 100% negative. twitter.com/tim_cook/sta...

Tim Cook on X: "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. https://t.co/6PeGXNoKgG" / Xtwitter.com 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. https://t.co/6PeGXNoKgG

You're telling on yourself and your entire company that you thought this would appeal to anyone outside of the tech bubble, where destroying things actual human beings value for profit is a virtue and an ad like this got anywhere close to being made, let alone tweeted proudly by the CEO.

Understanding that words and images can have symbolic value beyond what is putatively intended is literally the first thing you learn in an arts or humanities class.

Yeah man I don’t know, if you thought the symbolism of a big press squashing music and pictures and movies into an iPad was “Apple wants to destroy everything you love,” I think the problem is something to discuss with your therapist.

(also imagining that Apple doesn’t employ thousands of humanities grads and other artists is so outrageously wrong it’s laughable, come the fuck on)

Nah he is right. The ad conveys this message and lacks the awareness to know where music and art originally come from. It's not in the 1s and 0s. It comes from out in the real world first. You wouldn't have images without a camera, you wouldn't have piano notes without first having a piano.

I feel like even more than that it's a lack of awareness for the moment. Artists everywhere are facing the threat of being crushed by the demand for algorithmically generated art that is literally their own work, stolen and squished together by a machine.

And instead of thinking about how they've helped perpetuate this, and that that same work is what built them in the first place, mega corporations are like "Isn't this cool? We're taking your stolen labor and turning it into prohibitively expensive goods to sell back to you!"

Oh my god the ad is literally saying that exact thing you nonce. All that real stuff is being condensed into the iPad. Not replaced by. Do you seriously thing Thing A being condensed into Thing B means B created A??

Calling someone a nonce because you don't agree with their opinion really doesn't paint you in the best light, mate. Maybe you should go back to Twitter.

this would be a much more compelling argument if the camera didn't linger on all the objects being destroyed in the process of "being condensed"

"condensed"? The items aren't shrunk, or reduced whilst retaining their essence, they are crushed to destruction.

The thing that this ad REALLY gets wrong is that no tablet/computer is ever going to fully replace any of those things because the element of touch is gone. The feeling of fingers on the keys of a piano, the way a brush full of paint slides across a canvas - those are essential to the creative

A Gritty mascot pfp fighting to the death on behalf of an ultramegacorporation, smh

it's not being condensed, it's being thoroughly and gratuitously *destroyed* with shrapnel and debris flying.

You'd flunk a high school class in reading the media, let alone an actual humanities degree. Look at the images - you are not seeing something being condensed, it's being destroyed.

If I showed you a presser have a human inside it and then showcase an iPad Air, thinking that the iPad Air holds the human intelligence, everyone would rightly see a murder live.

It can say both since it’s subject to interpretation. This isn’t hard, bro. Like, think.

Further insults. Again, unnecessary.

Artists are being kneecapped by social media algorithms, content is being stolen and repurposed by AI no one wants or asked for, musical artists are paid thirds of a penny on the dollar by streaming services, creators are CONSTANTLY asked to create for free...and you're doing the 'lying eyes' bit?

maybe you should be the one speaking to the therapist about your numbness to it.

being charitable, this ad is a form of visual art and art is interpreted different ways. if the creatives involved and the C-suite that approved it completely missed the dual meaning...that shows you how highly art ranks amongst those in the rooms

My friend, I feel things so deeply it’s literally a mental disorder. This just isn’t enough of an effort to get to me. You’re being unraveled by an extremely halfass concept. If anything, the fact that this is all it takes is what shows how poorly the humanities are taught. This is Kleenex.

hi it me, I’m artists There is no way for my heart to be rent by seeing a piano or a bucket of paint destroyed to show that all creative output can be viewed through one condensed little window. And in the abstract, how are you discounting how all creation is destruction and vice versa?

The ad is showing tools as well as finished works. The iPad is being shown as a replacement for the tools of creation as well as consumption.

If you don't watch this ad and get viscerally repulsed you don't have a soul. I feel bad for you.

I don’t know, seeing a piano that doesn’t exist crushed in a hydraulic press to form a media device in a world where hydraulic press videos have a massive following just doesn’t upset me that much, on account of how obviously it’s not anti-music. I guess I’m built different (capable of analysis)

Built different (a tech bro moron who feels the need to defend apple). Go back to X, dipshit.

You don’t seem to understand symbolism. Or maybe you’re just reaching in order to try to defend your position so you don’t have to admit to being wrong about any of this.

It is, though, because capitalist monopolistic corporations are INHERENTLY anti-art. They value conformity to THEIR cultural/aesthetic ideals and unquestioning consumer behavior above all else. This is antithetical to human creativity. Apple is anti-art.

People lovingly restore old arcade cabinets and it's being crushed in this ad.

The symbolism of "mushing a bunch of art stuff into an iPad" is perfectly fine, but it should be cartoony and focus on the paint and instruments and statues etc. taking on this new shape, rather than being *destroyed* in unsettling detail

“It should be cartoony” Why? This is an aesthetic judgment; “I would have done it differently” and “it was [bad/wrong/offensive]” are totally distinct things, and folks have been arguing that it was bad/wrong/offensive.

It should be cartoony because the concept is *inherently* cartoony. In real life you can't smush a piano into a trumpet to make a computer with better music software.

Apple does in fact want to destroy everything you love and replace it with a disposable overpriced Apple product you have to log into and pay 50% extra for apps.

Does Apple make companies produce an app for everything, and is that in this commercial? Are their products significantly more disposable than competitors, or are they just a flashy scapegoat? Are they overpriced, or do you just not need pro hardware?

mm so you’re saying Apple wants movies, music, and photography to no longer be produced they want you to buy a device that feeds you movies, music, and photography, but eliminate those things from existence the deep irony that humanities education would help you understand why that’s nonsense 😅

i like books and instruments and seeing them get destroyed doesn't make me want to buy a product. might as well have an ad where people are tossing books in the fire, but wait, it's ok because the fire is actually forging an ipad! same idea

lol I am not an Apple shareholder, I don't care if anyone buys an ipad But no, bookburning and squashing a piano are not interchangeable, because the Nazis did not famously squash all the pianos about gender and sexuality theory. The irony that humanities education would have helped you here...

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