Apple apologizes for ‘Crush’ iPad Pro ad after makers respond

Apple’s latest ad crushed this – and not in a good way.

The one-minute ad, intended to highlight the thinness of the new iPad Pro, struck a chord with some in the creative community — perhaps because the analogy hit too close to home at a time when artificial intelligence is threatening creators.

In the ad, an imaginary trash compactor-like thing crushes musical instruments, a record player, a TV, a video game arcade machine, a sculpture and a painting, a chessboard, computers, books, sketches and cans of paint – with a rainbow of colors running down the side like blood flows – to produce an iPad.

Titled ‘Crush!’ the ad appeared Tuesday on YouTube and on CEO Tim Cook’s account on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. It was intended to promote the tech giant’s event on Wednesday about all the new iPad developments.

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But the response was so negative that the company issued a mea culpa on Thursday.

“Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it is incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives around the world,” Apple marketing vice president Tor Myhren said in a statement to Ad Age. “Our goal is to always explore the countless ways users can express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.”

Apple did not respond to a request for comment from USA TODAY.

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Some took the way Apple destroyed creativity and art forms literally – an idea that many felt Apple should have been sensitive to.

“The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley”, actor Hugh Grant posted on X.

The ad “turned my stomach. Then I got incredibly angry. Then I was just sad,” says Shelly Palmer, a technology/media/marketing consultant and advanced media professor in residence at Syracuse University’s SI Newhouse School of Public Communications. wrote Friday in his newsletter and on his blog.

Despite the ad’s supposed intent “to show how all the tools we use to create and consume art and music combine to create an iPad,” Palmer said. “To me, it’s a horrifying statement of how Apple thinks about the creative community.”

He told Cook: “I’m asking you directly: Is this what you think of the creative community? Is your goal to crush us? To crush the life out of our instruments? To literally crush our souls?’

Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Nick Anderson posted on X a drawing of an emoji representing creatives being squashed.

In a column, Julian Sancton, editor-in-chief at The Hollywood Reporter, wrote: “You can imagine the tone: ‘The entire human creation squeezed into one impossibly slim tablet.’ But the end result feels more like: ‘All of human creation sacrificed for an inanimate device’.”

Sancton, the lead plaintiff in a class action lawsuit alleging copyright infringement by OpenAI and Microsoft, added: “Indeed, at a time of bipartisan skepticism about technology 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.”

Garr Reynolds, professor of management and communications design at Kansai Gaidai University in Osaka, Japan, and author of Presentation Zen, made the following comparison on X: “This new iPad ad is to Apple commercials what the ‘Star Wars Holiday Special’ is to from 1978 was to Star Wars. Throw this iPad commercial in the trash and never let us talk about it again. Or re-release it with the first 57 seconds removed: the last 3 seconds were great.

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