Tim Cook, the faceless manager who replaced Steve Jobs at Apple, has just posted a video ad for the new iPad Pro. It’s quite something. Let’s first look at his tweet bigging it up:
Well, that sounds exciting. Everyone likes a new creative tool. But how to best show off Apple’s commitment to creativity and the work of artists? Well, steady yourself. Here’s the ad.
There is no way to look at this ad and not see it as a celebration of the destruction of art and culture. Oh sure, I get the idea that it is trying to boast about how thin the new iPad is – because clearly, previous models were so ludicrously cumbersome and bulky that this justifies being the main selling point – but look what it is saying. You don’t need any of this stuff – musical instruments, books, records, art, even paint – because your iPad can do it all. None of it will actually exist, but never mind. You can sit in your sterile white house on your sterile white sofa, watching whatever films and listening to whatever music your streaming service has decided to offer you, reading ebooks and playing online games, owning nothing and praying that your Smart House doesn’t have a glitch and lock you out (or, more likely, in – because why would you ever need to go anywhere?).
You have to wonder just how out of touch you need to be to create a commercial like this, one that evokes images of book burning and the destruction of ‘decadent’ art’ more than hyping the capabilities of an iPad. You have to wonder why anyone would sign off on it – especially a company like Apple that has long prided itself on being the creative’s choice. Macs were long seen as a tool for artistic creation, not a replacement for it. I’ve used Macs of one sort or another for 30 years. I’m writing this on a MacBook. This ad is making me question my choices. How culturally blind do you need to be to think that this is a good look that normal people will respond positively to?
Look – not everything analogue is better. Not everything old needs to be revered. The digital revolution has opened up countless opportunities for people to create, to sell and to discover. But it feels as though we are entering a new dark age where AI threatens to replace human creativity and learning – machines creating our art, writing our books, making our music and then storing it on Cloud servers that are every bit as secure as the business owning them. A world where we celebrate the destruction of the old and the wholesale ephemeralisation of art and culture. You don’t have to be a Luddite to see the dangers in that. Perhaps this is a future that we can’t entirely avoid, but equally, it is not one that we should be running head-first towards.
The sight of giant machines destroying all forms of art and creativity is not an exciting image of a brave new world being promised by your new, thinner-than-ever iPad. It’s more like a dystopian science fiction nightmare. Apple once produced ads that promised to break us free from the conformist control of Big Brother. Now it is creating ads that feel like a mash-up of Fahrenheit 451 and The Terminator. This doesn’t feel like progress.
Pleasingly, the reaction to the ad has been widespread revulsion. Unlike the closeted minds of Silicone Valley, people in the real world are already waking up to the downside of a world where you own nothing and everything is controlled by giant corporations who can delete, edit or restrict work while charging you as much as they believe you will pay for their services. I’m sure that the reaction has been a surprise to Cook, who I suspect is not a creatively imaginative person (who knows, though?) – and I doubt that it will stop sad people from lining up to be the first in the Apple store to buy a replacement for the device that they were perfectly happy with a week ago. Apple is too big for a blip like this to matter, at least in the short term. But this ad feels like a company shouting the part that should be whispered, and such hubris has been the beginning of the end for companies before.
DAVID FLINT
Like what we do? Support us and help us do more!
One Comment on “Apple: We Will Crush Art And Creativity”