Apple shouldn’t have apologized for its iPad Pro ‘Crush’ ad
Even the biggest companies have been caught up in social-media backlashes, from Adobe’s “tone-deaf” software smile correction to Google’s “embarrassing and wrong” AI tool. But I didn’t think much of a potential controversy when I watched Apple’s ad for the new iPad Pro at its Let Loose event this week. Boy, was I wrong about that.
The “Crush!” advert tries to get across the perennial Apple concept that the iPad Pro is such a capable and versatile creative tool that you can do almost anything with it. It does this in an amusingly literal way: By showing the physical embodiments of numerous creative activities–musical instruments, books, cameras, art supplies, sculptures, games machines, and characters–being physically crushed down by a hydraulic press until only the iPad is left. (This has the happy side-effect of also referencing the M4 Pro being preposterously flat.) It’s a cute bit of work:
Sadly a number of members of the creative community did not find “Crush!” cute, and are in fact up in arms about it, having as is traditional “taken to Twitter” to vent their feelings. AppleInsider reported on the first wave of complaints, which included claims it is “extremely distasteful” and “lacks any respect for creative equipment and mocks the creators.” One especially delicate viewer described the ad as “heartbreaking, uncomfortable, and egotistic.”
