robotmascot

@robotmascot

  • he/him

I make poor decisions, I like weird stuff, I have alright taste.

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robotmascot
@robotmascot
ireneista
@ireneista
atomicthumbs
@atomicthumbs

it's baffling how bad the new iPad ad is

everyone hates it: the beautiful tools of creativity crushed by a hydraulic press before it retracts, revealing a new, very thin iPad. the intent is clear: "the iPad has all this in it, and it's very thin!" but the execution is revulsive to everyone except whatever marketing execs came up with and approved the spot

i could have done better. it's astounding how easy it is to do better. turn the iPad into a window, nearly invisible from the side, and show artists pulling creative tools out of it piece by piece, assembling them, and using them to create art. come the fuck on

ironically, the fact that it's powered by the M4, whose main selling point is the more powerful inference accelerator for on-device generative AI (and other deep learning tasks), actually makes sense for the video: all culture will be crushed into a homogenous paste, to then be scraped together by the gormless and served to you as though it's worth something

the-doomed-posts-of-muteKi
@the-doomed-posts-of-muteKi

ironically, the fact that it's powered by the M4, whose main selling point is the more powerful inference accelerator for on-device generative AI (and other deep learning tasks), actually makes sense for the video: all culture will be crushed into a homogenous paste, to then be scraped together by the gormless and served to you as though it's worth something

See this is exactly why my reaction to this was "people hate this? I love this. this is the perfect metaphor for why I can't stand tablets"

lifning
@lifning

in the words of pfsc

it has never mattered how thin a computer is.

(edit: but here i am giving them spread. sharing this ad, just like quote-dunking on a nazi, may be causing more harm than good by putting their repugnant messaging in front of more people. do not buy apple products if you can help it.)

ireneista
@ireneista

shit, yeah, like... consider not watching this if you, like, care about beautiful things of any kind

it kept finding new ways to horrify us. the CAMERAS! gah. and that beautiful arcade cabinet. and the piano.

dark side of cyberneticism >< sometimes, like, stuff exists for a reason, and erasing all the distinctions between stuff isn't actually serving humanity's needs

robotmascot
@robotmascot

also just...

Even for people who don't have a particular attachment to artistic tools:

  • Cute cartoon character looking up right before being crushed
  • Human form appearing to struggle against imminent demise
  • A bunch of human-esque faces being destroyed, with one being the climactic moment

It feels like the target market was Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, jeez

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in reply to @atomicthumbs's post:

Sheri
@Sheri

okay one more just to say i actually do this this might be the worst ad apple has ever done? like Make iPad was supposed to be their meal ticket after several flops and to start off on the foot of "compress and destroy all art" for the ostensibly Artist Tablet is. bold.

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corhocysen
@corhocysen

i think maybe the fundamental problem here is if you want to show how there's a bunch of artistic tools in this ipad you can't do that by showing them all physically breaking. that just doesn't work visually i think

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pervocracy
@pervocracy

When OK Go did a video where they blew up guitars, they made a point of letting people know that they'd bought QA rejects from a guitar factory, because of course it would be wasteful to destroy new, functional instruments.

I hope Apple did something similar here. They might have, just for budget reasons? But they have a huge advertising budget and no damn sense so I don't know.

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in reply to @the-doomed-posts-of-muteKi's post:

nys
@nys

the new apple pencil is legitimately a big step up in digital drawing tools (though still lacks an eraser). the gyroscope and squeeze are like big improvements. but god does this ad just make me ignore all that.

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in reply to @ireneista's post:

ireneista
@ireneista

yeah, absolutely

and like... we can see the line of thinking that lead to it, computers are "supposed" to free us from the constraints of physical reality and all that

but like, again, some of those constraints are there for a reason. people want to form an EMOTIONAL attachment to some things, and physical reality helps to do that. creative tools are, like, the physical objects for which that attachment is maximal (unless Apple someday wants to crush your family members).

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