This is the most repulsive, counter-productive advertisement I have ever seen:
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. pic.twitter.com/6PeGXNoKgG
— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) May 7, 2024
But it is still less sinister and arrogant than this:
President @JoeBiden and I have forgiven nearly $160 billion of student loan debt for over 4 million people—including teachers, firefighters, and public servants.
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) May 8, 2024
I could see the Hydraulic Press Channel doing something like this. In fact, I have. But nothing comes out of that channel unharmed.
At least Sarah Conner crushed a terminator. Apple seems to only be able to crush the dreams and real life objects and experiences of normal humans. Meanwhile, Biden and Harris are the proverbial boot stamping on a human face forever.
Omigawd, that was horrid. That did not impress on me that the new phone will contain all of those destroyed things, just that they destroyed all of those things. Yuck.
I assume the intent here was to advertise this iPad as a form of creative destruction, but it just comes across as pure nihilism.
Recalling the craze for virtual pets or tamagotchis a decade or two ago I suppose we should be grateful that even Apple drew the line at crushing real puppies and kittens.
In many ways the world would be a far better place if 95% of Apple products were similarly crushed.
When it comes to buying votes with other people’s money the US government now has it down to an art. It is also interesting that you seem to need a degree to be a firefighter.
The apple ad is pretty disgusting but I’ll never buy any of their overpriced shit anyway. Their business model used to be about providing an excellent product at a keen price, now it’s more about exploiting the gullible.
Mr Biden has no legal power to “forgive” debts owned the taxpayers – the courts have already correctly (for a rare wonder) ruled against such debt “forgiveness” (a mark of a Tyrant since Ancient Greece).
Only in a Credit Money system (where “money” is created from NOTHING) could vast sums of money be thrown away in this casual fashion.
Also notice that such jobs as “fire fighters” firemen (a job that depends on courage, physical strength, and practical training) are expected to have a college degree now – only in a decaying society is everyone expected to have such a piece of paper, signifying years of “Progressive” indoctrination, to get a job.
And, lastly, notice that K. Harris says “and I” – so the puppet Mr Biden is going to be replaced soon.
As for “Apple” showing themselves destroying beautiful things – scientific instruments, books, musical instruments, even destroying human faces…
Well they are a “Woke” Corporation – they hate culture and they hate traditional society, and now the mask is off. They make no secret of the fact. I am reminded of H.G. Wells and the other Fabians boasting (in the early 1900s) that they intended to destroy beautiful buildings, paintings, sculptures, books, everything (see, for example, the “Coming of the Comet” story by H.G. Wells) as well as the family itself – and replace everything with a “scientific” future of concrete blocks of flats and hideous “modern art” – the Italian Futurists (who became the Fascists) were much the same as H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw (it was NOT “a joke” when Mr Shaw demanded that everyone justify their existence to a government board or be executed – he-meant-it), they also wanted to destroy traditional culture and society.
Think it was Auron MacIntyre on his podcast recently offered a suitable solution for the US student debt mountain – tax the university endowments. The whole tax exemption status of universities is ludicrous nowadays.
Electorally this would give GOP politicians something tangible to offer young graduates while also damaging an enemy castle (left-wing controlled higher ed).
I wonder if Apple will suffer a Gillette moment? They took a hit after insulting their target market. I notice that the characters in their ads are now either doting dads or hot young guys making themselves attractive. I have noticed that, at least among the guys doing their post workout grooming at the gym, That Gillette is still the market leader. I use Harry’s but pretty much everyone else uses Gillette.
Happily, Kamala Harris is too dim to grasp “that which is left unsaid”: “We have forgiven $160 billion in public debt, but it still has to be repaid – only, not by the students who rang it up; it’s on YOUR shoulders now. BOHICA!!!”
So Kamala and Sleepy Joe have earned 4 million votes – and soured their chances of earning votes among every other taxpayer out there.
“Joe, I’m scared – what’s that sound?” “Why, it looks like an adoring mob of peons is marching our way! But err, why are they waving torches and pitchforks? And why are they chanting, ‘Trump! Trump! Trump!’? Ungrateful wretches – and after all we’ve done for them too!”
If Sleepy Joe had used his own corrupt fortune to “forgive” these debts, I might have been impressed. Instead, this boast is really saying he and Kamala just stole $160 billion.
Isn’t “teachers, firefighters, and public servants” a tautology?
Why would giving taxpayers money to government employees be something you would want to boast about to voters? The whole purpose of such a statement is to reassure government employees that they are the masters and the public their servants.
What do you expect – they’re trying to appeal to the kind of loons who buy into the Apple business model.
Regarding firefighters and degrees – I know a lot of firefighters and I’m not aware of any that required a degree to get the job, except very-senior officers and specialists like arson investigators. Hell, many of them were high-school dropouts. Plenty do have degrees, of course, but none of them have degrees applicable to their work. There’s any-number of specialist certifications and qualifications, but almost-all are funded by fire departments anxious to improve the skills of their people – full-time, live-in firefighters are in chronically-short supply and most departments of any size are happy to train at no cost.
So this story of millions of firefighters relieved of student-loan debt is just so much codswallop, and typical of the Biden habit of associating policies (or personal histories) with images of respected and admired figures in an attempt to make them more appealling. I was appointed to the Naval Academy, I was a star football player in college, I graduated with 3 degrees in the top of my class, I was arrested for trying to visit Mandela, I was brought up in the black/Puerto-Rican/Jewish community, I’m a devout Catholic, I drove an 18-wheeler, I travelled however-many-million miles on Amtrak, my uncle was shot down and eaten by cannibals, my other uncle won the Purple Heart in the Battle of the Bulge, I was the poorest man in Congress, a drunk driver killed my wife, the list is endless. It’s like a nervous tic, the need to try and connect with popular and admirable people and try and garner sympathy, praise or admiration. There’s a word for it, now what is it . . . ? It’s like, you know, a syndrome . . . I.?
llater,
llamas
Honestly, I don’t understand the objection to the Apple ad. It seems pretty obvious to me that the point is the squeeze all those different things into an iPad. I don’t know I like the ad, and I certainly don’t like Apple or its products, but I don’t see why you all are so horrified by it. But I am sure I am missing something obvious.
Of course I find the Biden thing just horrific. My guess is that the firefighters would rather the government paid off their mortgage or their car loan than their non existent college debt. But I guess that is the point of that last sentence: to spin the truth and try to defect the obvious unfairness of this: to pretend that the democrats are the party of the working man, rather than what they are — the party of the idle rich.
As to teachers — maybe. Teachers are forced to take pointless and useless post graduate degrees simply because that is the way the union contracts work. The more degrees you have, irrespective of how useful they are, the more your salary is bumped. Which does make one wonder — if the purpose of the degree is to make more money, surely it is a cost benefit analysis? If you pay $100k to get a degree that gets you $5k more per year you have made a very poor financial choice. And perhaps if your judgement is so poor you shouldn’t be let loose on kids.
I used to do consulting work for a school district so I have read some of these union contracts — they are horrifying.
“The President, let alone the powerless-except-for-tiebreaking Vice President, does not have the power to do that.
Stop bragging about doing illegal things to buy votes.”
(Also, median student debt is like $35k, and poor kids get free rides. Why do they get away with pretending Student Loan Debt, a “crisis” they created with Free Money For Schools, is Destroying America?
It’s destroying … UMC graduates of programs that didn’t let them get a real job.
Oh, right – the median “journalist” these days seems to be in their late 20s and a fresh J school graduate.
They want their own personal bailout.)
@Sigivald
It’s destroying … UMC graduates of programs that didn’t let them get a real job.
Although I share your disgust at the whole program, this isn’t actually true, or at least it is more complicated than that. According to what I have read (and I’m too lazy too look up a cite) about 40% of student debt is held by people who did not complete their college education, and of the remainder a lot of it is for post graduate education, including people well able to pay their own bills like doctors and lawyers.
I think the real truth is that there is a small number of loud individuals who got crappy degrees and who make a lot of noise and don’t like the accountability that reality is bringing them, plus a lot of college drop outs who made a lot of poor choices.
If there is a debt crisis in the USA it is with regards to upside down mortgages, medical debt and credit card debt, not to mention the biggest debt crisis of them all — the unconscionable debt held by Uncle Sam himself. Bad enough to be so far in debt, but quite simply an outrage to continue digging the hole deeper by ten billion dollars a day. Perhaps Uncle Sam should bail himself out first?
“…I don’t understand the objection to the Apple ad.”
It is the wanton destruction that I don’t like, particularly the musical instruments.
Many musical instruments are thrown in the trash every day. They are as passe as typewriters or landline telephones.
I have to say the advert is rather clever.
iThings are used for consuming, not creating. It’s like saying “imagine what will be created with a television set”. It’s the people at the *other* *end* wot does the creating.
They tried for “miniaturization.”
What they achieved was “destruction.”
They didn’t glorify all of those notable and useful and amazing items they squished – they threw them out as outmoded and useless, and said “we can do all of that better.”
They can’t. As jgh said above, they don’t create, they transmit or copy.
Why are there so many people dropping out of university having run up debts to pay for the course? How on earth are the universities allowing in people who cannot complete the course? Why aren’t the universities on the hook for letting people in incapable of doing their courses?
A well looked after music instrument can last centuries and work just as well. Even the best well looked after iPad is a glorified paperweight in a decade.
Staghounds, can you explain what you mean by this: “…musical instruments are … as passe as typewriters or landline telephones.”?
The simple, literal interpretation seems ludicrous on its face!
Maybe people who actually can play an instrument are fewer than they used to be, but don’t throw out the instruments because of that!
I’m confused by your comment.
This is the most repulsive, counter-productive advertisement I have ever seen
I quite agree. Until I watched it I had for decades managed successfully to forget all about Sonny and Cher. Decades.
@jgh
iThings are used for consuming, not creating. It’s like saying “imagine what will be created with a television set”. It’s the people at the *other* *end* wot does the creating.
That’s not true at all. iPads and the software that runs on them (along with many other such platforms) are the tools that make creating these things possible. I’m not saying “they think” or “they create” but without them certain types of creativity just wouldn’t be possible. In times past humans would take dark ochre earth and make cave paintings on the wall, which required creativity. But it was the invention of the paint brush, and paint, and canvas, and laterly computer art software that has dramatically released the possibilities of creativity so long unavailable to humans.
I grew up in a time when computers and computer art was VERY limited and so I have watched the explosion of creativity that these tools made possible. I don’t care much for Apple as a company but I can’t deny that they have done amazingly transformative things. Watch an sci fi old movie and see what passed for special effects just thirty years ago — it’ll make you cringe.
@jgh
Why are there so many people dropping out of university having run up debts to pay for the course? How on earth are the universities allowing in people who cannot complete the course? Why aren’t the universities on the hook for letting people in incapable of doing their courses?
Sorry to pick on you twice in one day, but I don’t agree here either. Universities are businesses who sell educational courses and ultimately certification of capability through issuing degrees. It is the purchaser’s responsibility to ensure that the product they are buying is of net benefit to them. There are reasons why colleges do care about these things to do with public perception and, here in the USA they have a massive reporting and regulatory structure to ensure that those students can get government grants and loans. I do consulting work for some colleges and you cannot imagine how much bullshit bureaucracy is involved here. But that is just part of the ongoing nanny state nonsense.
The real problem is that the colleges operate hand in hand with the government causing costs to be insanely high. If college cost what it used to cost just forty years ago (adjusted for inflation) none of this would be a problem. These snotty protesters at Columbia are having their parents pay $90,000 a year — which is to say their education costs more than a nice house in many neighborhoods. That is insane. It is ultimately the parents’ choice, and if they are making bad choices that redound to their kids then they all need to suffer a bit of pain to correct for their poor choices.
Fraser Orr: Yes, tech is wonderful and is moving humanity forward, but, geeze, they crushed – they demolished – a nice guitar.
I think they could have made their point in a smarter way.
@Paul Marks
Money is created from nothing, but a corresponding debt is also created at the same time. I find the idea of fresh debt being created even more disquieting.
bobby b
I think they could have made their point in a smarter way.
Are you sure? Apparently we are all talking about it.
Oh and one other thing, I am not convinced it is real. I suspect it is a very high quality animation. It you watch it carefully enough it has a lot of things in the uncanny valley, though, if it is an animation, it is certainly a very good one. However, the little yellow ball whose eyes pop out? What is the chance of that rolling out so absolutely perfectly and level, and the eyes popping the way they do if it was a real thing rather than animated. And the paint cans exploding and squirting paint right at the camera lens — but the camera lens isn’t obscured. And bobby-b’s complaint about the guitar — I looked at that a few times and, although it is very good, it just doesn’t look quite like how a guitar would collapse under compression.
I call bullshit on this one.
If it is animation, do y’all still object?
Object? Nope, it’s their money. But it makes me feel less likely to patronize Apple. I dislike the philosophy of what that destruction represents. Animation doesn’t change that. I wasn’t reacting to the breaking of one specific guitar, I was reacting to their idea that what they were showing was progress. It isn’t.
I think they fell too much in love with their “disrupter” self-image. You don’t necessarily need to destroy in order to create.
Fraser Orr writes, “Honestly, I don’t understand the objection to the Apple ad. It seems pretty obvious to me that the point is the squeeze all those different things into an iPad.”
As I implied in the post, one of the reasons I think the Vice President’s message is a lot nastier than the advert is that she is boasting of a plan to make illegitimate use of power, whereas the advert is doing nothing worse than making an attempt at persuading people to buy a product which is unlikely to succeed. However there is a sense in which I will defend Kamala Harris’s tin-eared tweet but will not defend Tim Cook’s tin-eared advertisement: a politician can reasonably complain that their message was misunderstood. They can say, “I phrased it badly; I didn’t really mean it like it sounded” and fair-minded people ought to acknowledge that. But with an advertisement “like it sounded” is all there is. The whole job of that advertisement, of any advertisement, was emotional symbolism. It was not that I failed to understand the metaphor they wanted to convey – as you say, it was obvious – it was that the metaphor it actually evoked was of the mashing of human creativity and individuality and history, even of colour and texture, into a homogenous slab. Apparently we were meant to care exactly how thin the slab was.
Some people have been posting videos of the advert run backwards and it comes out great.
@Natatalie, the backward video was cool…
But I definitely see it differently than you and others — perhaps because I am a software person. As I said in my discussion with jgh above the things that are crushed are not creative things in themselves, rather they are tools to facilitate creativity. One of the transformative powers of computers is to reduce the amount of “stuff” you have by reimagining that stuff as bits in a computer. When you eliminate physical stuff and put it in a computer there are many, many advantages over physical things and so what I see in this ad the destruction not of human creativity but of the limits and hinderances to human creativity imposed by the physical limitations of the tools we have.
It is, for example, extraordinarily difficult to learn to play that piano effectively because we have to make our fingers do things they weren’t really designed for and encode those patterns into our brain. Only when we have accomplished that herculean task can we go on to be creative by making music. Yet with software we can learn the very basics of music theory then start creating right away. Instead of investing all that time into acquiring the physical skills necessary to even play doe, ray, me, we can eliminate that cost and instead be creative. And our creative acts are not transient. We can go back and edit and improve them.
I think that symbolism, which is how I view this advert, is actually a beautiful thing. Look at all that STUFF, you can carry it all in your pocket now.
FWIW, I don’t at all discount the physical pleasure of playing an instrument, just that that learning process is definitely a hindrance to creating music.
And why did they feel the need to show things with cute, childlike faces being destroyed?
The metaphor should have been that the little balls and all the other things were sleeping safely in the machine, like Pokémon in a Pokéball.
Our posts crossed. If they wanted to convey the idea that the machine can be a musical instrument and an artist’s model and a space invaders game all in one, they should have shown it morphing from one to the other. It is true that technology allows one to make art and music much more easily. The way you said it made me feel enthused. But the sight of a musical instrument being destroyed is never going to symbolise making music.
A more accurate and on point Apple ad would have said something like ” Apple: show the world you’re not a povvo kid.”
These days that seems to be what Apple is shooting for.
If college cost what it used to cost just forty years ago (adjusted for inflation) none of this would be a problem.
The other week I was looking at my old university’s campus accommodation. What I paid £20 a week for in 1987 today is now charged £195 a week. My flat – a whole flat, all to myself, no sharing! – is £90 a week*. If students’ income had gone up the same rate as the accommodation, they’d be on more than 20 grand – which is often more than I get from actually working!
(*Ok, plus council tax, gas, electricity, etc. around £150pw.)
Problem is, years ago, the schools all looked at those tales of “college grads make XX% more than non-grads”, and decided that those extra dollars rightly belonged to the schools instead of the graduates.
So they raised their prices very quickly to sort of pre-capture those predicted increased future earnings of their students. Everyone just quietly accepted that the huge increase in future income would justify those increases in school costs, but no one did the math to see that the costs completely ate the future income increase.
So the only just way to help debtor grads (if we decide we should help them at all) would be to make sure the schools had skin in the process.
Apple are a cult. Always have been. The Ridley Scott 1984 advert was a complete inversion of reality.
David Hockney uses an ipad to create art: https://www.hockney.com/works/digital/ipad
As for the ad, it worked a treat. 41 comments here and on the ‘front page’ of the Telegraph website (because Hugh Grant doesn’t like it)
Discovered Joys – not always.
There is no logical reason why governments (via their Central Banks – which are NOT “owned by the Rothschilds” and all the rest of the nonsense) should create money from nothing, dish it out to banks and other corporate entities, and borrow it back again. The could just create the “money” and spend it – NO DEBT.
J.M. Keynes supported working via “The City” (“Wall Street” in America) to get these powerful interests on the side of inflation (as they would personally benefit from the creation of the Credit Money) there is no economic reason why it should be done this way – it is done via the banks (and other such) for political (corrupt political) reasons. I am AGAINST fiat money – but if you are going to have fiat money then “print and spend” do NOT “print, lend out, borrow back at a higher rate of interest, and then spend” – that builds up a vast debt (some 35 Trillion Dollars for the American Federal Government alone) all so a few financial people can profit (and, in the end, even they lose).
The international economic and political system is now totally corrupted – it will fall, the only question is when.
jgh – yes higher education has become a scam.
Government backed loans (both in Britain and the United States – even more in the United States) – have allowed the universities to explode their costs.
The same is true for housing and everything else that government subsidizes – David Ricardo knew that more than 200 years ago, government subsidies lead to exploding costs. And now just about everything is subject to government subsidies (supposedly to benefit the poor – who are, in reality, hit the hardest by the consequences of these policies).
This is another reason why the present system in Western countries is going to fall – the only question is when.
The ad reminds me of the “no pressure” climate change ad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu3gd2FulwY
No doubt some people thought it was witty, but a lot of people failed to find humor in it. I didn’t see the humor in it myself until I saw a parody version that went a bit further. Some humor is too subtle for me.
Let us know when some guy uses an i pad to create something more memorable than the stuff that JS Bach created using an ink pot and a feather.
I get a kick out of the response that the ad was a success because everyone’s talking about it.
Everyone was talking about Bud Lights’s ads too.
P.S.: Apple has apologized for the ad.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/5/9/24153113/apple-ipad-ad-crushing-apology
Stonyground’s comment got me thinking about John Clare, the ‘ploughman poet of Helpston’. A farm labourer, the son of a farm labourer, seriously afflicted with what we would now call bipolar disorder, he still managed, after labouring in the fields from can’t see to can’t see, to write some of the most moving and lyrical pastoral poetry ever put on paper. On scraps of paper, retrieved from the trash of richer homes. Using a quill pen and ink he made himself, out of oak galls. His surviving manuscripts are as black as the day he wrote them, by candle-light, in the 1830s. I don’t really think that the use of an I-Pad would have added anything much to his works.
llater,
llamas
Endorsed.
Although there should be an option for universities to pay off their students’ debts, past & future, in exchange for tax-free endowments.
— wrt the Apple ad: all what i see is that the hydraulic press did not go all the way down.
What Apple represents with its products is the commoditization of low level creativity. No, these tools wouldn’t improve the abilities of the Masters. Rather, they elevate those who haven’t the gift or the devotion to raise themselves to Master level. Think of it as lowering the bottom rung on the ladder. It’s easy to create a little music, or a little graphic art, or (as I have recently done) design your own home. As with all the good things tech brings us, it improves the lives of the “everyman” in all of us. And if one is sufficiently excited by the little bits of music you can create in Garage Band, or the videos one can assemble with iMovie, one can proceed to bigger and better tools. Don’t forget, between you and the (modern) music you hear is a talented mixing engineer whose job can’t be reduced to an exquisite musical instrument… unless you count the computers behind the knobs on his panel as worthy of the admiration bestowed on the trumpet and piano in the Apple video.
The most disturbing thing, to me, about the Harris tweet is the inclusion of “public servants” in the debt forgiveness. The average person reading that, but not giving it much thought, could maybe get behind firefighter and teacher, thinking blue-collar. But “public servant = government employee usually, and some kind of bureaucratic drone likely – those people usually have jobs for life with pretty good pay and should conceivably be able to pay off their student loans. This is blatant in your face vote-buying, and making the rest of us pay for it.