Apple Is Crushing It (Literally)

The company is no longer the creative rebel; it’s the soulless corpo juggernaut it once rallied against.

Apple’s new advert

In The Dark Knight film, Harvey Dent said, "You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain." 

For Apple, that transformation has taken 40 years. 

In Apple's famous advert, 1984, the company rallied against conformity and corporate sameness with color, boldness, and the concept of "daring to be different." It marked the beginning of an era where Apple became a genuine powerhouse of innovation and creativity. 

When I was a Product Design student in the early 2010s, Apple was a beacon of inspiration across the design medium. We always tried to mimic the style, the branding, and the identity, often subconsciously, because it was first in class. The company was a category creator: the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. These products were groundbreaking and have changed the tech landscape forever. The way they were marketed was second to none. There has rarely been a brand identity that is so effective. 

So, what the hell happened? Apple is a shadow of itself and has been stagnating for years. It's lacking direction and chasing trends. The design juice is empty. Aside from the AirPods, it hasn't defined or created a new category in god knows how long. It's just incremental improvements, size or weight changes, barely enough to fill a 90-minute keynote event — even those are cringeworthy to watch now — and just enough convince the devoted fans to part with their cash. 

In a way, it was inevitable. Somewhere along the journey to becoming a trillion-dollar company — one could argue it started even before the passing of Steve Jobs — the focus shifted from design to dollars. The passing of the torch from Jobs to Tim Cook doubled down on this; it became less about breaking the mold and more about cold, hard numbers. Suck every dollar out of the supply chain. Tighten every margin possible. As this new philosophy took hold, Apple lost its identity and, with it, its very soul. The category-defining design it was once heralded for disappeared and was replaced with the pumping out of near-identical products in a mad pursuit to increase its stock price. Even when they tried something new, it was nowhere near the mark. The Vision Pro headset is a perfect example. Apple didn't want to make it, and consumers didn't want to buy it. The company was only pandering to FOMO and passing trends — and the result was a disaster. Or consider the electric car project; over ten years and millions of dollars set on fire, only to be sent to the cutting room floor because Apple finally released it was a waste of time. 

I've often wondered if Apple is aware of this perception and its fall from grace (with the public, not the stock markets — but that's part of the problem). 

Now we have our answer. They ain't just aware of it; it seems they're leaning into it. 

In its latest advert for the new iPad — let's call it "2024" to keep in with the comparison with its famous "1984" commercial — the company has swung a full 180 degrees. It's clearer than ever. Apple is no longer the creative rebel; it's now the faceless, soulless corpo juggernaut they once rallied against. 

The video shows a large-scale hydraulic press crushing a pile of objects, instruments and ornaments. There's everything from a piano and trumpet to paint cans and cameras to decorations. What they have in common is they allow humans to express creativity, and in this ad, we watch them get crushed into dust. And what remains when these items have been disintegrated? The iPad. 

What the fuck is this?

I can't remember seeing an Apple advert miss so badly. Yes, it has driven buzz, but at what cost to the company? The backlash has been swift and without mercy. The comments under Tim Cook's post have unanimously pushed back against the message, which is basically, "destroy beautiful objects and all things creative, you don't need them when you can just buy the newest shiny iPad. Hey, at least we made it thinner, even though no one asked for it." I'm dumbstruck by how tone-deaf the advert is. Consider where we're at right now. We're entering an era where AI is stepping into the creative world, trying its best to eat away at the arts, the crafts and the creatives. We're in a weird, scary time where human-led work is being automated and slowly turned into prompts and outputs. 

What was the advert trying to convey? 

It certainly doesn't say that Apple understands the current climate. To me, it just proves our tech overlords want us to forget anything of creative value and strap to a single device and ecosystem— one which they have 100% control over — all day, every day. They want everything produced on a device, viewed in a headset, and engaged with on a mobile device. A creative loop devoid of most of the tools creators love using to create, replaced by a metal rectangle so thin a gust of wind would snap it in half. 

I've loved a lot of technology that has come in the last 20 years. There was a great period when super creative people made super cool stuff, and most products moved us forward in some way. They seemed passionate. They seemed to care. Little did we know that this tech age would be the peak. It resulted in devices and products so established that moving past them is proving an impossible challenge. Worse, with the success of these products, the money flowed in, the top tech companies became too rich and too powerful, and the super cool, creative folks were pushed aside for super dull suits who cared only about the share price. Ever since that point, the net benefits for the consumer have whittled away, and the direction these companies have taken has become stale, safe and desperate not to spook the markets. 

Apple is a company out of touch. Read the damn room — people are getting sick of AI overlords, worried about the future of creativity, fed up with the "buy a new one because we added an extra megapixel to the camera" rhetoric, and are quickly losing trust in big tech. 

We want more human-led work with human-made things. We don't want to sacrifice any of that for the sake of another iPad. 

Forty years ago, Apple released the 1984 commercial as a bold statement against a dystopian future. 

Now, Apple is that dystopian future.

A side note: It dawned on me that this marketing mess had a simple fix — run the advert in reverse! It transforms into a celebration of the beautiful objects and creative endeavors around us, crushing the bland, paint-by-numbers, devoid of innovation devices that are slowly eroding human expression. 

Much better.

Update: Before I even had the chance to publish this, Apple has apologized for the advert and has scrapped plans to run it on TV. Apple’s VP of marketing communications Tor Myhren says “we missed the mark.” Lol.