Apple’s new iPad Pro commercial drew heavy criticism online, with the company now issuing an apology and the promise to no longer air the ad on TV.
The short video, released Tuesday, shows a variety of analog creative items — including a piano, trumpet, chalkboard, buckets of paint, cameras and more — all being flattened and destroyed by an industrial press.
While the ad was seemingly designed to highlight the many ways the iPad can be used to pursue countless creative endeavors, many online considered the commercial to be a tragic reflection of how technology kills creativity and the human forces behind it.
“The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley,” wrote actor Hugh Grant, in a repost of the ad on X.
In a post of her own, Reed Morano, the director of Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” told Apple CEO Tim Cook to “read the room,” adding that the ad was “actually psychotic.”
Others called the commercial an “insult to artists,” as well as an example of Apple “turning into the thing they said they were out to destroy in the 1984 ad.”
That ad in question first promoted the original Macintosh computer and portrayed Apple as saving the world from a dystopian future — much like the one written about in George Orwell’s cautionary novel “1984,” in which individuals are persecuted for independent thinking.
“Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad,” Tor Myhren, Apple’s VP of marketing, said in a statement to Ad Age on Thursday. “We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.”
Apple also confirmed that the spot will no longer be shown on TV.