Apple Has changed

Apple Has Changed

Apple has just released its next-generation product, the iPad Pro 2024, and as a result, its commercial is taking the internet by storm. In the 1-minute ad video, a huge, heavy hydraulic press crushes people’s favorite things, including books, musical instruments, paints, dolls, and more, into pieces with devastating force, and then launches Apple’s thinnest product ever, the iPad Pro 2024, in the process.

Visually, the ad is extremely impactful. If you haven’t seen it yet, now is the time to enjoy it:

While marveling at it, maybe you have some uncomfortable feeling, yet you can’t tell. This feeling is right, the domestic netizens made a “reverse release” video, which can let you clearly realize where their discomfort actually comes from, you can also compare and enjoy:

The reverse version is to play the official version backward, exactly the same way as the early martial arts movies used to film lightweights. However, the purpose of the reverse-played version is exactly the opposite of the original version. In this version, the iPad Pro leaves the frame and the hydraulic press then rises. All those various loved objects of life that have been destroyed by digital technology are restored from the fragments, rise from the dust, and become glittering again.

Suppose the original version of the video makes people feel the power of technology to control everything, and they can’t help but marvel at it. In that case, the reverse version of the video easily tugs at people’s heartstrings in a way that inspires them to cherish and love those “primitive” objects and those “primitive” lives. The “primitive” objects, those “primitive” lives of the precious love and cherish the feelings. The reversed version of the video, which has been widely spread on overseas social media, has stirred up a considerable amount of opposition to Apple, as it has a completely different effect on the brain than on the heart.

Netizens couldn’t help but compare this iPad Pro 2024 ad with Apple’s Think Different ad released in 1997. The Think Different is probably the most successful advertisement in the history of mankind and in the history of Apple. The promotion of Apple’s products was secondary to the fact that it inspired everyone who saw it, encouraging everyone to be themselves and to take a different path.

Now everything is reversed and the new ad looks like it’s going to destroy everyone’s life, compressing all of their colorful lives into a small 13-inch square sheet. It emphasizes the virtues of Apple’s products in a very powerful way, but it doesn’t care about the core of the product, the people themselves, and it’s the exact opposite of the 1997 ads. Even Apple’s previous “corny” advertisements were not as forceful, there would be more or less a set of shots showing how the user happily uses the product, proving that it helps people’s lives and work, and all the advertisements would not forget to shoot a set of shots of using the product with family and friends, suggesting that the product can help build a bond between people. connections between people.

Good advertising is company-level PR. PR means public relations, which means interpreting the relationship between the public and the company, and between the public and the product. The message of _Think Different_ is clear: Apple is an unconventional company that respects the choices of every individual and believes that history is made by those who don’t follow the beaten path. To that end, it has designed products that, if you’re one of those people, are tailor-made for you to realize that — it’s all about relationships, about being on the same side of the fence, based on shared ideas, based on shared values, and then making things happen for each other.

In the times we live in today, the biggest metaphor, and the hidden worry buried in most people’s minds is not inflation, not war not extreme weather, but the fact that with the rise of technology, human beings may have to face the fate of losing their jobs and being replaced by machines. Perhaps what the iPad Pro 2024 shows is the truth: people are gradually losing their physical books, their brushes and paints, their physical musical instruments, and their offline games, and everything is being digitized. Whether you live in a 12-square-meter apartment or a 500-square-meter flat, your life will be compressed into a screen, controlled by algorithms and machines. But to show this process in such a smug and joyful way, I really don’t quite understand the thinking behind it.

Yes, shooting it that way makes the product feel powerful. But it doesn’t answer the core question: what does your power have to do with me? No relationship, that’s disaster-level PR, the equivalent of a person jumping out to brag about themselves at the wine table. How much money you have, how much power you have, how many titles you hold, how many liters of spirits your stomach pouch can hold, and how many holes your cock can drill in a 2-inch steel plate in a second have nothing to do with me.

Instead, the reverse version of the ad succeeded in impressing me that it was conveying a value: those small and petty things in life are worth pursuing and cherishing. It’s also introducing an outlook on life: a temporary withdrawal from powerful and efficient machines, a return to the line, a return to life. Like the slowly rotating jukebox at the end of the video, it speaks of the tiny quiet happiness of mundane life. It even hints at the possibility that machines can help us by making us better at reading paperbacks, painting canvases, playing musical instruments, and spending time with family and friends.

The same materials, why aren’t these things in Apple’s current advertisement version? The Apple company from 1997 has disappeared, and the current one, I admit, I don’t quite understand, it feels quite unfamiliar.