Apples Also Rot
The state of technology, 2024
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I. The infamous ad is a sign of the times
I’ve never owned an Apple product. Not out of contempt, but by choice. The design is exquisite, the brand powerful, and there’s no denying the iPhone was a paradigm changer for fans and contrarians alike.
That’s perhaps why the new iPad Pro ad is doubly terrible — first because it was a shockingly honest depiction of its priorities as a desoulation machine and second because although Apple isn’t particularly fond of peasants like us — not that they’ve ever pretended otherwise — at least we kinda agreed they had good taste. I don’t think anyone believes that anymore.
The symbolism is so grotesque and viscerally wrong that it’d be hilarious as well as illuminating if no one at Apple expected the backlash it’s received. Are they so unattuned to the general sentiment toward big tech that they thought, “People like to watch clips of industrial presses crushing things, right? Let’s do that”? (I’m sure that exchange happened recently in some Cupertino meeting room, or maybe they took inspiration from somewhere else.) It took a Twitter commenter a day to come up with the simplest, cheapest-ever commercial alternative — reversing…
