Apple to Artists: We Will Crush You Out

From the company that brought you, “You’re holding the phone wrong,” and “You have no signal strength because we’re lying to you,” and “You’re not imagining it--we’re

intentionally slowing your phone down,” comes an all new adventure, straight out of Apple HQ and directed by Apple’s Advertising Department: Crush!

_____________

Just when you thought Apple couldn’t outdo itself, they have managed to do it again—and this time with its Crush! Ad.

Near the beginning of the ad, we see a hydraulic press crushing a trumpet underneath it, which is quickly followed by a piano and various other musical instruments and creative devices. As the ad continues, it eventually culminates in the crushing of a smiley face ball. After everything is crushed in the hydraulic press, the end result is paint splatter. As the hydraulic press is raised, everything magically disappears and all that is left in the wave of destruction is the iPad Pro.

Above: Apple's Crush Ad

So far, this ad has been nearly universally panned, and unsurprisingly, I am included as part of this group. Despite featuring cheerful background music, the ad’s overall themes of crushing out art, first represented by the literal crushing out of various musical instruments and devices, and later crushing out artists, which is represented by the crushing of the smiley face ball, is Orwellian. The imagery invokes eerie parallels to the mass book burning and other acts of artistic destruction perpetuated by the Nazis during WWII.

Orwell himself fought fascists in the Spanish Civil War, of which he’d later write about in Homage to Catalonia. More famously, he’d pen 1984, a cautionary tale against authoritarianism and which can also be interpreted as a warning against fascism.

It’s unfortunate and ironic that Apple, the same company that would later pay tribute to George Orwell with its famous 1984 ad, is now producing what can only be described as a pro-authoritarian/pro-fascist ad. 2024 has indeed become 1984 for Apple.

Apple’s slide into authoritarianism hasn’t happened overnight though. Last year, Apple decided to cancel the Apple TV+ show The Problem With Jon Stewart due to concerns over AI & China. Apple could have expanded the dialogue on both issues, yet instead decided to shut down free speech. The main reason was China’s XI Jinping though, as Apple didn’t want to risk offending XI Jinping, and likewise losing iPhone sales in China.

Let’s not forget who XI Jinping is though—a man responsible for China’s infamous social scoring system, mass surveillance of its own citizens, widespread censorship of its internet, political persecution of opponents, ongoing mass re-education centers of its minority Muslim population, & the violent and brutal crackdown of pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. Apple’s primary responsibility is to its shareholders though—let’s not let human rights issues get in the way.

______________

Furthermore, Apple’s “crushing out artists” message of this ad is also unbelievably tone-deaf, considering we are at a time when generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Sora, Sona, & Dall-E are now displacing the livelihoods of writers, photographers, musicians, videographers, and other creative professionals. This ad shows a profound lack of empathy on Apple’s part, and also an extreme lack of respect, considering that without many of these creative professionals, there would be no Apple. After all, Apple was built on the Macintosh with applications such as Quark, InDesign, Photoshop, Final Cut Pro, Pro Tools, and many others, with these creative professionals behind the keyboard.

This ad is so extreme that we must wonder, who QA’ed this ad, ChatGPT? Apple’s response that they’re "sorry for missing the mark” doesn’t even begin to describe how outrageous this ad is, and speaks to how out of touch with its customers Apple is.

It’s due to responses like this from companies like Apple that the Web 2.0 paradigm is crumbling, and that we need to accelerate our move away from companies like Apple towards the Web 3.0 paradigm. Additionally, companies like Apple have no part in that future as long as they continue to “miss the mark” to such an extent.

Another point the ad makes is that not only does art not matter, but that artists don’t matter—and that more literally, the physical world doesn’t matter. This last point is particularly problematic and absurd, because without the physical world, products like the iPad Pro wouldn’t exist, as the iPad Pro is a physical device, so Apple is contradicting its own ad here.

Here’s the other issue Apple, so all of these other things—pianos, guitars, trumpets, metronomes, etc.--it’s not that we just need these things to create, we need something else too—we need a person to bring them to life. This person is called an artist.

The artist is there to imbue that thing with the life force required to make it soar into a world beyond what anyone could imagine it could ever be. Without the artist, that thing is just another thing sitting on a shelf gathering dust.

One day, that thing may find its way onto a hydraulic press. It is there that it will be crushed out. This is real life though Apple—and in real life when you crush something and then raise that hydraulic press, you see what remains. You see the frayed chords of that piano, and the shattered keys, and the cracked splinters from the crushed wood, and the bruised and pounded metal of those pedals that are left behind.

Whatever you’re going to do though Apple, it doesn’t matter, because we’re going to continue to create our worlds with our hands in our way, and as long as our hands remain active on our instruments, they will not gather dust, and they will not find their way onto your hydraulic press.