The advertisement statement is destroying all these things and replacing them by an iPad. I.E. thats the sales pitch -- you don't need any of these things anymore just this iPad.

Hollywood does destroy all sorts of things but that's not their sales pitch to you. It happens in the background. Also it isn't replacing those soulful cars with a new car -- it's using them for a shot.

Exactly. Had this put this exact video into some dystopian sci fi, it might be a suitable way to portray some villain or cynical mega-corporation as nihilistic.

But when a company uses this in an ad, THEY are the ones that come off as nihilists, and not in a good way.

If they wanted to express that the ipad CONTAINED all of those older things within it, they could have created this as something like Dr Strange would have done. Like make those items fly into a portal shaped like a giant ipad, and then shrink the ipad with all those items still inside.

Or at the very least, they could have presented the items to be destroyed like they were worn out and broken (and no longer in use), and then presented their destruction as giving them new life through recycling as an Ipad.

This ad will definitely pop into my head the next time I consider buying an Apple device, and not in a good way.

I think the comparison is wrong here. For hollywood or film making, it is about the story telling. One has to create and destroy scene to produce story.

From what I had read from some of the upset people was that what’s wrong with the ad was in the realm of waste = bad. But I’m when I bring up the Hollywood example for waste, it goes out the window. If this ad was part of a longer movie, would it be ok to crush them all? If it was say a scene in a dictatorship story where people are not allowed to make new music or something, would someone talk about the waste of a perfectly good piano for the scene?

There's a step function difference between a large megacorp making their message about crushing artistic merit/individuality and selling their device as a replacement to all compared to hollywood using a couple cars as a stunt in the background. Apples to oranges.

If you can't see the difference here I think this says more about you being able to put together reasonable comparables for arguments then anything else.

For example using "Australian girl on Instagram that crushes things and dances to their shape" as a comparable is so completely different as to be irrelevant except that there is similarity in something being crushed. It's like comparing a military jet and a mosquito because they can both fly.

Why does saying “this IPad combines all these things” crush artistic merit or individuality? You can still go buy a piano and do whatever you want and be your own individual independently of Apple crushing ONE piano/trumpet/5 emoji balls.

Like I said - if you can't see why they dropped the ball on the advertisement then that falls on your own ability to interpret.

To your question - they literally used crush and destroy as their message.

Unforced error on Apples part plain and simple.

Destroying classic cars for a movie creates something. I think a few car people would be pretty upset if some really bad, made for TV movie destroyed a lot of classic cars. This is just that, but upsetting musicians, photographers, artists, and basically anyone who cares about the environment.

This ad destroys a lot of things people are really really fond about: musical instruments, painting supplies, photography equipment, and record player. And then says that all of those things will be replaced by this "gadget" that won't have the years of life of the piano, guitar, camera, record player, etc.

So it destroys things people care about AND tells you the things you care about don't matter anymore.

The classic cars destroyed in movies are, quite often, not worth restoring, The Ferrari in Ferris Bueller's Day Off was a kit car, vehicles are often insurance write offs...there was a time when you could see cars in-frame were suddently 10 years older and tell that there was some destruction going to happen. I'm sure you can find some Italian Supercar destroyed for real in some Fast and the Furious type movie, but it's often not what it seems.

Is there also outcry when a Musician destroys a guitar on-stage?

My feeling at the ad wasn't particularly emotional, more curiosity at how much of it was real and how much wasnt. Speakers and art supplies aren't particularly expensive, and the Arcade machine wasn't recognizeably a machine worth keeping. There are plenty of used up pianos out there. The emoji was kinda funny...I don't know what that says about me.

Movies generate something that’s visually interesting. If this wasn’t an ad, wouldn’t you say it was visually interesting to see what happens when you crush something like that? Things get destroyed all the time for visuals, experiments, someone’s ”fun”, etc.

I think the difference is that people are very removed from what waste actually is, and when they see what it actually happens all day every day to all those items, shock. We all generate this every day. In the big picture, someone’s old trumpet in an attic is going to end up in a landfill once they move/die/need space. Once it got produced, its final form is landfill.

Even if I don’t believe in the product, and I don’t think of the company very fondly, I lean towards considering the ad anti waste. “You no longer need to buy and store and move and hoard all these things, you only need an iPad”. It’s not saying “go crush all this items to buy an iPad”, it’s saying “don’t generate all this other waste, you can do it all here”

Volume wise at least, there is more waste in the “loved” items, and no one is recycling emoji squishy balls.

Quentin Tarantino once upset a lot of people when a classic guitar got smashed on one of his sets: https://www.guitarworld.com/features/the-hateful-eight-marti...

There’s a fire, and a piano is burned- that's okay as telling the story demands it in a movie. (I also believe that some among them would burn a fake piano rather than a real one. I may be wrong here.)

But stating that all those beautiful things "deserve" to be replaced by a thin silicon 3k USD machine by literally destroying them in an industrial crusher?

That's different.

The same Apple destroyed the Big Brother some decades ago in a commercial. The sense of irony!

(Also, a car is a car. The world doesn't share Americans' obsession and weird relationships with cars. A photographer's camera, a musician's guitar are more important.)

The car is an example of something that I think of as art in the same way you think of a camera. I’m sure they have destroyed many pianos for movies, shows, theatre, etc.

The world doesn’t share your own obsession and weird relationships with a camera and a guitar.

Most of the classic cars destroyed in movies are replicas built specifically for the occasion.

And why are we assuming the stuff in the ad is all collector worthy and not some broken piano that was going to the landfill?