Maybe it’s me. No, it’s got to be me. When I wrote the story on Tuesday night showing the official videos that Apple had created and released for the “Let Loose” iPad event, this is what I said about the now heavily-criticized ad called “Crush!”: “The iPad Pro is extremely thin and some of this is due to the new OLED display being used on both top-of-the-line tablets. We can tell you that Apple did not use the process seen in the following hilarious video.”
Because the new iPad Pro tablets use OLED displays instead of LCD screens, no backlight is needed allowing Apple to produce the thinnest product it has ever made. The 11-inch iPad Pro (2024) is 5.3mm thin and the 13-inch model is an even thinner 5.1mm. The “Crush!” video shows a hydraulic press crushing everything on a platform including musical instruments, old-school arcade-style video games, record players, an Angry Bird ceramic piggy bank, and more. It seems that the wanton destructiveness of the ad is what has been setting everyone off and again, while I personally have no problem with it, Apple today felt compelled to apologize.
Tor Myhren, Apple’s VP of marketing communications, told Ad Age magazine today, “Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world. Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.”
Did Apple really have something to apologize for? Could it be that we become so sensitive and have lost our sense of humor? Apple was planning on using the “Crush!” video for an advertising campaign and the negative responses have put the kibosh on that idea. Apple even went so far as to state that the clip was not used on any paid media and still appears on Apple’s YouTube channel and on Tim Cook‘s “X” account.
As far as I’m concerned, the criticism over the ad was too much. It’s not like Apple’s ad showed it shooting a puppy.