Apple is crushed by response to a new ad. Has its creativity gotten as flat as an iPad?

Apple, which apologizes about as often as the Trump Organization, was so rattled by response to an advertisement for its new iPad that it hastily put out a statement of regret for the ad’s imagery that appeared to crush the best instruments of human creativity and replace them all  with a gadget.

“Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad,” said Apple marketing Vice President Tor Myhren. “We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.”

The ad was designed to be an epic throwback to the company’s seminal “1984” Super Bowl spot that purported to shatter dull uniformity with an amazing new machine that promised to unleash creative talent.

But instead of unleashing creativity, the iPad advertisement used what appeared to be a giant cider press to destroy creative tools from pianos to paint. When the press is lifted, there, in place of this mess, was the new iPad which, get ready, is “the thinnest iPad ever.” Oh goodie.

The ad “turned my stomach. Then, it made me incredibly angry. Then, I was just sad,” Shelly Palmer, a media  professor at Syracuse University wrote on his blog. “To me, it is a horrifying declaration of how Apple thinks about the creative community."

Let’s not go nuts; this is an ad, not a Magna Carta. More revealing about the company is that this new iPad’s claim to fame is that it is slightly thinner than the old iPad.

Oh, and it is powered by a new chip, always a new chip.

But an iPad that is thinner begs the same question as an iPhone made out of titanium. Does it really make you want to rush out and buy one?

A faster chip benefits no one except those who traffic on complex graphics like, say, the designers of Apple’s new advertisement themselves. For everyone else, reviewers were less enthusiastic about the new iPad than the corresponding price reductions for the old iPads they replaced.

Apple’s new releases over the recent past have felt about as flat as its iPads. It’s been years since there’s been a feature or upgrade that left you thinking “I have to have that.”

But at least phones are doing enough to keep the revenue machine churning, unlike Apple’s virtual reality goggles, which critics describe as super cool the first time you try them, but leave the user with a residual clunky and creepy feeling that is scarcely worth $3,000 to experience.

And speaking of flat, flat-footed is how Apple has seemed in response to the onset of artificial technology. The company’s MO has always been to take emerging ideas and package them so simply and elegantly that consumers worldwide flocked to their doors.

But today, voice assistant Siri feels like a last generation parlor trick, the flying toaster or dancing Jesus of smart speakers. Apple recently dropped its expensive and top secret quest for a self-driving automobile so it could redirect talent (human talent, mind you) to AI. Scrambling to catch up is not Apple’s customary position.

Investing guru and Apple fan Warren Buffett has noticed, quietly scaling back his company’s prodigious position in Apple. Buffett has publicly said that’s for tax reasons and that he still loves the company — but it’s worth noting he still owns a sizable chunk of it, so it is not in his interest to say anything that would dent the share price.

Apple’s infrastructure is too entrenched to worry about its share price. It can slap a ChatGPT app on its existing phones and make do.

But symbolically, Apple’s creativity crushing ad seems almost Freudian: Its own creativity has been crushed by its super-secret corporate structure and conformity of thought that is eerily similar to the mindset the “1984” ad purported to destroy. Tech publications have noted an exodus from Apple of creative minds that feel stifled.

Maybe Apple has spoiled us. We can’t expect the next big thing every six months. Nor should we expect companies that produce gizmos to be a substitute for the human creativity we all have within us.

Those deep in the AI weeds — not the glam CEOs that hog the spotlight — like to remind us that artificial intelligence isn’t artificial at all. AI simply, with amazing speed, gathers and regurgitates what it has been taught by humans.

What’s generating excitement as this is being written is Taylor Swift, the aurora borealis and the WNBA — not the thinness of the new iPad. Instead of hiding behind goggles, what interests us most is getting out and exploring the world and capturing the spirit we find within us and in others.

Apple will have a hard time crushing that.

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Tim Rowland is a Herald-Mail columnist.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: Why did Apple's iPad ad get such a crushing response?