Apple doesn’t understand why you use technology

I wonderment if Apple CEO Tim Cook was amazed by nan visceral revulsion galore group felt after viewing nan newest commercialized for Apple’s iPad. In it, a plethora of imaginative devices are flattened by an business press. Watching a piano, which if maintained tin past for thing for illustration 50 years, squished to advertise a gadget, designed to beryllium obsolete successful little than 10, is infuriating. The backlash was immediate.

The connection galore of america received was this: Apple, a trillion-dollar behemoth, will crush everything beautiful and human, everything that’s a pleasance to look astatine and touch, and each that will beryllium near is simply a skinny solid and metallic slab. 

Astoundingly, this is meant to sell a product. “Buy nan point that’s destroying everything you love,” says Apple. This is rather a alteration from nan celebrated “1984” ad, wherever Apple styled itself arsenic smashing boring conformity. Sure, nan caller advertisement is tone-deaf — after all, Apple roseate to prominence by aligning itself pinch imaginative types. But it besides takes an embarrassingly constrictive position of technology. Imagine being specified a rube that you judge that nan only bully exertion is caller technology.

That position of exertion is fundamentally disrespectful. We are surrounded by worldly that’s meant to endure. Technology, successful a much broader sense, is innately hopeful. It’s a agleam aureate thread betwixt our past and our future.

Language is nan astir basal technology, nan 1 that lets america build everything else. Writing down our thoughts meant we could statesman to entree lifetimes of experience. The Pythagorean theorem was truthful important erstwhile it was first discovered that a cult formed astir it; I learned it successful sixth people because it was foundational for a batch of things we created later. These foundations — language, mathematics — made imaginable a concatenation of events that allowed Apple to exist.

There’s still a spot for nan exertion Apple crushes successful its ad. A TV surface is larger and much enjoyable to usage than an iPad if you don’t request to beryllium connected nan move; that’s why astir group still ain one. A grounds subordinate allows nan secondary joyousness of trading beingness objects, and get-togethers astatine grounds stores. The arcade video crippled exists successful places wherever you stitchery pinch different people. 

The iPad doesn’t switch those experiences. At its best, it complements them. I person ne'er met a master carpenter who uses only a multi-tool to get their occupation done. But if you’re trying to recreation light, that Swiss Army weapon is astir apt amended than an full toolkit.

This advertisement does item a peculiar Silicon Valley attitude: It scorns nan past arsenic outdated alternatively than respecting it arsenic clever. In immoderate sense, these companies person to: they’ve sewage products to sell. If Apple were to build thing arsenic durable arsenic a piano, it would waste a batch less computers. In fact, nan institution has a history of kneecapping its ain products successful bid to waste much of them: it deliberately slowed its older iPhones, for instance. It besides has a history of making repairing and maintaining its products difficult.

In this ad, exertion is disposable. I flinched erstwhile that soft sewage crushed. But apparently, nary 1 wrong nan institution did — and a batch of group had to motion disconnected connected this ad. The affectional valence of crushing is unmistakable; simply reversing nan ad, arsenic Reza Sixo Safai did, truthful that each nan imaginative devices outpouring from nan iPad instantly improves it. After all, nan iPad tin besides beryllium a imaginative tool, and isn’t that what nan commercialized was meant to suggest? 

Apple has a wont of suggesting its older devices are obsolete by releasing caller versions that alteration their shells and styling without altering what they do successful immoderate meaningful way. The constituent of this advertisement is not astir nan iPad’s imaginative uses — it’s that it’s skinny. That’s nan large trading point: the skinniest ever. Apple was truthful focused connected its breathtaking caller trading characteristic that it mislaid show of what’s really important: nan devices that make nan things we love.