Apple has apologized for its recent “Crush!” commercial, which was created to promote its new M4-powered iPad Pro. (The ad was also played during Apple’s Tuesday media event, where the new iPad Pro was unveiled.) Apple says the commercial “missed the mark,” and said it was sorry. The video is available on Apple’s YouTube for now, and Tim Cook posted the video on his X account.
The original commercial, which can be viewed above (until Apple removes it completely), shows a multiple creative tools and other objects, including a piano, cameras, paint, and more being flattened by an industrial-sized hydraulic press. Once the press lifts, the only thing left is the new iPad Pro.
While Apple had intended to show how much creative power the iPad Pro has, and also promote its 5.1mm thickness (thinness?), the commercial triggered creatives, and criticism began to grow with claims that the commercial was about destroying human creativity as the industry is facing a challenge from AI.
In a statement to Ad Age, Tor Myhren, Apple’s VP of marketing communications, apologized:
“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.”
The new iPad Pro lineup is powered by Apple’s new M4 processor, built on TSMC’s second-generation 3-nanometer technology. The M4 boasts an entirely new display engine, offering the “stunning precision, color, and brightness of the Ultra Retina XDR display.” The new CPU offers up to four performance cores and now six efficiency cores, with next-generation machine learning (ML) accelerators, to deliver up to 1.5x faster CPU performance over M2 in the previous-generation iPad Pro. The M4’s 10-core GPU includes features like Dynamic Caching, and hardware-accelerated mesh shading and ray tracing, a first for an iPad. A new advanced Media Engine includes support for AV1 decode.
The 11-inch iPad Pro starts at $999 and the 13-inch iPad Pro starts at $1,299. It is currently available for pre-order and launches on Wednesday, May 15.
(Via NeoWin)