Apple's 'dystopian' iPad commercial provokes ire from fans

Apple is trying to market its new iPad Pro as the thinnest device the Cupertino tech giant has ever sold. Instead, the tablet is acquiring a much more sinister reputation.

On Tuesday, CEO Tim Cook posted a video ad for the newly revealed device. First, we see an industrial press squash an entire platform of creative tools, art and electronics. It’s an oppressive force: The machine mangles a trumpet, buckles a piano, and turns camera lenses into sprays of glass and debris. Paint splatters. Post-it notes explode into confetti.

Then, the point. As the dust clears and the machine lifts, we see the wreckage has disappeared. An iPad Pro sits in its place. Cook, in his caption for the ad, wrote, “Just imagine all the things it’ll be used to create.” The idea, seemingly, was to show the range of creative tools that could be rendered obsolete by Apple’s slender new product.

Scores of indignant comments quickly arrived under Cook’s post. British novelist Hari Kunzru wrote, “Crushing the symbols of human creativity to produce a homogenized branded slab is pretty much where the tech industry is at in 2024.” Video game and film critic Chris Schilling called the video “genuinely dystopian.”

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut wrote, “Trying not to take this too seriously but does it weird you out that the technology elite have this level of hubris and this much disdain for the the history of human creation?”

Others pointed to Apple’s iconic “1984” ad, in which a woman sabotaged a screen running an authoritarian speech, breaking a gray-clad horde out of its stupor. That ad, for the original Macintosh, promised to help prevent George Orwell’s “1984” dystopia from becoming a reality. 

Tuesday’s ad, one commenter said, felt like the “exact opposite.”

Hear of anything happening at Apple or another Bay Area tech company? Contact tech reporter Stephen Council securely at stephen.council@sfgate.com or on Signal at 628-204-5452.