After some online “outrage” (that and a nickel will get you a nickel), Apple’s vice president of marketing, Tor Myhren, weakly proffered that the company “missed the mark” with an iPad Pro advertisement, which depicted tube TVs, video games, cans of paint, cameras, and musical instruments being crushed.
Besides being a pitiful kowtow (Apple CEO Tim Cook is an expert at that, at least), nothing much will come of it regarding Apple’s stock price. But, if the company misses the mark when it unveils its belated AI features next month, Apple stock could be in a lot of trouble.
It hasn’t been Apple’s year so far, and it’s under increasing pressure to win over investors and consumers with an AI offering worthy of the company’s storied history. It’s a little late to the AI party but that won’t matter as long as it pulls through.
But the stakes are high. The company just isn’t growing—revenue has fallen in five of the past six quarters. Arguably it hasn’t had a big hit with a new product in years and CEO Tim Cook’s challenges are mounting from tackling falling iPhone sales in China to fighting off antitrust lawsuits…
There are other signs that perhaps all is not well behind the scenes. Apple scrapped its self-driving electric car project earlier this year after a decade of development, as well as abandoning plans to build its own smartwatch screens.
The quest to develop the next big thing has proved fruitless so far. But there’s still hope that an innovative suite of AI features could drive an iPhone supercycle—enticing the more than 1 billion iPhone users to upgrade their handsets.
Anything short of a roaring success at its Worldwide Developers Conference next month, though, and Apple’s tricky 2024 could quickly become its defining year for all the wrong reasons.
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MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully, Apple’s marketing team can recover quickly enough from being thrown under the bus by higher-ups —— for the sin of creating an ad that created tremendous buzz around a product line that has been bungled and hamstrung for over a decade by the same higher-ups —— that they can market the ever-living sheet out of whatever AI features Apple has to show off at WWDC.
If not, and Apple lays an AI egg at WWDC and it miraculously wakes up Apple’s somnambulant board, triggering some transformative change in the C-Suite, it might be a blessing in disguise. Short term pain for long term gain!
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I loved the ad. Visually exciting, attention focusing, conveyed the many things an iPad could be used for to create new art, music, video, and so many other products. A tempest in a teapot… and even this is great attention for the new iPads.
Your opinion of the ad is irrelevant. They pulled it and issued an apology. It’s worth questioning whether it would be sensible for a company like Apple to yield to the demands of the tasteless by spending millions on airtime of this travesty.
That being said, it might just be that this ad is the most accurate ad Apple has ever made. Tim Cook’s Apple is a mirthless place.
It was a terrible ad. What was it supposed to inspire? “Yeah, F all of that analog stuff! I only need an iPad, crush the rest!” And besides the expected chip and screen improvements, what was the main emphasis, even with the ad? Look how thin it is! Absolutely NO ONE was asking for a thinner iPad. We want a better iPad OS, software! Which besides the brief emphasis on artists (1% of Apple’s customers?) we got nothing.
Hey, “whatever”, your opinion of the ad is irrelevant. They pull it from TV but it’s still on YouTube where it has racked up millions of views, and has been played on TV shows around the world. Apple doesn’t have to waste money showing this ad on TV because everyone knows about it now and can see it online, which costs Apple nothing, so it saved millions of dollars in advertising fees, and can play more of its actual iPad Pro ad.
Your views are mirthless views. But I guess you’ll tell me my opinion of your opinion is irrelevant, so we can be irrelevant together,
My opinion, like that of many others, is indeed relevant to the situation. Apple released an ad that was widely deemed tasteless and poorly thought out. The significant backlash it received wasn’t due to oversensitivity but because the ad conveyed a message that Apple itself recognized as inappropriate, prompting them to issue an apology. That sequence of events is entirely relevant.
Regarding personal views of the ad itself, whether yours or mine, they become secondary to the fact that Apple responded to a public sentiment strong enough to warrant a withdrawal and apology. You appear to be particularly affected by the decision to pull the ad, almost taking it as a personal affront. It’s important not to get overly sensitive about these developments—it’s not a catastrophe that your favorite corporation admitted to a mistake and rectified it.
Pretty dumb premise for an editorial. They’re going to do X and you’re going to whine about it. We know that’s what’s going to happen. Stop acting like you have some kind of objectivity here.
Ai, it’s another hobby right? After burning $10bn of cash on Apple Car, this might be the next black hole. Now Apple is already reacting to the market instead of leading it.
https://world.hey.com/dhh/hating-apple-goes-mainstream-fe740007
Another relevant opinion
OpenELM https://youtu.be/NrXYQurtMq4