THURSDAY THOUGHTS: Apple Crushes Creativity Into A Rectangle

You see? This is EXACTLY what I'm talking about 😡

Did you hear about the new iPad?  It's...er...a bit thinner than the last iPad.

If you don’t run in advertising and marketing circles as I do you may not have seen the latest release from Apple. I don’t mean their anorexic new iPad but the commercial produced to celebrate its release. In it they use a rather heavy-handed metaphor to convey the sheer utility of their latest black mirror device, but in so doing demonstrate how digital technology is literally crushing the life out of creativity. Observe…

The ad has been causing quite a stir on LinkedIn and I was contacted by Marketing Interactive in Singapore for a ‘hot take’, which they published in a rather cleaned up form here: https://www.marketing-interactive.com/apple-ipad-pro-commercial-crush-ai. But THIS was my unedited, initial reaction:

Is this really what Apple fans have been craving?  A slightly thinner iPad?  Is that really enough to justify the spend on a brand new commercial?  And does that commercial sell the new feature or does it, in fact, crush the dreams of creative people beneath the weight of its own arrogance?  

Do you enjoy painting?  Playing the guitar or piano?  Doing anything that's not on a screen?  Then FUCK YOU!  Either create on an iPad or don't create at all.  That's what this ad says, completely ignoring the fact that increasing numbers of young people, acutely aware of their own mental wellbeing, are turning back to analog activities for more fulfilling, less damaging creative experiences (see the growth in sales of vinyl records, film cameras and "dumb" phones).  

Apple used to be the computer for creatives but this ad demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of creative people who are naturally rebellious and not inclined to give themselves over, wholesale, to any corporation.  I personally left the Apple ecosystem about four years ago because I could feel it trying to lock me in by stripping out connectivity from its devices (no external ports) and forcing me to pay a monthly fee to access music I already owned.  This ad validates my decision.  Apple doesn't own me or my creativity.

Digital devices and applications are often miraculous additions to an artist’s toolbox, but they are just that - another tool in the box, neither better nor worse for bringing their vision, whatever it might be, to life. Don’t let tech companies convince you to sell your guitar or your paint brushes or pens because no matter how convincingly they can emulate the experience of strumming strings or stroking a canvas or scrawling on paper, they are not the same.

The experience of picking up a guitar or a brush or a pen activates different senses. An iPad doesn’t hug my knee like the curves of a guitar, or balance between my thumb and forefinger like a brush or pen. It’s doesn’t respond to or resist me the way tightly wound steel, or stretched canvas or textured paper does. It doesn’t awaken memories with its smell. An iPad is fine for some things but not, as the commercial would have you believe, for everything.

Several mornings a week I wake early to write fiction, long hand, with a Pilot Lightive fountain pen loaded with Iroshizuku ink in an Apica Premium CD Notebook. Why? Firstly, I hate the glare of my computer first thing in the morning, it’s too clinical, too harsh. Secondly, I am easily distracted and there is no email or Internet on a notebook so I am less likely to stray. Thirdly, it slows my thinking, makes me craft my words more considerately. And finally, because its a joy to create with fine tools following in a tradition that has worked for centuries.

And if that doesn’t convince you, answer me this - if I gave you a choice between, say, Jimmy Page’s guitar and his iPad, which would you rather have?

That’s what I thought!