Have you seen the new iPad commercial? It’s the one where cameras, pianos and tchotchkes are crushed flat in a metaphorical illustration of how much great stuff you can fit in the new, thinner iPad Pro. It’s simple, beautifully shot, and full of little moments of wit and charm. So far, so Apple.

So why is my Twitter timeline full of people who really don’t like it? @AdamSinger writes: “This ad is an (unintentional) perfect metaphor for today’s creative dark age: compress organic instruments, joyful/imperfect machines, tangible art, our entire physical reality into a soulless, postmodern, read-only device a multi-trillion $ corporation controls what you do with.”

@clairestricket was even more succinct: “Imagine a machine, stamping on human creativity – forever.”

I find this fascinating. In 2014 I was the creative lead on the launch of the iPad Air, so I’ve basically tackled the exact same brief (loads of stuff in a thin device), and I can tell you that our solution was nowhere near as memorable, original or simple as this one. But we also failed to inspire this degree of vitriol.

I think the negative interpretations come from two things. The first is that a charming collection of items is destroyed: an acoustic guitar becomes firewood; camera lenses are smashed to smithereens; a pile of notepads are turned into confetti.

This is not so much squeezing as obliterating, and because the items are real, the destruction is also real. That means Apple, which has always championed creativity, ruined some perfectly good, much-loved creative tools to make an ad for one of its own creative tools. If Apple had made this ad in animation or used CG, or indeed played the spot in reverse, I don’t think people would have minded so much.

That said, people have demonstrated a deep love of watching real things get destroyed. From the hydraulic press videos on TikTok to Blendtec’s Will It Blend campaign (which, ironically, once obliterated an iPad), we’re generally fine with smashing up perfectly usable objects. So what did Apple do wrong?

That leads me to my second point: the problem was that this was done by Apple. There seems to be something about the world’s biggest corporation doing the smashing up that doesn’t sit right with people.

Here in mid-2024 we have reached the apogee of wealth inequality, greedflation, wage stagnation, tax avoidance, corporate lobbying and the need for food banks. The distance between the haves and have-nots has never been more apparent, so when the greatest example of the haves destroys the little things that make the have-nots’ lives a bit more enjoyable, just to sell more stuff, it can appear a little more symbolic than anyone intended.

If there’s something for Apple to learn, it might be that the current sociopolitical circumstances may make people more predisposed to feeling uncomfortable about their size and power

There’s almost a feeling that the crushed items represent a kind of underdog, innocently minding their own business before being squashed into oblivion. They are David to Apple’s Goliath, and the world loves to get behind an underdog. Apple has also been keen to seem environmentally friendly (see last year’s Mother Nature commercial), so destroying perfectly good stuff, which presumably ends up in a landfill somewhere, might seem contradictory to that stance.

No one would have a go at Samsung for doing the same thing because Samsung doesn’t make a big deal out of suggesting it cares for the environment. Apple’s decision to hold itself to a higher standard means the public inevitably does the same thing, so any perceived slip is instantly seized upon.

In addition, Apple has a unique relationship with its customers. From queues around the block for its products, to devoted fan sites greeting every morsel of news with excited analysis, this is not how people relate to Microsoft or Mercedes.

So when it makes any kind of public pronouncement, we all tend to lean in a little further. The iPad ad is not just an ad; it’s a message from a company that has spent the last 20 years becoming an indispensable part of our daily lives. It is therefore subject to more scrutiny, and further interpretations of a seemingly innocent little metaphor.

Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time a company has released a commercial to an unexpected degree of backlash. Last year Zara displayed some new clothes on mannequins shrouded in white. Little did they know that some people would think that such imagery was reminiscent of the Israel-Palestine war. The work was withdrawn.

The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley. https://t.co/273XB3CfnF

— Hugh Grant (@HackedOffHugh) May 8, 2024

Advertising is a form of art, and therefore open to interpretation. However innocently this Apple commercial was created, as soon as it was released it became subject to the opinions of its audience.

Will Apple care? Probably not, but the lesson here is not necessarily that people were offended by the destruction of some nice friendly things by a giant piece of machinery. If there’s something for Apple to learn, it might be that the current sociopolitical circumstances may make people more predisposed to feeling uncomfortable about their size and power.

On one level the metaphor works to explain the new iPad. On another, it also conveys the unassailable dominance of giant tech corporations over so much of what we hold dear. Which one makes the most sense? Whether Apple likes it or not, that’s up to you.

Based in Los Angeles, Ben Kay is a creative director and copywriter, and advertising columnist for CR; ben-kay.com