Apple’s rare iPad misstep is a symptom of a much larger problem

When did being able to read the room become a lost art?

The arc of backlash to Apple’s “Crush” ad was wild to observe. The Macalope’s first reaction to it was thinking it missed the mark as a metaphor. Destroying the creative arts to make an iPad was not the right way to get across the creative things you can do with an iPad, and many other, better metaphors could have been used. But he certainly didn’t think it’d be met with the staunch opposition it has, an opposition that ultimately led to the company apologizing and canceling plans to show the ad on TV.

Sure, Apple’s always had its detractors, a swath of people who are always happy to tell the company that whatever it’s doing, it’s doing it wrong. But this time the calls were coming from inside the house. Apple “crushed” creativity and one of the company’s most notable customer groups is people who work (or play) in the arts.

If misery loves company, Apple should have a beer with Sonos. Sonos ran afoul of its customers by shipping an entirely new version of its app, one missing key features. Fortunately, the company had a sure-fire way to reassure its fans:

It takes courage [emphasis added] to rebuild a brand’s core product from the ground up, and to do so knowing it may require taking a few steps back to ultimately leap into the future.

Sonos chief product officer Maxime Bouvat-Merlin in a statement to The Verge

Brilliant. Because that “courage” thing worked so well for Apple.

These are just the most recent examples, but it seems like something of a trend. From angry reactions to ads and apps, to AI backlash, to widespread government action against big companies, tech is going from everyone’s darling to public enemy number… well, one may be stretching it. Cybertruck owners are still higher, at least. And Gary. He’s way up there. Yes, he also owns a Cybertruck, but he was way up on the list before that.

So, no, not number one, but higher than it was.

Part of this may be a feeling of wondering what tech has done for us lately. Large companies continue to churn out the same products we’ve always loved. And we still love them. While some small companies still manage to surprise us, the startup community is now so smothered by venture capital firms, that it only produces products venture capitalists want to see. This leads to abject failures like the Humane pin and the Rabbit R1.

Apple continues to make great products, but we are used to smartphones, tablets, computers, and heck, even smart speakers now. The Macalope isn’t saying innovation at Apple is dead. He’d have to punch himself in the face if he did that. And he doesn’t like punching himself in the face. At. All. Tried it once and you know what? Not for him.

Not to be controversial.

But the last new Apple product of note (sorry, HomePod) that was for “everyone” was probably AirPods, which came out eight years ago. Whether the Vision Pro is a good product or not is rather moot for most people. If you make a great product and no one can afford it because they’re already spending $1,000 and up for your smartphone, it doesn’t exactly move the needle of goodwill in your direction. Services help a little bit, but people are savvy enough to know that Apple doesn’t make the shows on TV+ itself and people are already suffering from streaming service fatigue as they all race to increase subscription prices.

Many products tech is producing are not for people, they’re for other companies, and many of them are decidedly anti-people. Corporations are salivating at the opportunity to use AI not to make experiences better but on the customer-facing end to mine those interactions and internally to be able to lay off more workers, something which Wall Street has an increasingly insatiable appetite for. Humans went from sacrificing people to volcanos to building their own volcanoes to sacrifice people.

That was not how civilization was supposed to work.

In Apple’s case, at least it was only metaphorically crushing creativity. It was definitely a bad metaphor, but there are worse crimes you can commit against creativity. The company still has a wonderful ability to deliver products that “the rest of us” like and the 10th generation iPad, the MacBook Air, and the Mac mini are arguably the greatest bang-for-the-buck computing products you can buy. But customer goodwill is about the most valuable asset a company could have. Better not crush it.

See? Because of the ad?

Yeah, you got it.