When Apple debuted its latest iPad advertisement at a London launch event for its new tablet computers this week, its employees cheered from the balconies of its Foster + Partners-designed offices in Battersea Power Station.
However, the minute-long spot, which showed musical instruments, cameras and artworks being crushed by a giant hydraulic press, could not have prompted a more different reaction from some of its most loyal customers. They were outraged.
To the kinds of creatives who continued to buy Mac computers even when Apple teetered on the brink of bankruptcy in the late 1990s — many of them already anxious about the impact artificial intelligence could have on their craft and careers — the ad seemed unusually tone deaf for a company feted for its marketing prowess.