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- Apple’s “Crush!” Controversy
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Apple’s “Crush!” Controversy
Apple has had an unusually bad few days! When I have an unusually bad few days, it typically means something like “attending Aunt Joan’s Las Vegas destination wedding, which she accidentally booked in Las Vegas, New Mexico” or “my entire line of personalized NFTs (NFSteves) has been stolen and everyone is mocking me on Twitter.”
Apple was also mocked on Twitter for its now-infamous “Crush!” ad for the new iPad Pro, which you can watch below.
“Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world,” Tor Myhren, Apple VP of marketing communications, said in a statement. “Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.”
What happened here is obvious to anyone: Apple’s intended metaphor was that all of these functions and tools were available in the form of an ultra-slim iPad. This isn’t how the ad read, of course: the viewer saw an assortment of beloved items crushed in a trash compactor and then an iPad comes out.
As Variety also notes via 9to5Google, the ad is very similar to a 2008 LG phone ad. The plot thickens!
Whether or not Apple plagiarized a 16 year old LG phone ad isn’t really within the scope of this newsletter. The bigger issue is: why would this version receive so much more blowback?
To me, it’s simple: there’s been a significant vibe shift around tech, particularly for people who work in creative fields… aka Apple’s core audience! In 2008, tech tools were exciting. The iPhone had just released, Facebook was a functional place to connect with people in your life, Google search was second to none. The promise of technology was that of life improvement.
In 2024, that promise is much more complicated. We are beset by scams, grifts, hype and nonsense babbled by our supposed genius tech gurus.
movies are going to become video games and video games are going to become something unimaginably better
— Sam Altman (@sama)
3:06 AM • Apr 5, 2024
It shouldn’t be surprising that in 2024 the image of a guitar and a sculpture being relentlessly crushed by a tech company feels bad to watch. “Crush!” was intended as an ad, but instead comes across as a warning. Does the tech industry understand this dynamic?
Film Preservation is No Longer Film vs. Digital
Back in March, I covered a good Hollywood Reporter article about some of the issues inherent to an all-digital master system for movies and TV shows. IndieWire has a terrific followup on how film preservationists are utilizing both digital and film for their preservation efforts.
…As Rajendra Roy of the Museum of Modern Art pointed out, “Current restorations generally are a combination of digital and analog processes: scanning film materials, digitally editing, integrating and cleaning the images, outputting to DCPs and in some cases 35mm prints. We’ve embraced the digital era while not leaving celluloid behind.”
That said, preservationists also point out that film is the far-superior medium for storage.
“Properly stored, film can have the lifespan of paper as an archival medium, lasting hundreds of years. Compared to LTO tape, which has a lifespan of 15-30 years, the long-term preservation benefit of film is still unmatched. Digital preservation requires ongoing stewardship and infrastructure to ensure the integrity and health of the files created. At the end of the day — or rather, at the end of a century — the film is still recognizable.”
Strangely, IndieWire takes shots at the Hollywood Reporter article:
…Lukow points out that digital preservation is far more reliable at this point than many people understand, emphasizing that pieces like a recent Hollywood Reporter article on the dangers of “decaying” digital files are needlessly alarmist. “That was a lede 15 years ago,” Lukow said, noting that robotic data tape libraries, which are neither online nor totally offline, ensure that footage will not be corrupted or lost. “When our files are ingested or migrated, there are SHA-1 verifying and checksumming procedures to make sure that nothing ever goes wrong, so we feel very comfortable with our digital preservation infrastructure at the petabyte level, and I know several of the studios do as well.”
Lukow is more concerned with independent filmmakers who are struggling to get their movies finished and out into the world. “They’re preparing their films for festivals, and once those festivals are over, they don’t have the resources to put attention into a proper celluloid or digital preservation.”
This is a weird framing of the THR article, which reaches the same conclusion about digital preservation primarily being an issue for independent filmmakers. I think IndieWire is reacting more to the original clickbaity headline than the content of the article itself.
Regardless, practical experience with Hollywood libraries counters the above quote: your robotic library can be the best in the world, but that doesn’t matter if the files in the robotic library aren’t. If your library ingests a problematic file - whether it’s an SD interlaced ingest from 2007 or a file that was already corrupted - the library doesn’t know the difference!
Kernels (3 links worth making popcorn for)
Here’s a round-up of cool and interesting links about Hollywood and technology:
Did the Sony hack teach us nothing about cybersecurity? (link)
Martin Scorsese on the immense impact of Roger Corman. (link)
Inside the wild world of Hollywood prop collectors. (link)