I think the part that was really upsetting is they crushed real good objects. After all of that talks about climate friendly. They could have crushed 3D renderings and up the clip with “rendered on iPad. No harm was done on real objects.” And that would have been a good ad.
It's almost certainly mostly CGI but even if it was done with practical props, they are still not "real good objects." They are props. No one crashes real Ferraris in an action movie. You use fakes and empty chassis.
They do crash real cars in movies though. The Wolf of Wall Street saw an actual Lamborghini Countach with a VIN get crashed quite a lot, John Carpenter's Christine went through like twenty Plymouths and The Dukes of Hazzard TV series destroyed hundreds of cars ("an estimated 309 Chargers were used").
>I think the part that was really upsetting is they crushed real good objects. After all of that talks about climate friendly.
Considering how much global e-waste and environmental damage, companies like Apple(and others of their size) are responsible for with their products, destroying a few objects for an ad is like spitting in the ocean in the scheme of things.
People complaining about the waste generated from this ad, are really missing the big picture, and is one of the reason companies like Apple mostly focus on posturing the image of climate friendliness and environmental sustainability, rather than actually enforcing it across their entire supply chain where it actually makes the big difference.
"Sure, the minerals in our devices are mined by kids in Congo with chemicals dangerous for the environment, and assembled by workers in sweatshop factories with suicide nets, but our posh donut-shaped HQ in Cupertino runs on 100% renewables and serves only vegan food with soy lattes, that's how environmentally conscious we are here at Hooli." </gavin_belson.jpg>
^Because this greenwashing is what people buy into from advertising.
Reminds me when Formula 1 switched form V10 engines to hybrid V6 to be more "environmentally friendly", when actually, the gas burned by those V10 engines during races only accounted for <0,2% of the total emissions, being far offset by the massive emissions of transporting that entire circus around the planet bouncing across continents all year round, yet nobody addressed that, just the engines for some cheap greenwashing.
> if Apple actually cared about the environment they'd release new models every several years instead of several times yearly
Thankfully last year’s model still works and is supported for several years. Nothing prevents you from ignoring the new models and act as if they didn’t exist.
Auto manufacturers release many new models every year and most people do not buy them all. Nor do they wish that appliance manufacturers stopped releasing new models so they could keep their fridge for longer.
> Auto manufacturers release many new models every year and most people do not buy them all. Nor do they wish that appliance manufacturers stopped releasing new models so they could keep their fridge for longer.
Generations of vehicles seem to be sold for at least half a decade, with maybe slight facelifts but largely functionally unchanged. My 20 year old truck, perhaps barring some safety features, also does basically the same job as a newer truck and drives down the same roads and so on. Thankfully the auto manufacturers haven't yet found a way to make your car or truck obsolescent in 3-5 years.
As far as appliances I swear to god I know I and a large number of other people would absolutely kill for an older Kenmore washer and dryer as they basically run forever and are easier to service. We keep jamming useless crap on everything (of course my refrigerator needs an embedded screen and internet of shit connection, so that it can spy on me and generally be another worthless shiny doodad that's going to break) while making things simultaneously harder to service. My 15 year old fridge does the exact same thing as the newer shitheap Samsung fridges they sell at big box retailers but without needing to be replaced every 5 years. Barring some marginal advances in refrigerant and insulation, some of the old stuff legitimately is better.
It's like when I read arguments such as "Aramco most polluting company in the planet by CO2" or "eating a burger pollutes more than driving an SUV for 100 miles"...
Apple, Aramco, your local butcher are merely serving your needs. Aramco ain't forcing you to buy 5L V8 trucks, and you're butcher ain't forcing you to eat beef rather than poultry or vegetables.
Apple releasing new products is just a normal tech company serving the need of users to have the latests shiny gadget, shareholders to see equity and employees and contractors having jobs.
What do I mean? While in principal I agree that many companies should do a lot more to limit their pollution, at the end of the day this pollution is a direct consequence of us average Joes neverending consumerism.
If average Joe doesn't give a damn about using public transport or using a used hybrid or to adapt his lifestyle to be less polluting, legislators and companies are gonna adapt to people not giving a damn besides whining on Twitter.
> at the end of the day this pollution is a direct consequence of us average Joes neverending consumerism.
However the subliminal advertising of big companies causing manipulation of weak human minds is what drives the never ending consumerism. Take away the ads, and the buying of crap will drop significantly.
> Apple, Aramco, your local butcher are merely serving your needs. Aramco ain't forcing you to buy 5L V8 trucks, and you're butcher ain't forcing you to eat beef rather than poultry or vegetables.
Marlboro wasn't forcing you to smoke either, yet too many people did against their own health and own best judgement, so we had to get government regulators to rule them in to protect people form damaging themselves and others with their own desires.
Just because consumers want something, doesn't mean it's what's best for them and that the capitalist free market should just be free to unregulatedly deliver whatever consumers want, at the expense of societal health or the environment, because then that's just "privatizing profits while socializing losses" with extra steps.
We also had governments regulate car emissions to save our air quality which meant engines had to be much more efficient and less environmentally damaging. All for the greater good, and few people complained about the cleaner smog- and tobacco- free air despite loosing a few HP on their engines and Marlboro selling fewer fags.
What makes you think e-waste should be exempt from such regulations?
Devil's advocate: RAM on SOCs is not upgradable due to technical limitations on frequency and latency needing the RAM chips to be as close as possible to the CPU. You can't beat physics.
I do hold them accountable for the non-upgradable SSDs, which are not needed to be soldered to achieve their full speed, and slim PCB connectors for PCI-E speed connections do exist.
>Devil's advocate: sell replacement drop-in boards and reuse the chassis.
Apple's response if regulators push for that: "Sure, that'll be 1600$ for the board please. (on an 1800$ new machine). Oh, and BTW, the board is paired to your iCloud account so you can't then re-sell it on the used market, for your own protection of course. You're welcome."
> Devil's advocate: RAM on SOCs is not upgradable due to technical limitations on frequency and latency needing the RAM chips to be as close as possible to the CPU. You can't beat physics.
That just came out, let's see if it goes anywhere and if they keep pushing it in other products, or if it's just a marketing exercise for one product, but I'm skeptical its here to stay.
I also remember how upgradable GPUs in laptops using MMX slots were pushed by Dell and a couple of others a few times 10-15 years ago, but abandoned each time.
I hope this catches on though, but like I said, I'm skeptical.
> destroying a few objects for an ad is like spitting in the ocean in the scheme of things.
I understand your point but the greater irony of the expression is that, at scale, our spitting (flushing, dumping, spewing) into the ocean has created an ecological disaster.
> destroying a few objects for an ad is like spitting in the ocean in the scheme of things
Yeah I think the biggest lesson from this is that people don't understand the amount of resources it takes to build an iPad.
Another example: Apple removing the stickers because they're plastic. A tiny tiny bit of plastic. Probably 0.001% of the plastic used in the production of an Apple device but people think it's significant because they can see it, and all the other plastic is hidden behind closed doors.
Economics. It's way cheaper to buy a few old instruments (buy extra in case you want to do multiple takes) and just record them being crushed than to pay a team computer artists for weeks to simulate the physics and draw this all in photorealistic CG.
Why do you think its insane to model realistic looking explosions? It's done all the time. Even if it started as a practical prop it was certainly doctored to all hell. Stone statues don't squish and guitars don't actually explode...
If you look through it you can see the top of the guitar is even cut off at the neck, either as a prop or digitally.
The shots towards the end have nothing around the items being focused on, such as remnants of the larger items. Doesn't need to be CGI, just multiple takes stitched together.
Erm, none? There are tons of cuts. I didn't say they did it one take.
You can actually see that they repositioned the ball between the side shot of it rolling and the front shot of it getting squashed, which you wouldn't need to do it if was CG.
I don't think anyone can say with any certainty, and certainly not with 100%, without actually talking to the people behind the video. Modern CGI is absolutely insane. There is so much in modern movies & TV that goes right past the viewers without any suspicion at all.
The Corridor Crew YouTube channel taught me that CGI is everywhere and I don't have a clue. Highly suggest checking out some of their videos.
Yes, this could have been done with CGI, but that seems unlikely. As others mentioned, doing this level of CGI destruction is super expensive, and destroying stuff is pretty cheap.
But there's also the bigger factor that, if Apple didn't destroy a bunch of stuff, why haven't they said so? It seems to me that if this ad was entirely CGI, Apple would admit that to minimize the backlash.
Therefore, unless Apple says something (or someone does some very convincing analysis), I'm inclined to believe this ad was done primarily with practical effects. That's just where the evidence is pointing right now.
I’m an artist and I feel great. As a singer-songwriter I’ve already come to terms with Swedish mega-producers, drum machines, Live Nation, and whatever drives people to consume corporate music.
What exactly makes things any harder for artists than it has ever been? Was there some glorious moment in the past when people didn’t look down at the average poets for being lazy and useless?
Sure, laud the best of the best, but you know for a fact that you’ve thought it a bad decision for someone you know who isn’t gifted with genius level talent to pursue a career in the arts.
It has never been easy.
Frankly, if AI makes a pop song or if Lana Del Ray’s producers make a pop song, it really is no different to me. No one is going to replace the folk singer because the audience is already selecting for the poet, not the product. Who cares what frat bros are chugging beer to?
Is part of the response to this ad the subconscious realization that one doesn’t make or actively appreciate organic art to begin with?
When was the last time most of us went to an open mic? Or bought a painting from a local artist?
Many tools can be used for art, even the featureless grey rectangle. Your attitude feels a lot like gatekeeping to me similar to when cameras replaced paintings, then digital replaced film, then phones replaced big bodies, etc…
For whatever reason I feel compelled to share my initial reaction to this comment:
Just because you managed to use "tool of art" as a literal phrase doesn't make your point more clear. Why should I care if a couple of these pieces are destroyed. Presumably they didn't destroy anything of historical, cultural, personal, or scarce significance. Are you sure you're not making an argument based only in emotions?
You do not have to. To me the feeling was kind of visceral. I usually do not have habit of analyzing my feelings. But ok, I'll try. It feels like an ugly imbecile walking into art museum, crushing everything around and saying: what a useless piece of shit, here, use this brick instead.
> No it would not. It would still be as disgusting as it is now.
For me the disgust was purely in waste of perfectly good items.
Those instruments could have provided a whole music department for a struggling school or youth center. The paint could have even been used to brighten the place up.
I feel like the reactions here are selective outrage. Real objects and sometimes living organisms are created and destroyed in the name of science every minute of every day.
An ad that was likely done in a single take, let’s be real, doesn’t matter at all in the big picture.
