Apple Apologizes For its Hydraulic Press iPad Pro Ad That 'Missed The Mark'

Advertising is a powerful tool for businesses to connect with their audience, build brand recognition, and drive desired actions.

By strategically leveraging advertising, companies can thrive in a competitive marketplace.

The same goes for Apple.

Despite having ubiquitous products, the company still needs various attempts to advertise its products, in order to distribute persuasive messages.

And this time, the company just created an iPad advertisement, which involves a giant hydraulic press, and the internet hates it.

In what is later considered a controversial ad, the ad that goes with the title "Crush!", showcased an array of artistic tools and objects being dramatically destroyed by a large hydraulic press.

They include:

• Musical instruments, like pianos, a trumpet, drums, speakers and record players.
• Cameras and camera lenses.
• Books of various dimensions.
• Tables of various sizes.
• Arcade game relics.
• Two desktop monitors showing non-Apple interface.
• Sticky papers, a metronome, and other desk items.
• Emoji balls and a globe.
• Lamps, clocks a chessboard, a bust of a human head, an Angry Bird ornament, and a wooden human figure.
• Paints that came in piles and cans.

Among some other items, they all met their demise under the crushing force. Squashed and flattened.

Not to nothing, but into an iPad Pro.

The device is thin, advanced and powerful device.

The idea, of course, is that the iPad Pro tablet lets users watch TV shows and movies, listen to and create music, play games, read books, take photos, shoot video and more. And that the device is sleeker and thinner than ever.

"Just imagine all the things it’ll be used to create," Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a post on X.

When Cook uploaded it, the internet quickly hates it.

While the idea is that the hydraulic press is to symbolize how the everything can be compacted into one single, small device, the ad literally showcases the dystopian implications of what future technology can do to arts and physicality.

By crushing artistic tools that humanity has used for centuries, the implication is that, an iPad is marketed as a device that can encapsulate humanity’s cultural prowess into a 5mm-thin object.

Created by Apple’s in-house team, the ad with a soundtrack of the Sonny and Cher 1971 tune "All I Ever Need Is You" literally crushes most of the physical history of creativity in a heavy-handed manner.

This certainly raised eyebrows.

This ad quickly received widespread backlash from the creative community, including actor Hugh Grant and director Reed Morano.

They criticized it as “the destruction of the human experience, courtesy of Silicon Valley."

In short, the ad has been interpreted more as a visual depiction of the tech industry’s devastation of cultural industries.

Apple issued an apology, saying that the destructive iPad ad "missed the mark."

Apple doesn’t make mistakes often and seldom apologizes. But the company knows when to admit a mistake when that mistake is apparent.

"Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world," said Tor Myhren, the company’s vice president of marketing communications, 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."