Misguided Apple Intelligence Ads
A pair of new ads for Apple Intelligence portray the Writing Tools and Memories movies as tools for those unwilling to put in any effort.
In the first ad, Apple Intelligence enables a goof-off who wastes time and annoys his colleagues to surprise his boss with an unexpectedly well-written email. It’s not clear that the boss is impressed; he just can’t believe the guy would have written a professional message.
The revised e-mail is certainly more formal, but I’m not sure that it’s actually good or that it matches his intent.
The second ad channels a similar suggestion—that Apple Intelligence is a crutch for the thoughtless. In it, a woman realizes that she has forgotten her husband’s birthday only after their kids give him thoughtful, homemade gifts, so she quickly uses Apple Intelligence to create a Memories movie of the children doing woodworking with their father.
It’s really quite a different message than a bicycle for the mind.
Previously:
- Apple Intelligence in macOS 15.1 and iOS 18.1
- Beta for Apple Intelligence in Apple Mail
- Apple Apologizes for iPad “Crush” Ad
Update (2024-11-14): Nick Heer:
The first is a little better than the second because it at least hints at something I bet many of us dread: writing work email. But why not a version which elevates someone who cares? The armchair director in me wants this to be an employee who is clearly trying hard, writing a frustrated email to someone who is not, and needing to adjust the tone of a pretty mean email.
The second ad is beyond helping. If someone had handed me their own phone with a photo slideshow at any point in the past five years, I would have assumed they did not make it themselves. I do not know anybody in real life who has ever done so.
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Between these two and the ad where they smashed a bunch of beloved creative tools, just a hall of fame master class in cynicism. Congrats to the people who use these powerful tools to stare at videos all do and do little else: Apple covets you more than they covet us. You won.
The email goes from "Hey J, been thinking this project might need a little bit of zhuhzing... but you're the big enchilada. Holler back, 💪warren💪" to "Hey J, upon further consideration, I believe this project might need some refinement. However, you are the most capable individual to undertake this task. Please let me know your thoughts. Best regards, Warren."
Both of these emails are absolute dog shit. They are not actionable, they're typical corpo late stage capitalism responsibility dilution garbage. But the original is at least funny and short, whereas the rewritten one isn't just pointless, it's also soulless.
AppleI took shit and turned it into a whole landslide of manure. It's the King Midas of garbage.
These ads seem to portray Apple Intelligence as a shortcut for laziness, but in reality, it’s more about enhancing productivity and creativity. Used right, it can save time on mundane tasks and help focus on what truly matters. It’s not about doing less effort—it’s about working smarter.
Don’t forget the Hollywood fraudster ad:
https://mastodon.social/@callionica/113174564237840206
"Here's a rather brutal take down of the memories ad"
This mirrors my own current thoughts on the ads. I initially wondered who these ads were supposed to appeal to. Surely, nobody find this kind of disdainful, clumsily Machiavellian behavior attractive. But then I remembered the results of the election, and it occurred to me that Apple might be smarter than we assumed.
@Plume Heh, I just popped in to write the same thing. I mean, hopefully Apple has a good grasp of their demographic. I've actually seen an AI Booster on LinkedIn writing "Apple knows why we like AI! Their ads are spot on."
The alternative, Apple cluelessly signing off on this after the Crush blowback, is just as bad but in a different way.
I for one am looking forward to their cheezy Holiday Special.
These days I feel like I live in a simulation, and the aliens running it have decided to concentrate on another one, so that fewer cycles in my simulation are spent on credibly emulating the other people. These people then make odd decisions because they only sample their decision trees instead of fully evaluating it. Deterministic phenomena, like nature, still work according to expectation. Other phenomena, like Apple's ad department, no longer do. I wonder if my aliens think that throttling the CPU is more merciful than simply aborting the simulation. Or perhaps this is what getting old is like, when a younger generation takes over.
