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Apple boasts that iPad Pro is, um, powerful

Commentary: In its inexorable quest for make you believe its tablet is a computer, Apple releases an explosive new ad.

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.


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This is a scene from an Apple ad. Who'd have thunk it?

Apple/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

Apple's in its 40s now. 

When you get there, you want everyone to believe you're still young and strong, the apogee of vibrant power. Even if you might shortly need a hip replacement.

Lately, Cupertino has been running ads based on, gasp, tweets -- something Apple itself never really bothered with. 

The latest ad, though, has a loud explosion in it. For many who have followed Apple over the years, this might seem so very un-Apple, cool as it's always been.

Here, though, Apple is responding to a young man who's desperate for a more powerful computer. To which the voice-over replies he should get an iPad Pro. 

Apple has been desperate to persuade for some time now that the iPad Pro is a computer. Microsoft has been desperate to laugh at the idea.

In this ad, Apple uses a wonderfully hard-selly, macho voice to intone about the A10x fusion chip. This turns the iPad Pro into the Arnold Schwarzenegger of tablets. Or, um, computers.

The ad is so spectacularly teenage and so pleasantly un-Apple. 

In another ad released on Friday, Apple wants you to believe its stylus, aka Pencil, has no lag. There's a joke in this ad and a man screaming loudly. Yes, more loud noise. 

Apple didn't stop there with the younger-pandering notions. 

In an ad from earlier this week, a young girl tweet-complains: "I hate everything." 

Apple's helpful dad-voice replies: "Well, you're really going to hate the new iPad Pro because you can do pretty much everything with it." 

It's really quite charming watching Apple try to be nice and the young, slightly Gothic girl merely offering hate in return.

The cleverness in this campaign is that Apple is trying to be short, youthful (without being fake) and relatively witty. 

The young don't have the patience for you, old Tim. They want to know what you've got and they want to know now. In as few characters as possible.

Oh, make some powerful noise too. The young are very easily distracted.

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