Apple ad admits employment of tired old man
Commentary: In a new ad for the iPhone 7, Apple features the Memories tab, run by an old man in a vault.
Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.
He's so tired, but he wants you to cry with happiness.
Being Apple is exhausting.
So many people to please, so many gadgets to make and so many members of the media spying and spewing words on your every gesture.
Perhaps a little of that exasperated tiredness crept into Cupertino's latest ad for the iPhone 7.
The phone that no one's interested in anymore enjoys the Memories tab. This exists to make instant, creative videos out of the photos and videos you shoot on your phone.
You might have imagined that this was the result of a clever piece of technology. But no.
This ad reveals that there's just one tired old man in a vault. He's been rescued, no doubt, from a Hollywood career gone wrong. It's a fickle place, peopled by those who have hearts of brass and souls more malleable than a gummy bear.
Our old craftsman, though, still has his editing skills.
He painstakingly wanders through the archives of your artistic work, no doubt sneering privately at the awful composition, the radical ignorance of light and the desperate camera-shake that makes your loved ones seem excessively troubled.
But he's an artist. He's there to make something worthwhile out of your abject lack of talent. Just as so many editors in Hollywood save the skin of snot-nosed, ill-dressed director types.
Our man uses all the old-fashioned tools of his craft. A lot of it was purloined from the set of "Cinema Paradiso," I think. He takes his time, sure that the result will bring a whole family to sniffles. Just like the best movies of yore did.
This old man is a genius. He works late into the night, just so that you can have a clever video to post on Facebook.
Worse, he has to move his creaky bones again tomorrow and flex his tolerance beyond all safe boundaries to do it all over again.
I hope that Apple has given him a decent health plan and 401(k).
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