Apple debuts new iPad Air ad highlighting real users' stories

Posted:
in iPad edited February 2014
Expanding upon the "Life on iPad" video released at the launch of iPad Air, Apple has created a second spot profiling real use cases of its tablets, ranging from scientific exploration to medicine, music, filmmaking and sports.



The new ad, titled "Your Verse," features a voiceover by Robin Williams reciting a monologue from the movie "Dead Poets Society." The passage highlights "poetry, beauty, romance, love; the are what we stay alive for" and the "powerful play" of life of which Walt Whitman wrote "you may contribute a verse."

Accompanying the words, which conclude with "what will your verse be?" the video depicts a wide variety of human pursuits that make use of an iPad Air.

iCloud Atlas

The "Your Verse" ad starts with a reference to the giant windmills in the previous "Life on iPad," first shown last October.



It then rapidly shifts to scenes depicting storm chasing climatologists, then mountain explorers, then filmmakers in Bollywood, then the remote capture of footage of a waterfall, then an exploration of Gaudi's La Sagrada Fam?lia cathedral, then a performer applying makeup, then boys exploring the woods, then the LA Kings analyzing their performance on an iPad, then a marching band practicing choreography, then musicians playing live.

As the message of the words begins to sink in, the stories of all these brief clips unfold as use cases for iPad.

A man tapping out a screenplay on an iPad is revealed to be a parking lot attendant moonlighting as a storyteller in his spare time. The storm chasers were tracking the storm via an app. The boys in the forest are identifying a praying mantis. A father is using an iPad app to help his daughter build an interactive Mindstorms robot. The cathedral was inspiration for a woman's art.

Underwater, a marine biologist is measuring a reef using an iPad within a waterproof iDive housing. The performer is a traditional Japanese Butoh dancer practicing in front of a assistant filming his movements on, of course, an iPad.

What will your verse be?

"We're humbled and inspired by what people do with iPad. So we set out to capture some of their stories. What will your verse be?," Apple states on its YouTube page for the ad. The comment links to Apple's own "Your Verse" page detailing some of the stories captured in the spot.

The Bollywood filmmaker is Feroz Khan of Agra, India. The live performance is Yao, a rock band in Beijing, China, tapping out beats via iPad. A classroom in Humla, Nepal is using "School in a Box," a solar powered education toolkit for iPad designed to teach children living in places that lack electricity.

The waterfall is being filmed by Josh Apter, on location in Iguazu Falls, Argentina using custom camera gear built around iPad. The LA Kings are using the ThunderCloud iBench app to analyze their hockey players' moves and the team's overall game strategy.

As John Paczkowski observed for the new re/code, "it's hard to look at all these various iPad use cases and not conclude that the iPad and other devices like it are having a transformative effect on our culture. Certainly, that's the argument Apple is making here."

No contrived nonsense about phony users

The new ad and web page depict real users, not imagined ones. That's relatively easy for Apple to do because iPad and its iOS platform is actually being used around the world by tens of millions of real people to do real tasks.

In stark contrast, Google's Nexus 7 ad portrays a boy asking the search giant what "glossophobia" is, as if a boy who knew that word would need to request its definition.

A second Nexus 7 ad imagines a worker on a ship "far from home" who rushes to clean up after his shift so he can look presentable to his family while performing a high resolution and highly emotional video call that would simply be impossible to connect from a ship on the high seas, where the sort of high speed Internet that Google's engineers (and apparently their advertising directors) take for granted doesn't exist.

Google has to invent users because it's not actually selling its Nexus tablets to a broad audience; the tablet's actual manufacturer, Asus, is struggling to sell tablets as desperately as it's struggling with hardware and software bugs. That makes Google's portrayal of phony use cases for its tablets is as phony as Asus' benchmark doping.

Up is down

The phoniness of Google's contrived ads (something that's certainly not in short supply in the tech industry) was also reflected in the condescending reaction to Apple's latest spot authored by Darrell Etherington for TechCrunch, who wrote, "it's no secret that Apple wants to push the creative aspect of its mobile devices, which are still seen largely as consumption gadgets."

He also made reference to "the perceived superiority of Apple tablets," as if Apple's unit sales and usage stats are both contrived fictions the company is seeking to promote in its ads, rather than being grounded in fact.

The very idea that Apple needs to "push the the creative aspect of its mobile devices" is silly; but the contradictory reason cited (that the public sees iPad as a "consumption gadget") is as laughable as the notion that iPads are merely a "consumption device," a ridiculous meme invented and repeated by Apple's critics to suggest that the tablet failures of the company's competitors are somehow more serious for work.



The tone deaf, completely clueless knee-jerk reaction scribbled out by Etherington originally included an observation that even the words recited in Apple's spot were "a terrible poem by the way," unaware that its source was Walt Whitman, one of America's most influential poets.
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 146
    philboogiephilboogie Posts: 7,675member
    Stunning ad. And a great article on itself, even if it would've been limited to just the iPad. Two thumbs, one for each 'company'. (and to [I]ac[/I]company each other)
  • Reply 2 of 146
    Yes. Nice ad.
    But I can't help thinking that the marketing suits producing these technology ads (and not just Apple's) are getting more and more overblown in their pretentious claims...

    They're becoming almost as satire-friendly as perfume ads!
  • Reply 3 of 146
    st88st88 Posts: 124member

    Marketing is Apple's most important weapon to success.  It would appear they're still doing a good job of it, a strong emphasis on the "Apple lifestyle".  The ability to add emotion and depth to something as simple as a tablet.

  • Reply 4 of 146
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member

    Kinda lays bare that traditional troll meme that only stupid, technologically ignorant people buy Apple products.

  • Reply 5 of 146
    st88st88 Posts: 124member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by AppleInsider View Post



    The very idea that Apple needs to "push the the creative aspect of its mobile devices" is silly; but the contradictory reason cited (that the public sees iPad as a "consumption gadget") is as laughable as the notion that iPads are merely a "consumption device," a ridiculous meme invented and repeated by Apple's critics to suggest that the tablet failures of the company's competitors are somehow more serious for work.

     

    I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but the iPad's capabilities are extremely limited when compared to an OS X or x86 Windows device (such as the ASUS T100 featured in the "more serious" link).  BTW, despite the shortages in North America and other regions, the T100 shipped 500,000 worldwide in Q4 of 2013 and according to ASUS is set for another 2 million in 2014 when production demand can be met.

  • Reply 6 of 146
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by st88 View Post

     

    Marketing is Apple's most important weapon to success.  It would appear they're still doing a good job of it, a strong emphasis on the "Apple lifestyle".  The ability to add emotion and depth to something as simple as a tablet.


     

    Strongly disagree here. Marketing isn’t enough if your products suck. Apple’s most important weapon to success is the quality, usability, beauty, superiority of their products. To say marketing is the most important is to say the products are equivalent to the competition and need the marketing to succeed. It’s also another old troll meme, that Apple’s success is solely due to it’s marketing, that other products are better but the marketing dupes the consumer into buying Apple instead.  Apple is good at both solid products and inspired marketing.

     

    But then I see you touting Windows products in most of your posts so...

  • Reply 7 of 146
    st88st88 Posts: 124member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by lkrupp View Post

     

     

    Strongly disagree here. Marketing isn’t enough if your products suck. Apple’s most important weapon to success is the quality, usability, beauty, superiority of their products. To say marketing is the most important is to say the products are equivalent to the competition and need the marketing to succeed. It’s also another old troll meme, that Apple’s success is solely due to it’s marketing, that other products are better but the marketing dupes the consumer into buying Apple instead.  Apple is good at both solid products and inspired marketing.


    Don't get me wrong or put words in my mouth, marketing isn't Apple's only key to success, but to downplay its importance is ignorance.  Apple has always had a strong focus on lifestyle.

  • Reply 8 of 146
    I saw this ad during the 49er/Panther game. It was breathtaking and awesome to watch. Make me proud to be an iPad owner and meet me wish I had an iPad air too.

    Freaking Apple! They just bowl me over with their ads and I'm a sucker for their products.
  • Reply 9 of 146
    nikon133nikon133 Posts: 2,600member
    psych_guy wrote: »
    I saw this ad during the 49er/Panther game. It was breathtaking and awesome to watch. Make me proud to be an iPad owner and meet me wish I had an iPad air too.

    Freaking Apple! They just bowl me over with their ads and I'm a sucker for their products.

    I never felt proud for owning something.

    I felt proud for using something I own in good, creative way that others admired, but not for owning something that other people use in creative way.
  • Reply 10 of 146
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Psych_guy View Post



    I saw this ad during the 49er/Panther game. It was breathtaking and awesome to watch. Make me proud to be an iPad owner "


     

     

    I couldn't have said this better. I love stuff like this.

  • Reply 11 of 146
    dasanman69dasanman69 Posts: 13,002member
    Absolutely visually stunning. Great job.
  • Reply 12 of 146
    nikon133nikon133 Posts: 2,600member
    st88 wrote: »
    I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but the iPad's capabilities are extremely limited when compared to an OS X or x86 Windows device (such as the ASUS T100 featured in the "more serious" link).  BTW, despite the shortages in North America and other regions, the T100 shipped 500,000 worldwide in Q4 of 2013 and according to ASUS is set for another 2 million in 2014 when production demand can be met.

    I'd really like to read how Josh Apter is using iPad Air. I can see that his MEWShop is Apple Authorised Training Centre, among other products/brands, so it makes sense that he is experimenting with device, in terms of getting more experience and finding the limits. But I'd like to see if this setup is just an experiment for him or his permanent kit, and if permanent, how is he really using it and how is it benefiting him, as opposed to having MBA or even MBP. Or, from using AVID/Adobe products (which MEWShop is also authorised training centre for) on something like Surface Pro.
  • Reply 13 of 146
    eriamjheriamjh Posts: 1,631member

    No power in the 'verse can stop us.

  • Reply 14 of 146
    Shouldn't the Nexus 7 boy be asking Google, "What's glassophobia"?
  • Reply 15 of 146

    "it's no secret that Apple wants to push the creative aspect of its mobile devices, which are still seen largely as consumption gadgets."

     

     

    ...gadgets?

  • Reply 16 of 146
    philboogiephilboogie Posts: 7,675member
    st88 wrote: »
    Don't get me wrong or put words in my mouth, marketing isn't Apple's only key to success, but to downplay its importance is ignorance.  Apple has always had a strong focus on lifestyle.

    I don't think he was. You wrote "Marketing is Apple's most important weapon to success" which I took as that they would have a hard time being successful if they didn't have great marketing.

    I see this differently: the products sell themselves. No need for marketing. Their products are that good.
  • Reply 17 of 146
    philboogiephilboogie Posts: 7,675member
    Shouldn't the Nexus 7 boy be asking Google, "What's glassophobia?"?

    Lol.

    Also, I don't think Google asks themselves anything, except for 'where did we go wrong?' Sure they ask patent cases to be thrown out of court, they ask the EU to go lightly on them whenever they get caught doing something illegal and they ask for acquittal when the infringe on copyright.

    I think they should asks themselves a lot of questions, but I guess it's just not in their veins.
  • Reply 18 of 146
    Quote:

    Originally Posted by RickFaced View Post

     

    How am I supposed to decide to buy one of these new iPads if I don't see break dancers and that innovative clicking keyboard?


    Now that's funny! :)

  • Reply 19 of 146
    jessijessi Posts: 302member
    This is why tech crunch is such a complete joke.
  • Reply 20 of 146
    st88 wrote: »
    I hate to keep beating a dead horse, but the iPad's capabilities are extremely limited when compared to an OS X or x86 Windows device (such as the ASUS T100 featured in the "more serious" link).  BTW, despite the shortages in North America and other regions, the T100 shipped 500,000 worldwide in Q4 of 2013 and according to ASUS is set for another 2 million in 2014 when production demand can be met.

    Please explain the extremely limited capabilities of iPad Air versus OS X or "x86 Windows" device.

    The capabilities are largely restricted by the available software. A jailbroken iPad Air is, therefore, only restricted by available processing power and memory as well as the hardware ports (for which many types of adapters are available). The variety and quantity of software available for iOS is virtually unfathomable and offers significant functionality not available to OS X or "x86 Windows" natively.
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