My initial reaction to the ad, upon watching it in the launch event was "huh, that's a fun reference to the Hydraulic Press Channel". The slapstick elements (trumpet noise, squishy balls) made it come across as light-hearted, rather than an ominous display of force by a large company crushing artists' tools.
This idea of 'squashing all these tools down to a thin slab of glass' made sense given their somewhat unusual focus on the thinness of the device. It was a bit of a throwback to the early 2010s smartphone innovation, where the size of the devices was the yardstick by which manufacturers would outdo each other. I would charitably interpret it as an uninspired marketing team trying to spin some version of Jobs' classic "the iPhone is simultaneously an iPod, phone and internet device" - however the party trick is old, and nobody's impressed anymore.
Perhaps the blowback is a sign of a wider weariness that people have accumulated towards big tech companies over the past few years, mixed with a nebulous malaise about 'AI' and what it means for the status quo and people's livelihoods.
This idea of 'squashing all these tools down to a thin slab of glass' made sense given their somewhat unusual focus on the thinness of the device. It was a bit of a throwback to the early 2010s smartphone innovation, where the size of the devices was the yardstick by which manufacturers would outdo each other. I would charitably interpret it as an uninspired marketing team trying to spin some version of Jobs' classic "the iPhone is simultaneously an iPod, phone and internet device" - however the party trick is old, and nobody's impressed anymore.
Perhaps the blowback is a sign of a wider weariness that people have accumulated towards big tech companies over the past few years, mixed with a nebulous malaise about 'AI' and what it means for the status quo and people's livelihoods.