苹果新款iPad广告引争议

多客科技

作者：懂王学英语
美国大西洋月刊网站于2024年5月8日发表题为《苹果的文化压缩机》的文章。以下观点不代表任何译者立场，现将全文翻译如下：

TECHNOLOGY技术
Watch Apple Trash-Compact Human Culture苹果的文化压缩机
What was the company thinking?苹果脑子秀逗了?
By Damon Beres and Charlie Warzel



Apple

MAY 8, 2024
Updated at 6:25 p.m. ET on May 9, 2024
Here is a nonexhaustive list of objects Apple recently pulverized with a menacing hydraulic crusher: a trumpet, a piano, a turntable, a sculpted bust, lots and lots of paint, video-game controllers.苹果公司最近用一个吓人的液压机压碎了琳琅满目的物品，以下仅是部分受害者名单：小号、钢琴、唱机、半身雕像、数不清的颜料罐、游戏手柄。
These are all shown being demolished in the company’s new iPad commercial, a minute-long spot titled “Crush!” The items are arranged on a platform beneath a slowly descending enormous metal block, then trash-compactored out of existence in a violent symphony of crunching. Once the destruction is complete, the press lifts back up to reveal that the items have been replaced by a slender, shimmering iPad.这些物品集体出现在苹果公司最新发布的一分钟广告「压缩！」中。画面中，物品被整齐地摆放在平台上，随后一个巨大的金属平台缓缓压下，伴随着刺耳的挤压声，一切都被压缩得无影无踪。毁灭完成，平台升起，取而代之的是一台纤薄闪亮的 iPad。
The notion behind the commercial is fairly obvious. Apple wants to show you that the bulk of human ingenuity and history can be compressed into an iPad, and thereby wants you to believe that the device is a desirable entry point to both the consumption of culture and the creation of it. (The ad is for the latest “Pro” model of the iPad, the price of which starts at $999 and goes as high as $2,299, depending on its configuration.) Most important, it wants you to know that the iPad is powerful and quite thin.广告的意图相当明显。苹果想告诉你，人类的大部分智慧成果和历史都可以压缩到一台 iPad中，从而让你相信这是一扇通往文化消费和创造的便捷大门。（广告宣传的是最新款 iPad Pro，售价 999 美元起，最高可达 2299 美元，具体价格取决于配置。）最重要的是，他们希望你知道 iPad 既强大又轻薄。
But good Lord, Apple, read the room. In its swing for spectacle, the ad lacks so much self-awareness, it’s cringey, even depressing. This is May 2024: Humanity is in the early stages of a standoff with generative AI, which offers methods through which visual art, writing, music, and computer code can be created by a machine in seconds with the simplest of prompts. Apple is reportedly building its own large language model for its devices, and its CEO, Tim Cook, explicitly invoked AI in his comments about the new tablet—the iPad Pro features, he said, an “outrageously powerful chip for AI.” Most of us are still in the sizing-up phase for generative AI, staring warily at a technology that’s been hyped as world-changing and job-disrupting (even, some proponents argue, potentially civilization-ending), and been foisted on the public in a very short period of time. It’s a weird, exhausting, exciting, even tense moment. Enter: THE CRUSHER.但是，无语了啊苹果！有点眼力见儿！为了视觉冲击，这个广告完全没有自知，只让人尴尬，甚至有些压抑。现在是2024年5月：人类正处于与生成式人工智能的僵持初期，只需简单的指令，机器就能在几秒钟内生成图片、视频、文案、音乐和代码。据报道，苹果公司也正在为设备研发大型语言模型，首席执行官蒂姆·库克在评论新款平板电脑时特别提到了人工智能——他说，iPad Pro 拥有“功能强到可怕的AI芯片”。面对生成式人工智能，我们大多数人还处于观望阶段，警惕地注视着这项被吹捧为即将改变世界、颠覆工作（甚至一些支持者认为可能终结人类文明）的技术，它在极短的时间内被推向公众视野。这是一个奇怪、累人、令人兴奋甚至紧张的时刻。现在，液压机登场了。
Apple is very good at defining the zeitgeist as it relates to how humans use technology to interact with the world. Announced with a Super Bowl commercial in 1984, the Macintosh ushered in the era of personal computing by presenting streamlined hardware and a pleasant graphical interface; iTunes and the iPod augured a world of limitless media; the iPhone delivered on its promise to fit the entire universe in our pocket. There is about a zero percent chance that the company did not understand the optics of releasing this ad at this moment. Apple is among the most sophisticated and moneyed corporations in all the world. (The company did not respond to a request for comment.)苹果公司一直擅长定义时代精神，这种精神与人类利用科技与世界交互的方式有关。1984年，苹果公司通过超级碗广告发布了Macintosh电脑，引领了个人电脑时代，它拥有简洁的硬件和友好的图形界面；iTunes和iPod预示着无限媒体的世界；iPhone实现了将整个宇宙装进口袋的承诺。苹果不可能不知道在此刻发布这则广告会产生的负面影响——苹果是世界上最老练、资金最雄厚的公司之一。（苹果没有回应置评请求。）
But this time, it’s hard to like what the company is showing us. People are angry. One commenter on X called the ad “heartbreaking.” Three reasons could explain why. First: Although watching things explode might be fun, it’s less fun when a multitrillion-dollar tech corporation is the one destroying tools, instruments, and other objects of human expression and creativity. Second, of course, is that this is a moment of great technological upheaval and angst, especially among artists, as tech companies build models trained on creative work with an ultimate goal of simulating those very people’s skilled output. It is easy to be offended at the ad’s implication, and it is easy to be aghast at the idea that AI will wipe out human creativity with cheap synthetic waste.
但这次，一向以简约清新格调著称的苹果公司，这次的电视广告却引发了广泛争议，招致众怒。一位网友在社交媒体X上评论广告令人“心碎”。究其原因，有三点值得探讨。首先，尽管观看爆炸场面或许能带来一时刺激，但当一家市值数万亿美元的科技巨头去粉碎象征人类表达和创造力的工具、器械等物品时，这种乐趣就荡然无存了。其次，当今时代充斥着技术变革带来的不安和焦虑，尤其对于艺术家而言更是如此。科技公司正致力于打造能够学习人类创造性作品的模型，最终目标是模拟这些艺术家本身的专业产出。这种背景下，人们很容易对广告隐含的意思感到反感，并对人工智能可能用廉价的合成品取代人类创造力而感到恐慌。
The third-order annoyance is in the genre. Apple has essentially aped a popular format of “crushing” videos on TikTok, wherein hydraulic presses are employed to obliterate everyday objects for the pleasure of idle scrollers. Arguably, the company thought that copying this specific motif would be fun, but something is grim about Apple trying to draft off a viral-video format to sell units. It’s unclear whether some of the ad might have been created with CGI, but Apple could easily round up tens of thousands of dollars of expensive equipment and destroy it all on a whim. However small, the ad is a symbol of the company’s dominance.第三点令人不快的因素在于广告的形式。苹果公司实质上模仿了抖音上流行的“摧毁物品”视频类型，这种视频利用液压机粉碎日常物品来取悦于那些漫无目的刷视频的用户。或许苹果公司认为模仿这类视频会很有趣，但一家科技巨头试图抄爆火视频的模版来推销产品，多少显得有些掉价。虽然无法确定广告中使用的部分物品是否由电脑特效生成，但苹果公司显然可以轻而易举地拿出数万美元购买昂贵设备，然后随心所欲地将它们摧毁。即使只是小事，但该广告仍象征着苹果公司的主导地位。
The ad remains, in some sense, great marketing. Everyone is talking about the iPad, a mainstay in Apple’s lineup that nevertheless gets far less attention than the iPhone. But this sudden interest offers room for a genuine appraisal of the device 14 years after its release. The iPad was one of Steve Jobs’s final products, one he believed could become as popular and perhaps as transformative as cars. That vision hasn’t panned out. The iPad hasn’t killed books, televisions, or even the iPhone. The commercial hails the new Pro model as “the most powerful iPad ever,” but its bravado is mostly unearned. The iPad is, potentially, a creative tool. It’s also an expensive luxury device whose cheaper iterations, at least, are vessels for letting your kid watch Cocomelon so they don’t melt down in public, reading self-help books on a plane, or opting for more pixels and better resolution whilst consuming content on the toilet.从某种意义上说，这则广告仍然算得上成功的营销手段。大家都在讨论 iPad，尽管它作为苹果的重要产品线热度远不及iPhone。然而，在iPad发布14年后大家突然这么关注它，正好提供了机会让我们重新审视这款产品。iPad是乔布斯的遗作之一，他曾认为iPad可以像汽车一样普及，甚至具有同样的革命性，但这个愿景并没有实现。iPad并没有取代书籍、电视，甚至没有取代 iPhone。广告宣传新款Pro版本是“有史以来最强大的 iPad”，但这明显是王婆卖瓜自卖自夸。iPad确实有可能成为一种创作工具，但同时也奢侈昂贵，至少便宜的版本不过是公共场合安抚孩子情绪播放“Cocomelon”动画片、在飞机上阅读自助书籍，或是在上厕所时提供高清大屏内容消费的工具而已。
In the day and a half since the ad was released, people have only gotten angrier. Cook’s post on X featuring the commercial has been viewed more than 29 million times, and the unhappy responses are piling up. (Since this story was published, Apple has apologized for the commercial and will no longer run it on TV, according to Ad Age.) Odds are, people aren’t really furious at Apple on behalf of the trumpeters—they’re mad because the ad says something about the balance of power. Apple is a great technology company, but it is a legendary marketer. Its ads, its slickly produced keynotes, and even its retail stores succeed because they offer a vision of the company’s products as tools that give us, the consumers, power. The fundamental flaw of Apple’s commercial is that it is a display of force that reminds us about this sleight of hand. We are not the powerful entity in this relationship. The creative potential we feel when we pick up one of their shiny devices is actually on loan. At the end of the day, it belongs to Apple, the destroyer.广告发布以来仅仅一天半的时间里，人们的愤怒情绪只增不减。库克在社交媒体X上发布的包含该广告的帖子已被浏览超过2900万次，不满的评论也越来越多。（据《广告时代》报道，这篇文章发表后，苹果公司已经发表道歉声明，并且表示不会再在电视上播出。）坦白地说，人们并不是真的因为那些被压扁的小号而对苹果公司怒不可遏，他们愤怒的是广告揭示了某种权力关系的失衡。苹果无疑是一家伟大的科技公司，但它也是一个传奇的营销高手。苹果的广告、制作精良的发布会，甚至零售商店之所以成功，都因为它提供了一种愿景，将公司产品描绘成赋予消费者力量的工具。这次广告的根本缺陷在于，它展示了一种力量，提醒我们这种障眼法的存在。在这段关系中，我们并不是强大的实体。我们拿起他们光鲜亮丽的设备时所感受到的创造潜力，实际上是借来的。说到底，它属于苹果公司，这个毁灭者。