Imagine you’re Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, forever operating in Steve Jobs’ shadow and trying to chase the high of the early-to-mid aughts when people still seemed excited about the products you had to offer. Jobs, for all his flaws and bizarre beliefs, was known as an innovator and a personality, whereas Tim Cook will forever be known as the Guy Who Is Not Steve Jobs.



Cook recently took to Twitter to announce Apple’s latest product offering, the iPad Pro, which is being marketed as the thinnest product Apple has ever created. Being Apple, the product was announced via an elaborate ad showing everything that can be squeezed into the skinny iPad being crushed by a hydraulic press, including a turntable, piano, guitar, trumpet, several cans of paint, computer monitors and, for some reason, an Angry Bird, as Sonny & Cher’s “All I Ever Need Is You” plays.




The backlash was swift, with one person using a Don Draper meme to argue that the ad is “crush[ing] society’s symbols of creativity into a cold, impersonal slab of technology,” while another user “fixed” the ad by reversing it and un-crushing everything.



The ad is also being fact-checked via suggested Community Notes, including several that point out other Apple products that are thinner than the iPad Pro, including the Apple credit card and the third generation iPod Shuffle.



Japanese Twitter users seemed particularly incensed by the ad, with one user condemning Apple with, “You destroyed all the creative tools and effort of humans. Worst. Commercial. Ever.” Another explained, “We Japanese have a way of life that values people, things and works of art. In Japan, one of the meaningful markets for your company, I believe that many sensitive people were hurt by this advertising expression.”


It wasn’t only social media users who were upset by the ad either. An article in The Hollywood Reporter described the ad as dystopian and asked if it signaled that 2024 would be like 1984. In fact, it’s hard to find anyone with anything positive to say about the ad, and that includes the verified accounts found in the replies to every popular tweet who usually only have inane platitudes and A.I.-generated nonsense to offer.


It’s likely Tim Cook won’t have to worry about the negative response for much longer, however. Several outlets, including Bloomberg and 9to5Mac, published articles soon after the ad went live speculating on who might succeed Cook as CEO, with Bloomberg’s headline inadvertently (or deliberately) capturing popular sentiment perfectly with its headline: “Tim Cook Can’t Run Apple Forever. Who’s Next?”