Blain’s Morning Porridge, 9^th May 2024 – Apple’s Ratners Moment? They Crushed It!

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine an (AI) boot stamping on a human face – forever.”

Lots of unhappy creatives this morning as Apple threatens to replace them all with iPads – after crushing their creative souls completely. Is it Apple’s Ratners Moment, or another sign of a mature company that’s lost touch with its community, and is badly in need of reinvigoration?

Shock! Horror! Has Apple just committed its Ratners Moment? A Ratners Moment describes a momentary mistake when something foolish utterly unravels the whole basis of a company’s success.

Ratners was a highly successful UK jewellery store chain on every high-street and shopping centre in the land. It broke the mould of the rather staid jewellery business by piling stuff high and selling it cheap, shifting lots and lots of inexpensive gold bangles, chains and ear-rings. In the Blingy Eighties everyone wore their products. During an ill-advised speech to the UK’s Institute of Directors in 1991, CEO Gerald Ratner, a man who loved self-publicity, said: “How can I sell this for such a low price? Because it’s total crap.” He went on to say the firm’s earrings were “cheaper than a prawn sandwich from M&S, but I have to say the sandwich will probably last longer than the earrings.”

Ratner thought he was being funny to an audience of his business peers. When it exploded across the media, he found he’d dramatically misjudged and underestimated the mood of the public. He ended up on TV talk shows trying to say he hadn’t been serious and compounding his mistake by trying to blame the media for deliberately fuelling the customer reaction. The company nosedived and had to completely change its brand, leaving empty ships. Ratner was forced out his own family firm.

The lesson was clear. Don’t misjudge your clients… and if you are going to make a joke, make sure your customers are in on it..

Which brings us to Crush.

It’s a new ad released by Apple yesterday to celebrate the re-launch of the struggling I-Pad. Here is the link to the most powerful and thinnest I-Pad ad – CRUSH. I am old enough to remember Big Brother, Apple’s iconic 1984 Ad that set it on the path to consumer computing dominance. (My PC then was an Atari 400! My first proper PC was a cheap Amstrad!)

Crush is brutal. Its sadistic – crushing an Anime character that’s taken refuge in a micro-wave oven. It’s messy. Personally, I think crushing cartoon characters and smiley face emoji balls is going to upset some kids… but to my mind destroying what looks to be a decent Martin guitar is probably a capital offence…

Otherwise, it’s just an ad. A rather well produced one. Someone has already posted the ad in reverse on Twitter “Hey Apple, I fixed it”. Brilliant, in a world where any publicity is good publicity then.. Apple have nailed it.

Yet this morning the internet has exploded in righteous fury at Apple’s depiction of crushing creativity – Big Brother’s Foot Crushing the Face of Humanity. It’s a neat reversal on the original successful ad that launched Apple.

Rather cleverly the New York Times says it’s left its creative audience “feeling flat”. It went on to describe the fears of the creative classes that generative AI will write the poetry, compose songs, and create movies, leaving them unemployed. Gosh, how shocking.. what we will do with millions of creatives, influencers and wanta-be’s.. they can join the rest of us in the AI queue at the job centre.. Life.. is tough.

This morning the Creative-Tech media/community is horrified – here’s a random selection of upset millennial/GenXYZ comments:

• “A tower of creative tools and analog items literally crushed into the form of an iPad”
• “People see this as betrayal of its commitment to human creative expression, and a tone deafness to the pressures artists feel at this time.”
• “The destruction of the human experience courtesy of Silicon Valley”, said English actor Hugh Grant (?)
• “I had a negative and visceral reaction to this – we should talk about why.”
• “The problem isn’t the ad, but the message – an iPad replaces the real and tangible.”
• “It is the most honest metaphor for what tech companies do to the arts, to artists musicians, creators, writers, filmmakers: squeeze them, use them, not pay well, take everything then say it’s all created by them.”
• “All of human creation compressed into one impossibly sleek tablet.” But the end result feels more like: “All of human creation sacrificed for a lifeless gadget.”

You get the drift…..

Sometimes in our dreams, the darkest truths are revealed. Maybe that an admission of what Apple’s real goal is – to replace everthing in our world with their Bright Shiny White thing that can do it all… Brilliant; that’s Apple AI strategy then.. we were all wondering…

Dang. I never knew….

Nope… the reality is I’m writing this on an iMac, I have a Mac-book Air upstairs, I will shortly get a call on my iPhone, and my iWatch links to everything tech in my world. I buy Apple because I am an addict, but also because I kind of understand how it works. I am a “Boomer” and old-dogs can’t figure out new tech. Give me Apple because its comfy and I can use it. I find my office-issued laptop ugly, difficult to use and …. “unsuitable”. Is Apple now an old-people brand? Will I find it advertised in Saga (over 50s) Magazine?

Does that mean I am anti-creativity? My house is full of guitars, sailing trophies (sadly from years back), stuff we’ve collected, photos, knicknacks and gear that makes it messy – like my painting kit! (I am a terrible painter – but I keep trying…. Van Gough never sold a painting… I have!)

Do I care about iPads. Heck, no! I use mine to read bad sci-fi and business books, and the papers in bed… It’s just an expensive Kindle..

If you really believe Apple is trying to destroy creativity… then sell the stock. If you don’t then get back to the job of judging what is really going to end the firm’s dominance. Is it commercial senility as they fail to innovate new ideas? Bad succession planning (Bloomberg used lots of pixels to comment about a successor to CEO Tim Cook last night? Or will it be something else…

Maybe the real issue for Apple is it’s mature. How much of a threat is there? Tech is now just a commodity. What if demand for expensive Apple tosh collapses when 90% of the World’s population realises they can’t afford Apple stuff when other firms (including the Chinese) make stuff that is just as good and much, much cheaper.

Back to real stuff like bond markets, central banks, economics and markets tomorrow.. but this morning… Apple just seemed the right thing to rant about this morning!

Out of time, and off to the day job…

Bill Blain

Author of The Morning Porridge

Wind Shift Capital

www.windshift.capital