Apple’s new TV spot about a roving girl and her iPad is one of my favorite Apple ads of all time — and I do not say this lightly since the company’s advertising has always been top-notch.
Initially, I couldn’t quite nail down why this spot so resonated with me, and then it hit me. That girl is me — and not just because she’s wearing nerd spectacles like mine, or rides her bicycle everywhere as I do with my bicycle.
Let me back up. I have long been enthused about the iPad as tool for productivity — that is, as a computer for actively creating content and not just passively consuming it.
Not everyone agreed with me, understandably, since the aggressively minimalist tablet at first suffered from grave shortcomings compared to standard laptops — but over time it improved.
The iPad Pro, a productivity-focused tablet with a companion Apple keyboard cover, has been a quantum leap in this regard. That’s the version of the iPad the girl in the spot is using.
In a recent TidBITS article, I dissected why the iPad Pro and the new iOS 11 are a powerful combination for productivity. This was an update of sorts to a 2015 TidBits article on the iPad Pro and productivity.
Now, take another look at that ad, and add ten years to the protagonist’s age. If you know me, you can probably guess where I’m going with this: She is essentially functioning as a journalist, like me.
She writes, takes photos, creates magazine-style layouts, draws with the iPad Pro’s companion Pencil stylus and more — all on go with her Internet-connected device.
I have long argued that the iPad is the ideal mobile computer for a reporter in the field because it’s a word-processing console, a still and video camera, a portable picture- and footage-editing station, an online-messaging platform, an Internet-browsing terminal, and a paper-style surface for handwriting, sketching or diagramming — all in a compact, powerful, durable, simple-to-use package that optionally includes cellular-data service for access to the interwebz anywhere.
I’ve sometimes had difficulty persuading fellow journalists about this … but maybe I just need to show them this video.
The girl in the Apple spot did teach me one thing — That slap-to-collapse move is dope.
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