How many light bulbs were harmed in the making of Apple’s latest TV ad? A lot, by the looks of it.
It’s for the latest MacBook Pro, the one with the Touch Bar, a feature the company hopes will be enough to convince consumers that the hefty price tag for the revamped machine is worth every cent.
As for the ad, it’s an unusual one for Apple in that for the first 90 seconds of the 97-second sequence, the audience has no idea what it’s for. Or who it’s by.
Unlike many of its other TV ads, there’s no minimalist setting, no narration, and, importantly, no Apple product. Instead we see an endless line of light bulbs exploding to Rossini’s rollicking William Tell Overture.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong with unveiling the product at the very last moment when everyone has almost given up wondering what it is, after all, Apple did the very same thing when it kept everyone waiting years before finally revealing the latest Pro to the world in October
The new MacBook Pro ad is essentially a roller coaster ride through mankind’s greatest discoveries and inventions – steam power, flight, robotics, you get the idea. They even managed to squeeze a toilet roll in there. Oh, and there are loads of exploding light bulbs throughout, presumably symbolic of all the ideas that have helped shape our world through the ages.
In the ad’s climactic moments we indeed learn that “ideas push the world forward.” We also discover that the new MacBook Pro – the one with the Touch Bar, not the cheaper one without – is the tool “for all the ideas to come.”
The ad ends with a light bulb. Exploding.
