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I was paying $229 for Screen Studio. Then I found this repo and uninstalled it the same night. Recordly is a free, MIT licensed screen recorder and editor that ships every feature I was paying for auto-zoom animations, cursor smoothing, motion blur, native macOS capture, and a full timeline... show more
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![STOP PAYING FOR MOTION DESIGN SOFTWARE opus 5.5 one shot every frame of this in code, no after effects im open sourcing the whole template for free plug in your product and it recreates this steal the prompt ↓ Ask me for: the one question a user asks my product and its one-line answer, two album covers, a royalty-free song around 110 BPM with a quiet intro and a hard drop (Mixkit, free for commercial use), and my logo for the ending. If I skip any, use the defaults: "is this all code?" / "yes. every frame.", two atmospheric photos, Mixkit "Head Bang". A 22 second square loop, 1440x1440 at 60fps, 2D only, one continuous take. Nothing ever cuts: every scene grows out of the last, and every gesture physically carries the camera into the next world. Every morph glides for 0.8s on cubic-bezier(.45,0,.15,1) and the camera zoom rides the same curve, so shapes change so smoothly you barely notice. Content dissolves in the back half of each glide. One gesture per scene. Look: a warm light stage (#f3f3f0 to #e3e3de), black UI, the app world dark (#121212) tinted from the current album cover, one green accent (#1ed760). Geist for UI, the real macOS pointer, soft layered shadows that grow with the shape's height. Banned: hard cuts, bouncy springs, particles, glows, zooming in and straight back out, holds longer than 1s, anything that looks like a template. Beats are the song's, and the press lands on its drop. Generate: the cursor clicks, the pill glides into a spinner, then a check. Chat: the check splits into three typing dots (goo). The left dot flies up into the question bubble and types it, the right one flies down into the reply. Both contract back into dots while gliding in and pour into the middle one. Play: the middle dot bends into a play triangle, point by point. The cursor presses it on the drop: a white button pops in under the click and the dark app floods out around it, so the leftover white becomes the play button. The camera pulls back to reveal the full now-playing screen: big cover, title, heart (liked, fills green), progress, controls, volume. Swipe: the cursor drags the cover sideways, the next track slides in, and the whole app retints from the new cover. Drag: the camera glides to the volume. The cursor drags it to max and keeps pulling: the bar rubber-bands and drags the camera sideways out of the app, tracking the knob across a dark dotted canvas. Chart: the line lands and bends up into a green chart while the number counts up. The volume knob becomes its last point. Dive: the cursor clicks that point and the camera dives into it until the light stage fills the frame. Ending: an "Ask [my product]" button grows out of the light, thins into a line, and the line fans out into my logo (default: the Claude spark, six copies rotating into twelve rays in Claude orange). It folds back into the line, which thickens into Generate. Last frame = first frame. 1. One HTML canvas. Everything is a pure function of time inside seek(t): no timers, no state between frames. 2. A camera with position and log-space zoom. Scenes live side by side in one world, so a pan really travels. 3. Goo: blur + alpha threshold on an offscreen layer for the split and the merges. 4. Floods are circles that grow from whatever caused them to the farthest corner in about 0.4s, and the colour switch happens underneath them. 5. Sound: before the press the song plays through a low-pass filter, like it's in the next room, and opens up to full on the drop. A downloaded Mixkit SFX for every event, each placed by its measured peak. Loudnorm to -14 LUFS. 6. Render with Playwright at 60fps with 4 motion-blur subframes, 12 on the fast pan. Then scan every frame for single-frame jumps and fix each one. A handoff between two drawings only works once the first one has fully landed, or it pops. The cursor must stay on whatever it drags, even while it stretches. A counter or tooltip that changes every frame smears under motion blur, so swap whole values. Ask me for the inputs, then show me the beat map and 6 stills (chat, play, app, drag, chart, logo) before you render.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2104674464868762046/amplify_video_thumb/2104672991703433216/img/bH3z6pQ-9dOuDQ-E.jpg)
![opus 5.5 is f*cking insane at motion design every frame is code with 0 external tools im open sourcing the template for all these morph transitions steal it ↓ Ask me for: my product's name (one lowercase word, it becomes a black wordmark with a period), the one job a user hands it before bed, the three results it reports by morning, two photos of the same place at night and by day (aligned, so a crossfade reads as a real sunrise), one sunny daytime photo for outside the logo, and a song with a big hit near its start. If I skip any, use the defaults: "nightshift", "book 10 sales calls this week", 200 leads found / 200 emails sent / 10 calls booked. A 24 second square product launch video, 1440x1440 at 60fps, 2D only, one continuous take that loops. The whole video happens inside the period of the wordmark. Outside it's daytime (the sunny photo behind a black wordmark). Inside it's the night photo under iOS-style glass panels (the blurred photo behind each panel, a tint, a rim light). Nothing cuts: every scene grows out of the last, shapes morph, dots fly, colours change under floods. Every morph glides 0.8s on cubic-bezier(.45,0,.15,1) and the camera zoom rides the same curve. Geist, the real macOS pointer, soft shadows that grow with each shape's height. Banned: flat or gradient backgrounds made in code, camera zooms into tiny points, hard cuts, crossfades between scenes, bouncy springs, particles, glows, holds longer than 1s, cropped type. Beats are the song's. The song enters on its big hit as the first pill appears. Open: the letters slide into the period and vanish into it while it glides to the middle. The period opens like an iris onto the night inside it, and "you log off at 6", then "[product] doesn't", roll through one mask line over the night photo. Ask: a glass "Ask [product]" pill springs in. The cursor clicks it, it glides into an input and the job types out. Find: send shrinks the input to a dot that ripples into a 23x15 grid. A scan line sweeps it, 200 dots light up and a counter counts them. Write: the lit dots pour into a glass email composer. A second, purple cursor labelled "[product]" types a personal opener and presses Send, and the counter runs to 200/200. Night: the composer becomes a glass orb with a progress ring. A clock chip swaps 11:42 PM, 3:17 AM, 5:02 AM, 6:59 AM while the sky relights from night to dawn and "while you sleep" rolls in. Results (beat 20): the orb turns black and goo-splits into the three result pills. The checks pop green. Morning: the pills merge into a Dynamic Island that grows into a phone lock screen: the day photo, the date, a big 7:00, the bezel growing out of the screen edge. Three glass notifications stack in, and the cursor taps the first, which opens like iOS. Proof: a week calendar (10 meetings pop in, a hover shows one's time), then a pipeline chart ($48,200 counts up, the line draws, a hover follows it). A black flood from the line's end becomes "Start your night shift →" and the cursor clicks it. Out: the button shrinks into a dot, the whole scene closes down into it like an iris, and the letters slide back out of the period. The tagline rises. Last frame = first frame. 1. One HTML canvas. Everything is a pure function of time inside seek(t): no timers, no state between frames. 2. One element morphs through every state (size, radius, colour, material) from a table of beat times, so retiming is one edit. 3. Render the inside world into an offscreen canvas and reveal it through the period with a circular mask. Never zoom the camera into the dot. 4. Glass: a pre-blurred copy of the photo clipped to the shape, then a tint and a gradient rim. 5. Goo: blur + alpha threshold on an offscreen layer for the split and the merge. 6. Sound: a downloaded SFX for every event, each placed by its measured peak. The song enters on its hit. Loudnorm to -14 LUFS. 7. Render with Playwright at 60fps with 4 motion-blur subframes. Scan every frame for single-frame jumps and fix each one. A camera zoom into an off-centre dot swings sideways and spikes, so open the dot instead. Ease a closing iris by area, not radius, or its first frames jump. A helper that sets globalAlpha must restore the caller's, or fading cards pop. Counters read the frame's time, not the subframe's, or the digits smear. Ask me for the inputs, then show me the beat map and 6 stills (open, find, write, results, phone, out) before you render.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2105927781678747965/amplify_video_thumb/2105927334729502720/img/yZZvvWv1sOfR0LdS.jpg)
![this is the only prompt you need to make high-end motion videos with claude opus 5.5 ------------------------------ you design and build motion videos entirely in code, with gsap for the animation and three.js for any 3d. every decision is judged against the best work in the references, and the video isn't finished until it holds up next to them. - what the video is for: [product, service or business] - who's watching: [who the viewer is and what they care about] - what they should do at the end: [call to action] - length and sizes: [e.g. 30 seconds, 16:9 and 9:16] - brand: [name, logo files, colours, fonts] - facts file: [path]. this is the only source for any number, name or claim that appears on screen - assets: [footage, photos, screenshots, product files] - style references: [links or a folder of videos whose motion i like] i'm away and won't answer questions. make the calls yourself and keep going until the video passes every check below. before anything else, clone and read read SKILL.md first, then every reference file it points to at the step where it says to read it. its rules, critic prompts, quality bar, 3d patterns, audio tools and scripts override your defaults. - build every scene as an html page animated on a single gsap timeline, with three.js for any 3d, all as pinned local files - render the timeline to video frame by frame using the renderer in the kit - use ffmpeg for frames, contact sheets and audio measurement - keep every api key in environment variables. never write a key into any file - render a 5 second test first and confirm it works before building the real video if i gave you references, study them before planning anything. - run a fast numeric pass over every frame: how much changed from the last frame, brightness and edge detail, to find every cut and every fast moment - make one overview contact sheet per video, and a dense sheet of one second at 16 to 20 frames a second around every transition - write a note per video: the key moment, how it works, and how it could be used in this video - pull out the motion rules and named techniques that hold across the best ones - references are for study only. never copy their footage, logos, layouts or music if i gave you no references, use the motion notes in the kit. 1. the thing in the front of the shot becomes the transition. a title, logo or object moves towards the camera while the next scene is already waiting underneath 2. one object carries the story across shots and keeps its identity, so it reads as one continuous piece 3. one main movement leads, with smaller ones layered under it, all overlapping. the frame never stops and starts all at once 4. the speed always changes. things land slowly enough to read, leave fast, and the next thing slows as it arrives. no linear motion 5. cuts are allowed only when size, direction and subject match on both sides 6. every action produces a visible result. a scan makes findings, a tap makes a new state, a request makes a confirmation 7. type is motion too. big words enter from opposite sides, reveal the next scene, and never sit over busy picture without something behind them to stay readable 8. vary the scale from close, to wide, to overhead, to full-frame type. never repeat the same layout, like a heading over three cards write a brief and a storyboard before any animation. - one table: time, what's on screen, what this moment is for, how it leaves, and which object carries into the next shot - around 12 to 15 compositions per 30 seconds, each lasting about 1.4 to 3.5 seconds - the main subject fills most of the frame. no small cards floating in empty space - frame one is a finished picture, never a word halfway through flying in - name three signature moments you can describe without using effect names - the video must make sense with the sound off - send the storyboard to a fresh critic and fix what it finds before building - every animated value is a function of timeline time only. no timers, no real-time animation, no unseeded randomness. any frame must render the same every time - write the shared pieces first: colours, fonts, shared 3d models and the exact pixel position of every handoff between scenes - build each scene as its own component with its own test page, rendered to stills and a short clip, and send it to a critic before it joins the film - carried objects land on exactly the same pixels on both sides of a cut - run several builders in parallel on separate sections once the shared pieces exist - don't stop to ask for approval between steps - only use 3d where it explains something physical or spatial, like layers, parts, placement or scale - light it like a product shoot, with a soft key light from one side and a rim light behind - keep the camera between about 35 and 55 degrees. never look straight down on a large surface, and never end tight on a flat one - style buildings like a premium architectural model with real materials and a base - no floating parts, no gaps where parts meet, no flat black glass, no repeating textures - labels are html positioned from the 3d scene every frame, never text inside the 3d - measure the rendered background pixel and adjust until it matches the brand colour - anything that moves like a real product is measured from real footage frame by frame, and those measurements are the curve - prefer building shots in code. use generated images or clips only for supporting shots, and label anything generated as a concept - upscale and smooth any generated clip to match the rest, and regenerate anything that warps - never generate a fake finished job, fake customer, fake review or fake result - match the music's energy to the picture and the viewer, and keep it low - prefer clean library music and sound effects over generated ones. never name a brand in a music prompt - one short, soft whoosh per real scene change, and small clicks or pops only on real on-screen actions - screen effects for boom, hiss and length before using them, and set each one just above the music in its own frequency range, with a cap so nothing gets harsh - cut every scene change on a beat - always export a music-only version the builder never judges its own work. - after the storyboard, each component and each full render, send the render, the brief and the references to a fresh critic that has seen none of the building - never tell a critic what you think you fixed or what you believe about the references. it pulls its own frames and measures for itself - the critic makes a contact sheet every 0.2 seconds plus dense frames around every transition, measures frozen time and loudness, and returns a ranked list of problems with timestamps, ending with ship or one more pass - fix the biggest problem first, render, then send to a new critic that checks every previous item as fixed, partly fixed or still there, and hunts for anything new that broke - keep a ledger of every round: what was found, what changed, and the numbers before and after the video isn't done until all of these pass, measured: - no more than about 1 second of frozen screen per 30 seconds, and no still stretch longer than about half a second - frame one is a finished composition - all text meets at least 4.5:1 contrast, and nothing collides with or flies through other text - brand colours in 3d renders match the brand values - loudness is steady and comfortable for web, with no clipping, and effects never louder than the music - a first-time viewer understands it with the sound off - a critic would put it next to the references without it looking weaker. a video with no bugs is not the same as a good video - only put numbers, names and claims on screen that are in the facts file - no invented testimonials, ratings, prices, savings, warranties or results - anything conceptual or generated is labelled as such - in your reports, separate what you measured from what still needs a human to watch or listen - the final mp4 in every size requested, at 1080p and 60 frames a second - a music-only version - a contact sheet of the final video - the critic ledger and the final quality bar results - a short note on anything a human should still check](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2104965415164399895/amplify_video_thumb/2104965023546449920/img/XwTBwlP6Jcwu0eVm.jpg)
![People have been asking how I'm generating my product videos. Here's a prompt my agent wrote so you can copy its process: # Prompt: make product videos with code and AI agents Copy everything below the line into a coding agent (Claude Code, Codex, etc.). Fill in the `{{…}}` placeholders first. It describes how Inbox Zero produced its landing-page hero, launch films and about 15 docs and app walkthroughs, each costing well under $1 in API calls. --- You are producing product videos for **{{PRODUCT}}** ({{ONE-LINE DESCRIPTION}}). The videos are a landing-page hero (~55s), short launch films (25–40s) and feature walkthroughs (45–110s) for the app and docs. They are made entirely with code: there's no screen recording and no video editor. Quality matters far more than cost. The product's source code is at `{{APP_REPO_PATH}}` and its docs are at `{{DOCS_PATH}}`. The founder or reviewer is {{REVIEWER}}. They give taste feedback, and you turn that feedback into written rules. ## 1. Core idea Every video is an **HTML/CSS/JS page whose every frame is a pure function of time `t`**. Headless Chrome screenshots each frame, and ffmpeg encodes them. This gives you: - Exact, repeatable renders: a copy change means a cheap re-render, not a re-edit. - Parallel rendering, because nothing carries over from one frame to the next. - Real product UI, because the "footage" is real DOM captured from the running app. Don't use Remotion or any other video framework; a ~200-line engine is enough. Don't screen-record: recordings can't be re-timed, re-worded or kept pixel-perfect. ## 2. Set up a private video repo Create a **private** repo (e.g. `{{ORG}}/demo-video`) separate from the product repo. Its layout: ``` AGENTS.md # read-first notes for every agent: pipeline, taste rules, mistakes made README.md # catalog: every video, its branch, length, status, where it's used BRIEF.md # product truths, fictional cast, kit API, end-card and taste rules EXPLAINER.md # brief for the walkthrough format LAUNCH.md # brief for launch films MUX.md # hosting IDs for every published video engine.js # renderAt(t), addScene, spring/easing helpers, word-by-word captions render.mjs # parallel Playwright frame renderer → ffmpeg # voice + music mix with ducking and loudness normalisation judge.mjs # audio judge (picks the best TTS take) vjudge.mjs # video judge (reviews a whole render) # contact sheet from sampled frames kit/app/ # REAL app screens captured as DOM snapshots (see §3) kit/explainer.js # overlays: step captions, callouts, highlights, camera, cursor, typing, toasts, # and mocks of third-party UIs (Gmail, Outlook, Slack, …) kit/endcard.js # shared end card music/ # shared music bed(s) tools/ # upload scripts (hosting), helpers ``` **One branch and one git worktree per video** (`git worktree add -b explainer-foo ../demo-explainer-foo main`). `main` holds only shared things: the kit, the briefs and the tools. Merge `main` into a video branch to pick up kit fixes. Put kit fixes found while making a video in a separate commit so they can be cherry-picked to `main`. Commit each video's web encode, poster, `.vtt` captions and a `VARIANT.md`. That file holds the script, the timings, chapter markers, the claim checks, and any docs-vs-UI discrepancies found. Git-ignore masters and intermediate files. Keep `AGENTS.md` alive. Every time the reviewer gives feedback, or an agent makes a mistake, add a one-line rule there. This file is what makes the tenth video good on the first try. ## 3. Capture the real UI kit 1. Run the app locally with a **seeded database of fictional data**: one consistent cast (a main user plus 4–5 contacts and a fictional company), and realistic but fake emails, events and numbers. Use local emulators for third-party APIs where possible. 2. Write a capture script (Playwright) that visits each screen and state the videos need. It saves the **rendered DOM plus inlined CSS** as a standalone HTML snapshot, plus a PNG for reference. Inbox Zero ended up with ~140 states. 3. Missing states can be **derived** from the nearest snapshot by editing the DOM to match the real component's source (text, classes), never invented. 4. **Audit every snapshot for leaks** before committing: real names, emails, avatars, API keys, and the capture machine's **timezone and locale**. A real city name once leaked through a timezone picker. 5. Document the states, selectors and how to recapture in `kit/app/README.md`. ## 4. Write the script (accuracy first) - Read the docs page and **the app source** for the feature. Every label, button and step on screen must match the product. Where the docs and the UI disagree, the UI wins; log the discrepancy in `VARIANT.md` and fix the docs afterwards. (This produced a steady stream of real docs fixes and bug reports.) - Check claims in code, not just in the docs. For example, does feature X actually use data Y? - Keep a list of **product truths** in `BRIEF.md`: supported platforms ("always say Gmail *and* Outlook"), trial terms, and what is early-access. - A walkthrough has a 1–2s product payoff up front, then numbered steps (one caption each), one result shot, and a minimal end card. - **Intro messaging** (hero and launch) must say what the product *is* in the first line. Write several candidate openers and let the reviewer pick. ## 5. Build the timeline - `engine.js`: scenes are DOM subtrees shown and hidden with `display:none` (not `visibility`, because visible children leak through a hidden parent). All motion is computed from `t` with springs and easing. - **Render purity is mandatory**: no ` no randomness without a seed, no state carried between frames. Workers start mid-timeline. - Camera moves are CSS transforms on the snapshot, and so are cursor paths, typing and highlights. - Preview live with `npx serve .`, using `?t=17` to start at 17s. ### Taste rules (start with these; add your reviewer's) - **Openers:** light and product-native. No dark gradients, glossy fake app icons with red badges, or captions over blurred clutter. Reach the product payoff within ~2s. - **No recaps:** never repeat earlier points in words or as a montage at the end. - **End cards:** neat and centred, with a logo lockup, one line and a quiet URL. Landing cuts can carry one CTA (e.g. "Try free for 7 days") plus small platform marks. Never "·"-joined copy, and never a button stuffed with text. - **Legibility:** body text ≥ 20px at 1080p, no wide shot of unreadable UI for more than ~1s, no words sliced at frame edges, and captions fully settled ≥ 0.4s before the click they describe. - **Transitions:** no long crossfades between two busy UIs (the double exposure looks muddy). Use a cut, a camera push or a short blur-through. ## 6. Audio - **Voiceover:** a strong TTS model with style instructions (Inbox Zero used Gemini Flash TTS through OpenRouter). Pick one voice per format. Generate **2–3 takes per line** and pick the best with an audio-capable model (`judge.mjs`): it scores pacing, mispronunciations, odd stresses and clipped endings. - **Music:** generate one shared bed per format (Inbox Zero used Lyria). Models ignore the requested length, so detect the beat grid (librosa) and cut or loop at phrase boundaries. - **Mix (` duck the music under the voice with a sidechain, then do two loudnorm passes to −14 LUFS and −1.2 dBTP. - Agents can't listen. Flag music endings and loop points for a human ear-check. ## 7. Render - `render.mjs` splits frames across N Playwright workers. Each one loads the page, sets `t` and screenshots. ffmpeg then encodes a high-quality master (CRF ~12) and a web copy (CRF ~20). - Add a screenshot timeout and retry (e.g. 120s, 5 tries); long renders hit flaky frames. - Support env vars to render a sub-range or a single segment, so fixes don't need a full render. - **On a shared machine:** cap workers (e.g. 3 per agent) and only stop your own processes by PID. Never `pkill -f render.mjs`: it kills other agents' jobs. ## 8. Review before showing anyone - Sample frames into 2×2 contact sheets and **look at them yourself**, zooming in on captions, edges and data. This is the main review. - Use a video-capable model (`vjudge.mjs`, Gemini Flash) for whole-video checks like timing and caption order, but **treat its output as hints**. Video and audio judges hallucinate problems, so verify every claim against frames. - Check: claims match the code, the fictional cast only, no leaks, the legibility rules, the end card. - Show the reviewer the finished mp4s (open the folder for them) along with the `VARIANT.md` discrepancy list. ## 9. Work in parallel with subagents - Once the kit and briefs exist, give **one subagent per video**. Each gets its own worktree and branch, the brief, the relevant docs page, and the instruction to read `AGENTS.md` first. - Each subagent writes the script, builds, renders, reviews and reports back with the mp4 path and the discrepancies found. - The coordinator merges kit fixes into `main`, uploads, and integrates the videos into the app and docs. ## 10. Publish - **Hosting:** use Mux (or similar) rather than YouTube embeds. You get a clean player, no recommendations and auto-subtitles. The upload script sets a public playback policy and generated English captions, and records each ID in `MUX.md`. Pass API tokens via env vars and never commit them. - **In the app:** a feature-page video button or dismissible card. **Lazy-load the player** (`next/dynamic`, `ssr:false`) so it only loads when the dialog opens and adds nothing to the page bundle. - **Docs:** a lazy ` ` at 16:9. - **Landing hero:** track `video clicked / started / progress / completed / closed` with a `video_id`. Don't A/B test the hero video: only the ~10% who click can be affected, so overall-sign-up tests are underpowered. Ship the better cut and compare cuts on watch-through and viewer → sign-up by `video_id`. - **YouTube:** the API locks uploads from unaudited projects to private, so upload in Studio and schedule one video every ~2 days. If an agent automates Studio, set text with `execCommand('insertText')`, type dates with real keystrokes, and **read every value back before clicking Schedule**. - If the product repo is public, keep commit and PR text free of private details. If it mounts private submodules, grep them before removing any shared component. ## 11. Mistakes we already made (don't repeat them) - Invented UI in v1, where the reviewer's first note was "show real UI". → Real DOM snapshots only. - Claims the product doesn't make (e.g. "important emails move to the top" when they're actually labelled). → Check in code. - Taglines the company doesn't use. → Offer options and let the reviewer pick, then record the pick. - A real timezone leaked in a snapshot and was committed to history. → Audit before committing. - Agents killed each other's renders with `pkill`. → Stop processes only by your own PID. - A judge model "found" skips and glitches that weren't there. → Verify against frames. - Removing a shared component broke production through a private submodule. → Grep it first. - A free hosting plan capped the asset count, and the upload script swallowed the error. → Scripts must surface API errors. ## Deliverables per video - [ ] `out/ -web.mp4`, poster, `.vtt`, and chapter markers - [ ] `VARIANT.md`: script, timings, claim checks, docs/UI discrepancies - [ ] An entry in the `README.md` catalog, and its hosting ID in `MUX.md` - [ ] Any new rules learned are added to `AGENTS.md`](https://image.24vids.com/tw-2107186094777434454/amplify_video_thumb/2107185816497745921/img/ZD4555c93-wevX5L.jpg)
![Apple’s iPad “Crush” Ad Is Bleak, Ominous and Threatening I don’t know if you’ve seen Apple’s just-released commercial for the “New” iPad Pro, but it’s pretty awful. It is dark, humorless, and feels like a not-so-thinly veiled threat to writers, musicians, game makers, developers, and artists of all kinds. …and children, even. I’ve watched it at least five times today alone, and I’m left with one big question. “Who on earth approved this?” It’s absolutely baffling that the world’s largest technology company, with the world’s biggest marketing budget, thought this would be a good idea. What kind of idiot—or idiots, since dozens or hundreds of people had to be involved in the writing, staging, producing, recording, and editing—felt this kind of ad would somehow create a positive emotional connection with consumers? Seriously, it’s terrifying. In a dank, cold warehouse, devoid of all life and humanity, an industrial crusher comes to life, and slowly starts destroying a collection of musical, philosophical, and artistic devices and instruments. For no apparent reason, everything starts getting smashed: first, a trumpet, then an arcade video game, then cans of paint, a piano, a globe, a metronome, a guitar… on and on it goes, obliterating everything in sight into a colorful, gooey, explosive mess. Books, camera lenses, lamps, a guitar, a sculpture, and a typewriter—all tools of the liberal arts—get mangled into a garbage heap as Sonny & Cher cheerfully sing, “All I ever need is you.” In the penultimate moment, a goofy yellow smiley emoji becomes a bug-eyed scary-clown freak as it, too, is crushed to death. Worse, if you enable closed captions like I do by default, the video says: “[POPPING] [SPLAT]” right as its eyeballs pop out of its head when Cher sings, “Give me a reason to build my world around you.” It’s enough to make a child cry. It has all the comforting vibes of the burnt pink teddy bear floating in the swimming pool on Breaking Bad after two planes crash in mid-air. I have so many questions (aside from simply wondering the names of the soon-to-be ex-employees who greenlit this abomination). First of all, as a trumpet player myself, I am personally offended that they made me watch a perfectly good trumpet get smashed to smithereens like it’s no big deal. Why would they torture me like this? Second of all, what is the message here? No, not that “the most powerful iPad ever is also the thinnest,” as the voiceover artist states in the last few seconds of the clip. I mean: what is the message? Ostensibly, pulverizing children’s toys, arcade games, architectural models, and ceramic Angry Birds into a paste implies something like “We’re taking all the best of humanity; all the collective works of Western Civilization, smashing it into pieces and putting it inside this remarkably thin device so you can have all of it in the palm of your hand.” But my oh my, is there an elephant in this room… he’s hiding behind the monstrous destroying machine. Did anyone inside Apple realize that everyone outside Apple will recognize this imagery in a metaphorical sense, but not the one Apple intended? We don’t see a crushing machine gently consolidating the greatest output of all our artistic endeavors, simply reformatted for a digital age and consumed by everyone with instant, fingertip access. We see what is painstakingly obvious to us, and the timing couldn’t possibly be worse. We see a giant, soulless machine consuming our work in a very different way. Right now, AI models are training themselves on our intellectual property and even our very own personally-identifying data. We aren’t the ones doing the consuming. We’re the ones being consumed. The tech industry has become one massive gaping maw, opening wide and swallowing everything in sight, chewing it up into little bits and pieces of comminuted waste, like a paper shredder or a garbage disposal. It’s destruction in its most literal form. And for what? For a newer version of the iPad that is only slightly thinner than its predecessor? For an only marginally improved version of Apple’s tablet device that has been around for 14 years? For increased profits? This is a terrible look for Apple. They may as well be saying: “All your work are belong to us.” Personally, I am a fan of artificial intelligence. I am eagerly embracing our robot overlords and I welcome our new CSV god (as the actual developers of AI models like to say). I look forward to the freedom and innovation that will come as a result of humanity augmenting our intelligence with AI like a force multiplier on a battlefield. But if Apple has the same perspective I do, they’re selling it in the worst possible way. When I see this video, I see that Apple is definitely crushing something… but I’m not sure what. -Crushing small companies that develop apps for the extremely heavy-handed App Store, which imposes byzantine restrictions on what they can and can’t do with their own apps? -Crushing competitors by limiting what they can do on the iOS and MacOS platforms with arbitrary and capricious rules about enabling functionalities that Apple doesn’t like, even if users do? -Crushing publishers and content creators with a punitive 30% fee on all subscriptions and in-app purchases? -Crushing choice and competition by not allowing app makers to make apps and programs that do the same thing that native apps already do, even if they do it better? -Crushing all human creativity and innovation by automating and systematizing everything? In the early days of the “Google vs. Apple” fight over the web and app stores, I was really concerned that Google was becoming way, way too powerful. Specifically, in 2015, when Google came up with “app streaming,” they announced a desire to form a “web of apps.” This was concerning. Especially when coupled with Google’s efforts to steal content from other websites and provide it to users via the “knowledge graph” results, ending up with the creation of “zero-click” search results pages, which absolutely punished website owners and content creators. By taking the most valuable content off a website and showing it to Google users without them needing to click through to the website itself, Google had essentially stolen everybody’s intellectual property with only the most minimal attribution possible (to fend off lawsuits no doubt, but with no intention of users actually visiting the website in question anymore). “Google is eating the internet,” I thought, and said out loud, (although I probably wasn’t the first person to use that phrase) But what I meant was purely an analogy. It was vague and ambiguous, almost silly. Maybe I was wrong, though: maybe it’s Apple that’s doing the eating. Maybe Apple is not only gobbling up everyone else’s work, but also homogenizing it—and us—and forcing us to use their platform, pay their fees, abide by their rules, and constantly keep upgrading, upgrading, upgrading, to an ever-thinner iPad in order to use it. Watch the video again. This is the stuff of nightmares. To be perfectly fair, even if I were to take the commercial at face value and ignore it’s off-the-charts creepiness and just stick to its one stated claim—that the new iPad Pro is thinner—it still fails as a commercial. Why? Because nobody cares how thin an iPad is. Seriously. I’ve owned an iPad since 2010: that means I’ve carried around a version of Apple’s already-thin tablet every day for over a dozen years. Never once have I said to myself: “You know what improvement I’d really like to see in this thing? I wish it were thinner.” Never. That thought has never crossed my mind, even once. You know what has? -Better battery life. -I’d like my iPad to not get hot to the touch when I use the Apple Pencil to take notes. -I wish it wasn’t so fragile: I dropped my brand-new iPad 2 back in the day when it slipped out of the arm-hold I was carrying it in, it bounced on the pavement, and the screen shattered into a thousand pieces, making it unusable. -I wish it had more storage. -I wish Apple would stop changing the type of cable connector it uses: I’ve gone from the original 30-pin connector to the Lightning connector, and now to the current USB-C/Thunderbolt connector. -I wish I could view the screen in direct sunlight. -I wish it wouldn’t overheat and turn off automatically when I use it outdoors in the summertime. Those are announcements I would welcome in a new iPad Pro commercial. None of this “now even thinner” nonsense nobody needs or cares about. So, back to the commercial. In my opinion, whoever made this ad should be fired. I almost never say that about other companies, especially for good-faith marketing efforts gone wrong… those of us who work in marketing make mistakes sometimes, and we learn from them. But cases like this warrant a special exception. Marketing and advertising are designed to make people want to buy your products. This commercial doesn’t just not make me want to buy Apple’s products. It makes me not want to buy Apple’s products, which is something altogether different. It turns me from someone who likes iPads into someone who is almost rethinking iPads entirely. That’s not just a bad advertisement; it’s a harmful advertisement. Apple’s usually known for great commercials. The legendary 1984 Super Bowl commercial was, of course, their best. I thought “Hello, I’m a Mac” was absolutely brilliant. They have made some missteps along the way, but this one is really bad. Not even their nauseatingly preachy and woke “Mother Nature” ad from a few years ago was this bad. Steve Jobs once said, “Technology alone is not enough—it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing.” My goodness, that last line alone is poetry itself! This ad seems to be Apple signaling that they don’t believe in that anymore. And I don’t think all this handwringing is an overreaction to where you could say “Oh, c’mon, it’s just a commercial! What’s the big deal?” It is a big deal. It tells you about the values of the company, and what they intend to communicate. Really, how is this the same company that used to sell iPhones by showing grandmas using FaceTime to connect with their baby grandchildren from afar during the holidays? Everything about it is wrong: even the thumbnail they chose for it (the bulging-eyed smiley face) and the fact that they gave it the title “Crush!” It was fun to see the reactions to the video online today. I find it fascinating that Apple shared it on YouTube but turned off the comments. On X, Tim Cook shared it Tuesday, and the video, which so richly deserves to be mocked, is getting it in spades. Some people are calling it “anti-art.” One user called it “soul-crushing,” which was about as literal and logical a response as you’d expect. It turns out Apple actually made an announcement about the commercial. In response to the (apparently unexpected) poor welcome it got, Apple wrote: “We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.” Lame response from a tone-deaf tech behemoth, but still, they hopefully got the message. C’mon, Apple. I have seen the future, and this ain’t it.](https://image.24vids.com/tw-1788740167194579387/media/GNLjSOOaEAAZ6VT.jpg)