What would you do if you walked into a room to discover a creepy auction of your personal data going on? That’s the premise of a new Apple video.
The goal is to highlight the many privacy tools iPhone offers to prevent online tracking.
Editor’s note: We originally published this illustrated history of the iPod to celebrate the device’s 10th anniversary on Oct. 22, 2011 (and updated it a decade later). We republished it on May 10, 2022, when Apple finally pulled the plug on the iPod.
The iPod grew out of Steve Jobs’ digital hub strategy. Life was going digital. People were plugging all kinds of devices into their computers: digital cameras, camcorders, MP3 players.
The computer was the central device, the “digital hub,” that could be used to edit photos and movies or manage a large music library. Jobs tasked Apple’s programmers with making software for editing photos, movies and managing digital music. While they were doing this, they discovered that all the early MP3 players were horrible. Jobs asked his top hardware guy, Jon Rubinstein, to see if Apple could do better.
Eddy Cue, Apple’s SVP of Services, is reportedly looking to restructure the company’s offerings to make a more significant push in streaming and advertising.
Apple’s services business has been growing rapidly over the last few years. It currently boasts more than 825 million paid subscribers.
In a new ad, Mad Men star Jon Hamm scrolls through the movies and shows on Apple TV+ and notes a conspicuous lack of Jon Hamm.
“Hey Apple, did I do something to offend you?” the actor asks.
Apple turned to country music legend Dolly Parton, Squarespace and the Super Bowl to promote Shazam and a new deal on Cupertino’s streaming music service.
You can use Shazam when listening to Parton’s just-released 5 to 9 advertisement to get five free months of Apple Music. That’s two months more than the usual offer.
Apple makes great phones, tablets, computers and smartwatches. It also makes superb commercials — and has done so for years.
What was the cream of this year’s Apple advertising crop? Check out our top 10 picks (in no particular order) below.
Several Apple ads from the past year won awards at the U.K.’s long-running Design and Art Direction awards. D&AD is a British educational charity that promotes excellence in design and advertising. In this year’s virtual-only awards, it gave various Pencils (the name of charity’s awards) to what it thinks are Apple’s best promotional spots of the year.
You can check out the prize-winners — including a 5-hour, 19-minute iPhone commercial — below.
A slick, black-and-white ad showcasing AirPods won Best in Show at the prestigious ADC Annual Awards.
Titled “Bounce,” the ad shows an AirPods wearer springing through the streets, evoking the unencumbered, wireless freedom of these earbuds.
Some people make a big production out of unboxing their new iPhone. What’s supposedly an upcoming iPhone SE ad takes the opposite approach with Apple’s just-released budget handset.
Watch it now:
Apple famously boasts the greatest attention to detail in consumer technology. Some say it’s been disappearing over the years, but if you look for it, you’ll find plenty of examples today.
Take the new ad for iPad Pro’s Magic Keyboard, for instance. Pause it at just the right moment and you’ll see the time Steve Jobs announced the very first iPhone beautifully reflected in the eye of a hummingbird.
Apple’s salute to International Women’s Day is a black-and-white montage of cool portraits of powerful women and the Mac computers that play a role in their work.
Apple released the “Behind the Mac” video on YouTube Wednesday morning.
David Leitch, the visionary director behind John Wick and Deadpool 2, teamed up with Apple for the latest “Shot on iPhone” ad that takes snowball fights to an all-new level.
The 90-second ad, titled Snowbrawl, follows a young girl who teams up with her friends in a sprawling snowball fight against her older brother and his cronies. Packed with tons of action stunts and gorgeous slow-mo shots you wouldn’t expect to be shot on a phone, the new ad will have you hyped to shoot your own winter videos.
Prepare to be blown away:
Justin Long, the “Mac” to John Hodgman’s “PC” in the now-famous ads from Apple, said the funnier commercials were kept off the air by company founder Steve Jobs.
It’s not because Jobs lacked a sense of humor as Long revealed over the weekend to host Lola Ogunnaike on PeopleTV’s Couch Surfing.
Apple’s entire line of products are on full display in the company’s brilliant new ad that also features a patented Apple pizza box.
The new video, which clocks in at just over three minutes long, shows a team of low-level corporate workers using Macs, iPads, iPhones and Apple Watch to execute a moonshot idea that could get them the promotions they’ve been dreaming off. Apple’s software shines just as bright as the hardware while the team races to finish their project ahead of schedule.
Watch the team pull off the impossible!
Apple debuted an ad showing off the Depth Control feature on the new X-class iPhones, a 38-second subliminal sales pitch to get you thinking of an upgrade.
The iPhone XR and XS handsets offer the computational equivalent of shallow depth of field, where a blurred background can make portrait subject stand out.
Apple’s next billboard may be in your pocket.
Apple is inviting iPhone photographers around the world to submit their best shots for its next “Shot on iPhone” marketing campaign.
A teen-aged golf prodigy could lose her amateur status after she appeared in a 15-second video for the Apple Watch.
Lucy Li, 16, is ranked ninth among the world’s women’s amateurs. The United States Golf Association could revoke her status as early as next week – even though, according to her mother, she received no compensation for appearing in the ad.
The past 12 months have been one of the busiest ever for Apple’s video team.
Apple churned out more than 120 ads and other videos in 2018, unleashing some of its most memorable commercials in years.
After hours of watching all of Apple’s 2018 ads, we rounded up the 10 absolute best, some of which you probably haven’t even seen yet. Get ready to relive all the good times!
Apple marketing set an even higher bar in the advertising industry this year and is closing out 2018 with three commercials in Adweek’s Top 25 Best Ads of the Year.
Adweek listed “Welcome Home,” Apple’s HomePod ad directed by Spike Jonze, as second-best. Nike’s “Believe in Something. Even If it Means Sacrificing Everything” was the top ad, featuring polarizing quarterback Colin Kaepernick.
Apple puts the iPhone’s low-light shooting capabilities on full display in a new “Shot on iPhone” ad that gives viewers a glimpse inside Japan’s decotora truck craze.
The incredible new video follows Kazuya Sekino, creator of Lady Misaki, a decorated truck with hundreds of LED lights. Apple’s trippy two-minute ad showcases the art of Japan’s many decotora trucks. It also highlights all the good things they do for the community.
Get ready to go for a ride!
Apple gives us the gift we really want: more Elvis. Specifically, a collection of Elvis impersonators scattered around the world using Group FaceTime to share their love of the King of Rock and Roll.
This iPhone ad highlights the best new feature in iOS 12.1, the ability to make FaceTime video calls to multiple people simultaneously.
Watch it now:
In a previous iPad advertisement, Apple famously asked “What’s a computer?” The company has taken a step past that with its latest ad that urges people to make an iPad Pro their next computer.
The less-than-a-minute video goes on to delineate some of the capabilities of the latest iOS tablet.
Watch it now:
August 27, 2008: The U.K. bans an iPhone ad for apparently misleading consumers.
The misleading bit? The ad overhypes the iPhone’s internet-surfing abilities. It does this by not mentioning that the device doesn’t support Adobe Flash — which is vital to internet surfing in 2008. How times change, eh?
Within a week’s time, two of the Apple’s biggest rivals got caught using misleading photos in ad campaigns that promoted the quality of their smartphones’ built-in cameras.
The embarrassing screwups of Samsung and Huawei showcase the simple brilliance of Apple’s “Shot on iPhone” campaign.
Apple’s latest TV ads are fast-paced and colorful. But a study by a market-research firm finds that Baby Boomers feel these ads aren’t aimed at them.
The analysts theorize this is because Apple isn’t trying to advertise the iPhone to anyone but young people.