Apple says sad, hopeless PC users suffer from iPad envy | ZDNet

It hurts.

You look outside your window and these people seem so happy.

They’re sitting contentedly in parks with warm lattes, while you’re wrapped up in work, cables, and very dull PCs.

You have huge screens upon which explosions occur every few seconds, as you try to become one of the world’s great gamers.

Meanwhile, some younger tyke is sitting outside — outside, I tell you — merrily gaming away with fresh air whispering through his locks.

This is the pain suffered by people who own desktop PCs and therefore aren’t allowed outside.

At least, this is how Apple frames modern life in its latest ad for the iPad Pro.

Here, the enlightened Appleites are out there, wandering free, enjoying a life of revolutionary magic, while PC users are miserable beings, trapped in an interior world they can never escape.

Unless, of course, they buy an iPad.

I fear real modern life isn’t quite like that. I fear many PC users are quite capable of going to parks, drinking coffee outside while having Zoom and Teams calls with their friends. I fear many PC users own other tablets, ones that also offer them the ability to take their computing amid the birds, the bees, and the trees.

I fear many PC users even own iPads.

Suggesting they experience this level of sad-sack seclusion is a touch much. Especially as Apple even has the gall to mock PC users and their cables when, for so many years, it’s thrust its own users into Dingle Dongle Depression.

And what about all those perhaps equally sad people stuck to their iMacs in some dark dungeon? Or doesn’t that ever happen?

There’s a further disturbing aspect here. The whole point of this ad is to claim that iPad Pro isn’t a computer. And is.

This has been a long-running debate between Cupertinian ears, as Apple makes lofty public claims for its tablets.

A few years ago, Apple’s insistence that iPad Pro is a computer made Microsoft laugh quite loudly. 

Nevertheless, Apple persisted in its claim two years later.

Then came 2019 when Apple finally seemed to concede that the iPad Pro couldn’t replace your computer.

Here, suddenly, Apple attempts to be charming by declaring: “Your next computer is not a computer.”

Oh, Apple. Please could your next iPad ad not mention the word computer at all?