It’s a Wonderful Life. Let’s live it directly.

“Basically it’s okay if you’re totally not present with your friends and family as long as you make a cool movie at the end.”

1. I first saw this on a site that said this commercial was the best thing ever, an instant classic, a keeper, an emotion-worker. ” 

2. I saw it via a dear friend who said, “I hate this. Basically Apple’s saying it’s okay to not be fully present with your friends and family as long as you’re there for the happy ending.”

Decide for yourself.

In a day and age when we check our smartphones 115 times a day, when we video concerts instead of living them, when we walk and text instead of giving our entertainment-drugged minds a chance to enjoy the houses and trees and sky and clouds we’re walking past, and so to relax and open and actually have true, genuine, fresh ideas…Apple is, in its post-Jobs era, giving up on dreams and being different and going for the tried and true: how product, lots of product, extract emotion, and sell product, lots of product.

Despite everything, I’m still an ardent Apple fan, man. And I want Apple to sell itself the way it used to: as a means to being of benefit—and not merely as a means to avoid the present moment. This commercial seeks to do both, admittedly—but, to me at least, an only child with a longing for family—well hell I’d rather have walked into that family home and enjoyed everything fully. For memories are free, and they glow warmly.

Relephant Reads:

Busyness is Laziness.

Multitasking is…where was I?