On April 1, Apple, the company that produces, among other things, MacBooks and iPhone, is fifty years old. Founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, Apple chose to transform the anniversary into a series of events distributed in its most symbolic stores in the world, focusing not so much on products as their creative use. Launched in mid-March, the program develops for several weeks and involves artists, musicians, actors and activists, with the aim of showing how digital tools can be integrated into contemporary creative processes.
The opening was held on 13 March in New York, in the Grand Central Terminal store, one of the most iconic stores in the brand. Here Alicia Keys, singer and producer of 17 Grammy Awards, performed a selection of his songs on the central staircase of space. The performance was recorded using the new devices of the iPhone line, in particular the latest generation model iPhone 17 Pro, used as a recovery tool to emphasize the video quality reached by smartphones. Keys, who has collaborated with Apple several times over the past few years – from the distribution in space audio on Apple Music to immersive content for Vision Pro – represents an example of integration between music production and proprietary technologies of the company.
The use of iPhone to shoot professional films is something on which the company has pushed a lot starting from the first models. The most mentioned case is Sean Baker’s Tangerine film, shot entirely with iPhone 5s and presented at the Sundance Film Festival in 2015. A few years later, Steven Soderbergh made two films with iPhone: Unsane and High Flying Bird. In the following years, other directors and productions followed the same path, even in the non-independent field. Apple herself commissioned short films and spots shot with iPhones, often entrusted to directors already navigated, just to prove that she does not fear competition when it comes to using her devices instead of professional cameras.
In London, in the Battersea Power Station store, the focus moved to the emerging music scene. Nia Archives, one of the most important names of the recent rebirth of the jungle in the UK, told its creative process, strongly linked to the use of Apple’s Logic Pro software. His career is in general very linked to the visibility achieved thanks to Apple, and in particular to the “Up Next” program of 2022.
Up Next is a global program launched by Apple Music in 2017 to identify and support emerging artists. Every month (or cycle) Apple selects an artist and builds them around a complete package, including editorial visibility in the Apple Music platform, video content, exclusive interviews and promotion on radio, social and other Apple ecosystem spaces.
Also in the musical field, the band Mumford & Sons took part in an interview with Zane Lowe in Los Angeles, discussing their latest album “Prizefighter”, which first appeared in British charts. Zane Lowe is a disc jockey, radio host, television host and New Zealand record producer, famous especially for conducting radio and television programs on BBC Radio 1 and MTV.
Also in Asia, some events were launched, woven music to local culture: in Chengdu, China, in the Taikoo Li store, Chris Lee – central artist in the Chinese scene with over 260 awards and very celebrated for aesthetic experimentation – represented the link between musical production, visual aesthetics and digital influences, explicitly citing the Think Different campaign as the initial reference of its path.
Think Different is Apple’s campaign launched in 1997, just after Steve Jobs returned to the company, and when Apple was very close to failure. It was an iconic spot that showed some famous figures such as Einstein, Gandhi and Picasso, all presented as “the Creazy honest”, those that change the world. The message sounded more or less like: if you use Apple, you’re one of them. It was also celebrated because it lived strongly on the personality of Apple and Apple products, more than on the efficiency and usefulness of the devices, giving rise to that identity position that then allowed Apple to create its own “tribe” of loyal users.
Fifty years after its foundation, Apple uses the network of its stores as a cultural and commercial platform. Not very different from the Think Different campaign, if we think about it: at the time artists and geniuses from the past were used, figures that Apple needed to support in order to promote an image of genius that went beyond the products; today that Apple managed to make that image, it is able to join contemporary artists – musicians, directors, creators, performers – making that campaign a more current live version.
L’articolo Fifty years of Apple with events around the world proviene da IlNewyorkese.
