From time to time the rumor mill springs to life over speculation that Apple and Disney are talking about a merger. But Apple traditionally has shied away from huge deals preferring to make smaller, less costly purchases of companies with niche products. Of course, there have been exceptions such as the $3 billion purchase of Beats Audio and the $1 billion it spent to buy most of Intel’s smartphone modem chip business.
Thanks to Disney’s purchase of Pixar, for a while the Steve Jobs’ trust was the largest Disney stockholder. And while Disney would have been a profitable place for Apple to have invested some of its money, Apple obviously has not thought of Disney as a strategic partner.
What brings this up is Apple’s newest 60 second television commercial for the iPad Pro (2021). If you recall, Disney’s Little Mermaid was about Ariel’s wish to become a human so that she wouldn’t have to be stuck living under water. Apple’s ad shows PC users lip-syncing to the Little Mermaid song “Part of Your World” as they are stuck inside offices and buildings jealously watching iPad users enjoying the freedom of using a tablet.
While one girl has her PC cables wrapped around a chair inside her cramped apartment, another girl is outside in the park watching video content on her iPad with all the space in the world. Another PC user is crawling on the floor of his nearby coffee shop looking for an outlet to plug into when he sees an iPad Pro user with the Magic Keyboard working away at the counter without a concern about where to find power.
Tag line please? “Your next computer is not a computer.” Watch for this commercial to appear in a 60 second or edited 30 second version starting this weekend.
And yes, this is the tablet that is powered by Apple’s powerful M1 chip produced using the 5nm process node and carrying a whopping 16 billion transistors.
