So Apple released its annual holiday ad yesterday, Mayo, and it's called A Critter Carol.

I think it's safe to say this one is a lot different than some of the ones they've done in the past.

It's like the premise of it is like a group of animals using an iPhone 17 Pro to record themselves singing a Christmas carol.

In the past, I think, I don't know, I think Apple's holiday ads have been a bit more plot driven maybe, and they like to do the thing where they try to make you cry a little bit. Yeah, I mean, for a while they went for the try and make you cry ad nauseam. Like every year, it was like a, we're going to pull on the heartstrings. I mean, even last year's one was, last year's was the hearing aid thing for the airports. Yep. Which was a good ad. This one, I think I've seen a lot of mixed responses to it. I think some people don't like it. But I think for the most part, it's okay. I like the focus on the animals. I think's cute i think it's fun then at the end they're

recording their song and then the iPhone makes the sound it makes when you ping it from like your

apple watch and they freak out and say oh the humans are coming the humans are coming and somebody

walks up with their appalach altar and it does the precision finding thing and they find their phone

that the critters had been using.

It's cute, I think. Nothing revolutionary, but it's cute. People don't like it? I've seen a lot of people say it just didn't land for them. Oh, I like it. I like it. I think it's cute. We've said on

previous years for sure that the pulling on the heartstrings motif was getting a bit, like you can't that every single year you know yeah and then a few years they did a kind of boring ones where it was like air pods through a snowy town and then people were just like dancing through do you remember that one where it's like there were like two or three of those yeah yeah exactly they the first one they did was kind of cool and they did basically the same ad, like three years in a row where it was like, hey, you can run around with AirPods and they don't follow out your ears and you can be your noise cancellation. But it was just kind of dancing through ice or whatever. I don't know. It wasn't very, this one's fun. It's a little song, you know. They drop their iPhone.

These woodland creatures come along and make a little song and dance out about it, and then they come get the iPhone back.

Like, it's subtle, it's cute, I like it.

And I think there's a underpinning of creativity to it where, you know,

obviously it's featuring an iPhone 17 Pro, shot on an iPhone 17 Pro cameras, with handmade puppets.

And even like the titles are like stamped out using wood grain printing, like woodblocks.

They've like made the font for it.

So it just gives it a nice little, you know, real touch and increasing worlds of like, you know, AI generated.

The fact that they're like, it's all handmade.

And they did a making of video that released exactly the same time as the ad.

And obviously they're pushing on the handmade, you know.

And the creatures aren't like perfect puppets, right?

They're like done in like a rustic, you know, they're meant to look created, right?

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