Alicia Keys, social oddness, and AVP in the air

In this week’s “Sunday Reboot,” Alicia Keys takes over an Apple Store, Apple goes off-piste with its TikTok videos, and someone finds out that flight attendants hold the power while on a plane.

Sunday Reboot is a weekly column covering some of the lighter stories within the Apple reality distortion field from the past seven days. All to get the next week underway with a good first step.

This week, Apple had a new App Tracking Transparency on its hands thanks to publishers in Germany, a new hack can trick victims into running Terminal commands to bypass macOS security, and an Apple server outage prevented developers from verifying apps. Some fun stories happened too, alongside the inevitable onslaught of initial hardware reviews and opinions.

Apple’s social game is going ham

Marketing is the lifeblood of a company, and it’s something that Apple has clearly mastered. When you reach a point where your advertising and public addresses are so easily parodied by others, you know you have established yourself in the industry.

Apple’s managed to do that to a level where it’s almost trapped itself inside a well-defined box. Apple’s advertising has a very consistent level of quality, a telltale sheen that winks at the viewer that it’s what they think it is, before the end logo appears.

The tropes of Apple’s advertising are so well known that its latest attempt was completely unexpected. So out of the box that it led to confusion by other Internet denizens.

No, we’re not talking about the new Hello Apple Instagram account, nor the skit with Tim Cook receiving an F1-style pit stop in a golf buggy. We’re talking TikTok.

On Monday, it was discovered that Apple had wiped its TikTok account of all videos, and started afresh, which isn’t an entirely new practice online. Indeed, the first couple of videos that it posted following the self-directed purge were fairly typical of the company, all promoting the MacBook Neo.

Everything after that went sideways.

The clips promoted three of the colors of the new model, with things like a lemon and lime in a FaceTime call with each other, shots of citrus in bubbly water, the Finder icon blushing for the camera, and a montage of people using stained hands after working with Japanese indigo.

For the most part, these clips were nonsensical. There was no direct or obvious meaning for them, unless you happened to know the new MacBook Neo colors, or were intrigued enough to do some digging.

This was a great idea by Apple, as it certainly caught people’s attention on a platform where initial impressions are a life-or-death thing.

Apple went so far off course from its usual advertising that, amusingly, people were commenting about the ads with concern. Quite a few asked if the account was hacked, while others wondered if Apple’s social media team is “okay.”

I can assure you Apple’s media people are doing more than fine. They managed to pull off a great bit of marketing for a major new product in a relatively low-cost fashion.

For a company known for its glossy ad spots and well-orchestrated performances, this was a risk that paid off extremely well.

Ain’t no Machine Gun Kelly

Speaking of performances, Apple kicked off its 50th anniversary celebrations with one. It went as Apple as you can expect.

On Friday, customers heading to the Apple Grand Central store at Grand Central Station, New York City were turned away. It wasn’t disclosed at the time, but the temporary closure was for a major concert for the anniversary.

Grand Central Station during the Alicia Keys concert – Image Credit: Apple

The event on March 13 had multiple Grammy Award-winning artist Alicia Keys suddenly appear on stage, sat at a bright pink piano, playing to the attending crowd. Both Apple’s invited members of the media, content creators, and guests, and the masses of people who were merely using the station as a station.

Obviously, Tim Cook turned up along with other major Apple names, including Greg Joswiak, Deirdre O’Brien, and John Ternus. It’s Alicia Keys performing, so who wouldn’t turn up?

The event reminded your humble writer of Apple’s previous program of in-store performances, which saw many recording artists rock up to an Apple Store and perform an intimate show to fans and nearby iPod buyers.

While Apple obviously doesn’t do that much anymore, it was so successful that other companies tried to copy it. Back in 2012, the Microsoft Stores did the same thing, but to somewhat mixed success.

After enjoying the musical stylings of Flo Rida, The Black Keys, and Lenny Kravitz at some of its stores, Microsoft invited the Cleveland-based rapper Machine Gun Kelly, MGK, to perform in Atlanta.

It took only a minute and a half for the wheels to fall off the wagon.

Reports at the time claimed he climbed onto floor displays, destroying PCs in the process. When asked to stop, MGK carried on, handing out middle fingers and creatively rewriting rap lyrics to a less parent-pleasing degree.

Admittedly, Apple’s presentation at Grand Central Station was polished and tightly controlled for that to ever happen. That, and Ms. Keys is far too classy to stamp on a MacBook Pro to be cool.

Put the Apple Vision Pro down

Frequent fliers know that there are a few unspoken rules about being a passenger. A lot of this can be summed up as “don’t be a moron on the plane,” but there is a golden rule that everyone should follow without question.

If the flight attendant tells you to do or not to do something, follow their instructions.

This sounds like a common-sense thing to do, but many people find themselves in the “Find Out” stage. Sometimes in a way that involves silver bracelets and being dragged by someone who knows how to use pepper spray properly.

On Wednesday, we heard of someone who was told by a flight attendant to remove the Apple Vision Pro during a Delta flight. Of course, someone’s rights to use their head-mounted computing device was infringed upon, and they complained online.

Much like Air Bud relying on there not being a rule preventing a dog from playing basketball, there’s no rule specifically preventing the use of a headset like the Apple Vision Pro while at 20,000 feet.

An Apple Vision Pro user, not on a plane.

While the complainant is right that there’s no rule that stops them from doing airborne Lawnmower Man under the FAA regulations, nor under published rules for major U.S. airlines, it doesn’t mean the flight assistant is wrong. Not in the slightest.

Cabin crew can tell you to take off the headset or face consequences for multiple justifiable reasons. This can be anything from the passenger failing to watch the safety demonstration, a potential lack of awareness in a dangerous situation, or even the fact that it’s a bunch of cameras capturing anyone and everyone in the vicinity.

If a flight attendant objects to something that you’re doing and can justify it, they can escalate it and de-plane you.

My advice is to follow the flight crew’s instructions in cases like these, even if you think you’re right. It’s far better to be quietly seething about a perceived slight of your chosen headwear than to be chucked off the plane and abandoned because you can’t play with your expensive toy.

If you want to sit among people and be bothersome for hours on end while in transit, I hear you can get a decent deal on a Greyhound

Last week’s Sunday Reboot covered Apple’s hardware downgrades, Apple’s GDC field trip, and adding digital graffiti to the Sydney Opera House.