Apple wants to make you cry.
The tech giant just released four new ads that use emotionally charged exchanges to highlight the iPhone 4's front-facing camera and the associated Facetime application, which together make two-way video chats possible on the device. Bloggers have found the ads particularly striking and they differ, albeit slightly, from some of the earlier iPhone spots.
In one of the ads for the original iPhone from 2007, a narrator practically walks the user through how they might use an iPhone, as a disembodied hand uses the phone first to play "Pirates of the Caribbean" and then to search for a nearby seafood place. The ad, at the end of the post, is prototypical of many of the subsequent spots for the device: a voiceover is combined with an audience demonstration, as in a magic trick.
In the four new ads, there is no narrator. Each begins with an over-the-shoulder shot from a different man's point of view. One introduces his baby daughter to her grandfather, another reassures his girlfriend over her new haircut, a man gets his adolescent daughter to smile and show off her new braces, and another finds out his wife is pregnant. By the end of three of the commercials, the shoulder is cropped entirely out of the image, as though the viewer were a part of the conversation. The intent is obvious: the phone is no longer being demonstrated for you, it's being demonstrated by you.