Apple holiday ad is inspirational, but barely includes Apple products

This year’s Apple holiday ad is an animated story meant to inspire you to “Share Your Gifts,” meaning your creativity, skills, and art. 

It’s also meant to inspire you to buy someone you love a creativity-inspiring device like the new iPad Pro or MacBook. 

Without any dialogue, an original song from young artist Billie Eilish matches the storyline of a woman who suppresses her creative spirit as she prints and boxes away her creations from her MacBook. The main character also makes funny shapes in the dough at the bakery where she works and draws similar ones in the fogged-up windows on her bus ride home.

It’s only during scenes at the artist’s apartment with her dog that we see any glint of Apple, particularly a colorful Touch Bar on what must be her MacBook Pro. The song ramps up when her creations escape out into the world and we have our heartwarming holiday moment, courtesy of Apple.

At Apple’s event last month at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (a place full of creative energy!), the Pro tablet was unveiled as the ultimate machine to create, build, design, develop, and make something. A new Adobe Photoshop app for the device was announced. Even the event invitations featured more inspired and colorful Apple designs. But this video doesn’t harp on the iPad or any particular device. Instead, it seems to suggest the mere presence of an Apple tool can inspire all of us.

It’s a different take compared to last year’s holiday ad that focused purposefully on Apple’s wireless earbuds, AirPods.

Eilish and one of the illustrators that drew the nearly 3-minute story will be at the recently reopened Apple store in Santa Monica, California on Tuesday.

The commercial is available to watch above and will also be on TV, social media, and on Apple.com – just in time for Thanksgiving dinner.