Apple's iPad event deleted an entire highway and a ton of houses all in the name of aesthetics

Edited overhead shot of San Francisco from Apple Let Loose event
(Image credit: Apple)

If you watched the Apple 'Let Loose' event either live earlier this week or via YouTube after the fact, you aren't alone. That YouTube video has been streamed almost six million times already and it features the M4 iPad Pro, M2 iPad Air, and two new accessories. But it's also courted controversy.

One of the videos shown during the event saw a huge press destroying musical instruments and other items, and it has people up in arms. But that's not all, now it seems that Apple deleted an entire highway to make its event look pretty, too.

No, not literally of course. But in a sweeping shot that began the iPad fun following CEO Tim Cook's intro, we saw an overhead view of San Francisco. It features a train moving through the area before zooming in to show Apple exec John Ternus inside. However, it turns out that the San Francisco we saw doesn't actually exist.

As reported by SFGate, Apple appears to have deleted an entire highway from the shot and replaced it with new homes that look much more likely to appeal to its aesthetic. What's more, the report notes that Apple also "replaced several blocks of densely packed Oceanview homes with a swath of pool-equipped mansions."

You can see the capture from the video at the top of the page and a screengrab of the area shown on Apple Maps. The differences are obvious, which begs the question, why even bother?

San Francisco in Apple Maps

(Image credit: SFGate/Apple)

Apple will never say of course, but it's a change that seems unnecessary to us.

Want to see the whole thing in motion? You can watch the video on YouTube now and don't worry, that link is timestamped to take you right to the portion of interest.

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Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.