Apple debuts new 'Shot on iPhone' ad featuring Maya Angelou

Apple has debuted a single new 'Shot on iPhone' ad, with the latest addition focusing on equality, featuring a voiceover from poet and author Maya Angelou.

The new ad is a minute long, and is included in Apple's olympic games campaign. The video utilizes a series of 18 photos and videos, and is overlayed by Maya Angelou reading most of her "Human Family" poetic composition.

The "Shot on iPhone" advertising campaign uses video clips and photos from actual users of the iPhone, and generally has an accompanying soundtrack generally from Apple Music — with Thursday's ad being a notable exception. Spots from the campaign have shown up on TV, on billboards and around the web, each advertising the iPhone's ability to capture high quality images without add-on peripherals or software.

Maya Angelou is an American author, born in April of 1928. She served on two presidential committees, is a 2011 Presidential Award of Freedom awardee, and received the National Medal of Arts in 2000. Steve Jobs reportedly courted Angelou for the voiceover on the "Think Different" television advertisement in 1997, that was ultimately narrated by Richard Dreyfuss. Angelou died on May 28, 2014.

The previous advertisements in the ad series prior to Thursday's additions featured the iPhone camera color gamut, and the slow motion features implemented into the iOS photo application.

28 Comments

cali 3494 comments · 10 Years

About 8 years ago

Wow. Awesome.

volcan 1799 comments · 10 Years

I'm not sure why YouTube no longer works in Safari for Mac. All I get is a black box. I have no Flash installed, but other HTML5 videos work fine, just not YouTube, however they play in Chrome without issue.

I figured it out. I still had Click to Flash installed but no Flash so for some reason it was breaking. I deleted Click to Flash and it works now. Not sure why Vimeo and other sources were unaffected, only YouTube but no problem now.

Mike Wuerthele 6906 comments · 8 Years

Works fine here, with no Flash installed and no Java.

uncommonasian 71 comments · 10 Years

AppleInsider said:

The "Shot on iPhone" advertising campaign uses video clips and photos from actual users of the iPhone, and generally has an accompanying soundtrack generally from Apple Music -- with Thursday's ad being a notable exception. Spots from the campaign have shown up on TV, on billboards and around the web, each advertising the iPhone's ability to capture high quality images without add-on peripherals or software.

This was a lovely ad, but this video DID use additional equipment and software. Fine print at the end.

zer0her0 24 comments · 9 Years

volcan said:

I'm not sure why YouTube no longer works in Safari for Mac. All I get is a black box. I have no Flash installed, but other HTML5 videos work fine, just not YouTube, however they play in Chrome without issue.

I figured it out. I still had Click to Flash installed but no Flash so for some reason it was breaking. I deleted Click to Flash and it works now. Not sure why Vimeo and other sources were unaffected, only YouTube but no problem now.

Just tested it and I get the same thing here, black box no video. No extensions/add-ons that should effect it (pocket, 1password, & evernote is all), & no Java/Flash installed. Works in chrome (where I generally watch YT videos anyway, so haven't noticed it till I saw this comment). Edit: Oh word I also had Click to Flash on this workstation still (I had uninstalled it on everything else a while ago, wonder how I missed it here).