The whole point was the destruction -- they spent basically all the time in the ad on slow, loving shots of all these artifacts being mangled and crushed. They weren't being combined, subsumed, or absorbed -- they were being flat out destroyed. And not quickly -- slowly and remorselessly.

The problem with the ad is in the semiotics -- the visual language of the ad was all about succession _through destruction_. The message was "all these things, that represent _good_ memories and experiences you've had, are now destroyed." And at the very end they show you a brief shot of the new iPad.

Where the hell were the focus groups on this one?