Apple’s Annual Holiday Ad Is Out And It’s An Emotional Triumph

Commercials are clever things: tiny movies designed to provoke a reaction in a matter of seconds. Done badly, and they are crass or annoying. But done well, they offer something profound and meaningful. The new Apple holiday ad is out. And it’s a winner.

Sometimes the Apple holiday ad is abstract, sometimes it’s an animation (like the brilliant one with the Billie Eilish song), or a flight-of-fancy metaphor with stunning dancers seeming to take flight. It’s always unpredictable.

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This year’s is called Heartstrings and it touches on a profound subject, hearing loss, and Apple’s remarkable response to it. This response is the recently introduced Hearing Test for Apple AirPods Pro 2—one earbud is the only visible product placement in the ad—and the fact that those headphones are now established as a clinical-grade hearing aid in some countries.

I’ve tried the Hearing Test feature and it’s a simple, effective five-minute test which helps assess how your hearing’s doing. If you have AirPods Pro 2, you should do it. It’s already available in many countries and comes to the U.K., for instance, with iOS 18.2 in December.

And the ad touches on something important: we know that AirPods Pro 2 offer great listening capabilities for music, we know they have spatial audio, that when you take one out of your ear, the music pauses and that the active noise cancellation is spectacular.

But in the commercial we see a father with hearing loss unable to properly hear the joyous moment of his daughter playing a song on a guitar, until he puts a single AirPods Pro earbud in place.

Apple says, “For so many of us, sound and how we hear shape how we connect to the world around us. Yet, people with hearing loss wait an average of 10 years before getting their hearing tested and fitted for hearing aids. Leaving millions unaware they’re living with hearing loss and without the assistance they need. Now with the world’s first end-to-end hearing health experience, you have access to a Hearing Test that provides scientifically validated results within minutes and the ability to activate a clinical-grade Hearing Aid feature on your AirPods Pro 2—right from home.”

The commercial is stunning, and quite the tearjerker. Plus, it achieves its emotional punch while breaking an unspoken rule of filmmaking: if you want the audience to be moved to tears, the person onscreen shouldn’t cry. This ad does both. It’s beautiful.

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