I learned about apples tiktok via this post and I must confess as an old person, in terms of brands reaching young people, I find the content pretty cool (usually I either don't understand it or think it's lame): https://www.tiktok.com/@apple
I'm not sure I'm interested in anything they're selling, but after what felt like 15 years of "young California hipster", I think this style catches my attention at least somewhat.
I guess the target audience they're going for is people who already have iPhones/iPads but would have bought a chromebook for school instead. This seems to be a reversal from their previous "what's a computer"-style ads that tried to sell iPads as the replacement for personal computing.
On one hand, wasn't that the premise of the "iPod people" ads?
On the other thand... you're right to say that this is _very_ indirect. In an internet saturated with advertising, I guess there's nothing like just making entiretainment.