Tag Archives: Apple

Get A Mac: Surgery, Sabotage, and Tech Support

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Get a Mac In the first new Mac ad, PC is getting surgery in order to receive all sorts of upgrades to run Windows Vista. Tech Support involves the PC receiving a camera upgrade (via masking tape to the head) so that he can do important business things like videoconference, only to find out that Macs come with built-in iSights now so they don’t need to upgrade. In Sabotage, the PC has decided to sabotage the commercial altogether and replace the Mac with another actor who says everything the PC wants him to say. [Infinite Loop]

The men and/or women responsible for writing these commercials are the very same people that played Keep-Away with the fat kid’s hat a lunch time in the 7th grade. Until he cried.

Apple ditches “Mac Guy” in new ads

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Apple’s “I’m a Mac” campaign is almost perfect: It’s funny, memorable, and efficiently lays out the advantages of Macs over PCs. Its only defect: Virtually everyone who watches it comes away liking the “PC guy” while wanting to push the “Mac guy” under a bus.

Justin Long (the “Mac guy”) is out. The campaign’s other principals, director Phil Morrison and journo-humorist John Hodgman, are both returning for another round of spots.

According to Seth Stevenson, ad critic for Slate, Long is “just the sort of unshaven, hoodie-wearing, hands-in-pockets hipster we’ve always imagined when picturing a Mac enthusiast…. It’s like Apple is parodying its own image while also cementing it.” Of the polymathic Hodgman, Stevenson writes, “Even as he plays the chump in these Apple spots, his humor and likability are evident.” — Radar Online

I didn’t find the Mac guy ‘a smug little twit.’ Hmmm. I shudder to think what that says about moi.

New Get a Mac ads (2006)

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Get a Mac adsIf you haven’t seen the new series of Get a Mac ads you probably will. The Better Results ad hits close to home for me because I used Windows apps to create videos for the three or four years. It worked, but…

Counselor and Self Pity both make their respective points very cleverly. I have never seen a campaign bring out so many different versions of an ad, so quickly, and keep the quality so high. [link above is to a compilation of all the ads]

Apple polishing

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Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced some new stuff yesterday. These events get Mac users hopping from one foot to the other and –now that I have a Mac– I sort of understand why. I can’t explain why, but I kind of get it.

Speaking of “get it” … I’ll eventually have to get one of the slick new nano’s (I just watched the amazing ad for same). The new Shuffle is literally wearable computing.

And there’s a new version of iTunes. I’m a sucker for a pretty UI and this is about as nice as they come. I haven’t seen them but there’s talk of a new series of Get A Mac ads poking fun at Windows efforts to mimic the sleek look and feel of the Mac OS. I’m sure Vista is/will be pretty but if the new iTunes is a hint of what the new Mac OS is going to look like… it’s no contest for me.

If you spend 90% of every waking moment looking at a computer, that time is more pleasant…more fun… if it’s Mac.

Mac desktop image

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I am incapable of keeping a clean, orderly desktop on any of my Windows machines. Folders and files and shortcuts scattered from top to bottom. It is in no way the fault of the OS. It’s my sloppiness. I have discovered, however, that I can keep the MacBook desktop clean. Maybe it’s the dock or the way Finder works or, perhaps, it’s just the beautiful desktop images that ship with OSX. It would be a shame to cover them. I don’t know. But here’s the desktop as of 5 minutes ago.