Apple Debuts New ‘Get a Mac’ Ads
We’ve known the two guys at the forefront of the ‘Get a Mac’ advertisement campaign for so long now, so do you think we’d get away with calling John Hodgeman ‘the Hodge’ and Justin Long ‘Jay-el’? I’ll give it a go.
As of January 16th 2007, Apple has updated their ‘Get a Mac’ webpage with three new videos, totalling 18 in all (two of the holiday ones have since been removed).
The three adverts once again find the Hodge (PC) desperate to persuade the audience that he is the better of the two computers, despite him knowing that he is really the inferior of the two – the humour generally comes from him whilst Long is just the catalyst for it all.
Surgery
The first advert is one we all saw during the Keynote at Macworld 2007 last week where the PC finds himself being prepared for an upgrade for Vista. The whole point of the advert is to make users aware that in order to run Vista, you’re most probably going to have to either upgrade or buy a new PC. Whilst Microsoft have posted up some specifications of what Vista will require to run, these really are just the basics – it doesn’t include applications you’ll be running nor does it allow you to run Vista at full pelt (basically, just Windows classic mode).
The one thing I’ve noticed Apple doing with these adverts is that whilst they have the PC trying to better the Mac, and the Mac not needing to because he knows he’s the better of the two anyway, they make them out to be friends (you’ll notice it in this advert). I think the message here is that yes, they’re two different competing platforms but they can get along, i.e – with software and peripherals.
Tech Support
In Tech Support, the PC (Hodge) is having a web cam built onto him by a tech support guy, the Mac (Long) is just chatting to him at this stage about what he’s going to do with the camera, suggesting he has a fun web cam chat with his buddies. The PC is quick to counter this suggestion by stating that it’ll just be for serious business use and that the Mac will understand one day when he has a “high-tech piece of equipment installed’. As we all know, Macs do have web cams pre built in and before the Mac has a chance to make PC aware of this, the tech support guy pips up saying that the iMacs and the MacBooks have the cameras “built right in” – at this point PC just looks at the audience with a “I cannot believe this” glare, before storming off the set.
The message? Well if you haven’t got it by now, Macs come with Web cams built in. Duh!
Sabotage
This is by far my favourite advert, not just of the three new ones released but also of the entire collection.
There’s a new guy on the scene taking over the Macs place as instated by the PC – hence ‘sabotage’. PC has gotten the fake Mac to basically bad-mouth himself whilst PC tries to console him, therefore making the PC out to be the really nice guy. It starts of with the PC asking the ‘Mac’ why he is so down, to which he replies “it’s because you’re so much better than me PC” – the PC consoles him. Whilst the ‘Mac’ continues to ‘big-up’ the PC, you can see PC miming along with his words, really trying to get the message across at this point that the PC has written a script out for him. The next part involves PC telling ‘Mac’ not to feel so down because he “read somewhere” that the Mac is getting more popular all the time. Whilst this statement is true, the ‘Mac’ denies this by saying that it’s “totally un-true”, at which point PC just soaks up all the glory. It’s not until the real Mac (Long) appears at the end when PC becomes startled, knowing full well he’s doing something he shouldn’t. The really funny part kicks in when the fake ‘Mac’ turns to the real Mac, with a sort of shy body language, and says “hey, I’m a really big fan”. Once again the Mac comes off as the winner.
You can see all three adverts on Apple’s ‘Get a Mac’ webpage now.
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Comments
PC’s have come with built in cameras in thier monitors on the desktop and laptop since 2004.
—Nuff Said
This is just Apple’s way of spreading their own FUD. Most computers don’t need an upgrade to run Vista, and it is still in contrast to the Apple way of just obsoleting computers with each version of OS X. XPostFacto, anyone?
I don’t need to tell you that it grinds my gears when Mac-tards bitterly complain that you’ll need to spend thousands of dollars in upgrades just to run Vista; but then explain to anyone trying to upgrade to Tiger that it needs 1GB of RAM to run “well.”
First of all, almost anyone who runs Vista will have gotten it via a new computer purchase. And you’ll only really need a new gfx card or RAM for the eye-candy.
When I upgraded Tiger for the first time on my Mac mini, it would not run some of the Tiger eye-candy either and it wasn’t possible to upgrade it even if I wanted to.
The bottom line is that new operating systems and new hardware tend to stay neck and neck with each other and as long as you’ve got some fairly recent hardware you’ll be fine. My 3 year old laptop easily passed the Vista-compatibility test.
Btw, my iMac Core Duo runs Vista GREAT in Boot Camp. No new PC hardware for me!
Macs come with Web cams built in. Duh!
The built-in iSights are cool, but they do not come on all Macs. Notably, the Mac mini and the Mac Pro, the lowest-end and highest-end Macs, are sans camera.
I’ve also seen PCs with cameras. So basically, it’s misleading to imply that all Macs come with cameras when only about half of them do (the iMacs and the Macbooks), and that no PCs have them at all.
What the hell is this? A column to interpret the Mac ads for us? I couldn’t bear to read it closely, so maybe there’s something else going on here, but for crying out loud, get a real topic to write about.
To be honest, talking about advertising is a welcome change from 57 articles about a phone. But when your site is dedicated to one company’s products (or bashing one other company’s products), you get the chance to talk about every aspect of that company, no matter how seemingly trivial.
I should clarify that I think this is mostly a GOOD thing. I’ve been struggling with a concept for my own podcast because I want to talk about too many things, and I think it should focus on ONE subject.