Get a Mac ads

Nightshooter

Does anyone else love these ads? I find them hilarious. I'm a Mac person, and they point out exactly why I don't like PCs.

I think the new one, about Vista's security problems, is fantastic. I had read about these problems on Engadget and forums, and it is funny to see the Mac ad come out so quickly to scrutinize it.

Luke

I've used both mac and pc in my life, and i think it is ridiculous how vehemently people can get about one or the other. I do like the light-hearted ads mac has been putting out. They are funny and ridiculous...almost meant for mac people.

Barry Nelson

They are not that funny, basically trying to say if you use a PC you aren't cool. Plus, they are very misleading, the one where the guy says he is upgrading to Vista, and has to upgrade just about everything in his PC. Not true, I have a PC that is two years old and I just upgraded to Vista everything is fine.

I have found through the years that MAC users have a superiorty complex. Because they use a computer that is used by about 8% of the population they are all just a little bit smarter.

s96024

Barry Nelson wrote:

I have found through the years that MAC users have a superiorty complex. Because they use a computer that is used by about 8% of the population they are all just a little bit smarter.

I agree totally.

Hardyboy

What's funny is that I've always found Justin Long, who plays the Mac, to be a dork (his character on Ed was the worst thing about that show) and John Hodgman, who plays the PC and who appears on The Daily Show as the "resident expert," to be hilarious. In the commercials PC has the best lines, the funniest site gags, and the like. And we're supposed to want to buy the Mac?

Nightshooter

Barry Nelson wrote:

They are not that funny, basically trying to say if you use a PC you aren't cool. Plus, they are very misleading, the one where the guy says he is upgrading to Vista, and has to upgrade just about everything in his PC. Not true, I have a PC that is two years old and I just upgraded to Vista everything is fine.

I have found through the years that MAC users have a superiorty complex. Because they use a computer that is used by about 8% of the population they are all just a little bit smarter.

It's not that we're smarter. We just use computers that don't constantly frustrate.

And of course the ads don't always tell the truth. What a surprise.

And Hardy, I'm surprised that someone other than me has seen Ed. What a mediocre (yet amusing) show.

Myk_

-Deleted-

Nightshooter

Macs are pretty useless for gaming. That is why I have an Xbox 360.

That having been said, now that Macs can run Windows, I don't see why you couldn't run games for Windows in Windows on a Mac.

chris Walken

i saw one advert where the pc kept freezing and the mac said ho no not again the pc has freezed i thought that was funny becuase its true

emtiem

They're really horribly smug- I'm not sure why you'd want to be like the Mac guy in them; he's so nasty to poor old PC. In the UK we have comedy act Mitchell and Webb playing them, which is a shame because Robert Webb, who plays Mac, plays a character not dissimilar to Mac in the sitcom Peep Show on the surface, but when you see the show you realise how nasty and selfish his character is. And you just can't help but associate that with Macs after seeing the ads.

Plus, I think they're yet to appear on TV- just print and online, possibly because there are rules against insulting rivals in telly ads in the UK (although I'm not sure if that is the reason).

Oh, and my G4 running OSX froze up completely there times last week, so all this stuff about Macs never crashing is a load of rubbish, quite frankly.

Predator

Although in saying that, G4s were designed to run OS9. That's like saying Vista won't run on a machine designed for Windows 98 ... and it won't

I'll get me coat ...


I find them amusing, but horribly arrogant ads. You feel sorry for the PC, but want to smack that Mac around the head with a wet fish. I want a Mac ... but not for these ads. I want one for the OS and the apps.

emtiem

Predator wrote:

Although in saying that, G4s were designed to run OS9. That's like saying Vista won't run on a machine designed for Windows 98 ... and it won't

I'll get me coat ...

I'm not so sure- this is the last G4 they made and I'm pretty sure that the first OSX was released a couple of years before the G5 was available. Don't quote me on it, but I don't think that's right. And if they didn't design OSX to run on the computers they had at the time... In fact I'm sure the bloody computer came with OSX.
And our brand new iMac recently packed up altogether- wouldn't even boot up. They do break and so does OSX.

Nightshooter

I have had very few crashing problems with the many macs that I've owned.

emtiem

Nightshooter wrote:

I have had very few crashing problems with the many macs that I've owned.

All in all, the Macs I've used have done well (when running on OSX- OS9 was pretty much unusable), but they're not invulnerable to crashing and PCs in my experience don't crash anywhere near as much as these ads and smug Apple fans would have you believe.

Barry Nelson

chris Walken wrote:

i saw one advert where the pc kept freezing and the mac said ho no not again the pc has freezed i thought that was funny becuase its true

My computer running XP previousely and now Vista has not froze up or crashed in years. I do regular maintenance (defrag, etc) and have had no problem.

Predator

emtiem wrote:

I'm not so sure- this is the last G4 they made and I'm pretty sure that the first OSX was released a couple of years before the G5 was available. Don't quote me on it, but I don't think that's right. And if they didn't design OSX to run on the computers they had at the time... In fact I'm sure the bloody computer came with OSX.

My goof, getting mixed up with G3s ...

emtiem

Ah- no woriies; that's the problem with giving things numbers instead of names- if they'd called it the 'Mac Gerald' we'd all know where we are!

Anyhoo, here's a fabbo article about those very ads that probably got a lot of net geeks hot under the collar from the wonderful columnist Charlie Brooker (don't be put off by the title, he's pretty even-handed and self-effacing): http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2006031,00.html

Charlie Brooker wrote:

I hate Macs


Charlie Brooker
Monday February 5, 2007
The Guardian

Unless you have been walking around with your eyes closed, and your head encased in a block of concrete, with a blindfold tied round it, in the dark - unless you have been doing that, you surely can't have failed to notice the current Apple Macintosh campaign starring David Mitchell and Robert Webb, which has taken over magazines, newspapers and the internet in a series of brutal coordinated attacks aimed at causing massive loss of resistance. While I don't have anything against shameless promotion per se (after all, within these very brackets I'm promoting my own BBC4 show, which starts tonight at 10pm), there is something infuriating about this particular blitz. In the ads, Webb plays a Mac while Mitchell adopts the mantle of a PC. We know this because they say so right at the start of the ad.

"Hello, I'm a Mac," says Webb.

"And I'm a PC," adds Mitchell.

They then perform a small comic vignette aimed at highlighting the differences between the two computers. So in one, the PC has a "nasty virus" that makes him sneeze like a plague victim; in another, he keeps freezing up and having to reboot. This is a subtle way of saying PCs are unreliable. Mitchell, incidentally, is wearing a nerdy, conservative suit throughout, while Webb is dressed in laid-back contemporary casual wear. This is a subtle way of saying Macs are cool.

The ads are adapted from a near-identical American campaign - the only difference is the use of Mitchell and Webb. They are a logical choice in one sense (everyone likes them), but a curious choice in another, since they are best known for the television series Peep Show - probably the best sitcom of the past five years - in which Mitchell plays a repressed, neurotic underdog, and Webb plays a selfish, self-regarding poseur. So when you see the ads, you think, "PCs are a bit rubbish yet ultimately lovable, whereas Macs are just smug, preening ******s." In other words, it is a devastatingly accurate campaign.

I hate Macs. I have always hated Macs. I hate people who use Macs. I even hate people who don't use Macs but sometimes wish they did. Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centres for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.

PCs are the ramshackle computers of the people. You can build your own from scratch, then customise it into oblivion. Sometimes you have to slap it to make it work properly, just like the Tardis (Doctor Who, incidentally, would definitely use a PC). PCs have charm; Macs ooze pretension. When I sit down to use a Mac, the first thing I think is, "I hate Macs", and then I think, "Why has this rubbish aspirational ornament only got one mouse button?" Losing that second mouse button feels like losing a limb. If the ads were really honest, Webb would be standing there with one arm, struggling to open a packet of peanuts while Mitchell effortlessly tore his apart with both hands. But then, if the ads were really honest, Webb would be dressed in unbelievably po-faced avant-garde clothing with a gigantic glowing apple on his back. And instead of conducting a proper conversation, he would be repeatedly congratulating himself for looking so cool, and banging on about how he was going to use his new laptop to write a novel, without ever getting round to doing it, like a mediocre idiot.

Cue 10 years of nasal bleating from Mac-likers who profess to like Macs not because they are fashionable, but because "they are just better". Mac owners often sneer that kind of defence back at you when you mock their silly, posturing contraptions, because in doing so, you have inadvertently put your finger on the dark fear haunting their feeble, quivering soul - that in some sense, they are a superficial semi-person assembled from packaging; an infinitely sad, second-rate replicant who doesn't really know what they are doing here, but feels vaguely significant and creative each time they gaze at their sleek designer machine. And the more deftly constructed and wittily argued their defence, the more terrified and wounded they secretly are.

Aside from crowing about sartorial differences, the adverts also make a big deal about PCs being associated with "work stuff" (Boo! Offices! Boo!), as opposed to Macs, which are apparently better at "fun stuff". How insecure is that? And how inaccurate? Better at "fun stuff", my arse. The only way to have fun with a Mac is to poke its insufferable owner in the eye. For proof, stroll into any decent games shop and cast your eye over the exhaustive range of cutting-edge computer games available exclusively for the PC, then compare that with the sort of rubbish you get on the Mac. Myst, the most pompous and boring videogame of all time, a plodding, dismal "adventure" in which you wandered around solving tedious puzzles in a rubbish magic kingdom apparently modelled on pretentious album covers, originated on the Mac in 1993. That same year, the first shoot-'em-up game, Doom, was released on the PC. This tells you all you will ever need to know about the Mac's relationship with "fun".

Ultimately the campaign's biggest flaw is that it perpetuates the notion that consumers somehow "define themselves" with the technology they choose. If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality. Of course, that hasn't stopped me slagging off Mac owners, with a series of sweeping generalisations, for the past 900 words, but that is what the ads do to PCs. Besides, that's what we PC owners are like - unreliable, idiosyncratic and gleefully unfair. And if you'll excuse me now, I feel an unexpected crash coming.

This week: Charlie watched some episodes of Larry Sanders (on his PC). He played the customised Fawlty Towers map for Counterstrike (on his PC). He listened to the Windows startup jingle every 10 minutes as his PC repeatedly rebooted itself.