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New "Get a Mac" TV ads
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Aug 28, 2006 06:26 AM
from the something-amusing-to-pass-the-day dept.
from the something-amusing-to-pass-the-day dept.
Klaidas writes "Apple has introduced 3 new "Get a Mac" TV ads: "Accident", "Angle/Devil" and "Trust Mac" " Normally, posting ads would be make me cry, but these are genuinely funny and well done.
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angles (Score:5, Funny)
Re:angles (Score:5, Funny)
Don't be obtuse.
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Re:angles (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:angles (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
There are a lot of people who use their web browser for everything.
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And... (Score:4, Funny)
"Sorry about the 'up yours, PC!'"
I don't care for these commercials (Score:4, Interesting)
I think Slate [slate.com] got it right when it comes to these ads. They're kinda funny, but really mean-spirited. They're "Haha...you suck!!"-ads that don't appeal to me. That, and the fact that they kinda make me happy that I'm running windows (not right now, right now it's Fedora all the way, I double-boot) instead of apple. It makes the PC look productive and serious, instead of the slacker Mac OS X.
They also contain alot of stuff that's plain wrong. For instance, Windows runs fine out of the box, there's virtually no advanced configuration after you've installed it. Set the date and time, account password and keyboard configuration, and bobs your uncle! Same thing with my digital camera, that works fine with windows, contrary to what one of the ads say.
Don't get me wrong, I think Mac OS X is a stellar OS, far superior to windows, I just don't like these ads.
That's plain wrong (Score:5, Informative)
Far nicer than the political ads that are swamping televisions this election year.
It makes the PC look productive and serious, instead of the slacker Mac OS X.
Actually, it points out what people already know: Corporations and businesses use Windows PCs. Windows for many is Word and Excel. And almost everyone who has used a Windows PC at work has hated it at some point. Showing you a desktop after logging in but not being able to do anything for an additional 30-120 seconds. Programs with odd names performing illegal operations and offering them the change to debug, only to do nothing useful. And so on.
The Mac is being shown in the light of being a computer for your home life, far away from spreadsheets and Active Directory, where your photos, home movies, and music play a much stronger role, and showing ease-of-use for doing nice things with that media.
Windows runs fine out of the box, there's virtually no advanced configuration after you've installed it.
Remember that the majority of new Windows PC owners buy an OEM machine and can barely plug in all the color-coded cables. They turn it on and the Windows setup wizard starts as you said. Fine. Now your OEM machine is detecting the 3-in-one inkjet-scanner-fax printer that came bundled free with the computer. Windows is now pompting them to install three items it has detected. Each one throwing up the New hardware wizard. Not to mention the computer's system image was from 4 months ago, so they need to download 55MB of patches on their dial-up connection in order to be "safe".
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Re:That's plain wrong (Score:5, Funny)
Apple Ads: Still more truthful and less nasty than the 2004 election campaign.
Not a motto I'd be proud of for my company
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I don't care for these commercials (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, and I'm sure that Apple's trying to market these commercials towards those that need office applications at home as opposed to the Mom-and-Pop types who just want a computer to surf the internet, and check/send e-mail from/to their kids.
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Re:I don't care for these commercials (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not being literal enough. They're talking about hardware, not software. With your typical Dell PC, after you get it out of the box, you've got to set up the tower and the monitor, then connect them, then also plug in your mouse, keyboard, and speakers. The monitor, tower, and speakers will also all require their own power. On the other hand, all of the hardware in an iMac is contained in a single unit. You plug the power into the unit, then plug in your keyboard and mouse. The keyboard and mouse will also plug into any USB port -- if you have a PC with a PS/2 keyboard and mouse, you have to be careful not to plug them in wrong, and then you also have to figure out which one of those little jacks your speakers should plug in to.
Yes, I'm sure that's not a big deal to you, but you have to realize that all of that is pretty daunting to anybody who's never owned a computer before (or never set up their own, at least).
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Re:I don't care for these commercials (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly I am not sure why all the keyboards and mice are USB now, the plug is no smaller, and you also give up at least one USB port to something that every non-server computer has. My Mac Mini at home only has 2 USB ports, and because I didn't want to drop $120 on a keyboard & mouse for a $450 computer, I have no free USB ports by default. Instead, I have an extra device sitting with my mini (USB hub) complete with associated wires.
And can we get a Mac with a USB port on the front of the box? I know that it's supposed to look like a simple design, but when I have to drag the expensive and fragile screen of the iMac I have at work around to get at the back of it so I can plug in the cable/thumb drive, so I can turn the screen around again so I can see it, so I can copy a file off of it, then turn it around and unplug it again, before turning it straight again so I can go back to work, it suddenly stops seeming like such a simple design. Whatever happened to form following function? Macs are all about being pretty, and somehow most people accept this as actually meaning "more user friendly."
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Re:I don't care for these commercials (Score:5, Informative)
Honestly I am not sure why all the keyboards and mice are USB now, the plug is no smaller, and you also give up at least one USB port to something that every non-server computer has.
USB can be plugged in and unplugged while the machine is running. PS/2 cannot. USB can be chained. PS/2 cannot. USB can be used for higher speed connections to cameras, and the like. PS/2 cannot. As for every non-server having a P/2 port, they take up space that could be used for other ports and they take up more space than USB ports which can provide greater functionality.
My Mac Mini at home only has 2 USB ports, and because I didn't want to drop $120 on a keyboard & mouse for a $450 computer, I have no free USB ports by default.
As I mentioned, USB is chainable. If you buy a keyboard from a reputable company, they will spend the extra $2 it costs to put at least one more USB port on the keyboard. The same goes for most other devices you might want plugged in permanently. In this way, adding peripherals takes up no additional ports. If you go to froogle.com and enter "usb keyboard" the resulting keyboards start at $3.99. The first one with extra ports on it was $9.99. Do you think you can afford that?
And can we get a Mac with a USB port on the front of the box? I know that it's supposed to look like a simple design, but when I have to drag the expensive and fragile screen of the iMac I have at work around to get at the back of it so I can plug in the cable/thumb drive, so I can turn the screen around again so I can see it, so I can copy a file off of it, then turn it around and unplug it again, before turning it straight again so I can go back to work, it suddenly stops seeming like such a simple design.
So plug it into the empty port on your keyboard. Or, buy one of the macs that comes with ports on the front. Or, buy a hub.
Whatever happened to form following function? Macs are all about being pretty, and somehow most people accept this as actually meaning "more user friendly."
Most people find macs easier to use for a lot of reasons. Some people who pick a machine aimed at one demographic and then use it in ways unusual for that demographic have problems. You're probably one of them.
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Story doesn't add up (Score:3, Informative)
Pardon me, but something is fishy about this part of your story - why are you not plugging the mouse into the keyboard USB extender? At most the keyboard and mouse together should take up one USB plug, which is why all macs come with at least two.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I know that it's supposed to look like a simple design, but when I have to drag the expensive and fragile screen of the iMac I have at work around to get at the back of it so I can plug in the cable/thumb drive, so I can turn the screen around again so I can see it, so I can copy a file off of it, then turn it around and unplug it again, be
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't care for these commercials (Score:5, Interesting)
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So, interestingly, I talked to three different people - independent of each other - about these ads yesterday. All th
Only mean spirited if you are reading between line (Score:4, Insightful)
This was pretty obvious to me because the ads are actually not mean spirited at all, unless the viewer is reading all kinds of things into the ads that simply are not there.
Think of the experience these women probably have, PC's at home that they have to get viruses and spyware cleaned off of, mysterious things that the computer tells them they do not really understand when they just want to hook up a printer. What about these ads would be untruthful to them? To someone who knows how to keep a PC clean by using firefox and firewals and so on and so forth the Apple ads appear untrue because that user has no spyware. But again, these women and most other consumers do see the spyware, and virues, and things that these ads talk about - so why would they have reason to doubt the pro Mac arguments the ads offer when the statements made about the PC are 100% true to them?
It's also pretty obvious the ads are working because Apple keeps making them and also paying a fair amount for good timeslots (like the emmys for the msot recent ones). An ad campain that was going south would have been pulled by now if it was not seeing some results.
Slashdot is a really bad filter to try and descern how Apple products are perceived, just look at the iPod when it came out. You can almost delcare Slashdot a comically bad judge of Apple products to the extent the direction of groupthink here is probably always the opposite of what the general market thinks.
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Re:Only mean spirited if you are reading between l (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you can go further: Slashdot is a horribly bad predictor of the success of technology meant for the average computer user, because no one who posts here is an average computer user, me included. When I think of average computer users I think of my brother, who asked me if I would help him fix his Powerbook. He had dropped the thing from a good height more than once and had so bent the case that he couldn't plug in the power cord. His idea of 'fixing' the thing was to take to computer completely apart, take a hammer and bang the case back into shape. I tried to explain to him that taking apart a laptop is not a small thing and that banging the case back into shape was no easy thing. I told him to take the thing to Tekserve [tekserve.com] and have them do it, because I wasn't going to take on the responsibility of possibly ruining someone else's computer.
The difference, I think, is that the average computer user thinks of the machine as a monolithic thing: it's a magic electronic box. When something goes wrong with the machine, it's universal. It's not that the USB has fried, or that a software update has choked, but that the whole magic box is now sick. This explains a couple of things. It is why people throw out perfectly good computers after two or three years rather than upgrade; if you think of the computer like a microwave (the principle of which most people don't understand) then there's no way you'd ever think of upgrading one. It explains why Slashdot was dead wrong on the success of the iPod; Apple created the mp3 player as magic electronic box, something your average user could relate to. Attach to computer, manage in iTunes, music appears on iPod. It's monolithic and, for someone who thinks of technology that way, simple.
And it explains the success of Apple's ads, and the displeasure they cause here. Apple is selling the computer as magic monolithic box and saying, essentially, our magic box is easier to use than someone else's. Most on Slashdot know that computers aren't magic boxes. Many here take great pride in how deep that knowledge runs, and take great joy in delving deep into the guts of their machines and OSes. But your average computer user doesn't want to, and doesn't care. That is the target audience for these ads, and for devices like the iPod. Beyond that, your average computer user wants a magic electronic box, something which functions more as an information appliance than anything else.
Most Slashdot readers don't want a magic box. But Slashdot users are the minority.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I don't care for these commercials (Score:4, Insightful)
These ads play on that fact. Whether that's fair or unfair is another question entirely.
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Re:I don't care for these commercials (Score:5, Insightful)
Can't argue with you - you're definitely a classic early-stage techie. When I hear a end users complaining about the fact that when they leave their computer alone, it runs up a few CPU cycles, I'll start giving that kind of logic some weight.
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Home and End (Score:5, Interesting)
Since OS X ships with Bash, I simply use Ctr-A and Ctrl-E for that. I have never missed home and end in terminals nor do I use them in Linux, as they are too far removed from the primary area of the keyboard.
For single lines in textareas of browsers, you can simply use Pageup/PageDown to go to the start and end of line respectivly - this is the only time when I ever used to use Home/End they way you are speaking of and really it's smarter to fold this ability into the same keys where it makes sense.
Why you think Windows is in any way more productive when it does not ship with a real shell is a mystery. I'd perhaps give Linux to you execot that Expose as an app switcher is a pretty big productivity boost.
and waste less of my CPU on stupid and meaningless crap like Dashboard, software rendered drop shadows & transparencies, etc.
GPU - all that is hardware accellerated. Kind of removes your whole point there. If your GPU is otherwise sitting idle why not make use of it?
Believe it or not, I value responsiveness, consistency, and day-to-day usability over polish.
So do I. That's why I use a Mac - polish is removed easily as it only covers the ugliness beneath. Good design goes through and through a product, which is what the Mac offers and why I switching away from Linux as my primary home computer.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Because Home and End are supposed to go to the "home" or the "end" position of the file. If you want to go to the beginning or end of the current line, use apple-left-arrow or apple-right-arrow. It's much easier on a laptop keyboard. Home is fn-left-arrow and End is fn-right-arrow, making it a matter of holding a different meta key depending on what you want it to do.
Re:I don't care for these commercials (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The stuff the OEM vendor bundles on the desktop is really not a problem with Windows, it's a problem with OEMs who don't actually have the best interests of their consumers in mind.
Truer words were never spoken. Every OEM machine I've ever worked with, I have to spend a few days tweaking it (while working) to get the setup I want. Inevitably, I put a folder called "crap" on my desktop. Into this folder I throw all the shortcuts to the bundled crapware that came with the machine. I don't uninstall it
these ones are better (Score:5, Funny)
"Make You Cry"? But I Thought... (Score:5, Funny)
Now I'm confused. If I want to get my ad on slashdot is or is not Hemos the person I am supposed to contact? If the policy has changed, we should be notified, no?
Re:"Make You Cry"? But I Thought... (Score:5, Funny)
Then, perhaps, a website primarily for computer nerds might feel compelled to talk about your ad.
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This is what they call "guerilla marketing"... (Score:4, Insightful)
It isn't a question if Apple is doing paid advertizing on Slashdot - They most certainly are. The question is:
1. Will Slashdotters fall for it?
2. Is someone at Slashdot really getting paid? Or are they getting a free ipod or something totally lame like that. If Commander Taco isn't getting at least $30,000 for this "article", then I lose all respect! It is one thing to sell out, it is another thing to sell out like a total buster!
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In other words, you don't insult your potential market. Macintosh has a lot of image they can sell, sell simply, and sell well, and yet they focus on the PC's problems?
Just because a large portion of Mac users seem to spend every waking hour mocking Windows doesn't mean that obsession is marketa
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You know, it's hard not to mock Windows users when they keep mocking Mac users. It's all about fighting back, especially since Windows really is a poor choice for a home computer, aside from gaming.
And for the record, yes, I was with the PC crowd when Apple was still stuck in the 80's with their crappy Mac OS 9.
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In other words, you don't insult your potential market. Macintosh has a lot of image they can sell, sell simply, and sell well, and yet they focus on the PC's problems?
Just because a large portion of Mac users seem to spend every waking hour mocking Windows doesn't mean that obsession is marketabl
VLC (Score:3, Informative)
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Funny
VLC seems to be totally cool because it supports more formats than just about anything,
Should read:
VLC is totally cool because it supports more formats than anything period.
One stop shop for anyone having video troubles is to just download VLC. I agree it's slow, but it's stable. Things just work (tm) - they way Apple advertises, but (at least in
Re:Summary incorrect. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:I guess all this stems from... (Score:5, Insightful)
My own answer to this would be that it's because they're a gnat's pube away from becoming a software company, and they're holding on to their bespoke hardware business for dear life.
Nope, let me clear it up for you:
Apple is not a software vendor, Apple is also not a hardware vendor. Apple is an experience vendor.
To get you the "Macintosh Experience" for which you're paying the big bucks they need tight control and integration between the hardware and the software. The reason why MacOS X is able to give a better useability experience is because Apple knows exactly what hardware it'll be running on unlike Microsoft does with Windows.
With a PC there are thousands upon thousands of motherboards, CPUs, hard drives, video cards, sound cards, network cards, etc, etc, etc. The combinations are endless and people expect Windows to not only work, but work well, on every single combination.
I would be surprised if the number of macintosh computers that are currently supported in Tiger reached beyond double digits but even if it did it is still a lot smaller than infinity. Because Apple knows exactly what hardware the OS will be running on they can take full advantage of it whereas on the PC side of things you still have for example: 64bit CPUs running 32bit OS's and the latest version of Windows not even supporting SATA, a 3+ year old technology, out of the box.
Think consoles: PS2, XBox, GameCube, etc. They are severly underpowered if you compare them to a PC, yet they can push out graphics rivaling them, why? Because the developers know exactly what hardware they are coding for and can take full advantage of it.
That is why Apple prevents OS X from running on just any beige box. It wasn't designed to, so if they allowed it people would try it, it would crash, not work right and people would say that MacOS X sucked.
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And that's when I stopped listen to your crazy rantings.
I know it's all the rage to use the style of argument, but it undermines your credibility. If you only read the assertion and not the support you are not addressing those arguments and thus your comments have failed before they have begun.
Apple sells hardware bundled with software. They do their damnedest to make sure their software only runs on their hardware, and vice versa.
Apple sells hardware/software bundles, but to argue they go out of th
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think the original poster's use of the term "experience vendor" is a good one, and it bears some serious consideration. It is the ultimate in branding. They have established, to a great degree, a set of expectations and assumptions around their product. That is the experience they pitch to potential customers.
We've all seen this in different sectors. When you hear the term "used car salesma
Hang up the hat Sherlock (Score:3, Funny)
Wow, what a leap of deduction - the computer equivilent of "Therefore, a witch!"
Can you think of no other products that were marketable but also functional?
It is possible to have a product with good design that then also has good marketing. You're just confused because most companies start on the marketing side.
I wouldn't quite your day job to open that detecti
Re:I guess all this stems from... (Score:5, Insightful)
A Mac is more than hardware, either, as you pointed out. Its soul may be somewhere in the code, but that code is spread between both hardware and software. It's an integrated platform, and to force it into components like it were a beige-box PC sort of misses the point, I think.
Finally, if you find the Mac guy "bloody annoying," you need to relax. It's just a commercial, and obviously not targeted at the likes of you.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think one of the things that scares away some geeks from the mac, is the fact that so many people love the mac for reasons that has nothing to do with the software or hardware. People buy a mac for the same reason they buy a Mini Cooper and Dansk furniture... they think it makes them "funky" and "different". Where as people who don't see consumer items as a source of social identity have a hard time dealing with the whole mac
Breaking It Down (Score:3, Informative)
True, the Mac is now an Intel PC wrapped in a nice design. However, these commercials rarely speak of the hardware. Apple never says our Intel box is better than yours. They say our design, our interface, our security, our innovative ideas - our end product is better than yours.
The Mac is the iPod. The difference is, the iPod was introduced before the personal music player boom and the iPod has yet to isolate itself like the original Apple Computers. Most people will agree that the iPod is popular and
Re:Apple ads = FUD, != funny (Score:5, Insightful)
I'll grant you the freezing, then rebooting Windows days are behind them but really, what is Apple lying about in these ads?
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M
Opposite (Score:3, Insightful)
To some degree, they must work as they are still being produced and laptop sales are on a dramatic rise.
Apple wouldn't keep paying for expensive advertising slots (emmys) if they didn't work for most people. Plus they are aimed mostly at someone just wanting a computer and not a system administrator job, along with kids going to college who may want a new computer.
If you can't even find the Magsafe one funny though (the m
Prooves the point (Score:3, Insightful)
See, life really would be easier if you had a Mac. Kind of prooves the whole point.
That's why they call it a "Wintendo" (Score:4, Insightful)
"Yeh, Microsoft makes great game machines. My owner's got an XBox, but he seems to like his Playstation better."
If your main reason for buying a computer is playing games, the gap between computer and console is narrower every year. Why not save the money and just get one?
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