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It's funny. Laugh. Businesses Apple

Good Guys Use Macs 54

Posted by pudge from the duh dept.
Annamite writes "Wired news reports about the Mac as 'a good guy' conspiracy, while the traitor was busy hauling a Dell laptop. Can product placement be even better than this. What is next? OS war on screen? You can betcha anything comes out of AOL/TimeWarner would be of AOL/Netscape, but can Bill Gates buy the rest of the movies industry?" I've seen every episode of 24 so far, and did notice certain Macs and PCs being used, but didn't pay attention to who used which one. I probably would have been killed by the traitor.
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Good Guys Use Macs More

Good Guys Use Macs

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  • And they tried to wipe out the human race. Evidence [imdb.com]
    • Space aliens use Macs,And they tried to wipe out the human race.

      Nope, Will Smith uploaded the virus to the alien mothership using a mac. That doesn't mean the aliens were using macs.
      • ...and this bit of ID4 plot went down in history as the most stupid piece of computer gibberish to hit the big screen! Although the aliens certainly broke more windows in NYC than MACOS's...

        Doggieville - The Comedy Hammer which Smacks the Humour Cow on its Stupid Head

    • ...Nokia phones.

      And quite often the bad guys use Motorolas...

      But what is interesting, is that where they bad before they started using PCs/Motorolas - or was it just the user interface that srewed up their minds?

  • In other news... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Daniel Wood ( 531906 ) on Monday May 20, 2002 @12:40AM (#3548280) Homepage Journal
    Bad guys wear black!

  • Ahem... (Score:3, Funny)

    by zulux ( 112259 ) on Monday May 20, 2002 @12:49AM (#3548302) Homepage Journal
    Good guys use Apples.
    Bad guys use Dells.
    Crazy-conspiricy-types use Amigas.

    • Re:Ahem... (Score:3, Funny)

      by saintlupus ( 227599 )
      Good guys use Apples.
      Bad guys use Dells.
      Crazy-conspiricy-types use Amigas.

      Filthy bastards with vague accents use Linux. And generally pronounce it Leeee-nucks.

      --saint
    • Good Guys kill puppies.

      Bad guys kill kittens.

      Oprah Winfrey kills brain cells. A bit like Vodka does but not as nice.

  • I found out from my good buddy, the Mac salesman at CompUSA. Being a good guy is a requirement if you want to carry a 'Book.

    Seriously, you weren't carded?

  • Good? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Perdo ( 151843 )
    "Apple Computer outspends all other PC companies in product placement and is perhaps more active in the area than any other technology company outside of Microsoft,"

    ...and that makes them good???
    • Figures that you believe what "a marketing executive at Advanced Micro Devices" says. What gives him inside knowledge? Yes, Apple probably (no, certainly) pays more for product placement than AMD - I have never even seen an AMD product on screen.

      OTOH Apple often doesn't pay for being in a movie, the production company buys or rents the Macs or uses machines they already have. Sometimes Apple isn't even asked (as can be seen - or not, thanks to the auto-translation - in this this (auto-translated) article [google.com] / original article in German [spiegel.de] about ads withs Macs in Germany) if Macs can be used.

      • Here [apple.com] you [macworld.com] are [caipirinha.com], Mr Head...

        "We consider product placement very, very important," says Suzanne Forlenza, Apple's senior manager, entertainment placement and marketing. "Our advertising budget pales in comparison to what Microsoft, IBM, Compaq, DEC and NEC all put behind the Windows/IBM compatible systems. So we need to find marketing that can strike a chord, and product placement is a unique way to familiarize people with our brand and product line. In placements, I want a breadth of exposure - I want to be in the hands of the spy, the president, the girlfriend. I don't want just to be in the hands of the high-tech nerd."

        "Our arrangement was simply a loaning of equipment in exchange for exposure in the hands of Meg Ryan," said Suzanne Forlenza, manager of product placement for Apple.

        "Mimi wears a lot of blue eyeshadow so at the outset of the season we approached the producers and said the iMac's quite a colorful product, it would be perfect on Mimi's desk," said Suzanne Forlenza, senior manager for product placement and entertainment promotions at Apple. "We aggressively place our products on TV and film as a complement to our other marketing efforts."......... "

        Every placement bought and paid for by Apple. Hardly inside knowlege. He just put it straight. On tv, the FCC regs prevent money from changeing hands, but if your job reqires you to use a computer, and Apple offers you a bunch of dual G4s and an ibook for each member of the crew, in exchange for an imac prop that you need anyway, you take the bribe and run...
        • Hardly proves that Apple "outspends all other PC companies in product placement", does it. Doesn't even prove that Apple pays for anything.

          "In placements, I want a breadth of exposure" says nothing about paying.

          "Loaning of equipment" says nothing about paying for placement.

          No, AMD probably does pay more for producrt placement than Apple, and that this doesn't show is what really irks the AMD guy. All your fantazising doesn't change that.

  • The most recent episode showed the messed up fiance/girlfriend (screws everyone she can find) uses Mac Laptop to document her exploits and pass them off as erotic fiction.

    Does this mean Apple is going for a different clientele?
  • Though I've not watched '24', I've heard about some similar cases over the years. Plus, if I had to use Windows all the time, I'd get cranky and evil, too, if not insane!

  • as an intern (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I was told by one of the executive team that there one person who does their product placement and has done it for years. They will not allow the 'bad' characters to use macs - or they pull support from the producers. If only good guys use macs, then apple gives them all sorts of support. Whoever this guy is is damn good at their job because you see (or maybe you notice) soo many more macs on TV and in movies than anything else.

    • An intern where?

      Most places put Macs in TV shows as they had them handy as they do a lot of creative work on Macs.

      After all, what platform do you think they use for creative work?

    • Umm...is that why, in this season's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," the bad guys have Apple flat panel displays clearly visible in most scenes shot in their "hideout"?

    • In Smallville Lex Luthor uses a Titanium PowerBook. While he is not yet a criminal master mind in this show, I would not characterise him as a good guy.
  • Is it me, or was this article posted on Wired about 3 months ago? It is an interesting piece on the media steriotypes of the computing world, but news in its hour is better than this old stuff that seems to be popping up on Slasodot ever more frequently. Perhaps it is a drive to keep publishing articles even when there is no news.
    • Is it me, or was this article posted on Wired about 3 months ago?

      If May 16, 2002 was three months ago, then no, it's not just you.
      • Sorry pudge, you're wrong, look here [wired.com].
        • No, I am correct, and you are incorrect. The story may have have been posted back then in another form, but since the episode where the individual was exposed as a traitor was aired for the first time only last week, "this article" could not have been posted more than six days ago. OOPSIE FOR YOU.
          • Was Jamey a traitor? Did she use a Dell PC? Was she exposed before Nina? Yes, yes and yes. To be clear the May 16th article was not published until May 16th, duh, but the point of the Stigmata669's post (I think), was that the observation of 24's bad guys using PC's and the good guys used Mac's, had been made and written about in Wired.
            • He said "this article," not "an article much like this one" or somesuch. So, he was wrong. *shrug*
            • He made it to apear that Slashdot "again" posted something about an old article. Maybe this should have gone into a Slashback, but it was not YASDUOS (yet another Slashdot digs up old stuff). It was Wired doing an follow-up to one of their old stories.
    • And the (new) article says so. It also says that few people believed him, and that he was ridiculed on web boards. Couldn't be talking of Slashdot, now could they.
  • You see this Mac/PC symbolism every once in a while in the media. For example, in the film You've Got Mail , Tom Hanks uses an IBM ThinkPad (symbolizing corporate greed), and Meg Ryan uses an Apple PowerBook (symbolizing the sweet, "Shop around the corner")
  • Here's my short list, please follow up with more:

    Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Willow is a Mac user)
    Angel (Fred, Cordie and Giles)
    Drew Carey (Drew and Meme[sp?])
    Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: the TV Series

    -Rusty
  • I'm new to the Apple Computer Company of the 00s, but having used the svelt TiBook, I've started to recognize it more often on TV. I guess looks do count for something, but it is refreshing to see OS X grace the screen once in a while.

    CSI - TiBooks throughout the lab, never see the back of the screen or it's blocked by something.

    West Wing - CJ & Co tapping away on TiBook' also, normally hidden by a [tasteful] vase.

    Props to Six Feet Under for using Apple's top of the line laptop to write pr0n.

  • Kaiju Komputers (Score:3, Informative)

    by Melantha_Bacchae ( 232402 ) on Tuesday May 21, 2002 @12:36PM (#3559176)
    Ever since an army of Macs appeared on the screen in 1993, Godzilla and Mothra, the King and Queen of Monsters, have made this abundantly clear: Mac users are good guys deserving of their protection, and users of Microsoft OSes (PCs and PDAs) are either evil or just imbeciles (though Mothra holds out the hope that they can change).

    In 1993, the Mac appeared in its first Japanese kaiju eiga (monster movie): "Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla 2". This movie stared Godzilla, MechaGodzilla, MechaKingGhidora (cameo), Rodan, Baby Godzilla. Cameo appearances of Toho's other two big stars, Mothra and King Ghidora, were later cut from the final movie. Dozens of Macs were used to design MechaGodzilla. In the scene of Baby Godzilla's birth, the camera switched back and forth between the rocking egg and a Mac, showing a chart of the energy levels, that was in the same room.

    In 1994, the Mac returned in "Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla". Director Miki Saegusa, wearing jewelry with Mothra's symbol on it and acting as Mothra's agent in this movie (Mothra was off in space trying to stop an asteriod from destroying the Earth), viewed the approach of Space Godzilla on a Mac. In case we wouldn't recognize it as a Mac, they stuck a big Apple logo sticker on the monitor. ;)

    In 1995's "Godzilla vs. Destroyer" (Godzilla's 40th birthday celebration), the Apple logo appears on the wall of the dorm room of no less a personage than the grandson of Dr. Yemane himself (a star of the first Godzilla movie back in 1954). He also has a Mac in his dorm room, with a model of Godzilla sitting on the monitor (have we quite gotten the concept that Godzilla loves the Mac yet?). Macs appear throughout the movie. At the end, Godzilla's son, born in the same room as a Mac, succeeds his father as the new King of the Monsters, and saves Tokyo from the fallout of his father's death.

    It's 1996, and the name of the movie is "Mosura" ("Rebirth of Mothra I" in the US). Apple is in big trouble. So are Mothra and her infant daughter Mothra Leo. There are no Macs in this movie, only a Windows 95 running Sony notebook (with the title bar and other Windows 95 parts blurred to avoid giving Microsoft any product placement). The PC is used by the guy that releases Death Ghidora from his prison (done out of ignorance and some mind control from Belabera) and who runs a logging company (a Mothra no-no). However, Apple does appear in symbolic form: an apple sapling burnt to a crisp (and shown several times so we know that it is "special") is resurrected and grown into a mighty tree by Mothra Leo (along with the surrounding 8000 acres of forest that Death Ghidora destroyed). This movie was released on December 14th, 1996. Later that same month, Apple makes a surprise announcement: the return of Steve Jobs.

    In 1997's "Mosura 2" ("Rebirth of Mothra 2" in the US), the Mac is back, with Fairy (Mothra's little avatar who provides transport for her Elias/fairies) perched on top. Mothra Leo transforms first into Rainbow Mothra, then into Aqua Mothra (shooting little blue X-shaped bolts of energy at her foes). Five months after the movie's December 1997 release, the rainbow hued iMacs are introduced, and a new operating system named OS X would be announced (which just happens to have an Aqua GUI).

    Computers of any kind are not really used in the 1998 "Mosura 3: Kingu Ghidora Raisu" (not yet released in the US). Mothra spends too much time in the time of the dinosaurs (who didn't have computers). King Ghidora is too busy kidnapping kids and acting out his King of Terror persona (complete with the destruction of a building featuring twin towers and a guy dodging falling debris while talking on a cell phone). Aqua Mothra does have a cameo (as a transition to Lightspeed Mothra). I'm still wondering if the white hemisphere of the Egg of Eternity (Mothra's tomb/cocoon/egg/time capsule) didn't have something to do with the design of the new iMac.

    In the 1999 "Godzilla 2000 Millenium" (released in US theaters as "Godzilla 2000"), the iMac makes its kaiju eiga debut. This is very clearly a case of Mac = good, PC = bad or stupid (and gets you stomped if Godzilla catches you using one ;). The good guys, the Godzilla Prediction Network, use lots of Macs. The imbecilic (the American version makes a running joke of calling her an imbecile) reporter hanging out with them has a sensible iMac at work, but runs around with yet another Sony notebook. She stupidly flashes her camera in Godzilla's eyes (the whole scene is a tribute to Jurassic Park -- not the first tribute to Spielberg to appear in the Godzilla series), causing him to go after the car she is in with the GPN people, but since they are Mac lovers, he lets her off with just a bad scare. The head bad guy, Katagiri, uses a WinCE PDA. This, his attempts to kill Godzilla, and his endangering Japan by his gross arrogance and stupidity get him killed by Godzilla. The evil alien, Orga, the Millenium Monster, seems as much a kaiju incarnation of Microsoft and their Millenium research project, as it is the Y2K bug. It hacks into computers (that Sony/Windows notebook is the first one hacked), "soaks up every last bit of data", seeks world domination, and attempts to embrace and extend Godzilla. A store full of iMacs, Japan, and the whole world are in danger! Who's gonna save us? Why Godzilla, of course. ;)

    A note to Open Source fans. G2K is also the first G movie to show computers running Open Source software (MAME). They do try to help Godzilla and the good guys figure out what Millenium is up to. Unfortunately they are destroyed by Millenium.

    "Gojira X Megaguiras" (2000). Not yet released in the US. There are no Macs that I can find in this movie. Then again, it doesn't have any humans of sterling character either. The closest would be the inventor kid (can you say Slashdot geek) with his homebuilt PC running a custom OS (based probably on some Linux/BSD variant). He does brag to his coworkers that it is 10 times faster than their OS (Windows). This movie is best for the monster scenes. The final fight betweeen Godzilla and Megaguiras employs an excellent combo of CGI special effects and suit acting inspired by both anime and the Three Stooges. The result shows tremendous comedic timing and really gives the monsters personality.

    "Gojira, Mosura, Kingu Ghidora: Daikaiju Soukougeki" (2001 - may still come to US theatres this summer, but Sony is going to have to stop making Godzilla and Mothra mad by making audio discs that are mean to Macs): I haven't seen more than the quicktime trailer, but there appears to be something resembling an Apple logo in the background of one of the King Ghidora clips (KG plays a good deity in this movie: the Guardian God of the Heavens, one of the three beast gods of Yamato). According to the director, some (storyboarding?) of the work on this movie "more than ever before" was done on Macs.

    "forever...friends...farewell"
    Mothra Leo to four humans and a resurrected Apple tree.
    "Mosura" 1996 (US: "Rebirth of Mothra 1")

  • 24 (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Hank Scorpio ( 137966 )
    Actually, ya know ... I just noticed last night during the season finale of "24" ... the bad girl traitor character used a Mac powerbook. And not only that, but it looked like she was running Linux on it! I distinctly saw a GNOME-ish window manager and desktop on her screen. With the glowing apple prominently showing on the back of the screen.

    So... I don't think this rule is really a general rule. I suspect that Apples are common in TV/Movies because the people who create those shows are creative-types that probably prefer Apples.

    HS
    • Isn't that the very definition of a double agent? Looks like one thing on the outside, another on the inside? Fun to think that this might have been deliberate, but who knows?

  • This is old news. Sure it's finally been confirmed, but people were noticing this stuff as far back as February 8. Here [macobserver.com] is the mention from Feb 8 that started the articles that didn't show up until Feb 16 here [macslash.com] and here's the old Wired article [wired.com]. So, if you missed it up until the final episode, it's because you weren't paying attention. In other words, yes, this is OLD NEWS.
  • amazing how the bad guys (the government etc were using compatibles) and besides the one reference to the new chip (which is way faster than the pentium) all the good hackers were using Mac's. No hacker ever uses a Mac, well untill darwin came around with a bsd tcp/ip stack and err well I digress

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