GBlog

Mac has often been associated with unique ad campaigns, ever since their famous ad campaign based off of Orwell’s 1984 (which conveniently came out in 1984). I’m not so much a fan of that ad, but that’s me. Maybe I would’ve thought differently in 1984, had I seen the ad as a baby.

The new ads, in which a PC and a Mac are metaphorically represented by people, are kinda offbeat and smarmy, which slightly amuses me despite my dislike of Mac and not really agreeing with the propaganda points they’re making.

But what is truly cool about these ads is that the PC guy is played by a Daily Show contributor, John Hodgman. He plays the part well, and he does a fine job on Daily Show.

The best commentary I’ve seen on those ads, however, has to be this Ctrl-Alt-Del strip, which takes a classic anti-Mac argument and updates it to spoof the modern ads (which really just recycle old pro-Mac arguments, anyway). Sir, I salute you.

(Sidenote – Macs were the first really fancy computers past Commodore 64s I had access to, at my friend Mike’s house. His sister somehow deleted my Civilization save file before I could beat the game. Then I got onto PCs, realized how much more awesomer Windows was (one of my earliest Win95 memories is thinking “Whoa, this can play VIDEO!” while watching a quarter screen intro video to a game demo disc), and have dissed Mac ever since. The arguments in the commercials and Ctrl-Alt-Delete mirror conversations from my youth. Though, I admit OSX isn’t quite as bad, especially since it’s running on top of FreeBSD. And now I know Linux is ‘better’, but I still use XP myself. I guess what I’m really trying to say is that I agree with Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie when they say that Every OS Sucks.)

Alas, poor Beverly Crusher, I knew ye well.

It took me a few viewings of Microsoft’s ‘we have people’ commercial to realize it, and another one to be sure, but that’s Gates McFadden there.

What’s really sad is that it’s a lame commercial. Until I paid closer attention due to Dr. Crusher, I was sure it was an IBM commercial. And yeah, people are great, but I’m always skeptical of commercials where large companies proclaim their love for their employees.

Also, the music bugs me because it’s a bad ripoff of the Bach/Gounod ‘Ave Maria’. (Interesting sidenote – apparently ‘Ave Maria’ is too Catholic, so I can’t play it for my church organist gig anymore. Which is a shame, cause Ave Marias are amongst the most beautiful religiously inspired music. My favourite is Schubert’s.)

Anyway, they’re not supposed to be making another TNG movie, but they should, in which Picard and company team up to save Dr. Crusher from the Borg Collective that is Microsoft, the Locutus that is Bill Gates.