p2pnet - rss feed: New Apple Intel ad
p2p news / p2pnet: “The commercial is set in the sterile confines of an Intel chip fabrication plant while white-suited Intel workers bustle about with Very Serious looks on their faces. Announcer Kiefer Sutherland, also contributing to the Very Serious vibe of the whole scene, intones that for years Intel chips have been trapped in ‘dull little boxes dutifully performing dull little tasks when it could have been doing so much more’.”
The dull little boxes are, of course, mainstream PCs but now, ‘the Intel chip has been set free”.
And you know by whom ; )
It’s a description by Macworld’s Philip Michaels of the new Apple commercial and, he says, it ends with a, “hero shot of the all new iMac”.
But the greatest Apple ads ever were, “the original ‘Here’s to the Crazy Ones’ ad from the Think Different era (is it possible for a TV commercial to actually be inspiring?), the 1984 ‘Big Brother’ ad (got to stick with the classics), and the commercial about using the original iMac to get on the Internet in three steps (points off for Jeff Goldblum narration, sure, but you just can’t top ‘There is no step three’ as the tagline).”
The worst ad?
The, “memorably awful ‘Middle Seat’ commercial, which was intended to show off the Mac’s prowess at digital lifestyle application. Instead, the ad left viewers with the impression that Mac users are pushy, thoughtless oafs who will commandeer your tray-table on red-eye flights and force you to listen to Baha Men songs that are six months past their freshness date.”
Actually, there’s an Apple ad that’s even worse than that. Far worse.
It’s the 2004 ad Apple made with the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) and Pepsi to promote iTunes and, hence, the iPod.
“Hi, I’m one of the kids who was prosecuted for downloading music free off of the Internet,” says a schoolgirl who was 14 at the time.
She was one of 16 naive US teenagers ‘persuaded’ to appear in the spot which reprised the 1984 commercial mentioned by Michaels when, in the first Super Bowl ‘event’ ad, the Mac was launched.
Busted, Charged, Incriminated, and Accused appeared over their images, and, “the carefully arranged lighting and their sullen looks purposefully suggest a gritty, urban, isolated feel - the kind of thing associated on TV with ‘lawbreakers’ and criminality’,” we said in our story about the ad.
The teenagers were identified by the RIAA as ‘copyright violators’ even though they’d never appeared before a judge or been found guilty of anything. They and their parents had ’settled’ rather than risk going head-to-head with the RIAA’s heavyweight legal teams and bottomless pockets. Part of the deal was to have their kids appear in the ad, a promo giving away 100 million iTunes songs.
“It’s all in good spirit,” said Dave Burwick, chief marketer, Pepsi, North America.
But, “There’s no calculus of relative harm to justify this kind of abusive, untruthful and cynical behavior towards minors no matter how complicit their misguided parents may have been in this deception,” Josh Wattles, former acting general counsel of Paramount Pictures, a key architect of the MPAA’s (Motion Picture Association of America) anti-piracy programs in the transition to videocassette distribution, and the former senior executive in charge of Viacom’s music subsidiaries, The Famous Music Publishing Companies, told p2pnet:
“Convicted file swappers star in Pepsi Super Bowl ad,” said a ZDNet teaser headline leading to another site.
Prosecuted? Convicted? Of what? When? By whom? And on what criminal charge?
New York Times business writer Stuart Elliott thought the “stand-out” Super Bowl commercial was a, “cheeky spot” that “smartly teased the recording industry for suing teenagers for illegal file sharing”.
Also See:
Macworld - Assessing Apple’s Intel ad, January 16, 2006
14 at the time - Pepsi uses RIAA victim in ad, January 23, 2004
our story - Pepsi-iTunes Super Bowl ad blasted, January 30, 2006
January 17th, 2006 at 5:04 pm
Macs are irrelevant, it’s that simple.
PC’s are cheaper and have equivilent hardware, so whats the point in buying a mac? There simply is no advantage.
Even OSX is just a clone of XP, or is that the other way around, who knows?. They are both just eye candy.
January 17th, 2006 at 8:56 pm
I guess I would not be quite so dismissive of Macs. They are generally well designed and built. IMHO their popularity these days is based more on hype than substance. If you are on a budget the PC platform smokes Macs for value. Macs are overpriced by comparison, but if money is not an issue the Macs are solid. The difference here is, you can get good wintel machines, you just have to do your homework.
January 18th, 2006 at 2:22 pm
“for years Intel chips have been trapped in ‘dull little boxes dutifully performing dull little tasks when it could have been doing so much more’”
This makes me laugh, I went into the apple store looking at the Ipods and noticed the small nitch of a section for the software there was in the store. The only reason they are going to the Intel chip is because they can’t get their current chip makers to spend time working on a system with such a small market.
IMHO Steve Jobs is a fool when it comes to marketing, keeping the Apple OS locked into those computers. If he really wanted to get Apple out there he would allow the OS run on any Intel or AMD system. Who knows maybe a few more companys might start making software for the system.
January 18th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
It is an consistent myth that PC’s are cheaper than Macs. There are enough models of PC that are more expensive than Mac, and why would you purchase an inferior PC to begin with. For quality PC you would have to spend the money.
The only difference between the two platforms are is OSes. I could never see myself placing XP on a Mac, but OSX on a PC now there is an option.
I guess you have never “thrown your remote at the TV”.