Apple appears to have pulled the plug on its ‘Get a Mac’ campaign that people felt all along did a better job selling the PC than Macs, and made Mac users look like smug, insufferable jerks in the process.
The ads always featured the PC (embodied by the talented John Hodgeman) trying vainly to get work done but failing miserably, or simply coming off as a square who knew nothing but spreadsheets, while Mac (played by the untalented Justin Long) just sort of stood there and bounced lines off him.
Some of them were funny, like the ones poking fun at Vista’s problems or the one that opened the 2009 Worldwide Developer Conference. But by and large they mostly made PC look sympathetic, if a bit pathetic.
Well, with Windows 7, it got a little harder to portray Windows as bloated, slow and buggy. Or maybe the commercials just got old. It’s been four years, after all. In an interview with the movie site A.V. Club last month, Long said he believed the commercials were done and had run their course. “You know, I think they might be done. In fact, I heard from John, I think they’re going to move on,” he told the site.
There hasn’t been a new commercial since October 2009, when Windows 7 shipped. Now comes the confirmation. The old ‘Get a Mac’ page has been replaced with one titled “Why you’ll love a Mac.” Nine reasons are listed, including “It runs Windows and Windows applications.” Even funnier was “It doesn’t get PC viruses.” No but it does get Mac viruses, they do exist.
All things considered, I’m glad to see an end to the commercials. They backfired in a lot of people’s minds, with PC coming out looking better (mostly because of Hodgeman) and you can only do so much negative campaigning. In the end, Apple has to tell people why they should buy a Mac, at two to three times the cost of a PC, and not why they shouldn’t buy a PC.
