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Apple Mac/PC Ads With a UK Twist
leppi writes "Japanese isn't the only language barrier Apple's decided to cross with its 'I'm a Mac, I'm a PC' ads. Those Brits love their 'shenanigans and tomfoolery' just as much as the next guy. Watch the Peep Show's Mitchell and Webb do the honors as PC and Mac, respectively."
So, funny ads.
With some truth in them, too...
So now what? Let the flames begin!
Ignore this signature. By order.
Also in Peep Show Jeremy (the Mac) gets laid a lot whilst Mark (the PC) gets laid about half a time before getting interrupted by the sound of Jeremy getting laid.
... maybe that's like a Mac connecting to a SMB share on a PC or something.
Generally though all the sex is rather retarded or twisted. Jeremy even shags Mark's sister, so I wonder what that's like
Because you can never have too much karma. ;)
Here, here, here and here.
Shouldn't that be
Apple Mac/PC Ads With a Twist of Limey?
Japanese isn't the only language barrier Apple's decided to cross with its 'I'm a Mac, I'm a PC' ads. Those Brits love their 'shenanigans and tomfoolery' just as much as the next guy.
It's almost like they've got General Peckem describing his platform preference to Yossarian.
Push Button, Receive Bacon
Now we just need versions for the Linux/Unix/BSD crowd. LOL!
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
Perhaps Apple's marketing consultants need to go on a quick computer course - after all, only a Windows PC is vulnerable to the "140,000 viruses" and whilst, using Crossover Office, it's possible to run MS Office on Linux, this is not the norm.
In the UK, we have an Advertising Standards Agency that should stop misleading adverts - this looks to be a prime example for them now...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Robert Webb (on the right) usually plays the more fashion conscious but much dumber character, and David Mitchell always plays the sensible, educated intelligent character.
No wonder he likes PCs!
Dude, that was like the first sentence of the summary! The link was the first word! Is it that hard to read even the first sentence of the FRIGGIN SUMMARY! I guess this is slashdot and that is asking a lot.
Monstar L
You can see them here in QT instead of YouTube
http://www.apple.com/uk/getamac/
-- I doubt, therefore I might be.
Well I for one had more OS X crashes in 2 weeks of owning a MacBook then x years with Windows XP. Maybe it is that I don't really know the OS , but I am still a bit disappointed.
-- TRUST ME! I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!
One advert makes the point that the 'PC' is a boring machine designed for boring office activities and the Mac is the free-spirited bundle'o'fun that'll bring joy an amusement to your home.
Then a couple of adverts later, they proudly tell you how your Mac'll run MS Office, a package which pretty much defines 'non-fun office stuff'
Today our contestants are Simon, who's a PC, and Julie who's also a Mac...
Macs have always been PCs but PCs haven't always been Windows. I was thinking of getting a MacBook until I saw an Apple ad in yesterdays Guardian. A pair of losers and patronizing marketing copy means I'll be passing on an Apple, I was going to run Linux as the main OS on the MacBook anyway. Chalk up another lost sale for the marketing execs.
quote: "Generally though all the sex is rather retarded or twisted. Jeremy even shags Mark's sister, so I wonder what that's like"
That's tickety-boo!
Saw the first of these adverts in a newspaper yesterday. My first reaction was "Are you intentionally insulting my intelligence or is it just a convenient side-effect"
I can't stand companies that insist on belittling others as part of their marketing campaign. Tell me what is good about YOUR system, if you HAVE to do comparisons hows about you keep it impartial, otherwise I just think you are a bunch of insecure twats.
"Hello, Im a Mac, AND IM A PC. Im all about fun on holidays, looking cool and being a rebel. IM ALL ABOUT GAMES. I dont have any games. I DO, INFACT I HAVE SO MANY GAMES NO MATTER HOW MANY OF THESE ADS WE MAKE I WILL ALWAYS BE IN FRONT. Oh. YUP. So these ads wont do anything to help MacOS? NOPE. Bugger"
Where are all the fun mac games to buy? I'll leave it at that.
I saw the ad on the side of a bus shelter in York as I was cycling past this morning. It had Mitchell holding up a sign saying, "I'm a PC" and Webb holding up a sign saying, "I'm a Mac".
Mitchell and Webb are a 'comedy duo' who first did a rather dark and twisted sitcom called "Peep Show", and then more recently a sketch show called "That Mitchell and Webb Look". In the sitcom, and the sketch show to a lesser extent, Mitchell is a dull, sensible, nerdy bloke with a safe boring job, whereas Webb is a partying, splif-smoking, foolhardy layabout.
Personally, I rather resented the implication that Mac users have more fun than PC users, but saw why they'd put these ads out - it's about reinforcing the popular image of Macs being colourful and 'fun' and PCs being grey, dull and run-of-the-mill.
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
.. Presses Back button.
The sooner video formats stop being political footballs and start 'just working' the better.
"I'm Linux and I'm free. And whilst you two have been busying yourselves arguing with each other, I've finished all of what I needed to do and I'm now off to the pub to spend the money I didn't spend on an operating system on a few pints of beer for myself."
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
So, to sum up the entire campaign:
:) In the personal computing space, Apple have settled for a pretty small and well-defined market that they think they can control closely, rather than compete in the more chaotic environment that swallowed Gateway and Compaq. At the same time, though, they kind of let go of their 'Chief Competitor to Microsoft' role.
* PC users are dweebs
* They don't have girlfreinds
* You should kick sand in their faces. Go on -- what're they going to do about it? Tell their mommies?
* Haw haw!
* BUY OUR STUFF, KID, OR YOU'LL BE THE ONE GETTING SAND KICKED IN YOUR FACE
This throws the difference between 'work' and 'lifestyle accessory' computing into pretty stark relief
Maybe these days, Linux competes with MS/Sun/IBM in the 'work' arena so well that Apple have had to move to the 'lifestyle' arena. Certainly it's hard to see how Apple could ever get into grid computing, large-scale web servers, and so on now that Linux is such a strong alternative.
I dunno, I really fear for Apple's long term future. Linux has eaten up so many markets at the small-device and large-server ends of the spectrum, and Apple shows so few signs of trying to compete with Windows in the middle, desktop/laptop part of the spectrum, that they really are going to have to mine this 'Apples are cool! Don't be a dweeb!' thing for all it's worth.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
Problem with that is that the best games require top spec machines, and you're better off buying a Wii instead.
So yes PC's have lots of games, (Well if you fork out big wads of cash for a good spec'd rig anyway) and PCs are cheap (well as long as you don't want to run the top games), so you have the best of both worlds.... not.
I think consoles will continue to take over from PCs for games.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
One's a smug, self-important wanker and the other's a pretentious git. Sounds perfect for Apple. Sorry, having a bad day.
The whole "PCs are only good for boring office type work" angle might have actually been believable back in the mid to late 80's when that is exactly how the "IBM Compatible" PCs were already widely perceived by the general public. But now anybody with an IQ greater than that of a chimp knows better. I'm not particularly for or against Mac but at the very least on this point they are about 20 years too late for this to be a usable marketing angle.
People with a modicum of technology awareness make ask you if it is a Windows or Apple PC. Here we know it can be anything really.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Do not go into markeeting.
Ever.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
and I would include the mac ones. I am a mac user and always have been, but the way these ads are presented does nothing but perpetuate the fanboi propoganda.
Hmmm.... I think the real advert would have featured 4 people.
1 I'm a Windows PC. I'm a crappy, bug riddled, OS which crashes frequently and is prone to getting "pwned" by 6 year old kids using copy & paste scripts. I'm a slut with syphilis.
2 I'm a MAC PC. I'm a reliable, pretty OS that only runs on overpriced hardware. I'm an effete snob.
3 I'm Linux. I'll run on almost anything but most of my desktop applications are simply not as good or usable as their Windows/MAC equivalents. I don't need consistency because everyone should "just do their own thing". I'm a hippy.
4 I'm *BSD. I spend most of my time locked in a cupboard quietly and reliably running all the important things on some old crappy hardware. I'm that weird guy down the road with an IQ of 260 and who's building a space shuttle out of old car parts.
Bah... If you ask me all PC operating systems are a bit crappy. If only we could have something which combined the development speed and hackability of Linux, the reliability and security of *BSD, the beauty of OSX and the consistency of behaviour and range of desktop programs of Windows. All running on commodity hardware. Maybe one day ?
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
And man, I'm feeling more hip and cool by the minute...
I had a friend bring up this point and I have to agree. There is one commercial where PC is talking about going in for an Upgrade for Vista. The one thing MAC lacks to mention is that if apple decides to release a new version of OS, have their line can't run in and the MAC needs to be replaced. I can see it now (in it's corrected version):
MAC: Hi PC
PC: Hi MAC
MAC: What are you up to?
PC: I'm going in to have some memory added and a new video card installed so I can run Vista.
MAC: Sounds rough.
PC: Hey, what about OS 10.5, isn't that coming out soon?
MAC: Yeah
See MAC go flying into a garbage can and a new bling laden MAC enter screen right.
MAC-New: Yoh, check out all this money I'm wearing.
PC: Nice.
The End
What's so newsworthy about this? Would have linked to an Nike ad if it had Mitchell and Webb in it? Didn't think so.
Mitchell, and Webb, for the non-UKians here do a very funny show called Peep Show which I only found out a few months ago, and have been raving about ever since!
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When there is no news around, people just post old news or linux/mac/xp war related articles. But i notice that as we are to see vista so soon that is getting a lot worse.
It's the old ads with british accents. The least they could have done is written new ones with allusions to brit society...
And is it me or does the mac not really look that hip compared to the american ads?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I'm a Mac vs PC (and introducing a 3rd character.... LINUX yeeeah :)
a rody-commercials-222404.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-L-0s-7-Z0&eurl=
Found it via this link (with other parodies):
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/press/top-5-im-a-mac-p
If they are going to come out with versions for each country, the Canadian version will probably be patterned after Bob and Doug McKenzie
Bob: G'day! I'm a Mac!
Doug: And I'm a PC, eh?
Bob: Today I'm gonna show you how I can run Microsoft Office applications, eh?
Doug: No way, eh?! That's my job!
Bob: Take off! Look at this chart that shows how much beer and back bacon I need to get me through the Stanley Cup Playoffs, eh?
Doug: You hoser! That's not enough beer!
Bob: Take off!
After that they can do commercials using Red Green and the Trailer Park Boys.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
Riiight.
...
"Oh, you know what Bill's doing, he's going for that indie dollar. That's a good market, he's very smart."
Oh man, I am not doing that. You fucking evil scumbags!
"Ooh, you know what Bill's doing now, he's going for the righteous indignation dollar. That's a big dollar. A lot of people are feeling that indignation. We've done research - huge market. He's doing a good thing."
Just remember - if the world didn't suck, we would all fall off.
...they're still full of sh!t. What Apple fails to realize, or they do yet insist on falsely representing the facts, is that PCs are not made by Microsoft, only the OS is and even then not every PC uses Windows. The Vista upgrade ad is especially annoying considering the upcoming release of Leopard. How long do you think developers are going to support universal binaries? Leopard may be built to run on G4s and G5s as well as the Intel Macs but the G4s are not going to perform very well and the G5s are going to require more RAM. I'm using Tiger on a 1.8 G5 at work and it's sluggish at times. The video camera is another stupid Mac ad. Who cares if a notebook comes with a camera? Yet another feature Apple crams down your throat, increasing the cost of the system. Not to mention that PCs notebooks had cameras built-in to them before Apple did. Many manufacturers still put them in. I'm about to purchase a Dell M2010 and it's got a camera built-in. If that's the sort of feature you need in a PC then there are plenty of options available. Let's also not forget Apple initial solution for the camera on the notebook, the huge iSight that clipped onto the top edge of the notebook monitor. Not exactly an elegant solution.
bla bla bla, more ads... if before they were with the news, so now they are the news
I had the same problem. I bought a Wallstreet notebook years ago. Loved the hardware, but the dang thing crashed more often than a North Korean rocket. Sometimes, I'd get a message saying that an "error of Type 2 occurred". What was that? Sometimes, I'd get a box on the screen with nothing but a caret in it. Perhaps you guys in big cities have a network of Mac users who could help with things like that, but out here in the sticks, I don't know of a single other Mac user to ask. So I ditched it for everyday tasks and only used it for email while on business trips, as I could afford to lose it. Last year, I loaded Yellowdog linux into it and have been very happy ever since. I'm sure this will be modded down for criticizing Apple, etc. etc.
I mean it's a bit like selling coke and pepsi; not so much difference between Macs and PCs but people have their very clear and very strong choices...
The Ads are cute and funny and like any other ad are designed to sell one product at the expense of an other. I think they do that very well.
http://www.hawknest.com/
> "PC" stands for "Personal Computer" which could be running
> Windows, Linux, *BSD, MSDOS, FreeDOS, etc. etc.
The word you're looking for is "microcomputer". "PC", as you point out, is short for "Personal Computer". "Personal Computer", in turn, is IBM's market-speak for their entry into the microcomputer market and its descendants; specifically with microsoft's OS running on Intel CPUs. Thus a PC is never a Macintosh, and until Apple switched from PPC to Intel chips, it was never possible for a Mac to be a PC. But they are both microcomputers.
Now, it is possible to turn a Mac into a PC by using Bootcamp and running windows natively on it. But that's a very recent turn of events. And, unless you do so, a Macintosh is still NOT a PC.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-L-0s-7-Z0
"Don't be so humble - you are not that great." - Golda Meir
David Mitchell got the upper hand plenty of times in "That Mitchell and Webb Look". See "Can People Levitate?" and "Angel Summoner and BMX Bandit".
Linux box: Hi, I'm a Linux box.
Windows box: And I'm a Windows box. Linux, I'm going to f**ing bury you.
Linux box: You and which army?
Windows box: Well, I've got Steve Ballmer. He can throw chairs pretty hard.
Linux box: That's scary alright, but as for killitude, I've got Hans Reiser.
Windows box: Ah- I- I'm going to go somewhere else then, okay?
One more reason to love Linux: Because if you don't we'll sic Hans on you.
Okay, that one was way tasteless. I apologize.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
This comment was posted in another discussion ages ago but its so appropriate I thought I'd add it here.
Mac: Whatcha got there?
PC: Games.
Mac: Can I play?
PC: No.
Mac: Aww! No fair.
PC: Allright. You can play them in two years, if you're lucky.
They should have a husband and wife pair of computers. The fat stupid lazy self absorbed PC husband with a drinking problem. And the hot slim sexy smart mouthed infinitely capable yet gentle harpy of a Mac wife.
... and I watched the US Mac ads, I found them quite endearing. Full of bullshit but non the less I felt quite sorry for both the machines they represented. The Mac with its "If PC wasn't so stupid I'd never get away with this crap I'm peddling" and the PC's "I really haven't any idea whats going on any more" I kinda liked it.
But these two? I want to smack both of them upside the head and that annoyance made me want to kick both my work PC and the Mac I have to use because our CEO does everything on a powerbook then get annoyed when the rest of the company can't read anything he produces. Surely that not the response they were aiming for.
Mind you I still love my home rig, all of those machine are may babies and I love them.
Loop, twist and loop again.
http://mvpc.ytmnd.com/
Youtube links just work?
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
OMG! You are the first person who ever pointed this out!! Stop the presses!
Fact: Apple isn't the one who made this distinction. IBM made a computer called (gasp) the IBM PC (omg rly no wai), and the terminology stuck. In everyday usage for the last 25 years, PC has meant Microsoft DOS and Windows computers.
Not Tandys. Not Apple II's or Macs. Not Commodores, and not Amigas. IBM compatable PCs. You can still buy a box of floppys with PC FORMATTED printed on the fuggin' side. That's FAT my friend, not UFS, ext, or some other unixey BS. You still think Apple is pushing the terminology?
I ask myself, how can three-or-more slashdot users be such cluless nubs that they mod this up? And then I remember: oh, wait, slashdot. nm.
This made my day.
Done.