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Interview With "Switcher Girl" Ellen Feiss

Posted by kdawson on from the half-of-my-paper-was-gone dept.

Ed over in Accounting writes in with a Macinstein interview with Ellen Feiss, an Internet cult figure of a bygone era. Back in 2002, in the heyday of Apple's "Switcher" ads, the 14-year-old Feiss garnered a bit more than 15 minutes of fame. Her Switcher ad became an instant classic — partly because of the widespread belief that she was stoned while filming it, which she says was not the case. In the interview Feiss, who is now a college student with one movie behind her, talks about pseudo Internet fame, drugs, and acting. She says she's still using the same G4 she had when the ad ran. Nostalgia bonus: the ad is embedded at the end of the interview.

5 of 351 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Go PowerBook G4! by glesga_kiss · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Ditto. I think these mac users are on crack most of the time, they have this weird self-censorship where all the facts are skewed. Explains the eyelids I suppose. In my home I only have two PCs with a CPU speed greater than 2gHz, one is my old desktop that is FOUR years old and the other is my new laptop and both were specifically bought with gaming in mind. The rest are all below the 500MHz mark and run just fine.

  2. Re:Apple ads by jpellino · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    "mentioning how Mac software never has problems"

    That's not been said in any ad.

    The truth is PCs running Windows are more problematic than Macs.

    Just yesterday it took a half an hour to get a mainstream quickcam out of the box and showing video. iSight? No longer than it takes to launch the app than needs it.

    Use a thumb drive on a Windows PC. As in, go hunt for it once you plug it in - then use it.

    Picasa vs. iPhoto. No contest.

    Actually, Picasa (and much of the rest of Google's stuff) has saved Microsoft's bacon as far as good app experiences go - Bill and Steve B should face Mt View and pray every morning in gratitude.

    Add a printer? 90% of them work in OSX with included drivers.

    Need to do something tough in networking? Go buy another version of Windows.
    Need to be a media center? Goi buy another version of Windows.

    There's more but I have to get to work...

    --
    "Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
  3. Re:Apple ads by MightyYar · · Score: 1, Flamebait
    Pretentious probably isn't the right word... the people you deride are more ostentatious. They like to show off their nice things. Sort of a "Look, I have the BEST computer!" Pretentious people have a more self-important flavor to them, and certainly a lot of the hipster Mac users fit into that category as well. And of course, ostentatious people can also be pretentious... I think I'm rambling.

    That said, I am a Mac user, and I do buy them partially for their looks. To be fair, I also spend extra on the nicer PC cases for my Windows/Linux machines. I just like things to look nice - I guess it could be considered ostentatious, but I've at least convinced myself that I'm not showing off :)

    So I think Macs attract the following:
    1. People who are pretentious. (The Mac makes me look important.)
    2. People who are ostentatious. (Look, I have the coolest, nicest computer!)
    3. People who like things that look good.
    4. Psuedo-geeks who a unix with a nice interface.
    I think I'm asking for a flaming with #4. ;p
    --
    W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  4. Re:Apple ads by Lars+T. · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    The 604 beat the Pentium 2 to hell and back even in SPEC, and yet lamers like you still didn't buy Macs. It must be great to be a lying hypocrite, tell us about it.

    BTW, the latest PC are sold with DRM chips, while the latest Macs aren't - suck up to that.

    --

    Lars T.

    To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck

  5. Re:Apple ads by gujo-odori · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    If Macs have a slight edge in ease of use over Windows, than an M-16 has a slight edge over a muzzle-loading musket as an infantry weapon. Looking on from the Windows or Linux side of the fence, you may not realize just how much better OS X is than Windows, but the gulf really is about that large.

    Price? XP Pro isn't exactly cheap. Software availability? For most users, there are no areas where either the same or workalike software isn't available. Better still, in cases where there is both a Win and Mac version of a software product, the Mac version is usually better. There's more Windows software out there, but a lot of it's crappy and nowhere near worth the price. Mac software covers all the important areas and is usually much better in quality.

    Also, consider this: if price and software availability are really all that matter to most people, they should all be using Debian or one of its clones: they're free and there's something like 7000 packages in the Debian repositories, any of which can be installed free of charge with a few clicks of the mouse.

    Why, then, do most people use Windows? Because it's what their computer came with and they don't know anything else/know any better. If they did know anything else, they'd switch. The fact of the matter is that in terms of the quality of the UI, Windows has fallen far behind both Mac and Linux. Vista does a lot to offset that, but it brings so much other crap with it that it's not worth switching, IMO. If you're going to learn a whole different UI anyway, might as well forget Vista and Aeroglass and get something better and cheaper, like OS X or Kubuntu.