Novell/Linux Parody on Apple's Mac vs PC Ads

xtaski writes "Wired's 'Cult of Mac' blog offers up video of Novell's spin on the Apple Mac vs. PC ads. The twist: a young lady portraying that winsome third party, Linux. There are two ads available for perusal, and the second is definitely the better of the two."

Comments

How about a link to the downloadable videos?

[Anonymous Coward]

Conveniently located on Novell.com instead of some crappy Flash video. Now available in MPEG and Ogg!

Re:How about a link to the downloadable videos?

[i_should_be_working]

I also like how it's pointing out that it doesn't matter what type of computer you have. You can run Linux now. I guess many people are used to the idea of having to buy a new computer to change operating system.

Re:How about a link to the downloadable videos?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two more for the list:

8. Beryl/compiz. These don't work on OS X. (Yeah, I know, OS X has a nice interface, but it's static and boring compared to beryl.)

9. More intelligent sleep functions: it won't go to sleep if the network activity and/or cpu level is above a certain threshold, unlike OS X which monitors only keyboard and mouse to gauge whether the computer is busy. As a result, OS X can go to sleep during a large download, large compile, or large simulation. Linux waits until these are finished, and then goes to sleep.

Re:How about a link to the downloadable videos?

[jZnat]

I would recommend trying Kubuntu, OpenSUSE (or SUSE even, although that would involve supporting that damn Microsoft-Novell patent deal), Mandriva, or Linspire/Freespire. These distributions use KDE (K Desktop Environment), which in my opinion (and even Linus himself along with many, many others) is far more usable, customisable, and useful than GNOME, the default desktop environment for many other distributions such as Ubuntu. Although GNOME tends to look cleaner than KDE, its usability is quite, well, limited. I don't understand the circle jerk going on between most distributions and their need to use GNOME by default, but I do know that a lot of people's complaints in regards to the GUI on Linux are GNOME-specific and are not a problem with KDE.

Re:How about a link to the downloadable videos?

[k1e0x]

Thats pretty much right but don't write off Gnome so quickly, its also a very usable system. There are some things that could be better about it but in the case of a few things Apple has patents on them.. for instance the spring loaded folders. Nautilus had this some time ago but had to remove the function as Apple was going to sue.

>> Early on, Apple put a lot of research into their human interface guidelines.

So has Gnome. Sun spent a great deal of time user testing, and researching Gnome. This VASTLY improved Gnomes usability from 1.4 to 2.4'ish. Gnome has also done this testing on modern fast web connected computers. http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gup/ut1_report /report_main.html Gnome is very pleasing to use, and it follows its UI Guidelines closer than anyone else. Gnome gets a lot of flack for removing preferences, but some should be removed.. for instance the Task List applet.. at one time you could set (in pixels) how large each task in the list would be.. now the applet determines the best size depending on how much space is free. (whereas you could still have a preference for this now.. the *need* for it is very low.) I think Gnome is for people who don't want to know about the computer they just want to get stuff done. (Much like OS X)

however.. lets say you want a power users desktop.. well Linux just so happens to have the best thing there as well, KDE. Or maybe its something fast and light weight.. again in comes Linux with XFCE and Fluxbox.

OS X is a great system, but my biggest complaint with it is its performance vs Linux, All the UI's in Linux mentioned give better performance than Aqua. (or Aero and Luna for that matter.)

Not as good as...

[computersareevil]

Good, but not as good as the IBM commercial from years ago, IMHO.

Re:Not as good as...

[computersareevil]

They did put out a bunch of other Linux commercials. Some of them are quite good, like the first result (and it's 'Lee-nus' not 'Lie-nus' you insensitive clod!), but I still like the original best. Gives me chills.

Here is another one

[loconet]

Here is another clip wire didn't add

Indeed not

[Dolda2000]

If you follow the link in the article to Novell's video page, you'll see they have them in Ogg/Theora format:

• Video 1
• Video 2
• Video 3

Re:You tried to parod a humorous commercial?

[backdoc]

Oh. C'mon. They clearly make points such as in the first commercial the mac and pc are so busy fighting over who is #1, they don't even notice Linux. And, when they do, it's very mature. Get it???

And, in the second video, she is fashionable and gets a new look quite often while the and the pc says he will be wearing the jacket for 5 or 6 years.

I think the commercials are both good and humorous.

Re:ATTN: SWITCHEURS!

[colourmyeyes]

So is the self-mutiliation aspect of "the entire Apple experience" optional?

Already been done

[giminy]

Here

Re:Never pronounces SUSE

[Chandon Seldon]

It's entirely clear how to pronounce it - just like the guy in the video "German Air Traffic Control" does.

http://www.novell.com/video/ (Sixth video down)