"Hello." "I'm a Smug Shit." "And I'm a PC."

From the moment I started seeing those "I'm a Mac. And I'm a PC" ads, I felt uneasy about them, kind of like how I feel when I notice the ancient-times date on the yogurt I just ate.

It took me a while, but I eventually figured out what was so unsettling about this campaign:

1. The human avatar for the PC is John Hodgman, a brilliant writer, lecturer, and contributor to The Daily Show and This American Life. (His recent radio piece on superpowers -- would you rather have flight or invisibility, and would you do any good with it? -- was unadulterated genius.) I'm supposed to root against this guy?

2. Meanwhile, the human avatar for the Mac is a jocky hipster who woos Japanese girls in their native tongue and carries around a Walt Mossberg column about how awesome he is. He probably works as an underqualified Director of Marketing at a Web 2.0 company, and his dad still pays off his credit card for him every month. In sum, he's a huge cock, and a Teamsters-style whup-down would do him some positive learnin'.

3. I rock a 2002-model Gateway with Windows XP. I beat the silicon out that sumbitch, running pretty much everything I can -- iTunes, Photoshop, Thunderbird, the last three Grand Theft Auto games, Picasa, free firewall and virus protection software, sometimes simultanteously -- and it's crashed or failed maybe four times ever. When I connect an MP3 player or that "new camera from Japan" or my Tivo or pretty much anything else, it works, usually with negligible tinkering. Overall, my PC is the most high-function, low-maintenance appliance in the whole house.

Good friend and neighbor Chris Null illustrates that the content of the campaign is about 50% valid, 50% bullshit, which I guess is about 50% better than "the coldest-tasting beer in America." Slate's Seth Stevenson goes so far as to deem the campaign "mean-spirited," one of the rare instances in which that phrase is used meaningfully.

Oh well. It's almost football season, I'm certain the suits at Coors are toiling on much fresher ways of offending us.

Have a spectacular weekend.

Comments

[Scaramouche]

s-
Why would you ever look at the date after eating the yogurt? That's as senseless as looking if you could have paid less for a major purchase after the fact. Both are bound to upset your system when you could have blithely lived on in ignorance.

As a tag on, the superpower of flight seems more beneficial to the environment, although invisibility could allow you ride public transport for free...

[Jon]

I always took you for a culture savvy type. How did you not recognize Justin Long as the "Mac"?

[jjm]

i hate it when i look at the date after i've consumed. there's no do-overs in eating, only drastic measures or acceptance. so yes, why bother?

back to the campaign. i'm sick of being told how unhip i am by association, i.e., the fact that i'm lugging a PC around rather than a shiny happy overpriced Mac with no right-click. buzz off! i'm still not buying your product, or entering your cozy nichified closed garden of an ecosystem.

The ad kinda reminds me of Ritual on Valencia - too many self-satisfied preening nattily spiked Mac users means i'll take my coffee to go.

[seamus]

Jon, I recognize Justin Long, the way you recognize your high school geometry teacher. I just refuse to recognize Justin Long, the way Iran refuses to recognize Israel.

Besides, I've never had a reason to see Dodgeball.

[mlo]

Dude, boyfriend has lost mad muscle mass since playing for Delaware!

[MattyMatt]

God I hate that Mac twerp. Mostly because he's so self-satisfied, but also because I want him to sleep with me.

My favorite of those commercials is when the Mac talks about starting a podcast. Can you imagine the excruciating podcast he would have? "Today I was pretty awesome. I worked on my art car, and then I listened to Bright Eyes and cried."

[papa]

what really makes that little mac puke a smug shit is that HE'S WRONG. he triumphantly corrects the mr. PC for improper use of "touche," except that it was perfectly proper. in fencing, from which the term derives, a fencer says "touche" if his opponent has scored a touch on him as a point of honor (usually said when the umpire has missed the call). it has nothing to do with having scored a point first, as the mac ad implies.

perhaps the ad agency is run by PC guys and slipped this one past the little pukes at apple....

[Catherine]

Well, I don't think that you're the target audience for the ads because 1. you read 2. you think and 3. you are techno savvy.

[ed]

Funny that almost no one is arguing the points the commercials make :)

I think the argument is a little wrong pc vs mac hardware is a different argument.

its os x vs windows thats the killer, xp is behind as all online comparisons show, ive been following vista closely now and its unfortunatley starting to look like a bag of spanners i even no a vista developer claim he would never install it on his hardware :)

[dalton]

You might enjoy these Apple commercial parody videos.

Although you have to admit, it's a pretty easy target.