A Slate.com article on the Mac vs. PC commercials caught my attention this morning. First things first, I love these commercials, they're hilarious. On the other hand, I'm a PC user and wouldn't be caught dead with a Mac in my home (my husband will support that too)...but even I can appreciate the humor in these commercials.
Although, it's easy for me to not be swayed by marketing, it turns out that these commercials are causing a ruckus in the Mac vs. PC world. Seth Stevenson, at Slate, calls them "mean-spirited", although I don't think I would go as far to say that...misleading maybe.
I think the two men are stereotypical users of each type of computer. Although I think I'm comfortable enough in my geekiness to not care to aspire to the "coolness" of the Mac user. Seth Stevenson's article brought up an excellent point about these stereotypical characters; one that I did not consider:
My problem with these ads begins with the casting. As the Mac character, Justin Long (who was in the forgettable movie Dodgeball and the forgettabler TV show Ed) is just the sort of unshaven, hoodie-wearing, hands-in-pockets hipster we've always imagined when picturing a Mac enthusiast. He's perfect. Too perfect. It's like Apple is parodying its own image while also cementing it. If the idea was to reach out to new types of consumers (the kind who aren't already evangelizing for Macs), they ought to have used a different type of actor.
The actor that plays Mac does represent a lot of Mac owners. I do hate being stereotypical here but it's hard to avoid. Mac users are a very small population of computer users and I can see how these commercials could make their potential market smaller instead of larger. I couldn't see somebody like my mom being inspired to buy a Mac based on this character anyway. I've long thought that the only people who will continue to use Macs are die hard Mac users, everybody else will use a PC. Seth continues with his analysis, only with the PC character this time:
Meanwhile, the PC is played by John Hodgman-contributor to The Daily Show and This American Life, host of an amusing lecture series, and all-around dry-wit extraordinaire. Even as he plays the chump in these Apple spots, his humor and likability are evident. (Look at that hilariously perfect pratfall he pulls off in the spot titled "Viruses.") The ads pose a seemingly obvious question-would you rather be the laid-back young dude or the portly old dweeb?-but I found myself consistently giving the "wrong" answer: I'd much sooner associate myself with Hodgman than with Long.
By the way, Alex and I love John Hodgman on The Daily Show, he's hilarious! Even after watching all of the commercials I'm still happy to associate myself with the "portly old dweeb" character. Being a PC user I think it's because I can associate with the frustrations of being a PC user through this character. That's why the commercials are funny to me, because I can relate to a lot of PC's pitfalls...however, because of this, he gets my sympathy vote, and I end up disliking Mac even more...I think this isn't the emotion that Apple was going for in the ads...at least I hope it wasn't, otherwise they need to fire their marketing team.
Now, funny or not, these ads are still misleading. Yeah, you can do fun, cool stuff on a Mac. I do fun, cool stuff on a PC all the time too. Our games don't play on Macs well (if at all), Office on a Mac is not good, and if I did own a Mac, the first thing I would do is buy a new mouse (how do you use those things?!) I think the thing that PC users enjoy the most is that they have a wider variety of software available to them. Software is what makes the computer, not the OS. Don't get me wrong, I think Windows is not perfect, but OSX is not perfect on the other end of the spectrum (pretty, animated icons mean nothing to me when all I want to do is open a damn file). The perfect OS is somewhere in the middle and both companies haven't grasped it yet, however since I have a choice, I choose the platform that lets me run the most stuff with little issues. I can deal with having to clean my computer up at least once a month or so when it starts running slow (I used the metaphor of sending your car in for an oil change with my family this past weekend). I can also deal with the stupid Microsoft updates that seem to appear every two days. For me, the most appealing thing about being a PC owner is the freedom of choice...even though proprietary software exists on PCs (and sometimes annoyingly), we're not tied down to it. As a more advanced computer user I have yet to run into a computer problem that I haven't been able to fix on my own (one way or another), and let me tell you that if my family wanted to use me for tech support and they owned a Mac, the answer would be "no!", and I would tell them to buy a new computer.
Here's a compilation of comments about the commercials, also from Slate. Another fun link I found in all of this was an MS IPod parody video that answers the question, what if Microsoft redesigned the IPod box? What I love about this video is that is was made by Microsoft employees. PC users, and even Microsoft employees, know how to poke fun at themselves, I love that!
