First is was hilarious. The Mac, Justin Long, all cool and hip with his witty retorts and his, umm, jeans. The PC, John Hodgman, all dorky with his thick glasses and his ties. Oh lordy that PC, how silly he was with all of his dumb ideas and his inferior OS. After a while, Microsoft decided to respond to the commercials with a run of its own. “I’m a PC”, responding to “I’m a Mac”, highlighted the tremendous reach of the Windows OS and the millions of people in all walks of life who use Windows. Ok, super. Can we move on now? Oh no – now a fresh crop of two new Mac ads have started running, attacking Microsoft for not saying the word Vista in its commercials in the “The V Word”, and claiming that Microsoft is spending all its money on advertising as opposed to fixing Vista in “Bean Counter”. Umm, prior to Microsoft’s current ad run did any computer company advertise on TV even 10% as much as Apple? Regardless, it’s getting dirty out there folks – we haven’t seen a smear campaign like this since, well, Obama and McCain. The bottom line is that the whole thing is getting old. Sure, fanboys will still snicker at Justin Long and all of his snappy zingers but you don’t need to sell fanboys now do you Apple? You need to sell the rest of the market and stagnant ads with a dude who was funnier when he was getting pelted in the marbles with dodgeballs might not cut it anymore. So Apple, it will behoove you to know that we’re kind of over it. It was witty, it was effective and it’s time to move on. It might be best to get rolling with a new campaign before Justin Long becomes the next Aflac duck or Geico gecko – you know, so hated that people actually vow never to give those companies a single dollar as a result. Hit the jump for the other zany new “I’m a Mac” ad.
