Hi, I’m a Mac… Beep, beep

Hi, I’m a Mac… Beep, beep

If Apple had gone the tra­di­tional route of por­tray­ing Microsoft as a gigan­tic monop­o­lis­tic borg, great at crush­ing com­pe­ti­tion through mar­ket pres­sure but capa­ble of devel­op­ing only mediocre prod­ucts, the ads would have been bor­ing. More accu­rate, per­haps, but bor­ing. They’d have been the 30 Sec­onds Hate, and that’s just so last cen­tury. Instead Apple por­tray the PC as mostly well-meaning, like­able, goofy… but com­pletely ineffectual.

An inter­est­ing com­par­i­son of John Hodgeman-as-PC to Wile E. Coy­ote. As Chuck Jones said, “The audience’s sym­pa­thy must remain with the Coy­ote.” And, brush­ing by the para­noid “Microsoft is greedy” mantra that a lot of free soft­ware users seem to espouse, I think this por­trayal of Microsoft is very accurate.

(via John Gru­ber)