Intel casts Mac as PC in new Commercials.

[rcmaehl]

Summary

Intel has casted Apple's former "I'm a Mac" guy Justin Long to praise PCs in latest anti-M1 ads.

 

Media

 

Quotes

Quote

Intel has cast former "I'm a Mac" actor Justin Long in a series of new ads. Long stars in a series of five new commercials... on Intel's YouTube channel. Each ad plays with expectations from Apple's iconic 2000s-era "Get a Mac" ad campaign. "Hello, I'm a — Justin. Just a real person doing a real comparison between Mac and PC." The 30-second spots include... touting PC touchscreens' advantages, various 2-in-1 form factors, PC gaming, and support for multiple monitors. In one ad, the now 42-year-old actor meets with a PC gamer. The punchline lands when Long asks if they also have a Mac gamer. The...gamer responds, "No one really games on a Mac," Long's Intel gig is only the latest example of... hiring familiar actors from rivals' popular ad campaigns. Sprint employed Verizon's former "Can you hear me now?" actor Paul Marcarelli to boost a rival carrier. Apple's M1 Macs launched in November, proving to be faster than almost every Intel Mac. Apple kicked off a...transition away from Intel with the launch of a new 13-inch MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac mini.

 

My thoughts

I swear Companies hiring prominent actors from previous commercials is just dirty and petty, and I want more of it. It just goes to show that actors are just actors and getting paid to say whatever the company wants them to say. Intel is not pulling any punches with their most recent campaigns and it will be interesting to see if/how Apple responds.

 

Sources

The Verge

9 to 5 Mac

Apple Insider (quote source)

Edited March 17, 2021 by rcmaehl
More minor cleanup

[WkdPaul]

* thread cleaned *

 

Thanks for the corrections !

[HanZie82]

Whoa this is an Intel add. Dayyum.

They dont like them using that M1 silicon then i guess. hahahaha.

Kinda feels like a very childish, i cant play with your toys so they's shit, kinda thing.

 

Seriously management on those big companies is run by fucking children i tell yah. Such sadness there. I feel sorry for all of them.

[CommanderAlex]

21 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

The 30-second spots include... touting PC touchscreens' advantages, various 2-in-1 form factors, PC gaming, and support for multiple monitors. In one ad, the now 42-year-old actor meets with a PC gamer. The punchline lands when Long asks if they also have a Mac gamer. The laptop gamer responds, "No one really games on a Mac," Long's Intel gig is only the latest example of tech giants hiring familiar actors from rivals' popular ad campaigns.

I can start to see Pat Gelsinger starting to hammer Apple now after becoming CEO last month. 

[hunsnotdead]

18 minutes ago, rcmaehl said:

Summary

No one really games on a Mac

Well he's not wrong.

 

Also, shots fired in last november

 

[Murasaki]

The face of a company that knows they're screwed.

[saltycaramel]

Cringey.

Awkward.

Desperate.

 

Also, I like that some of the claims are super time-sensitive.

 

It’s now or never again to make those claims about only 1 external screen, similar performances, no variety of chassis colors, etc. 

 

Kinda like Linus claiming “it doesn’t run freaking Photoshop” back in November. (now native Photoshop just got out of beta)

 

Or the latest TechQuickie framing the Macs in the context of “well, most Macs IN THE WILD right now are x86, so we’ll pretend that’s the correct comparison to make in 2021”. 

 

Everybody making a huge fuss (and time-sensitive damage control) of what effectively is the “beta” phase of Apple Silicon Macs rollout. 

 

Because they know or imagine what comes next.

They know that will be even harder to counter.

Time is running out.

Tick, tock, tick, tock..

[saltycaramel]

Imagine being the incumbent in the CPU space and making a huge fuss about the first timid low end attempt from a new competitor, effectively its “beta” attempt rushed to market just to prove a point, half-assed inside last decade Mac chassis designs. 

 

Only explanation: you’re smelling an existential danger already from this low end attempt. 

[SupaKomputa]

And Amd come with Laurence Fishburne

[RejZoR]

If Apple's M1 is just a "beta" it's one damn good "beta". Just look how long Microsoft is trying with ARM and all their attempts were pretty sad. Apple drops it and their translation layer is super fast and transparent, they move entire ecosystem to new SoC and only few 3rd parties took "few months" to adopt it. Good luck ever seeing that by anyone else within a decade...

[saltycaramel]

When the “1.0” drops in a couple of months (or maybe weeks, for the iMac), it will melt faces. 

 

In the meantime, competitors are already struggling to create a narrative to counter the “beta”. This is telling.

[captain_to_fire]

1 hour ago, rcmaehl said:

It just goes to show that actors are just actors and getting paid to say whatever the company wants them to say.

Historically it has always been this way for actors and other famous people

• Alicia Keys tweeting from an iPhone while being Blackberry's brand ambassador. [here]
• Oprah tweeting that she likes the Surface RT but used Twitter for iPad to send the tweet. [here]
• Jessica Alba eventually went back to an iPhone after endorsing Windows Phone. [here]
• Famous Kpop girl group Blackpink caught using iPhones while being Samsung endorsers. [here]
• RDJ endorsing HTC and OnePlus

[saltycaramel]

In this particular case the actor is just reading a script both this time and back in the “I’m a Mac” days, there’s no secret about it. 

I wouldn’t necessarily put him in the same basket as celebrities putting up an act IRL to look like they’re genuinely into a brand.

 

Any case, actors or paid influencers are just doing their job. They’re a “tool”, the problem here is how this tool is being used in a totally misguided way. (unclear who are they targeting age-wise, what are they accomplishing other than some Streisand effect around the M1 Macs and sounding desperate, etc.)

 

I don’t wanna believe this whole campaign was inspired by that 30 seconds joke cameo of the PC-guy in the post credits scene of Apple’s M1 keynote. 

[Commodus]

I look at it this way: that Intel felt pressure to put out an ad featuring Mr. I'm A Mac says more about how nervous Intel is than anything. It wouldn't do this if it thought Apple Silicon wasn't fast enough to pose a threat.

 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again... while I don't think Apple will suddenly conquer the computing market, you get the sense Intel, Microsoft and even AMD are worried Macs will claim an unambiguous performance advantage (in CPUs, not likely GPUs) like iPhones did in the mobile world. Not even for the sales loss so much as the public perception that they're no longer the top dogs.

 

 

[Sandro Linux]

Very cringe was way better being the mac guy

[Jet_ski]

Intel going all out on the marketing, not so much in the engineering though.

[RedRound2]

I dont understand. They already got a lot of flak for the misleading benchmarks and previous sponsered videos. Why are they still continuing this? Maybe this is enough to trick the general consumers, but they do know that eventually words will spread and Intel will forever be stained with such acts (well, now that I think of it, they probably got away so many times with shady tactics by remaining in monopoly for a long time to know any better)

[Video Beagle]

What's weird is >dusts off degree in advertising< , in marketing strategy, the market leader doesn't mention it's competetors. It's part "you don't occupy the same mind space as me" and part don't give them advertising.  Lower places in the market will mention the leader because they're already there..the public knows about them.

(think back in the day.. Pepsi would show how they compare against Coke...but Coke never talked about Pepsi...that's just 101 level stuff).

 

Intel is acting like the follower, rather than the leader that their market share puts them as.

[saltycaramel]

https://daringfireball.net/2021/03/intel_goes_long

[Sauron]

17 hours ago, rcmaehl said:

It just goes to show that actors are just actors and getting paid to say whatever the company wants them to say.

Are you saying the actor who was paid to say "I'm a mac" isn't actually a mac? :shock:

[Blademaster91]

An ad like that isn't at a good time when Intel is still stuck on 14nm, and AMD is making a more efficient mobile cpu, AMD's only problem is supply.

And if only the fanatics for a particular fruit company got as upset over anti-consumer practices as they are over a dumb ad.

[DoctorNick]

13 hours ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

 

 

Lol steve was genius. Destribes Apple 20 later

[Spindel]

That's it!

 

I'm convinced, I'll be throwing my M1 away and I'll be getting a "real" computer. 

 

 

Obviously lack of fan noise should have clued me in on my computer not doing any real work and it means the computer is a slug and worthless. 

[Maticks]

only different between Kodak and Intel is Intel still has time... low tactic, gamers tend to not be mac users anyway or they have a console and will laugh at the ad.

[Commodus]

2 hours ago, Maticks said:

only different between Kodak and Intel is Intel still has time... low tactic, gamers tend to not be mac users anyway or they have a console and will laugh at the ad.

I'm a Mac user who has a PS5, and I find it a dandy combo... not cheap, but I get a nicer computing experience (as far as I'm concerned) while getting to play the latest games relatively hassle-free. No driver hiccups or rampant online cheating.