Love the new Get a Mac ads. They’re the right ads at the right time. Don’t let the humor fool you, these ads are nice and arrogant. This isn’t the soft-sell of years past, where the boldest Apple could get away with being was to let Mac users get on carmera and run their mount about how much they like doing so. Thanks to a confluence of reasons ranging from the rise of consumer multimedia, to fears over security, to the popularity of the iPod, to the rise of legal music downloads, and the fact that many PC users have become vaguely aware of the fact that the Mac rates out better in all of these areas, Apple is finally in a position to go on television and arrogantly inform the world that yes, all the good things they’ve heard about the Mac from nutcases like you and me is actually true after all.
But they get away with the arrogance not just because people quietly know they’re right, but because the ads start off with such an unassuming presence. You think it’s some kind of public service announcement from the computer gods, cheerfully informing you of various aspects of personal computing…and then suddenly you realize that it’s Apple arrogantly informing you why its computers are great and all other computers are crap. Disguised as an unassuming humorous soft-sell, it’s actually some well-disguised powerful stuff. Even a year or two, Apple couldn’t have gotten away with it. But now’s the time to take everything that PC users are subconsciously starting to realize about the Mac, and actively shove it down their throats. It ends up planting such a direct message with consumers that it’ll leave them wondering why companies such as Dell and Microsoft don’t have the nerve to publicly defend themselves against the Mac. The more that those companies continue to officially pretend that the Mac doesn’t exist, the better of a choice the Mac looks to be in comparison.
…and here you thought I was going to write a ten paragraph dissertation on the subject 
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.