I'm a PC (not)

My wife has the ability to ignore TV commercials. I mean ignore to the point of being completely oblivious. I see this when she happens to be not ignoring and makes a comment about the ad or product. I'll often react with "But that's at least the fifth time we've seen that ad tonight". No, we didn't. I saw it five times, yes. She was sitting beside me, apparently looking in the direction of the TV screen, but in fact she was Somewhere Else. This happens all the time and it always surprises me. I can be Somewhere Else, but part of my brain always notices those commercials. Lucky gal..

Anyway, the new Microsoft "I'm a PC" ads have been out for weeks. I know she's "seen" them, at least in the sense that photons hit the backs of her eyes. But she never noticed them until last night. Before the ad had even quite finished, she turned to me and asked "What.. was.. that???"

Well, let's see. It's an unfunny, unclever pitch that seems to work most effectively to remind us of the funny, clever and very entertaining Mac ads that Apple does. Now I know some people complain that the Apple ads exaggerate and stretch the truth some, but even if you think that you have to admit those ads are FUNNY. Microsoft's ads are not. Not even close to funny. Not even sort of funny.

Aside from reminding us of Apple Macs, what else do these ads sell? Oh, conformity? Yessiree. Be like everybody else. Be a PC. But even that is ridiculous. We Mac users don't think of ourselves as "Macs". We are Mac users, not idiots. We know that the characters in the Mac ads are cartoonish representations. These aren't people claiming to actually "be" Macs or PC's. Microsoft wants to make "I'm a PC" a cool thing to say.. it isn't, and never will be.

Hilariously, the ads were actually created on Macs. When this came out, Microsoft removed the incriminating evidence from the graphics:

When LuisDS checked on the photos again this morning after publishing the metadata details on Flickr last night, he found that Microsoft has scrubbed the revealing details from the work, an effort that also resulted in the 272 KB photo ballooning to 852 KB.

Too funny. Which is good, because nothing else has been.

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