Mac Commercials
Posted by matteverard on July 11, 2006
I’m among the throngs of people praising the new “Get a Mac” commercials. Apple is rubbing salt in an open wound in the consumer computing market: too much complexity. Just about any normal person has to promise free beer to a serious techie in order to get their new Dell up and running. I was called to my mom’s recently and spent an afternoon fumbling around with patches, updates, uninstalls, and virus protection. Add a wireless network to the mix and you’ve gone from two beers to four in a hurry. I was only able to succeed with a well-timed phone call to a full-time sys admin buddy.
Check out Charter St.’s (Paul McNamara) good piece intitled “The Software Complexity Racket.” It’s a smart take on the financial disinsentives for innovative simplicity that exist in the current enterprise software market.
Also, don’t miss the smart parody “Get a Mac” commercials from VH1! Hilarious!
Paul McNamara said
Thanks for your kind words about Charter Street. I was watching one of the Mac commercials last night (the one where the PC guy gets a virus) thinking how absolutely brilliant they are. They strike the right balance — poking fun while not being obnoxious. Also, by humanizing the products they draw you into the story line. You feel empathy for the PC-guy but really like the Mac-guy. These are really effective commercials. I look forward to seeing more of them.