Over at Center of Gravitas, Gayprof has this to say about Apple’s new Mac commercials (which you can watch here but why would you want to?):
Mac wants to pretend that they are not a giant U.S. corporation guilty of all the excesses therein. Some people feel so invested in Mac that they will even become angry if you dare to suggest that they are just another consumer option. Thus, I am annoyed by the smug, self-satisfied ad campaign for Mac computers.
You have probably not been able to avoid them unless your doctor or a criminal court ordered you to stay at least 75 feet from all television sets. These ads involve a”PC”and a”Mac”computer personified with actors. The Mac tries so hard to seem”cool,”but just ends up looking like one of my annoying-know-it-all freshmen students. Mac, the corporation, tries to convince the public that buying their computer will permit them to be part of a special group of people. I see this ad and think that Mac computers clearly lack manners.
As I have said many times, though, the Mac mystique is really just capitalist brand-identification. If one finds the Mac computer works better for their particular needs, I think that is just dandy. Owning a Mac as some type of evidence of innate cleverness, though? In the immortal words of Shania, that don’t impress me much.
These ads, if anything, make me unlikely to even think of buying a Mac for many years. The next time that smug little Mac brat appears on my television, friends might need to restrain me from tossing the whole set against a wall. I would not want that Mac guy in my house, much less working as my computer.
I was really pleased to have a female salesperson when I bought my iBook last year, because I’ve been patronized and insulted by a lot of annoying techie men over the years, but so far never by a techie woman. She was the only woman on the floor at that Apple shop while I was making my purchase, which I think was a huge mistake, given all the women who were in there buying computers. But obviously the whole company is geared towards men, which the new ad campaign reinforces. Maybe I should just be grateful that no one tried to sell me a pink fluffy scented laptop, right?
–Ann Bartow
