Jobs to Gates: Mac Guy likes PC Guy – really?
By John Pospisil
Mac Guy does not hate PC Guy, is the take away from the much hyped Steve Jobs and Bill Gates gabfest/love-in at the D: All Things Digital conference in Carlsbad, California.
In a 90 minute conversation moderated by The Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg, Steve Jobs delivered the amazing revelation, that contrary to the put downs, ridicule and humiliation inflicted on PC Guy in the annoying, but effective “Get a Mac” series of ads, Mac Guy – get this – likes PC guy, and vice versa.
“The art of those commercials isn’t to be mean, it’s for those guys to like each other, PC guy is great, he’s got a big heart,” Jobs told Swisher and Gates, no doubt trying to keep a straight face while doing so.
It is possible that the oh so cool, and oh so smug Mac Guy might like PC Guy. Some sickos do like to have people around that they can humiliate and put down. But could PC Guy really like Mac Guy? No way.
Just look at what Apple did to poor PC Guy (played by John Hodgman) back in February (see picture), where they dressed him up in operating garb so that he could get upgraded. Next to über-cool Mac Guy (played by Justin Long) he looked like an über dork.
Back in February, Gates was outraged by the ads.
“I don’t know why (Apple is) acting like it’s superior … Does honesty matter in these things, or if you’re really cool, does that mean you get to be a lying person whenever you feel like it,” he fumed to Steven Levy at Newsweek International.
Obviously that anger has dissipated. The mutual adulation at D: All Things Digital was nauseating.
At one point Jobs said that Gates was a software visionary:
“Bill built the first software company before anybody in our industry knew what software was, and that was huge.”
Gates praised Jobs’ ability to be lead the market, and said that “Apple really pursued the dream of building products that we want to use ourselves.”
If watching two arch rivals smooch in public doesn’t make you sick, I don’t know what will.
Smooching aside, I’d like to see Microsoft come up with some ads that show a Mac character wearing a black turtleneck prancing around with a cappuccino telling everyone how cool he is, while a PC character, dressed in overalls, actually gets the job done.
That would be much closer to real life.
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on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 12:28 pm
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Stumble It!
May 31st, 2007
It’s good to see synergy between the two companies; saying that the mac isn’t as efficient as the pc is just plain silly, though. The ad was meant to be effective, not insulting; it serves its purpose. Getting angry about that is the same as getting angry if you have Sprint or Cingular and you watch the new Alltel commercial.
Saying that a mac is chic is just another stereotype; obviously from someone who has never used a mac. Don’t be afraid clunky laptop MBAs, I’ll still give you a job one day – and teach you how to use a real computer :)
May 31st, 2007
author doesn’t have a clue
May 31st, 2007
This author has a complex…..Chill Dude…..Get A Mac.
June 1st, 2007
“…while a PC character, dressed in overalls, actually gets the job done.
That would be much closer to real life.”
Right, us Mac people would just spend our time playing mac games?! You might get the job done if the job is downloading drivers or trying to figure out what error 16540087 is.
June 2nd, 2007
Actually, it should be more like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa1RCg-Ccp0
October 23rd, 2007
yeah, i agree, get the job done. like the windows bundled movie and photo programs– they’re great. and besides, everyone knows you have to install all this anti-spyware software on the mac! who wants that?
and every programmer knows that dos is light years better than the unix shell. thats why all mission critical applications run on windows, and not unix servers. duh.