From 2006 to 2009, an Apple advertising campaign ran on international TV to convince users to switch to a Mac. “Get a Mac”, as the advertising project was called, had over 60 episodes. In the US version and other countries, the role of the personified PC is played by comedian John Hodgman, while the Mac is played by actor Justin Long (known from “Live Free or Die Hard” and “Zack and Miri Make a Porno”). Since the end of Apple advertising, Long has been working for Apple’s competitors: most recently during the Qualcomm keynote at Computex.
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“Mac” would like a Snapdragon
Long appears in the last few minutes of the chip manufacturer’s presentation of the “Snapdragon PC”. He can be seen at an Apple Silicon Mac, which annoys him with notifications placed around him, for example about apps that are not optimized for M-Macs, too little storage space or only one percent battery life left. Finally, Long searches the Internet for a “snapdragon powered pc” and says to the camera that “sometimes things change”.
The 25-second spot has since been cut from the recording of the Qualcomm keynote, but is still on YouTube Why Qualcomm removed the advertisement from the presentation is still unclear. “Snapdragon PCs” are computers in which an ARM processor from Qualcomm of the types Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus Microsoft uses this for its “Copilot+ PCs” with various AI functions.
Long has also worked for Intel and Huawei
Actor Long has also worked for other Apple competitors in the past. These include the Chinese manufacturer Huawei (for the Mate 9 in 2017) and Intel (PC chips in 2021). Each time, Long emphasizes that this is the “real” figure behind the “Mac”. The amount he receives for his appearances is not known.
With its new chips, Snapdragon has brought direct competitors to Apple’s M processors onto the market. In collaboration with Microsoft, they are intended to be competitive with Apple notebooks, for example in terms of battery life. Microsoft also emphasized the comparison with Apple when introducing its own “Copilot+ PCs”.
(bsc)