Man Bites Blog

We all know the “I’m a Mac; I’m a PC” commercials, where the hoodie-wearing hipster Mac demonstrates the manifest superiority of Macs to the hapless bumbling dissembling PC. It would be difficult to come away from those ads unconvinced that Macs were superior to PC’s in almost every way that matters.

Yet, most of you (I flatter myself that I can use the plural to refer to my readership) are reading this on PC’s, and I’m writing this on a PC. How can that be?

A couple of years ago, Seth Stevenson nicely analyzed these ads:

My problem with these ads begins with the casting. As the Mac character, Justin Long (who was in the forgettable movie Dodgeball and the forgettabler TV show Ed) is just the sort of unshaven, hoodie-wearing, hands-in-pockets hipster we’ve always imagined when picturing a Mac enthusiast. He’s perfect. Too perfect. It’s like Apple is parodying its own image while also cementing it. If the idea was to reach out to new types of consumers (the kind who aren’t already evangelizing for Macs), they ought to have used a different type of actor.

Meanwhile, the PC is played by John Hodgman—contributor to The Daily Show and This American Life, host of an amusing lecture series, and all-around dry-wit extraordinaire. Even as he plays the chump in these Apple spots, his humor and likability are evident. (Look at that hilariously perfect pratfall he pulls off in the spot titled “Viruses.”) The ads pose a seemingly obvious question—would you rather be the laid-back young dude or the portly old dweeb?—but I found myself consistently giving the “wrong” answer: I’d much sooner associate myself with Hodgman than with Long.

I think that’s the case for a lot of us. I also note that since then, Apple seems to have toned down the Mac character and given the PC character a bit of a nefarious edge.

I think that’s the problem health care reform ads are facing now. This “5 myths about helathcare in the rest of the world” op-ed could be rewritten as an “I’m a Mac” ad. (Note to health care advocates: don’t do this). Yes, maybe Europeans and Canadians are thrilled with their government-run healthcare. Yes, there are obvious problems with what we have now. Are we willing to toss the keys of health-care to the smug hipsters in the jeans and hoodies, or will we find a way to muddle through with what we’ve got? Do we really want to be more like them?

A lot of folks would rather deal with their PC’s than become a smirking Mac person. And they’re not going to be changing their minds because all the cool kids have ditched their PC’s for Macs.

UPDATE: For a prototypical example of unpersuasive rhetoric from proponents of health care, it would be difficult to top this Jacob Weisberg piece arguing that the GOP is the party that really wants to off Grandma, because they enacted lowering estate taxes, favore privatizing Social Security, oppose embryonic stem cell research, etc. The appeal of this argument to those not already convinced escapes me.

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