24 April 2011

[icons] "Get A Mac": Art Imitates Life Imitates Art Imitating Life

2610.They've become iconic: John Hodgman as the PC and Justin Long as the Mac. Over many years and between 60 and 70 seperate commercials, the buttoned-down, business-suited, bland Hodgman became a sort of PC-tan against Long's Mac-tan in the ultimate collision of American advertising and moe anthropomorphism.

Turns out that the incarnations are actually quite close to the stereotype.

An article on PC World reports than an unscientific survey run by a site called Hunch suggests that the stereotypes have basis in reality:

An unscientific survey by Hunch, a website that makes custom predictions based on your interests, shows that PC users tend to prefer fitting in with others, are less tech savvy, and prefer Hollywood films over indie films. The same survey suggests Mac users tend to throw more parties, are modern art enthusiasts, and would rather drive a Vespa than a Harley.

The real cosmic joke, in my opine, is that John Hodgman is actually a hardcore Mac user:

Here is the joke that is absolutely apt, though I once promised I would never make it: "I play one on TV, but I am not a PC." It is true. I am first of all: not a computer, but a human being; and second of all: a Mac user, almost exclusively, since 1984. There was a brief period in the wilderness between 1997 and 2003. Let us not speak of it.

Justin Long is an Actor whom, I presume, doesn't trouble too much about computers.

And so it goes.

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