Intel has launched a series of new ads that feature Justin Long, the former “I’m a Mac” star from Apple’s popular ad campaign between 2006-2009. In a flip of Apple’s Mac vs. PC ads, Intel shows Long checking out various PCs and features powered by Intel with the punch lines being what Apple’s new M1 Macs can’t do.
Intel is playing boldly into Long’s former role in the “I’m a Mac” campaign with four of the five ads in the new “Justin Gets Real” campaign starting with him saying “Hello, I’m a… Justin. Just a real person doing a real comparison between Mac and PC.”
The new ads (first spotted by MacRumors) mock Apple over things like the M1 MacBook Pro’s Touch Bar, lack of touchscreen, supporting only one external monitor at a time, lack of choice, flexibility, and more.
This is the second “Go PC” campaign we’ve seen recently from Intel specifically going hard against Apple. In February, Intel launched a Twitter campaign with messages like “If you can flip through Photoshop thumbnails with your actual thumb, you’re not on a Mac. Go PC.”
Intel is certainly concerned about how well the M1 Macs are performing and of course, has lost a sizable amount of business with Apple ditching its chips. Other moves we’ve seen from Intel include cherry-picking benchmarks to make its chips look better than Apple Silicon. And the other big thing to keep in mind, Apple’s three M1 Macs available now are just the entry-level models. More powerful Apple Silicon Macs are on the way.
Check out all five of the new Intel ads below. What do you think? Savvy move or does it come across resentful?
