Super Bowl Ads

Of course their not all awful, only about 80% or so seem to hit two thumbs down. To think that 2.5 million dollars were spent on every 30 seconds of ad space, and this is what comes of it.

A few get a laugh (the Bud Light: Secret Fridge [which is said to be the best], FedEx: Caveman, and the CareerBuilder: Monkey Party), but what happened. For the most part in the past, the Super Bowl ad’s where about making people laugh, no this crap. Yes its crap, when compared to past years of the ads, which most people found funny.

Why does it need to be funny, think about it, the public tends to talk about the funny commercials that aired on the Super Bowl and are more likely to remember that ad. To remember what the product was is another thing, if the ad in question links the joke to the product, people will relate that joke to the product. When I asked a group today about which commercial was the funnier one, (before I had seen any) the answer I got, was the Bud Light, magic fridge (Bud Light: Secret Fridge). Why did they remember the product, was it only because it air one day ago, maybe, or more likely it has to do with the joke behind it.

Secret Fridge Ad

UPDATE: Google has also put up all the Super Bowl ads [HERE].

view PDF

Rosetta, is Apple’s answer for outdated applications that where made for the Power-PC based Macs, but it seems to come with a price. The performance of this appears to be slow, especially when using Photoshop in a professional environment, do to the fact that Rosetta is an emulator.

“In general, applications that are not designed to run on Intel-based Mac computers, including current versions of Adobe’s creative professional applications, may be noticeably slower than they are running on PowerPC based Macs. Instead of experiencing much-anticipated speed enhancements, customers are likely to see some degradation of performance.”

For the maximum workflow for professionals seeking efficiency, they should continue using their Power-PC based Mac for now, or have the new Intel based Mac machine with a large amount of RAM of at least one gigabyte, to run any of the Adobe or Macromedia programs. Even with using Rosetta, Adobe users will find that Version Cue Workspace will not work, due to problems with the way Rosetta works. There is no official support for Rosetta, when it comes to problems that are occurring when running applications under the emulator.

The disappoint fact is that Adobe and Macromedia, the world’s leader and the most key software company for designers, know far before anyone else outside of Apple, that this change was coming. Now to just sit back and wait for CS3 to come out, which could be as far away as another year away.

link to video

Seems that ABC, the ones showing the Super Bowl, did not want this to be aired at all, why? Maybe that’s because the main joker here is George W. Bush, which the commercial focuses on. ABC ended up sending QuietAgent a whole letter about the rejection of the ad.

Here’s a bit of the letter:

“Unless authorized in writing by the Office of the White House Counsel, the use of the name or likeness of the President or Vice President of the United States and their families, as well as the Presidential Seal, is generally not acceptable for advestising purposes. Therefore, the use of the President with this creative is not acceptable.
Also, the following scenes are not acceptable due to their inappropriate nature:

1. The dog squatting to go to the bathroom.
2. The naked man and woman whose genitalia are covered by leaves.
3. The husky elderly man in a thong.
4. The diseased teeth.
5. The hospital gown which reveals a bare bottom.
6. The man getting strangled.
7. The diseased feet.“

Knowing that this ad will never air on tv, it makes me think of all the other great ideas for Super Bowl commercials that are being discarded by the network. So far there seems to be around 16 banned ads, and will, see for yourself.

View Banned Ads

To bad, some of these ads will not air on game day, and I’m glad that some of the them will not air at all, just becuase some of them are not funny and are more about sex than anything else. The ironic part about this all is it’s ABC that’s stopping these ads from airing, the same network that shows Desperate Housewives.

1984 Video

Later in 1995, the commercial was declared as the best as of the last 50 years. But now of day in 2006, Apple seems to have lost the ball with their ads, not to say that the 1984 commercial was it for Apple, their iPod commercials with the people dancing around with a white iPod have been impressive, unique, and hold a style all on their own. With that said, Apple seems to be right out ripping their commercials from others.

Case 1: iPod commercial with Eminem.

Steve Jobs introduced the ad to a whole audience during his keynote, stating that it was something Apple wanted to do for some time, as a commercial. But after another look, it’s simple a ripping of the Lugz’s commercial’s from 2001 with the same art style, color, and city images. The all major different between the two, are little and have to do with visual lines that float around. In Apple’s version it’s an orange color, that seems to drawl text and signs, but in the Lugz’s ad it’s a black arrow that adds a dynamic flow along with the dancer. The other variation in Apples version of the ad is the addition of the paint affect, that follows Eminem’s foot steps. And lastly there’s different music, and that’s it. Lugz footwear in return has sent Apple a legal cease-and-desist letter ordering Apple to pull the plug on the Eminem iPod commercial, maybe that’s why Apple made a new iPod ad not to long after. Also this may put some truth to the rumor of Apple removing the iPod ad for a period. But it’s easier to see it for yourself to know the truth.

iPod Video

Lugz Video

Case 2: Apples commercial, Intel chips ‘set free’ inside the Mac

It would seem that Apple would have stopped their tactics, but no. Once again Apple does it again and rips off another source for its ad, this time a music video. The band known as The Postal Service, has had their music video ‘Such Great Heights’ frame for frame remade into an Apple ad. In this case, Apple has taken the concept of ripping their ideas to a whole new level, the scenes in the Apple commercial are frame for frame with the video ‘Such Great Heights.’ Before I go on, I recommend you view the ad along side the music video.

Comparison Video
Left Side Ad – Right Side Video

Now of what the band has to say:

A Note from Ben
It has recently come to our attention that Apple Computers’ new television commercial for the Intel chip features a shot-for-shop recreation of our video for ‘Such Great Heights’ make by the same filmmakers responsible for the original. We did not approve this commercialization and are extremely disappointed with both parties that this was executed without our consultation or consent. –Ben Gibbard, The Postal Service

But how can this be? Simple, Apple hired the same director team, Josh Melnick and Xander Charity, that did the music video, so who’s to blame? It’s unknown for now, anyway, if Apple know that it was a remake frame for frame of the music video that the directors did, is hard to say, or if the directors couldn’t come up with something new. I will say this, its beauty poor of the directors to use the same idea again for a huge amount of money.

Seems this doesn’t end here, along with the fact that the rip doesn’t even have the music form The Postal Service in the background. The music video ‘Such Great Heights’ that can (get this) now be bought from iTunes, its also edited from it’s original form. It seems for some odd reason Apple has blurred out about 80% or so of the word ‘SKYWORKS’ from the music video, mostly where it’s legible. On top of this, it seems that the iTunes Music Store, has ‘Such Great Heights’ video as the most downloaded music video, seems Apple is pushing this video, maybe to make The Postal Service happy some how.

So why is Apple doing this? I’m not sure, I’ll keep digging into it as things continue.

The Nintendo DS, is getting a whole new make over. Called the DS Lite, this mock-up (mock-up design from Nintendo) is smaller, liter, clearer, and a dam good redesign. Said to be a rumored floating around on web, that Nintendo was working on a redesign, is now confirmed.

The style is straight from the up comming Nintendo Revolution console and controller, which we all know that style was from Apple’s products. But we seem to just want more of the style/design arround, and Nintendo is now on the bandwagon too.

Now for the bad news about the redesign, it seems that the new DS Lite may not have backward compatible with the Game Boy Advance games. This may hurt Nintendo’s sells for the DS, which are doing so good in fact, that people from Japan are importing DS’s from the US.

It makes me think that the main reason behind the redesign is a way for Nintendo to get more DS’s out on the market for the people in Japan. And because it is a problem that all the DS’s sold in Japan are now being imported from the US, I can see Nintendo removing the backward compatible to play GBA (GBA = Game Boy Advance) games, if it helps with cutting down build time. Only time will tell, to see if Nintendo removes the backward compatible of playing GBA games, March 2 the DS Lite will be hitting the island of Japan, and the people of Japan can stop having to importing DS’s from the US.