Watch Justin Long Betray Apple And Start Promoting PCs
Justin Long used to be the Mac Guy. Now he’s selling PCs.
This article is more than 2 years old
No longer a Mac guy, Justin Long is now just a person. While the actor has been in movies, most people who watched television from 2006 to 2009 know him as the Mac Guy. Even if you had a DVR at the time, he was in over 300 commercials for Apple. He was hard to miss. Now, the Mac Guy has had his head turned. He’s promoting PCs for Intel in a new series of commercials that directly cast shade on the new M1 Macs. Watch one of the new Intel commercials below.
It’s not quite the same watching the Mac Guy without PC. Actor John Hodgman played the funnier and often broken PC during the older commercials. Intel’s YouTube channel has a series of new commercials. One points out that no one games on a Mac, another points out the flexibility of the new Intel devices, and most of them point out the options you have when purchasing a PC versus an Apple device. This is similar to the original commercials from Apple, which would point out things like how a PC couldn’t handle how often a family uses their computer. At the time, Justin Long argued that Apple devices were cooler. That they had more to offer. The script has officially been flipped.
Watching the entire catalog of Mac Guy vs PC commercials would take a while. Just a highlight reel of 66 of them requires 40 minutes. However, if you’d like to remember some of the funnier ones, you can watch them below.
This actually isn’t the first time that Justin Long has spoken up for another company. Back in 2017, he did commercials for Huawei. While we don’t often think of actors becoming famous for commercials, it’s become a more common situation. While many of us know Colin Ferguson from the SyFy comedy series Eureka, more people probably recognize him as the Maytag guy. Dennis Haysbert is President Palmer from 24, but he’s also the Allstate Guy. Dean Winters was from SVU, but also Mayhem from Allstate. Then there are the commercial actors we really only know from commercials but stay in our minds anyway. The “Dirty mouth?” woman from Orbit Gum, Flo from Progressive, and the Caveman from Geico are all strangely nostalgic characters from commercials.
Justin Long has actually been interviewed about his time as Mac Guy a fair amount over the years. He was once on Larry King discussing his craft as an actor for the commercials. Author Jonathan Franzen wrote a piece discussing Macs versus PCs, and heavily criticized the commercials. Franzen said that Justin Long was insufferably smug. Long responded to these criticisms. He said he was a fan of Franzen and that the author was probably right, but that he did his best as an actor at the time. The actor has also said that, despite his ongoing career as a tech spokesperson, he is not particularly techy himself.
Meanwhile, comedian John Hodgman also recently resurrected his career as PC. Unlike Justin Long, who has flipped sides, Hodgman appeared in an ad as his original character for Apple at the end of their One More Thing event. This happened in late 2020. It seems like they may not have invited Justin Long back to participate in the ad after Long had already aired a commercial for Huawei in 2017.
