Macs A Key Part Of Controversial Anti-Bush Ads (some mac users all tingly about socialism)

"I think the message we tried to deliver is something we really believed in. We were passionate in our beliefs and everyone has a right in our democracy to do that."

Mr. Stowell was part of a team that produced one of 26 political commercials in a recent online contest soliciting political ads critical of President Bush. Entitled the 'Bush in 30 seconds' TV ad contest and sponsored by the Washington, DC-based public policy advocacy group MoveOn.org, Stowell's spot - entitled "Pop Quiz" - was produced and edited on a Mac.

In fact, the majority of the finalist spots were produced using Macs. From medium to large design studios and often someone's home basement, the commercials came from a variety of people who had an idea, a passion to speak their mind and often a Mac on their desktop.

"Here was the first time I ever saw this kind of idea of people using the freedom that comes from technology for a political purpose to speak their minds," said Mr. Stowell, founder of the New York City graphic design studio, Open.

Co-produced with colleagues Susan Barber, Cara Brower and Kate Kittredge, the spot quickly asks the viewer to answer rapid fire questions on a variety of political issues and attributes the answers to various news sources. In every instance, the critical answer is "George W. Bush." The spot ends with the question, "What's wrong with this picture?"

All of the spot are similar to "Pop Quiz" in that they criticize the president on a variety of fronts, from the controversial war in Iraq to the national debt and even educational funding.

The spot voted best overall, entitled "Child's Pay," made news headlines in late January after the CBS television network decided not to broadcast it during last Sunday's Super Bowl XXXVIII because of its long-standing policy not to air advocacy ads. Instead, the spot ran during the half-time of the NFL championship game, but on CNN, rather than on CBS's Super Bowl broadcast itself. The 30-second, dialogue-free spot featured children working as janitors, dishwashers and garbage collectors and ended with the caption, "Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1 trillion deficit?"

For many of the ad's producers, a Mac was the platform of choice that often made the difference between tedious editing over dozens of hours or days and producing a spot sometimes in just one afternoon.

Mr. Stowell and his team used a 1.25 MHz dual processor Power Mac G4 to produce "Pop Quiz," together with Adobe Illustrator to do the graphics and After Effects for the animation. One of the reasons Stowell and his team used simple type for their spot was to not only be different from the majority of other spots, but because they had decided to enter the competition very close to the deadline. "After we came up with the concept, we cranked it out in no time and the Mac made a big difference."

The runner-up for best overall ad was also produced on a Mac. Entitled "What Are We Teaching Our Children?", Fred Surr together with Ted Page and Janet Tashjian of Needham, Mass., produced a tongue in cheek spot that hit home their message.

The ad features six young kids, each delivering a speech to adults on what they would do if they were elected president - from, "If elected, I'll lie about weapons of mass destruction as a pretext to invade another country," to "I'll leave no child behind, unless they can't afford it."

Mr. Surr, an independent producer and founder of the production company Captains of Industry, used a Media 100 editing system on a Power Mac 9600 to edit the spot in no more than "six to eight hours."

A Mac user since 1988, Mr. Surr was just as passionate about his Macs as he was about his political spot. "I don't like Windows, honestly. I think it's a kludge format and always has been."

Because all of the talent and production workers donated their time, Mr. Surr was able to produce the spot for less than US$100 after renting one single item - a professional microphone. "Everyone donated their time," he said. "We had six kids, about 10 adults together with extras and four others at the shoot."

Reaction to the spot has been overwhelmingly positive, according to Mr. Surr. "Even friends and colleagues that are Republicans look at the spot chuckling and say, 'Well, you can't argue with the premise.' "

Most of the spots were inexpensive to make, except for one produced on film by Adam Feinstein, an independent film maker from New York City. Entitled "Polygraph," the spot was shot on Super 16mm film and then transferred using the Telecine process of converting a film negative to video tape. It was then edited on a 533MHz-dual processor Power Mac G4 with Final Cut Pro.

About US$1,000 to shoot and produce, Mr. Feinstein turned to some 30 friends to donate money toward the cost of making the commercial. "I'm a filmmaker who has had my political soul stirred to life in the last three years," Mr. Feinstein told The Mac Observer. "If I can credit Mr. Bush with anything, it's making me realize how important it is for me as a media maker to say and do something that can make a difference."

The spot shows an actual polygraph machine registering responses to comments made by President Bush during his State of the Union speech in January of 2003. As Mr. Bush utters certain facts, the polygraph is shown violently moving, as if to convince the viewer that his comments are all lies.

But it was the parody piece "Desktop" that hits closest to home for Mac users, regardless of their political beliefs.

David Haynes is a filmmaker, writer and director making independent films under his small production company Tanglewood Films in Dallas, Texas. Having entered the competition later than most, Mr. Haynes had little time to devise a concept, shoot it and edit it.

For him, the star of his spot was his Mac. Mr. Haynes used his Sony VX-2000 digital camera to shoot his OS 9 desktop. "I sort of brainstormed the idea of using the Mac and having the file folders represent different components of our government and different programs that have happened over the last few years that in my opinion were not so great," he said.

The spot shows a desktop pointer moving folders marked 'Social Security, 'Environment', 'Civil Liberties' and more over the seal of the president to the Trash. Only after a message warns that the folders will be permanently deleted and a bloated trash icon erases the folders does the spot end with the words, "What's next?"

"I've never really been a political person and followed politics," Mr. Haynes responded when asked what was the catalyst for him to produce the political spot. "There was a point during the build up to the Iraq war that the Bush Administration seemed to want to go to war really, really badly. Something about that raised a red flag in my head and it didn't seem very American and didn't feel right."

Mr. Haynes used an 867 MHz Power Mac G4 with Final Cut Pro to edit his 30-second spot, which took about a day to shoot and produce.

All the producers were convinced their Macs made a difference in being able to focus on making the best ad, instead of worrying about the technical aspects.

"My Mac allowed me to focus on the message," said Mr. Surr. "I just find it to be really, really dependable. There's not a lot of surprises on a Mac. It doesn't crash on me and it's just a solid work station."

"If you subtracted all the Macs in my life, I would be paralyzed," said Mr. Feinstein. "Every project I haven't edited on film, I've edited on a Mac."

When Mr. Stowell was asked why his studio only uses Mac, his response was short and sweet. "Why? I can't think of any reason why not."

Nobody suffers viruses on a daily basis. That would be a grotesque and silly exhageration that you should retract.

What video editing software? Don't use, don't need it, and don't want it. As for it being "free" on your Mac maybe you need to take a remedial tax lesson, the extras in Mac OS are just as "free" as socialized medicine, the system is made more expensive to cover the cost of that and everybody that owns a Mac pays for that software even if they don't use it.

Not living in the past at all. Apple is still the sole source for most of the hardware and the OS, if Mac was king of the heap it would be two monopolies instead of one. The person here with their head in the sand is the one that thinks they get free software on their more expensive computer.

What's Mac's marketshare now? Who's being passed by the world?

You can continue using red herrings until your keyboard melts down for all I care, the fact that you need to so completely distort reality to pretend to make a point just make mine for me. Macs aren't luxury computers that should have a rarified market space. They're regular old desktop computers, comparible to any random sedan, and their marketshare is miniscule because the company has always done a horrible job of marketing them. PC vs Mac isn't Ford vs Porsche, it's Ford vs Honda, and if Honda had only 1/10 the marketshare Ford had everyone on the board would be out on the streets.

"Mr. Stowell was part of a team that produced one of 26 political commercials in a recent online contest soliciting political ads critical of President Bush. Entitled the 'Bush in 30 seconds' TV ad contest and sponsored by the Washington, DC-based public policy advocacy group MoveOn.org, Stowell's spot - entitled "Pop Quiz" - was produced and edited on a Mac."

What'd you expect? The Mac is a superior machine! I'm not surprised at all.

"Not living in the past at all. Apple is still the sole source for most of the hardware and the OS, if Mac was king of the heap it would be two monopolies instead of one."

You are misinformed. The core of the Mac OS (Darwin UNIX) is open source and can be ported to any platform. Most of the hardware is industry standard and interchangable with PCs. The hardware that is proprietary is the ASICs - and that situation exists for Wintel computers too.

"The person here with their head in the sand is the one that thinks they get free software on their more expensive computer."

I get free software for my Mac all the time. A lot of it is Mac-specific, but a lot of it is Linux software that is simply recompiled to run on PowerPC. Apple provides free software for Macs and PCs, like iTunes and QuickTime. And Apple includes a bunch of applications with each Mac that is superior to what Microsoft includes with Windows.

I didn't know that the consumer's sun rises and sets from Rusty's ass. Give me a break.

Snapple, the original 'Clean Shower' people, Florida Orange Juice and others may beg to differ. He doesn't keep 600+ stations and advertisers because consumers ignore his ads.

Macs aren't luxury computers that should have a rarified market space.

It is clear you don't understand the product or its use. It's a niche product with a devout following that produces a slim but effective profit for Apple and its shareholders. The company is a going concern with a profit motive -- just like its competitors.

What sort of economic basis do you have for marginalizing a successful product like this one?

How many companies make OSes that run on Macs? How many make motherboards that can run the OS? Dual monopoly no matter how you slice it. Tell AMD about Intel's harware monopoly.

Everything Mac includes with the OS, just like everything MS includes with the OS, cost the purchaser of the OS money. they just don't charge you as seperate line items, but the cost of development was in the budget for making the OS and that cost is figured into the sales price and passed on to the purchaser. Anybody claiming any pre-bundled software is "free" needs to take some business classes, regardless of who the software comes from.

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Macs are are a niche product because they don't sell. They're marketed as a generic universal computer, they are NOT a luxury computer period. Comparing them with Hummers and Porsches is just goofy.

The ecomonic basis is clear: they're marketed as standard use desktop computers for the masses and maintain 5 to 7% of the market. They marginalized themselves with crappy marketing. As for how successful they are, which competing OS maker lent them money to survive?

What the heck does the computer platform have to do with Bush-Bashing/Hate?

It's a known fact that the Macintosh platform is still the platform of choice for video and audio editing. The fact that Apple has free tools that can give pretty professional looking results makes it a good choice for those interested in video work.

And I won't argue Steve Job's politics because that has no bearing on this particular story.

Would the predominance of Windows based PC's being used meant that Windows was suddenly the evil ones? (They are, but for another reason...hehehe)

What's the matter, can't rebut Apple's own commercials?!

The stupid one here is the guy that think Apples are to PCs what Porsches are to Cars. I already gave them the benefit of the doubt as superior machines, but lets not get crazy. The are not now nore have they ever been luxury computers with a tiny target market. If they had a tiny target market why are they given away to schools? Why are they advertised as usable by anybody for anything? Why was OS X's big claim to fame it's ability to run software made for the much larger PC market?

Should check your own facts before throwing insults. You're 100% wrong across the board and your need to call me stupid shows you've learned you were wrong but aren't man enough to admit it. Sad sad sad. Begone.

"How many companies make OSes that run on Macs?"

Apple, Linux and Microsoft, to name a few.

"How many make motherboards that can run the OS?"

More than one.

"Dual monopoly no matter how you slice it. Tell AMD about Intel's harware monopoly."

x86 is a crap architecture. Even Intel knows it.

"Anybody claiming any pre-bundled software is "free" needs to take some business classes, regardless of who the software comes from."

Apple is in business to make a profit, but it's still a better value for the customer than Wintel products.

Thought you'd like this:

"Mac users are nuttier than a fruitcake," Andy said. "People have an unnatural emotional attachment to object(s) like computers. For some, their reaction was akin to me butchering their parents or a beloved pet."

The Overclockers.com website published a barely believable hoax last week detailing the gutting of a brand new and very expensive Power Mac G5. This brought on an unbelievable reaction from the Mac community.
The hoaxer, identified only as "Andy," claimed he received a dual-processor G5 for Christmas. But preferring a Windows PC, he swapped out the insides of the $3,000 machine for the guts of a cheapo PC. The post included several digital photographs to prove the outrageous claim.
...
Reaction from the Mac community was swift and brutal.
Andy said his e-mail inbox quickly filled to capacity, with more than 1,300 messages, and an unknown number bounced. The mail he did receive was full of nice, kind thoughts like death threats, insults and all kinds of colorful invective.

They still are, and the "artists" who demand them seldom comprehend that their data is stored on PC servers. The i-Mac is a good thin client for that segment, because most of the interfaces came from mac based software, and because it allows them the opportunity to get involved in the hardware selection process by choosing what color they want. No lie.

Oh yeah, they opened up the architecture to be able to run non-Mac OSes. Wonder why they had to do that? Oh yeah, because they had a 7% marketshare and falling. Of course you can't buy a Mac with an OS not from Apple. Still a clean monopoly on the OS, and they never would have opened up the architecture if they had won the war with Windows.

Really? Motorola makes the chips for them, who makes the computers? Where are the Mac cloans if there's "more than one"? They STILL have a monopoly on the hardware.

Crap architecture that Mac had to embrace to grab some marketshare. Not that it matters, it's a red herring you're raising to distract from the FACT that Mac was targeting a dual monopoly.

I didn't say they aren't a business Hal, I said their "free" video editing software isn't free. Not saying that's a bad or a good thing, just a TRUE thing. No bundled software is free, your throwing red herring at this is telling. As does your need to use the Wintel shorthand and completely ignore AMD and other competitors. Drop the red herrings Hal, I've come to expect better from you.

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