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."

"Of course you can't buy a Mac with an OS not from Apple."

Yes, you can. Apple's online store sells Office v.X for Mac Professional Edition which includes Windows XP Professional. You can buy it with a Mac.

"Motorola makes the chips for them, who makes the computers?"

Motorola does manufacture PowerPCs, but Apple is switching to IBM's PowerPCs. Microsoft and Sony are also using PowerPCs for some of their future products.

"As does your need to use the Wintel shorthand and completely ignore AMD and other competitors."

I don't ignore AMD - I have a couple of computers with AMD processors.

"Drop the red herrings Hal, I've come to expect better from you."

Sorry if I've disappointed you, but after 30 years as a computer user, I just won't settle for a second-rate platform like Wintel.

Nobody is asking you to settle for anything, jsut to aknowledge the truth:
Mac was gunning for a dual monopoly, anybody that was around when it still looked like Windows vs Mac would be a fair fight knows that
No software bundled with the OS is truly free, anybody that's opposed to government largess and insane taxes should be able to transfer the logic over

Those were my simple direct statements that you've been moving further and further away from with every post.

Say that to all those who suffer viruses on a daily basis.

I run Linux and Windows and wish I had a Mac, but I can't imagine anyone suffering viruses on a daily basis, nor can I really blame Microsoft. If as many people ran Macs as they do Windows, Mac viruses would be as common as dirt. Viruses for Macs pop up every once in a while but tend not to spread much because there are just so few Macs around.
I've only had one virus in my life and that was when a client stuck an infected floppy in a work machine about 8 years ago. I cleaned up the machine and had no problems.

I want competition, though I do like having a clear winner that creates defacto standards. I remember the days of a wide open industry and it really kind of sucked, seemed then you needed at least two systems to be able to use all the software you wanted because you could garauntee that the best of breed of at least one type wouldn't be made for System X. Having a standard really helps avoid that, but competition is good, keeping whoever is on the top of the heap on their toes is good for everybody, having alternatives is great. I'm not anti-Mac, they're good system. I just get annoyed when people act like Steve Jobs is a really great guy and the world would be a better place if he'd won and Bill Gates lost, they're both scum. Steve is smarter scum when it comes to technology, Bill is smarter scum when it comes to marketing. That's why Bill won, and why things wouldn't be that much different than they are now if Steve had won.

"...and the default decisions of Jobs (no floppy, 1 button mouse) are idiotic."

You are welcome to your opinion, but as a PC@work/Mac@home person, I find the floppy to be useless and can function just as well with a one button mouse as a two button mouse. One of Jobs other stupid default decisions was to junk all the legacy crap and go strictly USB (and later USB/firewire). What a maroon!

I use the floppy almost every day at work (swapping images to change test environments revolves around booting from floppy, there are other solutions but they'd be a much bigger pain... and sneaker-net is still a great way to move files when all other options fail you), and I use the right mouse button every day. Defaulting away from them was stupid, it punishes power users. What's especially gauling about those decisions is how cheap the hardware is, floppy drives less than a new music CD adding extra buttons is miniscule (actually given how much the multi-button mouse rules the world going one button probably costs extra). Undoing those decisions would be a negligible cost.

He dropped serial and parallel support?! Didn't know about that. It'll be added to my "what was Steve thinking" list. Yeah serial and parallel suck but they're still out there and serve a purpose (like running printers that haven't died yet).

"What's Mac's marketshare now?"

Another question might be what is market share for Microsoft brand PC's? If you compare units sold for Apple vs. Dell/HP/Gateway/etc., they are not that far back in the pack. Add to that the building momentum of the G5 machines and the enormous success of the iPod, and you have a company that is making lots of money. I just read the other day that Apple is essentially debt free and is sitting on something like $4.5 billion in cash (or roughly $12 per share at a share price around $22).

Finally, if you've never used OS X (especially version 10.3), you really have know idea what you're missing.

As for the "free" software, of course its not free. You are correct that you pay for it in the cost of ownership. However, unlike PC buyers who get a "free" copy of Windows with their hardware purchase, my "free" OS and iLife applications are worth what I paid for them and more.

Mac was gunning for a dual monopoly, anybody that was around when it still looked like Windows vs Mac would be a fair fight knows that

I'm not really concerned that Apple failed to establish an effective monopoly, or that Microsoft is a convicted monopolist.

I just want a computer with high quality, good value and technological excellence. If Wintel had those attributes, I'd be a Wintel user.

...and I use the right mouse button every day."

I use the right mouse button every day at work on my Dell PC. At home on my Mac, however, I am not crippled by the one button mouse because I can use keyboard/mouse click combos or click/hold the one button and do what I could do with a two button mouse.

If it were a crippling blow, I would just buy a two-button mouse for my Mac. They work just fine but for me are not necessary. Same goes for the floppy drive. I bought an external one for my first floppy-less Mac. It now sits in a box in the basement. Haven't needed it in over 5 years.

The person I posted that line to was presenting Macs as the wave of the future. If they're going to be the future they're going to need to overtake the entire Intel/ Windows based industry, not just individual companies playing in that market. They're profitable, which is a good thing, but they're marketshare has been hovering between 5 and 7% for a very long time and really doesn't show much tendancy to break out of the shell, every new model sells well but it seems to sell to people using it to replace older Macs instead of PCs (exceptions occur of course, I'm just talking generalized trends here).

As for OS X I really don't care what I'm missing. I'm not that kind of computer geek. Windows does what I want when I want how I want, it doesn't always do it well but I really don't care. It keeps me in a job and at home it runs Netscape and games. I long ago got bored with sexy OSes, spent many months tweaking around OS/2 and had a good time doing it but I'm past that. I'm no longer a person that wants to fiddle with the OS, I want the OS to give me the internet, give me games and occasionally allow me to tweak my resume; I really don't care how it looks and as long as my computer has enough oomph to make the OS seem fast that's good enough for me.

Windows is worth what I paid for it, just because it's not your bag doesn't mean it's a ripoff.

Well that was my statement that you first took issuance with. I'm not trying to convert you, I don't give a damn what computer you use how why or when. I said Mac was gunning for a dual monopoly and you didn't like that statement, if now you don't care what they were gunning for then there's no need for the discussion to continue. Use your Mac in good health. I'll use my AMD-Windows machine (you really need to stop using that Wintel phrase, it skews your vision and makes you look like a Machack with an unhealthy obsession) in good health.

In the world of QA where I live that's called a "work around", one of our favorite phrases in QA is: just because there's a work around doesn't mean it isn't a bug. I never said one button was crippling, I said it was a stupid default and Steve should join the real world and ship two-button one-wheel mice like every other peripheral manufacturer on the planet.

I want competition, though I do like having a clear winner that creates defacto standards.

The problem with a clear winner is that they don't create defacto standards. They create proprietary standards. I want standards to be open and either produced through consensus or trade associations.

I remember the days of a wide open industry and it really kind of sucked, seemed then you needed at least two systems to be able to use all the software you wanted because you could garauntee that the best of breed of at least one type wouldn't be made for System X.

With modern compilers and object libraries, it is much easier to cross compile and would be easier still if interfaces were not as proprietary.

Having a standard really helps avoid that, but competition is good, keeping whoever is on the top of the heap on their toes is good for everybody, having alternatives is great.

If one company can patent what becomes a critical standard, then they can shut out the competition. I'd rather not even risk that. It is bad enough having one entity that can tax me. I don't want two. The only way I'd want that level of standardization is if the OS is open (e.g., Linux or FreeBSD).

That's why Bill won, and why things wouldn't be that much different than they are now if Steve had won.

Oh, I agree that Steve winning wouldn't be ideal, either. I don't want a winner. I want competition.

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