Justin Long, the face of Apple’s iconic “I’m Mac” commercials, now stars in a short parody of Qualcomm promoting Snapdragon computers.
At the Computex 2024 keynote, Qualcomm unveiled a new skit featuring Long, who is known for his role in Apple’s “Get a Mac” commercials nearly two decades ago. Long is portrayed as overwhelmed by a barrage of notices about app compatibility, lack of disk space and battery problems in macOS, prompting him to seek an alternative in the form of Windows on ARM PCs. The ad ends with the lengthy message, “Things are changing,” a sentiment echoed by Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon during closing remarks. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips will debut in the new Copilot Plus PCs on June 18.
Long’s participation in the skit is the latest development in a series of marketing strategies where tech companies use his association with the “I’m a Mac” persona to promote their products. The trend began in 2017, when Huawei featured Long in an ad for its Mate 9 smartphone. In 2021, Intel also hired Long to create ads that praised the PC and mocked various aspects of Apple’s MacBook M1, including the Touch Bar and its limited color options .
Apple launched the original “Get a Mac” ad campaign in 2006. Long played the personified Mac, characterized as laid-back and efficient, while John Hodgman portrayed the PC, depicted as conformist and prone to problems such as viruses and system crashes. The commercials ran for three years and consisted of 66 different commercials, although Long revealed in 2019 that approximately 300 were filmed.
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