“Jerry Seinfeld has pulled the old switcheroo,” Maxine Shen reports for The New York Post. “No more Windows for Bill Gates’ former best pal — the comic has apparently gone back to his first love, Apple [Mac] computers.”
“In 2008, Microsoft paid Seinfeld $10 million to pitch its Windows Vista operating system,” Shen reports.
“But that measly amount bought only one year of his loyalty — and he’s legally free to defect to the competition,” Shen reports. “The funnyman is currently appearing on TV sitting behind a conspicuously placed MacBook Pro. He showed up with his Mac a week ago on an episode of the HBO comedy series ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm,’ where he and series star Larry David are shown putting together a ‘Seinfeld’ reunion program.”
“Pairing the comic with PCs was an odd choice from the start, because when Seinfeld was master of his own domain, he had been associated with Macs,” Shen reports. “Classic versions of Apple computers popped up regularly on ‘Seinfeld,’ usually sitting on a desk in Jerry’s TV apartment.”
Shen reports, “An early Mac ad even used a clip of a young Seinfeld doing stand-up.”
Apple’s 1997 “Think Different” ad featuring Jerry Seinfeld which aired only once during the series finale of Seinfeld:
Direct link via YouTube here.
Full article here.
I wonder what Seinfeld is REALLY thinking when he is looking at Bill in that picture…
Seinfeld was thinking about a $10 million check. Hell, I’d shill Windows for a percent of that.
He’s thinking “$ 10.000.000”.
Does Seinfeld’s MS dalliance castigate him as a “name that congressman recently called a lobbyist”?
Do we welcome him back as prodigal son?
Maybe it was all a ploy from the start. I mean, you saw the ad spots. I’ve never seen anything that plodding and unfunny since… well, since the last episode of Seinfeld.
Maybe the whole plan from the start was to take some MS money and make the company look like a homeless nerd in the process.
Why shoked? $ rules! It’s american way of life.
@tc
who among us wouldn’t hawk Windows for ten million?
I say he’s welcome back into the fold.
I’d do the same thing for $10 million!!!
Vista runs better on a Mac than a PC, so what’s the problem?
Do you ever notice the networks still cover up the Apple logo when they shoot a TV scene?
Well done Agent Seinfeld. Now, return to base.
Jerry never left the fold. $10 mil to pretend to be a PC user for a year? Really? Who wouldn’t take that? Steve Jobs is perhaps the only person on the planet that wouldn’t make that deal. Seinfeld was never considered much of an actor, but even I could act enthusiastic about Windows for $10 mil. It was only a year after all.
Geez, tacky. I mean, as if it’s not outrageous enough to accept ten mill just for a few days work, now he’s thumbing his nose at them too? Not a fan.
I thought about buying msft stock in the late 80s, but decided I didn’t want to be a part of such predatory criminality. Now do I wish I bought the msft and then sold it in early 2000? You bet. Let them pay for my Macs. (Did very well with aapl anyway).
Seinfeld not only lightened the microsoft wallet, but now he is in position to poison their attempt to buy their way into cool.
HBO is big on Macs and they must have a lot of them on hand for shows. But yeah everyone has their sell out price including Jerry. Not that he needs the money though. He should at least give some of the MS money to charity. Half or America’s children will see food stamps at some point.
After all these years Seinfeld finally did something that made me laugh.
That last line is not true. I first saw the Think Different ad on TV during an airing of Toy Story in 1997, I believe.
If we are to consider Jerry a prodigal son, who intentionally looted Bill Gates’ pockets, wouldn’t he have played Robin Hood, and given his loot to schoolkids by using that $10M to buy new Macs for them? He didn’t?
Apple does’t pay for product placement. When you see an Apple product in a TV show or a film it’s because someone in the production wanted it there.
On the other hand, when the label is covered it may be because they don’t want to offend any potential sponsors. (Or because some staff bean counter used to getting paid for product placement got turned down by Apple.)
As John Candy said in Brewster’s Millions “TEN MILLION, TEN MILLION, TEN MILLION DOLLARS! TEN MILLION, TEN MILLION, TEN MILLION DOLLARS! ” Not that Seinfeld needs the money.
That’s gold Jerry, gold!
hahahahhhaa Suckerrrrsssssssss
Jerry…you da man!
Admiral X: MDN is referring to a re-edited version of the Think Different ad you know. This one cuts in a clip of a young Jerry Seinfeld first appearing on The Tonight Show. MDN is correct that it was only aired once during the final Seinfeld episode.
this was SO planned to enforce the “switch to Mac” campain!
Seinfeld is a whore.Plain and simple.
AT least at the end of the day, he uses a Mac