Ellen DeGeneres created and aired a fake commercial for Apple iPhone on Monday.
Yesterday, she aired it again while apologizing on-air:
Direct link to video clip via YouTube here.
MacDailyNews Take: Those calling for Apple to lighten up must not know about or have forgotten the lethal damage that a little comic strip once did to a very-promising Apple product. And, that one had truth on its side. Unfortunately, DeGeneres’ fake commercial simply strays too far from the truth.
Parody is supposed to take something real and exaggerate it, but DeGeneres’ attempt failed because it creates non-existent issues and then treats them as a parody would. DeGeneres’ misuse of parody creates the mistaken impression in the viewer’s mind that the issues depicted actually exist with iPhone, since the audience expects that what’s being exaggerated to be rooted in fact. That could be why she apologized so quickly (and/or she didn’t want to lose potential Apple ad dollars).
This isn’t Apple being humorless and overbearing to poor little Ellen. This is a case of parody being wrongly applied to issues that do not exist, then aired on national TV, potentially damaging the reputation of a product that did nothing to warrant such treatment except carry an Apple logo and be popular. DeGeneres made a mistake and she apologized for it.
Lastly, had Ellen instead parodied iPhone by trying and failing to zoom the camera or tether her MacBook with AT&T, there would be no issue with the parody and no reason for Apple to complain or for Ellen to apologize.
MacDailyNews Note: Help kill Adobe’s Flash:
• Join YouTube’s HTML5 beta here and maybe someday they’ll offer embeddable HTML5 video.
MDN, another Apple fanboy site who agrees with everything this Communist company does and say. Give me a break, you ass tards are seriously going to defend Apple for shit like this? Apples no sense of humor seems to trickle down to its fan boy sites apparently. And by the way, the Newton comic strip wasn’t the reason for the disaster, it just sucked ass so get over it. Grow a pair of balls and stop blowing the man (steve).
Apple should send Ellen Degenerate a message by discontinuing all Product Red co-operation. Let the perverts help themselves…
I would be very surprised that it was Apple who reacted here. This is so inconsequential, especially since iPhone is NOT a brand new product, struggling to make it in the market; it is a leader in its category and everyone else is trying to emulate it. Apple had no reason to react.
This is clearly result of Apple fanboys (such as many who posted here) reacting vocally and flooding Ellen’s show with complaints. She essentially apologised to THEM, not to Apple.
Eholame Apple
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keep making virus free products!!!!
We the people know the facts jacks!
Good time to Buy AAPL stocks!!!!
$300 in July 2010!
I’ve done everything Ellen did in the fake commercial. I didn’t find the commercial all that funny.Barely cracked a smile. The apology was funny. Not a knee slapper just kinda funny.
This is not a big deal folks. She did Apple no damage. iPhone sales will not plummet. Lighten up. She was trying to be funny and missed the mark.
To attack her for doing her job and failing, as in not being too funny, is juvenile. Some of the attacks show that not all posters to MDN are very old.
Thats ok too. Part of living in a free (ish) country.
At least give her credit for being with Portia DeRossi. DeRossi is smokin’ hot. And yes I know they are lesbians.
Hey, MDN, you’re kidding us, don’t you. Just kidding. I hope so. This is humor. Just humor. Don’t loose that. Don’t be more “Appleholic” than Apple marketing’s gurus.
Apple’s products are great. But please, let people have fun with them. In all ways.
I don’t like MDN this way. Really not.
@LeftCoastDude I am one of the “fat, potato-chip-eating, unemployed,” but I don’t live in my mother’s basement. Does that still make me a loser? BTW while I was entering my last post MDN crashed on me (WTF, is this app made with flash???) I also had several typos and accidentally hit the “undo” button instead of the “ABC” button consequently erasing my entire post. Maybe I am a “loser,” or maybe Ellen has a point.
It was mildly amusing and Mdn is very wrong.
@MDN “Those calling for Apple to lighten up must not know about or have forgotten the lethal damage that a little comic strip once did to a very-promising Apple product. And, that one had truth on its side.”
This is so patently false, I don’t even know were to begin.
I had an messagepad 2000 back then, and it was amazing for it’s time. But is was very expensive (more expensive even then my performa) back then), quite heavy for it’s size, and had no killers aps. The handwriting recognition was cool, but just not precise enough. It was very visonary but way too much ahead of it’s time. It didn’t sell well at all, and thus when Jobs returned he axed it in favor of going for a more simpler and profitable product matrix. That’s what happened. The comic had nothing to do with it.
Apart from this, MDN, you contradict yourself: if a comic has truth on it’s’ side, then it’s the truth that killed it, not the comic at all. I’m sure you see your own big fallacy here?
Lastly, though I’m shooting for an iPad when they become available here, I don’t have an iphone because I’m not into mobile phones. But two of my collegeas are, and regularly they show me amazing stuff the iPhone can do. Wonderfull device. But at the same time, they also ‘touch’ ‘wrong in the same way Ellen made fun off every now and then. Nothing special, doesn’t take anything away from smartphones, but it surely has truth on it’s side too.
MDN, shame on you, is all I can say. You really disgust me with your lying through your teeth in your version of Apple “history” and falsely attacking Ellen in a very below the belt manner. We all know you’re just as much hit whores as scum like Dvorack, Thurrot and the likes, but don’t rub our noses in it. We prefer to neglect that darker side of you. You sure you arent’t the same clique secretly, only in all this for the hits?
As MDN clearly states, what Ellen did was not Parody. She could have seriously damaged the reputation of Apple and their products.
I “smell” a lawsuit coming…. I think Apple needs to write into the EULA that “thou shall not criticize anything Apple”..
Let’s face it (As MDN always points out), Everything without an Apple user is junk and clunky – not like the ever so elegant Apple products.
I hope an Apple employee files a complaint with the Police and they kick Ellen’s door in – And I hope the Ellen show is canceled!! Maybe Steve can write an open letter to all who watch that show to quit watching and destroy it…..
Better yet, Maybe Apple will make a TV that only shows programs that are Pro-Apple and run by those who share Steve’s left wing kook values!!!!!
Woooo Hooooo, Go Steve, … Ellen is Finished!!! Ellen is Toast!!! – I just know it!!!!!!!!
She’s a talented, unapologetic poster child of immorality. What would u expect?
MDN is right.
Ellen’s humor generally involves self-deprecation. Ellen probably wanted to portray herself as a klutz, not denigrate the iPhone, but it just didn’t come out that way.
@MDN = Fanboys
Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and all the rest must be twirling in their graves at the suggestion that a major capitalist corporation made up of the bourgeoisie and accused of exploiting the proletariat could be Communist. Boggles the mind, not to mention the Manifesto.
These days we have no political terms. They have all become epithets. What do the radical moderate liberal conservatives among us have to say about that? Do the moderate radical conservative liberals have a counterpoint?
Man, MDN will back anything Apple does. Apple was in the wrong. Period!
Ellen’s joke was funny. Your analysis of parody should be the subject of a parody. It’s one thing to stick up for Apple, it’s another thing, an embarrassing, painful to watch thing, to simply not get a joke.
Panda,
You are the one who is wrong.
That Doonesbury strip is dated August 27, 1993, nearly four years before the Newton MessagePad 2000 debuted with working handwriting recognition.
MDN is right. You are wrong and should apologize to MDN like Ellen did to Apple.
So if Ellen did a “parody” where she complains about the hundreds of self-replicating viruses on iPhone, and how she prefers a WinPhone (without a trace of irony), that would be okay because it was an attempt at a joke? Or does it cross the line into libel? That is the line that MDN put down, that there is enough basis in fact.
Apple could start killing babies and some people will defend it. Give me a break.
Personally, I found it amusing. I also didn’t see it as a shot at Apple, but more a shot at herself for not knowing how to use it. (It should be mentioned that Sex and the City The Movie did something similar where Carrie asks someone for a cell phone and Samantha hands her the iPhone, to which she replies “I, uh, yeah, I don’t know how to use this thing…”
Maybe it was inappropriate for Ellen to use the Apple logo for it, I think that was pushing it, but it was meant to be about her. People need to stop taking everything so seriously.
Rene et al.
Oh, yes, MDN will back anything Apple does. Just like this:
Apple blew it. Again… This app should never have been rejected and whoever’s in charge of the college intern(s) in Apple’s App Store approvals department is clearly incompetent… Apple should make sure that apps are safe to run on iPhone OS and leave taste, or lack thereof, out of the approval equation. It’s not Apple’s responsibility to “protect” people from downloading apps that may offend the downloaders’ or others’ sensibilities… Apple’s only considerations should be to make sure apps do not harm the device and/or encourage physically harming others, directly or indirectly… We don’t know if Apple’s problem is: (a) the quality of the staff they’ve hired to flip the coins they use to determine app approvals; (b) if said staff is totally overwhelmed; (c) if said “staff” is really just that lone not-so-smart MobileMe launch guy whom the new, more mellow Steve didn’t have the heart to fire; or (e) all of the above, but they really ought to have worked it out by now.When they wake up, people with brains at Apple are likely going to want to correct this one yesterday. The problem is that yesterday has passed. Another looming App Store PR debacle is all that remains.
MacDailyNews Note: Contact Apple via Web form here.
– MacDailyNews, April 16, 2010, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist’s iPhone app rejected by Apple App Store
I can’t believe they’re having a problem with it. I didn’t focus on any of the things the article is stating. I just took the skit as why apple didn’t run her commercial. I found it quite amusing! The idea of not wanting to buy an iPhone from that is ludicrous. Keep us laughing, Ellen!
@Superior Being,
I see you are intellectually challenged, so I’ll explain a bit more.
Yes, the 2000 model was an improved version of the mesagepads that gone before. Everyone on this forum knows that I assume, and so do you. Nice. The point is that the 2000 model stil did not get handwriting recognition where it should be, in still had the problems as depicted in the cartoon. I spent a lot of time on getting it to learn my style of writing, and got nice results eventually. But nice is not good enough in the market place.
Aside from this, any device needs killer apps, and the newton simply didn’t have those.
All this oe could also read in the reviews in the various Mac magazines at that time. Great vision for sure, but just way too expensive for what you got. I could afford it, but at those pricepoints for most it was just not justifiable.
When Jobs returned he did not kill it because it was working so well, had lots of killers app, and at an amazing price to boot. Jobs killed it because it lacked all this. And rightly so.
Got it?
Try again.
Panda,
Your last post has nothing whatsoever to do with your first post or Superior Being’s perfect refutation of it.
Your last post succeeds only in branding yourself as a pure idiot.
Please stop posting while you’re hopelessly behind.
It was funny and Apple needs to grow up on this one.