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Strawberry PowerBook G3 (10/6/98)
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It's a wonder that we saw either new iMac commercial at all, given that it debuted during ABC's Home Improvement, a show of which we've never been fond down here at AtAT headquarters. And no, it's not just because they get much higher ratings than we do. Anyway, this is a Buffy office, so the new episode on the WB took first priority, while the VCR was dutifully taping night #71 of the X-Files on FX. To grab the commercials (at least, as much as we managed to get) we kept one eye on an XClaim TV video window on our primary Mac, and captured uncompressed video to disk whenever a commercial break interrupted the hilarity on ABC. (See, we knew that buying the TV tuner module wasn't entirely frivolous!)
However, just because we didn't watch "Home Improvement" doesn't mean that most of you didn't. That's why we're glad that faithful viewer Rich Lindsay confirmed something we thought we noticed when we were shooting occasional glances at the Mac screen waiting for a commercial break: After watching this evening's "Home Improvement" episode, I was disgusted with the product placement. They discussed Windows 98 in a few joke lines, but when the brand new PowerBook was center-screen for a scene there was a sticker of a strawberry placed over the Apple logo.
We assume there must be some kind of policy or something on "Home Improvement" about prominently-displayed company logos; after all, Apple's a paying advertiser, so why else would they cover up the crystal Apple on the PowerBook G3's cover? Although, many years ago, we distinctly recall one of the kids on the show wearing a Plan B skateboard company hat. So maybe it isn't policy, but rather a massive "Home Improvement" conspiracy to keep Apple's logo off the show. After all, "Dharma and Greg" (another ABC show) featured a similar PowerBook last week, and we're pretty sure the logo was visible. Hmmm...
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SceneLink (1059)
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And Now For A Word From Our Sponsors |
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 10/6/98 episode: October 6, 1998: New iMac commercials invade the airwaves, putting a face to the voice from the first batch. Meanwhile, why would "Home Improvement" cover the Apple logo on a PowerBook with a big strawberry sticker? And whatever happened to QuickTime's upcoming streaming capabilities?...
Other scenes from that episode: 1058: Selling, Selling, Selling (10/6/98) So another couple of iMac commercials have debuted, bringing the grand total up to six. The first four, which we assume you've seen by now, focused heavily on just showing the iMac's revolutionary design to the viewer, while underscoring its simplicity... 1060: Real-Time, Shmeal-Time (10/6/98) QuickTime's all fine and dandy for distributing pre-produced video clips on the web in full-size chunks. But what about true streaming capability? If your memory's at least as good as ours (and that's not too difficult to achieve), you'll most likely recall that QuickTime's biggest limitation when compared to other video delivery services is that it can't stream live data...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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