Okay, folks, our apparent cosmic penance for the sin of not watching "The West Wing" is over: faithful viewer Reddish Hugh tipped us off to the fact that the new Yo-Yo Ma Switch ad eventually appeared on Apple's web site yesterday afternoon, so we've finally taken a gander or six, seen the famous cellist in full-on Mac-peddling action, and now we're no longer haunted by the gnawing emptiness of knowing that there's a new Apple commercial out there that we hadn't yet seen. Sure, we spent three-quarters of a day in an internalized Beckett play as our souls wandered the gulfs between Being and Becoming, but hey, who hasn't?

The only bummer, of course, is that said ad is not actually a Switch ad at all; the Musical Mr. Ma simply extols the simplicity of Macs and how they're "friendly" to the "technically-challenged" such as himself. For that matter, he never even mentions that "other platform," let alone issues an overt comparison-- his G4 is "friendly," not "friendlier." And he certainly doesn't offer up any useful smack-talk, such as that his dad's PC devoured his really good concerto, or that he switched to the Mac after waking up naked in a hotel bathtub full of ice with a phone taped to his hand and a note instructing him to call 911 because his Wintel PC had drugged him and then absconded with both his kidneys for sale on the black market. Or something.

Our point being, like we said, it's not really a Switch ad, per se. But then again, neither are any of the other celebrity ads Apple has broadcast. Tony Hawk, Kelly Slater, DJ Qbert-- none of these guys are talking about "switching;" they're just talking about how nifty their Macs are. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, but we don't mind admitting that we were hoping for a stream of bitter anti-Windows vitriol spewing forth from Yo-Yo Ma's piehole. We somehow expect that witnessing such a thing would be intensely satisfying, but unfortunately we may never know, since Apple seems to have taken the moral high road as far as celebrity switching is concerned. Even overseas!

See, as faithful viewer Thorri pointed out, following hot on the heels of Apple's Japanese Switch ads comes the first of a series of Icelandic equivalents. (Yes, Iceland. Apple has Switch ads running in the U.S., Japan, and Iceland. You got a problem with that?) It's a celebrity variant starring Einar Örn-- or, at least, was, since at broadcast time the URL seemed to have stopped working. The hipper among you will recognize Einar as one of The Sugarcubes, namely, the one who sang when a very pre-swan dress Björk didn't. A kind soul in the MacRumors forums posted a rough translation of Einar's spiel, and while there's at least a definite implication that Wintels are "difficult and impossible and hard to connect," good ol' Einar apparently started out with a Mac-- so again, there's no switching involved.

But hey, we're not ones to complain. Well, actually, okay, yes, we are-- but not about this. Celebrities in any country getting on the tube and hawking Macs in any language is a-okay by us, whether or not they're actual "switchers." Still, we hold out hope that one day Apple will stick a fantastically recognizable famous person in front of a camera and let him go off on a thirty-second tirade about how Wintels spat in his coffee, stood up his sister at her prom, and foreclosed on his family's farm. Hey, Apple: we hear Santa Claus himself is an avid switcher. Maybe give him a call? We're guessing that his influence extends geographically south of the North Pole, especially around this time of year...