Apple’s “Get a Mac” officially ends; John Hodgman, Justin Long live on

If any casting director has been hoping to employ Justin “I’m a Mac” Long or John “I’m a PC” Hodgman, the good news is they’re available. The bad news, for fans of Apple’s “Get a Mac” campaign, is that it’s officially over. The television ads, which helped make it not just acceptable but even stylish to migrate to Apple’s flagship product line, have confirmed to have been discontinued by Long and all evidence of them has disappeared from Apple’s website. Various ads emerged over the years featuring the two actors highlighted various advantages of Mac over PC ranging from quality of software to lack of viruses, with the inside joke being that both Long and Hodgman are in fact Mac users in real life.

Apple’s more recent television ads have focused on its new iPad, iPhone, and occasionally its iPod models, with short lived campaigns TV sometimes emerging to promote specific new Mac models. Even despite the comparative lack of Mac specific advertising, Mac sales have been growing in the range of thirty to forty percent annually of late. One possible reason for the lack of Mac advertising could be that the various Macintosh hardware models have remained physically similar looking for the past couple of years, and that the MacOS X operating system hasn’t seen an interface revamp since 2008; Apple could simply be waiting until it has something visibly new to advertise in the Mac department before launching another major Mac campaign. Or the company may simply be so pleased with Macintosh sales growth that it feels no major expensive television push is currently needed.

In any case, the “Get a Mac” campaign is officially in the past now, meaning that future Macintosh television campaigns will have to be based around some other motif. As for Long and Hodgman, while they both seem to be having no trouble finding work, it’s unlikely that either will ever completely live down the iconic roles they portrayed in the ads.