Apple's Accident

Above is Apple's Commercial entitled "Accident" which was released in August of 2006. It starts off with two people on the screen: One, a boring looking middle-aged business man in a wheelchair, represents a PC and the other, a younger, more popular type person, represents a Mac. The PC starts to explain that he fell off his desk when someone tripped over his power cord and that’s the reason he is so badly damaged. The Mac responds by saying that his power cord is magnetic and when pulled it will just fall off. Then the PC sees his life flash before his eyes and he starts to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

This commercial bugs me for a couple of reasons; one of the main reasons is because it uses a string of fallacies to promote their product. The entire commercial is an attack on the PC which is an ad hominem argument. Apple spent more time focusing on the “failings” of the PC rather than talking about their own product. They also had a slippery slope argument when Apple insinuated that if you buy a PC you will trip over its power cord which will make the PC fall on the floor which will seriously damage the PC and cause it to completely stop working. Finally, I feel like Apple is begging the question when they try to convince their audience that their charger is better without showing any proof of their claim.

I personally feel that this is a very poorly thought out commercial. Because Apple’s products can sell themselves, Apple should’ve focused on their own products rather than trying to deface the products of others. If they did that, I would have so much more respect for them. But because they have already decided to take their company in this direction, I feel that they have already lost all of their integrity.