Justin Long, the face of Apple’s iconic “I’m a Mac” commercials, now stars in a short Qualcomm skit promoting Snapdragon-powered PCs.

During the Computex 2024 keynote, Qualcomm unveiled the new sketch featuring Long, who is known for his role in Apple’s “Get a Mac” commercials nearly two decades ago. Long is depicted as overwhelmed by a barrage of notifications about app compatibility, low disk space, and battery issues in macOS, prompting him to look for an alternative in the form of a Windows on ARM PC. The ad ends with Long saying, “Things are changing,” a sentiment echoed by Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon during the event’s closing remarks. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips will debut in new Copilot Plus PCs on June 18.

Long’s participation in the skit is the latest development in a series of marketing strategies in which tech companies use his association with the “I’m a Mac” personality to promote their products. The trend started in 2017 when Huawei featured Long in an ad for its Mate 9 smartphone. In 2021, Intel also enlisted Long to create commercials praising PCs and mocking various aspects of Apple’s M1 MacBooks, including the Touch Bar and limited color options.

Apple launched the original “Get a Mac” ad campaign in 2006. Long played a personified Mac, characterized as easy-going and efficient, while John Hodgman portrayed a PC, depicted as conformist and prone to problems such as viruses and system crashes. The ads ran for three years and consisted of 66 different commercials, although Long revealed in 2019 that around 300 were filmed.

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