Intel Nabs Former Apple Pitchman Justin Long To Rip Macs In Hilarious New Ad Campaign

Apple last year confirmed a seismic shift that we all knew was coming for a long time. The company announced its decision to abandon Intel processors over the next 2 to 3 years and switch to its own Apple Silicon. Making this move would put Apple in the driver's seat concerning its product roadmap, though the move was bold and risky to be sure.

The first products to move to Apple's homegrown SoC -- the M1 -- were the 13-inch MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, and Mac mini. Intel is probably none-too pleased at Apple's decision, which has been compounded by the fact that Apple has touted its superiority over Intel chips ever since. In return, Intel has launched a new ad campaign to show all the ways that Core-based systems and PCs in general stomp all over M1 Macs. The gloves are off, so to speak...

Intel dug way back into Apple's past to find its star for the ad series. That's right; Chipzilla hired none other than Justin Long from the long-running Mac vs. PC campaign to bring his dry sense of humor to the table. First, Intel has a new Go PC website where it talks up some vital functional differences between M1 MacBooks and Intel-based laptops/convertibles. Intel touts many different form-factors/designs, touch screen support, support for peripherals without the need for a hub or adapter, and its superior gaming platform. Intel also pokes fun at M1 Macs only supporting a single external display, which is a big annoyance for content creators. To be honest, we can't argue with any of these points that Intel mentions in its favor.

We do take issue with the fact that Intel lists "Touch Bar Only" in the Mac M1 column when only the 13-inch MacBook Pro (M1) features a Touch Bar on the MacBook side. The MacBook Air (M1) continues with the legacy function row at the top of the keyboard. Also, the image that Intel shows appears to be of a 15-inch MacBook Pro without a Touch Bar, so we're scratching our heads on that one.

Digging deeper into the site, Intel talks about its processors being 3.5x faster at AI-based content creation using Topaz Labs tools and 41 percent faster in Chrome while offering a 2.4x uplift in Office 365 performance. 

Intel even gets a dig in at Apple's battery life claims, noting:

Apple boasts their new M1 laptop has an 18hr battery life. But the truth behind the claim reveals that the screen brightness does not represent what a user would do in the real world (Apple had the brightness set low at 150 nits). We ran a parity test with an M1 Mac against an Acer Swift 5 with an Intel Core i7 processor. We didn't change the test to win, we changed it to make it real. The truth is that both systems delivered roughly the same 10hr battery life.

But Intel is really trying to sell its advantage over M1 Macs with these Justin Long-backed ads, of which five are currently available. You can see them embedded throughout this article, and they have a passing resemblance to the old Mac vs. PC ads. The short spots touch on various topics, including the monotony in design of Apple's MacBook line, the benefit of using touch screens, better gaming chops, and the ability to use three monitors at once (among other perks). Each ad is less than a minute, so it won't take you long to breeze through all of them for some satisfying satire.

Tell us what you think about Intel's new ad campaign and if you think it's effective against Apple's first generation of Apple Silicon devices.