Conan O’Brien spoofs Apple iPad 2 event as "a little bit cocky" - Page 2

I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't come to AI... Conan's too boring.

Sent the link to a friend who's always razzing me about my Apple love. He thought it was great... and true. Har!

Is there non flash version anywhere?

Er,... Thanks for the YouTube of conan the barbarian. 'Nuff said here.

It has often been said that satire is one of the highest forms of flattery ...

I thought the video was just kind of so-so, but you still have to be able to stand back and see the humor in things no matter how much you like Apple products. There's quite a lot to make fun of ...

I'm as big an Apple fan as anyone and found his spoof well done and hilarious. I had a good loud laugh and I was alone, which is a good measure of funny for me. I immediately watched it again and laughed again (but as always, keep your expectations low for best effect.)
What amazes me is the surprising number of humorless commentators comedy critique poseurs here on AI. For Pete's sake, it's a spoof and Conan is a comedian. Get a life!

After reading the article, i was expecting to hate the piece. But the clip is very funny indeed. It's a good parody.


It fits your definition of good satire: You make the mistake of thinking the parody was about the iPad 2. It isn't. It's about Apple's marketing video. That's what they were making fun of, not the iPad itself.



The voice of reason. Thank you. Agree 100%.



Yeah, i too am getting really, really tired of listening to Jonathan Ive regurgitate the same old stuff about each new product. Good grief, this guy is supposedly the creative genius behind Apple's product designs. How is it he lacks the ability to say anything new about any product? He said nearly the exact same thing when Apple came out with the first flatscreen (lampshade) iMac, way back when, and every product ever since. The truth is, i laughed during the real iPad 2 film when Ive came on and was verbatim predictable. Ive invites satire anymore.

I suspect the true design creatives work for Ive; it isn't Ive himself.

Personally, I think Apple makes the classiest, most straightforward commercials and demos in the entire industry. Head designer talks about the cool design. Head software guy talks about all the fun programs. Hardware guy talks about the specs a bit, but focuses on how it helps the end user. End with the price and why it's a good deal.

Compare this to say, Droid.
*A dark factory with assembly lines whirring*
WITH ITS 1.2 GHZ PROCESSOR, SLIDEOUT KEYBOARD, AND HIGH RESOLUTION SCREEN, THE DROID WILL TURN YOU INTO A TEXTING, MEDIA-CONSUMING MACHINE.
*Guy's eyes glow red a la Terminator*
DROOOIID.

It is, but it's the same because it's him. That's how he thinks and talks about design. It's pretty typical in the design community.


Nope. He's a great designer. I'm sure he's picked a great team that is also extremely talented. All design is a collaborative activity. A lack of collaborative, team management, and strategic/planning skills are what prevent most otherwise talented designers from ever becoming great, and Ive has them all in spades.

Sounds to me like you hated it but thought it was on target.

I may be a fanboi, but he wasn't funny before this either.

He's on TBS for a reason...

True.. with popularity comes responsibility. I suppose Conan is trying to hatch on the train as well just to get popular (on the internet)



Ha ha. Never like Coco. Silly t*4* hair.
Always Jay (Leno)...



Ne~verr!

Watch different promotional ads from different tech companies and see how they differs especially on the emotional content which is a gold standard on advertisements. Apple does not need to 'stage' them like Microsoft did they just collect real live stories and just put them together in a emotionally simulative way to get you sucked up to their RDFV - many people did

I thought it was very funny (as the TBS slogan goes). I laughed out loud when the first guy said "this was the product of at least 2 or 3 meetings." The non-specific ethnic accent guy nailed it too.

Look, get real. This is an interim product brought out to meet the major points of the competition -- camera, dual-core CPU -- plus they made strides in the content creation aspect of the iPad because that's the major competitive point vs. netbooks. So the satire was dead on.

This is exactly how I see it. It's exactly why Apple is vilified so much. Take the Flash debate for example. A lot people think that the reason Apple excludes Flash is so that they can protect revenue from the App Store. Many call this attitude greed.

I am amazed when people condemn Apple for being greedy. If Apple wants to protect its App Store revenue, that's its prerogative. Adobe is doing the same thing with Flash. Adobe has been stalling the standards committee on HTML5. The reason is simple. The emergence of HTML5 poses a major threat to Flash. Therefore, Adobe is stalling it as much as possible. I find it very hypocritical that people look the other way when confronted with this fact, but call Apple greedy when it does the same thing.

I think it has do with the fact that Apple is now seen as the agressor in any situation. In any conflict between Apple and another entity, people are always going to stand against Apple, regardless of the facts of the situation. Since Apple has become so successful, people always see Apple as this behemoth throwing its weight around.

A fair point. But I still think it's a poorly done satire. Even CollegeHumour's was better, and that really was pretty childish.

I don't mind satire, but I do hate our culture's love of tearing down. Apple make great stuff, market it in a really nice, clean way. It's cheese on a stick, but it's highly effective and unique.

I guess different people have different senses of humour, but I just found this really lacking wit. There's good material there to work with and this just wan't prime time quality for me.

Lighten up fellow Apple fanboys. This isn't religion or politics we are talking about.......or is it?

This kind of attention comes with territory when you are the biggest bruiser in town.

Interesting how much funnier it would have been had Conan spoofed Microsoft or Google.

It's all a matter of which team you are on and which team is getting skewered.

Pretty funny satire, but nobody asked me.

Amen to this. I never found O'Brien funny, even when he was on the big networks. There is just something about him that just rubs me the wrong way. When I heard he was going to replace Jay I figured I'd better take up late night reading again. Then when he flopped, lost the Tonight Show, and began to spout bitterness and blame everywhere, I was clearer on why I never liked him. There is a certain nastiness at the core of his humor. Hard to believe he made his nut being a writer on SNL, a show whose humor I really respond to.

My animus to CoCo far predates my Apple fan status. That he may be sponsored by Apple competitors would explain why this skit seemed to go beyond satire merely for purposes of humor.

Oh, and to those clowns (read: the recently banned StevesMinion) who park themselves early on a thread like this to "predict" negative responses? Do you even realize how douchey and infantile that is?

I agree! All the mac people who get offended at this need to have people laugh at them. I'm a mac person, own a macbook and an iphone, love them. But I don't take it personal as if Apple needs me to defend Apple. Just check out the success of the company.

Yes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I solved the Flash performance problem by installing Click to Flash - now all flash content is blocked from loading unless I click on it.

Don't expect people to stop buying Apple products because of a late night talk show host poking fun at their company and marketing of products. Apple's products speak for themselves.

I didn't find it funny. But I couldn't stop laughing when watching this one.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvG0f...layer_embedded

I solved the Flash problem on my Mac by removing Flash completely. If I must use a Flash content then I open the page using Chrome, which happens maybe once every two or so days.

My stomach hurts after watching that one.

It seems he needs a neck brace too. The almost-constantly tilted neck and hand mannerisms have been largely the same for a decade.

I'm amazed this hasn't come up in the thread yet, but Team Coco has an iPhone app, which plays the video just fine. (And all the other videos from his web site.)

"although Adobe is still working out the kinks to get Flash Player delivered for tablets"

From the way Flash runs on desktop machines, I'd say they're still trying to work the kinks out there, from sucking down multiple GB or RAM to multiple-cores worth of CPU cycles. I have a 12 core Mac Pro and avoid Flash whenever possible, haven't installed it on my Air at all. I find it amazing that including that steaming pile of... whatever it is... is pushed as a selling point for other tablets. I guess they need something to say they have that the iPad doesn't. (Well, assuming they're not going to crow about the Android Trojans...)

Then again, MS-DOS / Windows sold more copies than OSX ever did, so who am I to judge.n

You think Jay Leno kicked Conan out because Conan sucked? Wow, are you ever mis informed.

does anyone else find it remotely ironic that this post has a video for an iDevice that said iDevice cannot view?

Honestly people, it's a frackin' joke. You all really need to lighten up.

Whether it's good satire or not was not the point, which you effectively missed. And I also like how you can infer I wouldn't know the difference. Clearly you can gauge what I know and do not from a single post. I do wish to make a modest proposal , and request that you not insult me when I've not directly insulted you or anyone else.

[QUOTE=Mister Snitch;1822717]He certainly did have a point. Some people are quick to post, slow to think about whether they actually have something worth saying. 'redbarchetta, unfortunately, is the problem rather than any kind of solution./QUOTE]

If the "problem" is that we can't make jokes because it may influence the way others think, then the "problem" really lies with you.

Yeah, i agree with that. There are some people who just hate Apple (and love douche-bag companies like MicroSoftie). But when i hear them spout off, they just sound ignorant and stupid.

I'm a long-time Apple customer. Over the years i've owned Apple ]['s, a Lisa, and numerous Macs. Apple has always made some of the best computers. But the company isn't perfect, they've produced some lemons, some of their positions on things are wrong, and they have their warts. I don't have a problem laughing at them, even though i generally respect the company.


While i thought it was pretty funny, it was far from a comedic masterpiece. Honestly, it felt like a quickly produced hack job. But like all good humor, it had a kernel of truth. Without some seeds of truth, parody falls flat. This tickled my funny-bone because it struck some gems of truth. That's what made it funny to me.


Couldn't live without it.


Ain't that the truth.


You have got to be kidding! It almost had a sneeze of humor. Pretty lame, all in all. The only part i enjoyed was the 3 seconds showing the cute girl with the nice cleavage.

On target.

Do you change your neck positioning and your hand mannerisms every seven years?

Ain't that the truth!

And let's not forget that Flash is used mostly to deliver annoying animated advertising, and poorly written UI's.

About the only thing useful that it does is deliver video content and HTML5 is better at that, in my opinion.

Flash is mostly evil. I'm glad it's dying. And i'm proud of Apple for driving the wooden stake through its heart.


Just goes to show the average person is pretty stupid, and easily impressed/duped.


Honestly, no.

A parody of what?


How many people actually watch Apple marketing videos?


You're really tired of seeing something that you have to go way out of your way to see? Ives in marketing videos isn't just showing up on your TV or computer; you either have to watch Apple product release presentations or go to Apple's website and seek out the videos. If it rubs you the wrong way you could always forgo doing all that.

In general, I think it's funny that there's this idea that Apple has particularly insipid or fatuous advertising, because they really don't. The average iOS ad shows the device being used to do stuff, generally to jaunty little tune.

I just saw a Xoom ad that depicted a guy picking up a Xoom in portentous urban night scape which transformed him into the captain of a starship, or something. Deeply puerile, in other words, just like most of the Android advertising I've seen. But I never hear a word about it-- possibly because it adheres to national norms of kind of stupid fantasy macho bullshit. Stupid fantasy macho bullshit: always OK! Talk of quality and precision and passion: probably gay!

Really, most of the stuff I see about Apple seems to involve a great deal of projection. If you just look at what Apple puts out it's pretty innocuous, especially compared to the Sturm und Drang of the competition. But you'd think they were filling the airwaves with smug, smirking hipsters chanting slogans and ordering you to worship Jobs. It's actually gotten fairly bizarre, at this point, with "Apple" haven taken on a cultural identity, for certain people, that seems more racial than corporate-- in that the animosities seem similarly irrational and virulent.

I'm kidding with that, but I do think the almost constantly tilted head looks really stupid. I'm surprised the guy can manage to draw a straight line.

I laughed at the spoof.
I'm an Apple fan.
Some of the posters here poking fun at Jonny Ives, Scot Forstall, etc.: lay off!

In their defense, you should realize that due to their quarks and tics, and bordering on psychological obsessiveness in need of therapy... it's what makes Apple's products great in the first place.

You are NOT going to get that kind of passion, nor a similar end product, from the accounting department, or an MBA i.e. the types that are running "the other" companies.

As only a designer can appreciate and sympathize with, unfortunately, you can appear to other people as "strange" and eclectic. Especially if they catch you staring mesmerized at the rounded corner of a dinner-plate for a long minute without breathing. Worse and embarrassing, is when you wax poetic after being woken from your "dream state" by your GF, and bore her to death with the organic beauty of a double bezier concave curve... for like the 100th time.

I wish just one exec. would come out and say that the major reason why the NEED to have those mega-specs like a 2ghz+ processor, 1 GB (or more) RAM, a juiced graphics chip, is to run Flash.

Which is really their ONLY defining feature.

Add to that, Honeycomb and Android running in a VM environment, is not as efficient as an OS tailored to the chip spec-wise. It's why a lower-spec'ed Mac can run better than a similar spec'ed Windows machine.

It's the OS and underlying frameworks that can use ALL of the power embedded in the chips and board design, WITHOUT unnecessary overhead and superfluous messy code.

Adobe needs to just kill Flash and concentrate on an HTML5 IDE. They could hang on to the hope that Moore's Law will provide them with a quad-core ARM processor with 4 GB RAM in the not too distant future. But where will their strategy of clinging on to the current Flash-Trash code be at that time?

6/10.

I thought this was funnier:
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http...Dfeedu&h=483f8