Conan O?Brien spoofs Apple iPad 2 event as "a little bit cocky"

Posted:
in iPad edited July 2014
Comedian Conan O?Brien presented a parody of Apple's iPad 2 event video on his show last night, introducing it by saying, "I personally think that the people at Apple are starting to get a little bit cocky."



The clip took aim at Apple's minimalistic product videos that portray the company's products against blank backgrounds while narrators speak effusively about how great their new features are.



The spoof (below), ironically doesn't play on the iPad because TBS distributes its videos using a Flash applet. O?Brien has successfully leveraged the Internet, particularly Twitter and Facebook, to reach his fan base after leaving his old network in a dispute and moving to TBS.



O?Brien's staff of actors posed as Apple executives who poked at the new iPad 2 as being "the culmination of literally two to three meetings. It's truly incredible how little we did," specifically skewering the new model as "adding two holes with cheap cameras in them" and predicting that "people would just go nuts" for the model.



Other presenters lobbed jokes aimed at Steve Jobs' signature black turtleneck and the variety of "non specific ethnic accents" of various executives that speak in Apple videos.



The video ends with the tagline: "iPad 2. You'll buy it no matter what we say."







Flash and Xoom



Few new consumer electronic devices are well recognized enough to serve as parody material, but Apple's iPods, iPhone and iPad have been regularly spoofed by late night comics and in shows such as "Saturday Night Live," providing millions of dollars worth of free advertisement for Apple.



Somewhat ironically, viewers report that the clip is being shown with ads that include paid spots for Motorola's Xoom tablet, which it hopes will compete with iPad 2 this year. Motorola's Flash-based Xoom ads by Verizon have also entered paid circulation on AppleInsider, prompting at least one reader to complain that the ads are sapping the performance of his quad processor machine.







Flash playback is a promoted feature of both Motorola's Xoom and Google's Android 3.0 Honeycomb platform, although Adobe is still working out the kinks to get Flash Player delivered for tablets nearly a year after it began its campaign attempting to badger Apple into supporting its web browser plugin on the iPad.
«1345678

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 146
    asciiascii Posts: 5,936member
    Say Wot. That Godless plugin is using over 2 entire cores.
  • Reply 2 of 146
    slang4artslang4art Posts: 376member
    idiot masses probably consider Conan's skit a source of accurate information.
  • Reply 3 of 146
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Slang4Art View Post


    idiot masses probably consider Conan's skit a source of accurate information.



    Satire. Look it up.
  • Reply 4 of 146
    Is there some way for Appleinsider to get video wrapped in an html5 video player? Isn't this something that can be done on the server end? To recognize user end capacity? That way we can see flash video content, increasingly rare as it is?



    Not that I would want to watch something as insensitive and offensive as the referenced video...
  • Reply 5 of 146
    I enjoyed it. Still waiting for more of the fanboys to slam Conan as "not funny" or "washed up" or unrelated silly things because of this exaggerated joke, but laugh when other products are made fun of. This is AppleInsider, after all.



    And I'm not sure what Flash and Xoom have to do with Conan O'Brien, but again, this is AppleInsider, so the authors here are a bit strange with grouping things together.
  • Reply 6 of 146
    dualiedualie Posts: 334member
    Satire from the guy who told the same basic Paris Hilton joke every night for three years.
  • Reply 7 of 146
    lkrupplkrupp Posts: 10,557member
    America loves a winner and loves to see the underdog triumph. But once you are on top then watch out because America also takes great pleasure in cutting the winner off at the knees and laughing as they fall from the pedestal they were placed on.
  • Reply 8 of 146
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Wasn't the huge CPU drain a problem fixed last year? I don't see that kind of drain on my first gen Mac Pro since updating the Flash several months ago, maybe last summer. It's probably more than it should be, but also far from that bad. I'd check if Apple is shipping an outdated flash player.
  • Reply 9 of 146
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by dualie View Post


    Satire from the guy who told the same basic Paris Hilton joke every night for three years.



    Called it. And the post right beneath mine, too. You people are so predictable.
  • Reply 10 of 146
    reklss41reklss41 Posts: 21member
    Does anyone care about conan and his hair anymore?
  • Reply 11 of 146
    ghostface147ghostface147 Posts: 1,629member
    Funny how iOS devices can't play it. Blame TBS on this one. Surely HTML5 can do it.
  • Reply 12 of 146
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by reklss41 View Post


    Does anyone care about conan and his hair anymore?



    Not emotionally fragile Apple fanboys, at least.
  • Reply 13 of 146
    luisdiasluisdias Posts: 277member
    I thought it was frakking funny as hell. And true too. Apple overdues its style, and of course, that's why I love them, but then they cannot pass as "everyday people" as they try to too, which is a contradiction. In a nutshell, apple's dressing code is more strict than any other company, while trying to seem blazé. And they seem completely oblivious to the obviousness of this all...
  • Reply 14 of 146
    dualiedualie Posts: 334member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by StevesMinion View Post


    Called it. And the post right beneath mine, too. You people are so predictable.





    I'd rather be predictable than prejudiced, arrogant and self-righteous.
  • Reply 15 of 146
    danvid36danvid36 Posts: 80member
    That was pretty funny. Some people here need to get a friggin' sense of humor_I love Apple but come on that was just a satire in good fun!
  • Reply 16 of 146
    irnchrizirnchriz Posts: 1,617member
    This is just an example of exactly the penetration Apple has in popular culture, with the iPod and now the iPad. Their competitors would kill for that.
  • Reply 17 of 146
    slang4artslang4art Posts: 376member
    .....
  • Reply 18 of 146
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by irnchriz View Post


    This is just an example of exactly the penetration Apple has in popular culture, with the iPod and now the iPad. Their competitors would kill for that.



    You could replace penetration with pretentious. Can't Apple make a normal video? I don't need Jony Ive to describe the iPad as a god. Product shots and captions would do.
  • Reply 19 of 146
    archosarchos Posts: 152member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by tomlawler View Post


    Is there some way for Appleinsider to get video wrapped in an html5 video player? Isn't this something that can be done on the server end? To recognize user end capacity? That way we can see flash video content, increasingly rare as it is?



    Not that I would want to watch something as insensitive and offensive as the referenced video...



    AI has posted HTML5 videos of its own, but this is a TBS video that AI doesn't own. So you'll have to complain to TBS.
  • Reply 20 of 146
    dualiedualie Posts: 334member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by StevesMinion View Post


    You could replace penetration with pretentious. Can't Apple make a normal video? I don't need Jony Ive to describe the iPad as a god. Product shots and captions would do.



    Come on show us how it should be done funny guy.
Sign In or Register to comment.