Long at the Strangers With Candy party.Photo: Patrick McMullan
Was Justin Long — the scruffy-faced Mac to John Hodgman’s straitlaced PC in those ubiquitous Apple ads — ousted from his role simply because, as Radar and Gawker suggested the other day, he was an annoying dweeb? Or was it because — and make sure you’re sitting down for this — the human embodiment of cool computing actually didn’t even know how to use one of the machines? Long made the confession at a party this summer. “I know nothing about computers,” he said at the Strangers With Candy premiere in June. “I get guys coming up to me saying, ‘Dude, what makes you think you’re better than PCs?’ I don’t even know where to begin! I know nothing about either. I’m computer illiterate.” Even worse, technology frightens him. “It scares me that they control so much of the world. I’m not taking a high road about it. I’m just not smart enough to figure them out. I still have never IMed. That scares me. It’s like, “Hi, it’s your friend you don’t really want to talk to and if you really wanted to talk to you could call.” At least, his rep assured us then, he’d been given a free Mac. One hopes he didn’t get too attached to it.
— Jada Yuan
Movie Star, Loosely Defined [Gawker]
Apples Ditches ‘Mac Guy’ In New Ads [Radar Online]
