Yael Naïm versus Feist
Apple has a habit of really going with a spread spectrum of music to hawk its wares. We've seen everyone featured in iPod ads, for example, from The Propellerheads to Wynton Marsalis, Wolfmother to Paul McCartney.
Last fall the company put into heavy rotation ads featuring Feist, a Canadian musician, singing a song called "1234." It wasn't my favorite ad -- I found her delivery to be a little bit too twee. It was compounded by the fact that the ad was played relentlessly. I could barely change the channel without seeing it at least once an hour for several weeks. By the end I was just burnt out.
I guess that's the same reason why the MacBook Air ad falls flat with me. There's no question that Yael Naïm is a very different musician than Feist -- listening to samples from her eponymous album on iTunes, I heard some gorgeous tracks. It's just a shame that the one song that Apple's advertising team took was the one that reminds me the most of Feist's iPod ad. Bo-ring.
It doesn't help that the MacBook Air is a solution for a problem I don't have. I'm a big lover of heavy iron. Now if Apple had rolled out a 20-inch MacBook Pro, *that* would be an object of lust for me, regardless of who was singing in the background.