You weren’t completely sure why, but you felt it was good. Then Apple turned on Intel and cast it outside, there to fend for itself without Tim Cook’s beatific benevolence. This wasn’t sad for, say, M1 MacBook Air users. With Apple’s own chips, laptops suddenly had more speed and more battery life. Intel, however, was quite upset. It sniffed that Apple laptop users were entirely clueless. Which seemed a touch extreme. Now the company may have calmed its own heart in order to win yours. It’s just released an ad that tries to persuade you that Intel is inside so very many things. Also: The worst thing about eSIM-only iPhone 14s The ad’s true purpose, however, is to get you back to the bong. Well, four bongs to be precise. The four bongs that used to tell you instantly that Intel was inside your gadget. Oh, perhaps it wasn’t as much of a bong for you as a bum bum bum-bum. Here, though, are so many ordinary, busy, positive people choosing to intone the four notes that were so famous before the Apple apocalypse. When I say ordinary people, I do of course mean ordinary actors and ordinary celebrities such as Aespa, the K-pop band, and Ninjayla, the Twitch ambassador. You didn’t know that Intel was so young, so cool, and so much everywhere in all sorts of wonderful gadgets, did you? Now, Intel would adore it if every time you see, say, an automatic dog-feeding machine, you performed the four bongs in your head – or preferably out loud. There’s even a pregnant woman staring at her growing child-to-be on an ultrasound screen. Is she moved to think about what the child will be called? I don’t think so. She’s too busy stifling her longing and praising Intel by four-bonging. Autopilots and fast-food delivery robots are also adorned with Intel technology, which will surely make so many well up with gratitude. Also: NASA says space junk is one of the great challenges of our time Especially as, at the end of the ad, Intel pleads for admiration: “How Wonderful Is That?” And really, why not? It’s a perfectly wise strategy to suggest that Intel isn’t just inside dull old laptops – though a couple do make an appearance here – but in all sorts of wild, future-focused piece of technology. The question, though, is whether enough people will still be moved to sing the bong. Or whether it’s all a little passé. Being cool is hard. Being cool for a long time is really hard.
