14 DAY TRIAL // A Peter Serafinowicz Show Christmas Special is featuring a short clip dedicated to a new, fictional Apple product – the Mactini. The clip is a parody of Apple's guided tour of the MacBook Air, emphasizing the company's habit of reducing the number of controls (buttons) on its products.
The Peter Serafinowicz Show is a BBC Two comedy sketch show, written by and starring Peter Serafinowicz, a British comic actor, writer, voice artist, and composer. His latest bit features the actor dressed up like an Apple employee and doing a guided tour of the Mactini, an ultra-portable computer that doesn't compromise functionality, while reducing all its controls to a single button.
Serafinowicz assures Mac fans that the single key found on the Mactini “performs all the functions of a regular keyboard,” complementing Apple's style of touting its products.
“For instance, if I want to type the letter A, I press it once [audience laughs]. For the letter Z, I press it - you guessed it - 26 times,” and even more laughter bursts among the members of the audience. And yes, you guessed it, the guy actually starts the button-mashing, and eventually the letter Z appears on the small screen of the Mactini. We reckon it's using Apple's standard backlit display, with just one LED providing the light.
The real kicker comes when Serafinowicz decides to go deeper into the functionality of the Mactini and starts showcasing its punctuation abilities. For a simple comma, users must “hold [the button] down for four seconds, release it for two, and then... ra ta ta tat [presses the key repeatedly in a timely, rhythmic manner].”
The user guide, as you would imagine, is a several thousand-page long bible. You might need a crane to move that thing about. “The Mactini is also a fully integrated entertainment system. It's perfect for listening to music, watching movies, or even giving a business presentation,” Serafinowicz says during his guided tour, showing off the respective capabilities.
Moreover, while the Mactini already looks like it doesn't have any competition, the device becomes obsolete before the commercial is even over, because of a smaller, more compact device called, you guessed it...