Screen Time: Jane Goodall's All About Apple Macs

Beloved primatologist voices commercial

If you can’t take tech recommendations from Jane Goodall, who can you trust?

The legendary primatologist, who passed away as the month began, provides the narration for Apple’s latest Macintosh spot.

Is she an odd choice? Perhaps. Clearly, the text was gleaned from one of her speeches or some such; it’s not Mac specific.

Still, Goodall dedicated her life to probing the natural world and adding to the sum total of human knowledge. That feels in sync with Apple’s ethos.

And the ad’s minimalism—focused on a flashing cursor on a blank screen—harkens back to the brand’s historically sleek, simple aesthetic.

She begins:

“Every story you love,
Every invention that moves you,
Every idea you wished was yours,
All began as nothing—
Just a flicker on a screen.
Asking a simple question:
‘What do you see?'”

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At one point, images of diverse creators across the arts and scientists appear, and it all culminates with the line, “Great ideas start here.”

“This campaign celebrates the hardest and most mysterious part of a great idea—its origin: how something is created out of nothing, from a blank canvas,” Apple marcom VP Tor Myhren told Ad Age. “It’s remarkable how many of the world’s great ideas started on a Mac. This work salutes these ideas, and everyone who tries to make more of them.”

All in all it’s an effective, low-frills approach. We get a break from the brand’s vaunted product demos in favor of a thoughtful vibe that’s a world away from Apple’s sitcom-y “Underdogs” clips and its oft-explosive mini-epics.

TBWA\Media Arts Lab crafted the advert with MJZ’s Mike Mills directing.