Ellen Degeneres raised Apple’s ire recently for a fake iPhone ad she ran on her morning talk show, Ellen. In the ad, Ms. Degeneres talks about how much she loves her iPhone, but makes mistakes while trying to text her wife, Portia de Rossi. Apple complained to the show host, telling her they thought the joke made the iPhone look hard to use.
In the fake ad (which is included in the video segment below), Ms. Degeneres brags in a voice-over that she can do so much with an iPhone, for instance, “I can text.” She then taps the Google Maps application, stumbles around, brings up the text client, sends a couple of accidental messages to her wife, comments that she didn’t remember her fingers being so thick, and otherwise clearly makes fun of herself for not being a big techie.
After the fake ad played, she said, “It’s funny, right? I thought it was funny. A bunch of people thought it was funny. You know who didn’t think it was funny? [audience laughs] Yeah, the people at Apple didn’t think it was so funny. [laughter] They thought I made it look like it’s hard to use, and I just want to say that I’m sorry if I made it look like the iPhone is hard to use.”
She added, “It’s not hard to use. I have an iPhone. Portia has an iPhone. I just learned how to text on an iPhone. It’s the only phone that I can text on. And I love it. I love my iPad, I love my iPod. I love IHOP, if you have anything to do with that. [laughter] So, everyone at Apple, Steve Jobs, Mr. Macintosh (laughs). I apologize. I’m sorry. I love this stuff.”
Apple has often been a sponsor of Ellen.
So far, mainstream mentions of this have come down squarely on Apple for not having a sense of humor.
Video segment from Ellen.