Heroes and Apple

I remember in the first episode that Micah said he had to rebuild his "logic board". The first time I heard this term for what x86-ers call a "motherboard" was when I heard an Apple Genius use it to describe a repair option for my MacBook Pro. I'd say that Micah is likely a Mac user.

The only computer I remember was from the last episode. Mohinder was sitting at his father's desk and a computer was running some program which looked like the Matrix running sideways.

It's a beige model with a 15-17" CRT. I'm not familiar with Apple computers in the mid-90's (pre-iMac era) but it could have been one. Can someone confirm?

Numb3rs confuses me; now on series 3, they've had plenty of Macs on display since the first series, but they always have the logo covered.

Sometimes it's as simple as having a pot of pens stood infront of an iMac to hide the logo, other times, it's as bad as covering the logo on the back of a Power Book with something that almost looks like a Dell logo!

What's the deal with that?

Of course there were macs used in the show. Claire's Friend used a mac to do those cool special effects of her trying to kill her self, remember?

Vanished on Fox has so many Mac's on that show that its almost comical. There's entire FBI offices full of them...no joke like 10 30" cinema displays for one ubergeek to use...gotta love that placement!

Not arguing with whether it was the ap on the show, but gaim runs on osx as well.

Apple Computer Inc. made an official trademark change sometime pre-2000, including an SCC and FTC filing, and requested at that time the press from that point forward refer to them only as 'Apple'. Witness their own press releases, which used to say:

"Apple Computer ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s..."

...and now say:

"Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s..."

[note: somewhere I have the original press release on this; their online library only goes back to 2001]

The parent company is, and (likely) always will be "Apple Computer, Inc.", but, much like a small business can use a DBA (Doing Business As), they could conceivably change their trade name to almost anything, including 'iPod', if they wanted (note: iPod is already spun off as a separate business division of the parent corp, as is FileMakerPro, and as Claris once was, etc...)

Regarding the original post, I would tell you that the promotional consideration is, as another has stated, the "... available on iTunes..." plug. Yes, it helps Heroes and NBC, but it drives a ton of mind, if not market share to iTunes.

I also seem to see plenty of iPod and Apple ads during Heroes (though I TiVo right over them, which may indicate they are "official" sponsors of the program, and thus their ad revenues make it possible to be aired. Does no one here remember when TV stations used to religiously voice-over during entry/exit "Promotional Consideration provided by..." the names of their main sponsors/advertisers. These days, every network is so busy self-promoting (don't you just love the totally unreadable, compressed credits, and stepped-upon end-theme music of every series?), that they have no audible space left for the people paying the bills; Apple should feel lucky to get the credit line listed they do, let alone an iTunes plug.

Am I just getting old, or does TV just suck worse than ever? I'm not even sure why I own a TiVo, truthfully, other than it further filters out much of the suckiness. Ironically my TiVo failed me, and, despite instructions not to, deleted Monday's Heroes before I could even watch it. Were it not for a SciFi Channel repeat on Friday, I would quit watching Heroes altogether; like Lost, it requires too much commitment to keep up with they story; miss one episode, or watch it out of order, and you're screwed out of too much entertainment value. And, no, it's not worth $2 to me to buy it from iTunes. I already pay too much for TiVo, Comcast, and all the Apple products in my home.

Well, I remember when I went to see Little Miss Sunshine in theatres in August, I got a promotional holographic card that said "Check Out Heroes Early on Itunes" and I watched the pilot weeks before it aired on TV... maybe thats why they credit Apple?

I know a little about this since I used to run the rental department for for a major apple reseller and service provider and i dealt with a lot of major tv shows and movies that film here. i can assure you that in almost all cases the apple gear you see on screen, especially for the big TV shows, is by design and strictly the choice of the production. they rent most of the pieces, although on occasion they can get a promotional unit from apple, but even then they often have to pay for it. Yes, instead of paying productions to use Apple products, Apple instead requires payment for the privilege of using their brand! Much of the time the production wants a piece of Apple hardware because of the "look" but can't show the logo (for a variety of reasons I won't go into here). There's a reason for that.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/14/AR2006041401670.html

Apple says they never pay for product placement. I'm sure they have other ways.