TV

Apple's 'Think Different' man likes Samsung's ad campaign

Apple is like Obama after the first debate, says TBWA-Chiat-Day's former creative director

FORTUNE -- Ken Segall worked with Steve Jobs for 14 years, during which time he put the i in iMac and found the thread that links Albert Einstein and Amelia Earhart. But though he no longer works as a creative director at TBWA/Chiat/Day, Segall is still keeping a close eye on Apple's (AAPL) marketing efforts on his Observatory blog.

And he MORE

Apple's new subliminal TV ads

Samsung has been teasing Apple on TV. The latest iPad ads don't rise to the bait.

FORTUNE -- Samsung has been having some fun at Apple's (AAPL) expense lately, mocking iPhone line-sitters and hiring Hollywood celebrities to crack wise about trademark lawsuits.

Did Apple rise to the bait?

It did not. At least not in its first post-Superbowl iPad commercials, "Together" (above) and "Alive" (below).

Apple seems to be sticking its knitting, planting a MORE

Huberty: Apple could sell 13 million TV sets at $1,060 each

Survey finds Americans more keen to buy an "iTV" than they were the iPhone or iPad

FORTUNE -- Opinions about whether Apple (AAPL) is about to enter the TV set market are about as sharply divided as Fox News and MSNBC. You're either in the Gene Munster camp (It's coming, for sure, in 2013!) or in Jean-Louis Gassée's (It's a pipe dream!).

Whichever party you belong to, there's much to be gleaned MORE

The startup that wants to conquer TV

Television is battling the smartphone and the tablet for attention. Viggle aims to co-opt such devices to boost ratings and revenue.

By Jennifer Alsever, contributor

FORTUNE -- Television executives and advertisers alike are desperate to interact with television viewers. Media mogul Robert F.X. Sillerman wants to help them.

Viggle, his New York-based startup, hopes to become the entertainment industry's chief loyalty-rewards program. Its app, which is available for Apple (AAPL) and Google MORE

Found footage: A rare never-aired 1983 Apple television ad

Meet the team that created the original Macintosh. Where are they now?

FORTUNE -- Late Thursday, Andy Hertzfeld posted on YouTube a commercial created for Apple (AAPL) in 1983 by Chiat-Day but never aired, according to Hertzfeld, because it was deemed "too self-congratulatory."

You see why, especially when you compare it with the spot Apple did run: Ridley Scott's award-winning 1984.

In many ways, however, the "Snippets" piece tells us more about Apple's corporate MORE

What changed to finally bring Hulu Plus to Apple TV?

The likely hold-up: Apple's 30% cut. The breakthrough: AirPlay on the Mac

FORTUNE -- Like many Hulu Plus subscribers who use the $7.99-per-month service to catch up on TV shows they've missed, I have no shortage of ways to get it. It's on Roku, PS3, XBox and the Wii. There's a Hulu app for the iPad, the Mac, Linux and Microsoft (MSFT) Windows. It even came pre-loaded on my Internet-ready Panasonic MORE

Apple's Olympic TV ads: One funny one, two not so much

Batting 333 isn't bad in baseball. For Apple, it's below average.

FORTUNE -- The one about the Apple "genius" doing emergency interventions in mid-flight is the funny one.

The quality falls off when the same genius (who apparently sleeps in a blue Apple T-shirt and puts on his name tag to answer the door) interacts with increasingly silly customers, one whose wife is about give birth and another who bought a PC MORE

Sales at Apple's Taiwanese suppliers fell 13% in June

Weakness among their other customers may be partially to blame, says analyst

FORTUNE -- Topeka's Brian White, who tracks the performance of a collection of Taiwanese electronics suppliers as a "barometer" of Apple's (AAPL) future performance, shared some bad news with his clients Monday morning.

With only one company in his "Apple Monitor" not yet reporting, sales among these suppliers were down 13% month over month in June, compared with an average 1% MORE

Google unveils an ecosystem designed to rival Apple's

But can the combination of Jelly Bean, Play, the Nexus 7 and the Q catch up to iTunes?

FORTUNE -- In a jam-packed keynote that included a long list of significant software announcements, a box full of free hardware and a live-streamed skydive onto the roof of Moscone West, Google (GOOG) unveiled its strongest challenge yet to Apple's (AAPL) computing and entertainment ecosystem.

The highlights of the two hour-plus presentation:

Google Play, a MORE

Poll: Which comes first, Microsoft's Surface or Apple's television set?

One is vaporware. The other a rumor.

FORTUNE -- Early voting in Brian S Hall's impudent poll, posted Sunday on his Smartphone Wars blog, gave only slightly more credence to Microsoft's (MSFT) tablet computer, unveiled with great fanfare last week, than to Apple's (AAPL) television set, about which the company has said absolutely nothing.

Will the balance shift as more votes come in? Let's find out. Click here to register your opinion.