I’m just watching “Swimming Pool” (I think it’s a remake of “La Piscine” from 1969 with Alain Delon and Romy Schneider, but I’m not totally sure), and at one time Charlotte Rampling boots up her laptop, and a Windows screen appears (unmistakably, even the Word icon is clearly shown, and she creates a new folder on the desktop). Now, I’ve never seen an original OS I know in any work of fiction. Normally, it’s always some kind of fake GUI and fake websites, nobody talks about Microsoft, Apple, Android, Google, Facebook or whatever, it’s always somehow faked or hidden. I’ve always assumed that this is because of copyright issues or to prevent unintentional advertising, so that scene stuck out to me. I wonder if the producers had a special contract with Microsoft.
I could imagine that the underlying OS for many fake movie GUIs is Linux, but I don’t know if GNU licences also allow to use GUIs for art. Do you have other examples of GUIs or other interfaces of commercial companies clearly shown in the movies or on TV?
The Swedish Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy was practically an Apple Computer ad, and what was shown onscreen was viable MacOS imagery and behaviors.
The Modern Family episode called “Connection Lost” takes place entirely on Claire’s MacBook Pro screen as she’s stuck in an airport.
It’s technically not the actual OS itself, they had a motion graphics artist recreate it because they wanted to zoom in on parts of the screen for shots and that would make for issues with the resolution. Yosemite was still in beta while he was creating it, so he had to keep updating the assets as Apple kept changing the beta. As a result, it’s pretty faithful.
One of the Maguire Spiderman movies (I think the first one but might be the second one) has product placement from Bing and they definitely show him using Bing as the search engine.
I don’t think this is so true anymore, but I remember a long stretch in which it seemed like every TV show or movie that featured someone using a computer was using a Mac. Not so much showing the OS but prominently showing the Apple logo on the back of the laptop screen. You would have thought Apple had 99% market share judging by movies and TV shows alone. Apparently this was by design:
Yeah, that was part of Captain Marvel’s design aesthetic of “Let’s hit everyone over the head repeatedly with the idea that this is from the 90s!”. They could have just as easily set the movie in the 90s but kept it mostly undated. Like, the store she crash-landed into was a Blockbuster’s, but it could have just as easily been a McDonald’s.
Coincidentally the last two movies I saw (“Dark Waters” and “Bad Education”) featured real life operating systems. They’re period pieces (OMG, I just said that about something set in my college years cries) set around the late 90s early 00s though.
Windows 2000 was clearly visible in one, intentionally pointed out. The other was true to life with the screensaver at the time (tubes flying everywhere) which was a small shot of nostalgia.
I don’t think there is any legal restriction on showing real life operating systems or products in movies or shows. You can do it if you want. You may choose not to if you don’t want a Ford showing up in your sitcom because you might try sell ads spots to Toyota or whatever. Or maybe you want to keep product placement options open. But I can’t see why you’d be disallowed to.
I also wouldn’t assume that every example is product placement. People use products in real life. If I were a director I’d prefer to go for realism (especially in the period piece example where it can really set the tone and place). I felt in the two examples I gave that was probably the main motivation. Personally I find it mildly distracting when they’re all using “Fake McFake” versions of something or fly on “Made Up Airlines” to try avoid showing real products.
Just the caption. Kelly Rowland has said they just gave her something to type on, she never really paid attention to it and assumed the home viewer wouldn’t be able to see that much detail. Nothing to do with the song or video. She was just supposed to be texting someone.
Apple can set all the guidelines and requirements they want. Doesn’t mean they’re enforceable. Now, it may be that the movie studios value having a positive relationship with Apple, and that Apple gives them other benefits that could be revoked, and so they voluntarily choose to comply with Apple’s guidelines. But if a rogue director wanted to show Vampire Adolf Hitler stabbing a puppy to death with an iPhone, with a slow-motion close-up on the logo on the phone, they couldn’t stop him. Their lawyers would probably try to claim a trademark violation, but if it ever got to court, they’d lose.