Did the iPad Kill the "I'm a Mac/I'm a PC" Commercials?

We're looking for suspects after Justin Long tells website popular that Get a Mac campaign "might be done"

Hope you're happy with your cool new iPad. One question: When you wave your finger over the cool new touch screen, do you hear the cries of Justin Long and John Hodgman?

What are we talking about? This: One day, the iPad goes on sale; the next day, Long's telling the A.V. Club that his and Hodgman's nifty Get a Mac campaign "might be done."

Et tu, Steve Jobs?

We emailed Apple a couple of times for comment, but didn't hear back. To be honest, we'd be too busy to get back to us, too, if we were selling cool new iPads like so many cups of Starbucks coffee.

But if the campaign is dead—and in the Long interview, the actor says he can't say definitively that it is—then we've got one cool new high-resolution device wanted for questioning. Our interrogation would go something like this: Geez, iPad, why'd you do it? 

Since the iPad, for all its revolutionary cred, can't handle a Q&A, we reached out to ad exec Lynn Blumenfeld, who runs the boutique New York agency Blumenfeld + Fleming. Our question to her: Why do they it? Why do companies pull plugs on popular, long-running campaigns?

"Clients tire of campaigns way before consumers do," Blumenfeld told us. "Think of the number of times a marketing manager watches their own TV spots versus the number of times someone sitting on a couch does."

When we asked if she'd be surprised for "Get a Mac" to get the ax, she said she wouldn't be—and she's a self-described fan of the "terrific" ads, too.  

"It's been on forever, and it's been supersaturated, and it's been mocked," said Blumenfeld. "[This] would be the time to do it."

And, yes, she's referring to the launch of a certain cool new thing.

So, did we prove anything? Nope. The arrival of the iPad and the end of Get a Mac, if it has indeed ended, may be coincidental. Just the same, we wonder if we can learn to trust the iPad. Maybe one day it'll come after us, too. And what hope would we have if Long and Hodgman, so smart and funny as the bantering Mac and PC, can be taken out after three-and-a-half-years of excellence?

It's enough to make us want upgrade to Windows 7 just for spite. 

Well, no, not really. And, please, don't tell the iPad we just said that.