If you’ve been watching any amount of television in the last couple of weeks, then you may have come across the new advertisement from T-Mobile regarding its “4G” network and the myTouch 4G smartphone. Without getting into the technical specifics as to whether the new network is really 4G, there is something else that is worth noting in this commercial. If you haven’t seen it, it has been uploaded to YouTube as well.

After watching the commercial, I couldn’t help but feel like I’ve seen it before. Then, it hit me: the old Mac commercials with Justin Long and John Hodgman, better known as the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” series of commercials from Apple. The T-Mobile commercials use the same plain white background, the same juxtaposition format with a competing brand, and the same “I’m a A, and I’m a B” opening line.

The person representing the T-Mobile myTouch 4G is young, attractive, and fashionable. While the person representing the iPhone 4 on the AT&T 3G network isn’t depicted as older and “stuffier” like the PC guy in the Apple ads, he is shown as being less effective. It’s an amusing spot, but the comparison to the Apple commercials is undeniable. Does this detract from the effectiveness of T-Mobile’s ad campaign or does it help it?

It makes you wonder if this similarity was intentional, acting as a parody of the original Apple commercials under a slightly different context. In this way, you have to ask whether the parody goes far enough.