The Underdogs again. Apple's packaging startup gets its first trade show in this eight-minute episode from October 7, 2025, and the villain is a blue screen: every PC at Container Con dies mid-show while the Underdogs' Macs, iPhones, and iPads keep working. The ad says PC and never Windows or CrowdStrike, and MacRumors reads it as the 2024 CrowdStrike outage anyway.
The payload is a straight-faced speech from Sam, the Underdogs' IT guy. The Macs run their endpoint detection and response tool through Apple's endpoint security API, which handles kernel-level functionality without granting kernel-level access, so third-party software and malware can't modify the deepest parts of the operating system. "It's a PC problem. Your Macs are secure." Apple's note under the video, relayed by MacRumors, says kernel-level protection guards against breaches, outages, and unauthorized access, and the tagline is that there's no security like Mac security.
The features get cameos rather than demos: the Underdogs bump iPhones to pass a booth map, AirDrops a lead list, summons a Siri workout playlist at the wrong moment, and finally rescues the rival, Seaweed Packaging Solutions, by AirDropping it through the outage ("Do you all have iPhones, or am I going to have to send this by pigeon?"). The buyer they have chased all day rewards the good deed with an order for two million bags. Eiffel 65's "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" does the rest.
The Underdogs series dates to 2019, per MacRumors, and has sold AirDrop and FaceTime before. This is the first Apple ad I can think of that sells a security API by name, to an audience of IT managers who lived through the day the world went blue.
