Although the company behind Apple's new Genius ads, TBWA/Media Arts Lab, is telling the world that they were intended for a quick first run during the Olympics, a single weekend on air obviously points at other scenarios. We’ve heard that the campaign wasn’t really popular to begin with, and we’d say that this is much more likely.

The campaign featured stand-up comedian Josh Rabinowitz as the Apple Genius, which has to be an oxymoron, if we’ve ever heard one. During his stint on air, the "genius" helped Apple users make anniversary iMovies, child birth announcement cards and helped point out that they’ve bought counterfeit Macs. Apple again went for cuteness and light humor, but it doesn't seem to have gone so well.

Looking at it objectively, the ads were wrong on so many levels and it’s quite strange that Apple didn’t trash them earlier. Unlike the I’m-slick-Mac-you’re-ordinary-PC ads, which suggested that Macs are simpler for use, the Genius ones show Macs in another, more user-unfriendly light. Well, either that or it says that Apple users are computer illiterate, attention craving creeps, which although probably true in some cases, wouldn’t work well in a campaign.

The Genius handled his drag-n-drops well, and is as effects-savvy as James Cameron at least. He also showed a more sensitive side, by urging an Apple user to go see his wife after she gave birth. The guy was more worried about making a photo card on his iMac.

We honestly don’t care if we see the ads again, but we’d very much like the Macbook from the first ad, since it renders videos in the blink of an eye. Well for that money, it better.

More here.