By AppleInsider Staff

Published: 08:45 PM EST (05:45 PM PST)

Comedian Ellen Degeneres claimed she upset Apple officials with a parody of the company's iPhone commercials, prompting the talk show host to apologize for jokingly portraying the touchscreen device as difficult to use.

The host of the syndicated program "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" said on her program that representatives from Apple contacted her regarding a parody commercial she had aired on her program.

"I thought it was funny, a bunch of people thought it was funny," she said to her audience. "You know who didn't think it was funny? Yeah, the people at Apple didn't think it was so funny."

In the video, which mimics the style of Apple's instantly recognizable iPhone TV commercials, DeGeneres stumbles through a number of features on the handset, coming up only with failure. In an attempt to text, she pulls up the maps application. The parody shows the comedian trying to text again and mistakenly sending a message, before asking, "Can you help me with this?"

The next day on her show, DeGeneres showed the commercial again, and followed it up by praising a number of Apple products, including the iPhone, iPod and iPad. She then gave a tongue-in-cheek apology to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and "Mr. Macintosh."

"They thought I made it look like it's hard to use, and I just want to say that I'm sorry if I made it like the iPhone is hard to use. It's not hard to use. I have an iPhone... I just learned how to text on an iPhone, it's the only phone that I can text on, and I love it."

"I love my iPad, I love my iPod," she said to applause from the audience. "I love IHOP, if you have anything to do with that."



Engadget editor-in-chief Joshua Topolsky, who originally posted the video, gave a succinct reaction: "After watching this video, we've come to one conclusion: Apple needs to learn how to take a joke."