Apple has apparently removed videos of its series of three divisive "Genius" ads from both its website and its YouTube channel. The move, first noticed by MacRumors, suggests that Apple wasn't happy with the overall reaction to the ads, which was largely critical of the fact that the ads appeared to paint Mac users as "clueless."

The series of "Genius" ads, which premiered during the opening ceremonies of the 2012 Summer Olympics, featured Mac users caught in ostensibly "emergency" situations, like putting together a Keynote presentation before a plane lands. The cheerful Apple Genius is there to help customers in need, or so the message goes.

But critics said that Apple's attempt to inject humor into the ads actually ended up making its customers look stupid. "The last thing it wants is to win new customers at the cost of looking ridiculous to its enthusiastic supporters," noted Ken Segall, the former TBWA\Chiat\Day creative director who spent years working with Steve Jobs to market the company's products.

"[T]he implementation is cheesy—too cheesy, even for an Apple ad—and borderline smarmy in all cases," opined Ars Senior Apple Editor Jacqui Cheng in a staff blog post. "The ads make Apple seem a little too smug for comfort." (I personally thought the ads were chuckle-worthy.)

Apple stopped running them as the Olympics wound down, so it was clear that the campaign may not have been expected to last anyway. But it's still strange that Apple removed all traces of them so soon. Apple kept its decidedly far more popular "Get a Mac" ads on its website for a much longer time after retiring the campaign. Apple still has an iPhone 4 ad from November 2010 posted to its YouTube channel.

It's possible that Apple decided it was embarrassed by the ads and didn't want a reminder of its misstep. The company did not respond to our request for comment by publication time, so we'll likely never know for sure what the reason was for the ads' removal.