

Apple responds to "I'm a PC" - andygeers
http://movies.apple.com/movies/us/apple/getamac/apple_getamac_beancounter_20081019_480x272.mov

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visitor4rmindia
When did advertisments become about putting your competitor down? Heck even
the Coke v/s Pepsi wars didn't stoop this low.

If Apple can't market it's products on their own features and has to rely on
this kind of negative adverts I'd say it's really hitting a low-point. The ad
kind of pisses me off actually.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
You know, I'm starting to agree with you.

I've had Vista since it came out and am completely happy with it. I thought
the Apple commercials were cute, but off-base. They were funny, and they
emphasized Mac good points, so I liked them.

But now it just seems mean. Hell, computer commercials are getting like
political commercials, and we've all had enough of that lately.

~~~
rbanffy
I am sure not a full-time Mac evangelist (I use Linux myself), but have you
tried to use a Mac for a month or so?

I was perfectly happy with Windows (XP then) when I decided to check the
greener grass on the other side of the fence (Red Hat, first, then Debian,
then Ubuntu) and I never thought about going back. Linux is so much more
refined under the hood that more than compensates for the lack of software in
several niches. I recommended my then girlfriend (now wife) to buy a Mac when
she wanted to upgrade her PC and she loves it. I wouldn't recommend Linux for
her because the added elegance under the hood would not compensate the
limitations in dealing with complex (read quirky) Office documents.

Now, we both cringe our teeth because our employers issued Windows running
Dell laptops for us. Argh.

~~~
Jem
...and I had to use a Mac at work for 12 months and hated every minute of it.

For every person with a convert story to the Mac, there's another person who
is quite happy to stick with Windows. I'm not sure why so many people consider
the prospect so crazy.

~~~
unalone
With respect to your story, I'm fairly certain there are more convert stories
among people who have used the Mac than there are stories of people disliking
them.

~~~
wizlb
Really? You're certain? How certain are you?

Both me and my wife have had the displeasure of using Macs in the past. I even
owned one for about 6 months, a mac mini. I replaced it with Vista and Vista's
Media Center pretty much owns Front Row (pfft, don't even get me started). The
dock sucks compared to the task bar, you can't even see what's running on the
dock. Oh and it's slow.

~~~
unalone
I've never used a Mac Mini, so I don't know how slow it is, though I'd guess
that it's not in the same league as Apple's higher-end products.

Out of curiosity, what makes Front Row worse than the Media Center? I rarely
use Front Row, but I'd like to know what Vista Media Center does better.

The dock absolutely is better than the task bar. The TB is cluttered - why do
I need a box for every open window when I can just see the windows (hence
Expose)? The Dock shows you running applications (though not background
processes, though that's okay since neither does the task bar), it shows you
minimized windows, and it shows you your set launch applications. I've argued
before and I still believe that the presence of the dock is what makes OS X
the superior system. It focuses on efficiency. The fact that it houses the
Trash and the new Stacks system makes it even better: it removes a hell of a
lot of clutter.

I've never had a speed problem with my computer, though to be fair I use a MBP
with 2 gigs of ram. That said, I can run multiple intensive processes at once
and still do casual tasks like browsing without a speed hit.

And despite what you've said, I'm still fairly certain. Meaning no disrespect
to you, I've had such a wonderful experience with my computer that I can't
possibly imagine people liking Windows more once they get into OS X. Again:
your existence shows that I'm not entirely correct, but I'd still believe that
of the people who've used both OSes noncasually, more people like the Mac over
the PC.

~~~
wizlb
I'm not going to get in a back-and-forth with you about what I hate about
Macs.

The point is that there are a LOT of people out there that absolutely can't
stand Macs. As a matter of fact, besides me and my wife EVERY single person in
my office hates them (most of us are programmers and YES, we've actually used
them before).

~~~
unalone
Back-and-forth? I asked you a few questions about what you said, and made a
few statements of my own. You act like this is a hostile conversation.

I don't understand the sort of mindset that doesn't like the Mac, but I
acknowledge that it exists. I would still guess that that mindset is in the
minority, however: as a casual OS it is vastly better than Windows. Your
office experience is not indicative of the majority of computer users.

~~~
wizlb
Oh and I find it amazing that you think you know what the majority of people
are thinking.

I'm going off of actual experience talking to actual people that don't live in
a bubble. What are you going off of? Your imagination?

~~~
unalone
Most of the products I use are built by people who use the Mac. That's why I
looked into getting a Mac in the first place.

37signals. The Big Noob. The Tumblr team. Paul Graham once wrote an article on
using the Mac. The Omni Group and Panic and Delicious Monster. Coudal. Rososo
and Vimeo and NowDoThis. Facebook. Everywhere I looked, people told me that
the Mac was wonderful and they were _fanatic_ about it. So I gave it a try and
found that I was equally fanatic.

I'm going off of every designer whose opinion I like and respect. You're going
off of people who work in a single environment. If we wanted to be logical,
we'd work off of user statistics, where Apple's rated as one of the most
satisfactory companies in the nation. They blow competition away. Hence my
confidence in my statement. Now, can we drop it, or are you going to continue
to make arguments in a debate that's convincing nobody on either side?

~~~
wizlb
"I'm going off of every designer whose opinion I like and respect."

For the record, I'm not JUST going off of my peers at work, I happen to belong
to a number of user groups and I also happen to visit many, many real working
people in corporate workplaces around the world and I'm quite confident that
it wouldn't be that hard to come up with a list of awesome web 2.0 developers
that absolutely adore ASP.Net...

Anyway, sure, I can drop it as soon as you can drop it :)

~~~
unalone
Sure. Let's.

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thomasmallen
This is pretty ironic considering how Mac ads far outnumber Windows ads. Maybe
next time around Apple can pull a few of the spots and get Java up to date
sooner than a year after an OS release.

~~~
unalone
But do the Apple ads cost as much as this Microsoft campaign? (Disclaimer: I
don't know if they do or not. I'm curious myself about this.) Because with
Microsoft the cost of the ads kept popping up, especially in regards with
Seinfeld. I'm guessing their current campaign is pretty vastly expensive, and
I don't know if Apple's campaign is or not.

~~~
thomasmallen
It's just that, regardless of cost-effectiveness, an advertisement that
criticizes another company for spending money on advertising is pretty
hypocritical.

~~~
teej
To be honest, Leopard is a lot better than Vista.

~~~
wizlb
To be honest...any version of Windows is better than Leopard. Especially if
you value choice and flexibility.

~~~
unalone
Leopard's plenty flexible. By choice, do you mean being forced to pay extra
money just to get an operating system that hasn't had features removed?
Because I know Leopard only costs $80, but it's full-featured and that's what
I care about.

Or do you mean the choice to tinker with every little aspect of your computer?
Because the system's entirely moddable. I mean, I would never voluntarily hack
my computer, because I cherish it the way it is, but I remember there being a
lot of buzz about the Gaia Suite, which is a complete redesign of the OS.

Do you mean the lack of programs available? Because you can get MS Office if
you _really_ don't like iWork (though iWork is wonderful, in this user's
opinion), and you can get replacements for every single iLife program. It's
just that most people don't, because iPhoto and iTunes and Mail and GarageBand
are really all excellent programs. (The one program on my entire system that I
dislike is iDVD, and I feel like one bad program is a small concession to
make.)

If by "flexibility" you mean a non-unified system, then you might have a
point, but I like knowing that the same keyboard shortcuts work for every
single application I have. I like knowing the menus work the same. Hell, I
like having a system-wide spellcheck. You've still got choice - I'm sure you
_could_ make a new spellchecker - but really, what's the point if it works?

If you're going to diss an operating system in a community of people who
really are enthusiastic about the computers that they use, at least make a
good point, like the guy who mentioned Apple's Java fark-up. You can't come in
blindly making insults and expect anything good to come of it. So how about
you come up with some good criticisms, and in return I will try to be _fairly_
critical of your operating system in return.

~~~
wizlb
Really? Kind of like the point that I was responding to? The one that made all
those good points about how great Leper'd is?

Oh, but since you mentioned it...no I didn't mean any of the things you
mentioned. I value the flexibility of being able to do what I want to do, the
way I want to do it.

For instance, Apple is always trying to lock you into: their hardware, their
iTunes store, their AppStore, their ONE way of doing things (see the pattern
here?)

I can buy a Windows laptop that becomes a tablet. I can buy a Gyration (wii
style) remote for my Media Center. I can get a CableCARD tuner. I can buy any
graphics card under the Sun. Can you do that with Apple? No, instead Apple
locks you into two choices: "somewhat expensive" and "really expensive".

Besides hardware, I also have flexibility in how I can build programs. You got
xCode and Objective-C and that's all Apple will really help you with. Sure,
they let you build programs in other languages like Python but since it's not
part of "the ONE true way", they won't really help you much.

Microsoft OTOH supports C, C++, C#, F#, VB.Net and VB classic and they'll
actually help you out with any of those (yes, even VB classic if you ask them
nicely). Besides all of the officially supported languages, you still have
every single language that's popular on *nix right now (Python, Perl, Ruby,
etc.). Oh and the environment libraries are simply the best (.Net, WPF,
DirectX, etc.) but if they aren't good enough for you there's a billion dollar
market for third-party components that you can use. On the Mac? Not so much.

Then we come to user experience. I'm a power user and I could go on for days
about how bad I think the Mac user interface is. I simply don't want to get
into that with you, it's a very, very long discussion.

Suffice it to say that Apple is very opinionated about the way they think YOU
should work and if you can't see that, you're blind. I'll take Windows over
OSuX any day thx.

~~~
thomasmallen
From my point of view, Vista could be very secure and usable, but at the end
of the day I need to be on a Unix box, and Cygwin doesn't quite cut it.

This isn't in response to any particular comment, but it's based on a personal
preference so I'm burying it here.

~~~
ivank
I don't mind running Linux in a virtual machine or PuTTYing into another host.
If you have gigabit access to it, does it really matter if you must use two
OSes to get the job done?

~~~
thomasmallen
Good point. I'm actually considering the opposite: Linux running XP or Vista
virtualized (mostly for browser testing, but also for Photoshop). Right now, I
run Leopard with XP virtualized.

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mixmax
Now if apple would only realise that quicktime on the net has lost out to
flash I would be able to wacth this. Quicktime reminds me of realplayer: buggy
on PC's, runs lots of processes in the background I didn't ask for and
requires me to install itunes which I don't want.

~~~
sjh
"Slimming down the bloated iTunes 8 installer":
<http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=554>

~~~
mixmax
Thanks for the link, but my point was more that Apple should really watch
their step here. They're creating a crappy product that pushes stuff you
didn't ask for to potential buyers. And it inflicts heavy damage on their
otherwise good reputation.

~~~
unalone
Is it possible that Apple's blind to the Quicktime problem because it's
working on the Mac so well? I remember loathing Quicktime on the PC, but since
I've moved over to OS X it's moved very quickly at all times. It's possible
that its reliability on OS X makes Apple less quick to move and fix things,
which is a tad disappointing.

------
Readmore
I think it's actually pretty hilarious. Ever since the Microsoft "I'm a PC"
ads came out I've wondered what it meant for the Apple ads, I guess now we
know. Apple has them coming and going, there really isn't much they can do.

Gizmodo had a similar reaction to many of you, that it's a pissing match and
normal people don't care, but actually I think it's the opposite. People LOVE
the Mac ads, even people who don't use a Mac think they are funny. This is
another instance of the Techie echo-camber getting in the way, so what if some
hardcore techies don't like them because Linux is superior, btw it's not, the
market at large loves the ads and it's getting them to take a better look at
Apple computers, end of story.

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arien
MS and apple... It's kind of cute, like watching kids fight :)

~~~
sofal
I'd say the same thing about the presidential debates. The problem is that
these cute fights represent a power struggle of unthinkable magnitude and
influence.

------
sfphotoarts
These ads lack class, which is what Apple has always tried to stand for, in
design of their products and their company image - anyone remember the Think
Different campaign?

I'd rather they work on reducing the difference in price between the pc world
and the mac in laptops. It used to be a couple hundred dollars difference,
which I'm ok with because that, to me, is the price of OSX, but its getting
increasingly harder to justify the expanding price difference.

If/when the OSX86 project gets to the point where their ISO is a no-brainer
install of OSX on cheap dell/acer (etc.) laptops then Apple will have to
reconsider its pricing.

The irony here (like rain on your wedding day!) is that it's actually Apple
with that big pile of cash spending it on advertising, while MSFT goes back to
the drawing board to come up with an O/S that more people like...

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jagjit
These ads are getting more and more lame. As a fulltime programmer and xp and
vista user - I never felt the need to use macs but for their unix base and
cool design. Considered buying one recently but settled for a vista pc with
much better configuration at half the price. It has been running great for me
with not a single issue in past 6 months. For any need of unix system, I run
ubuntu or freebsd vmware appliances on my vista.

If apple cannot convince a frugal programmer like me who would love to own a
mac - I do not know how even these ads can help them much in the general pc
market. I think they will remain limited only to folks who really appreciate
their commitment to design and would pay so much extra just for that.

~~~
jagjit
And a crazy apple fanboy wants to vote my opinion down - why dont people like
me just get it already.

I guess these ads have an audience after all. But then it is a waste of the
apple advertising dollar to preach to the choir.

~~~
olefoo
One very cynical view is that Apple is mostly in the business of selling
'Taste'. As such, confirming to customers who purchase many, many Apple
products over the years that they are somehow better than those who lack their
refined sensibilities is not wasted money.

------
mds
Reminds me of the escalating bumper sticker wars between the Jesus fish
stickers and the Darwin fish (with legs) stickers... recently I've started
seeing "Jesus fish eating a Darwin fish" stickers. I'm still waiting for
"Darwin fish eating a Jesus fish eating a Darwin fish".

I can't wait to see Microsoft's meta-meta-response.

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tok9
Apple couldnt go any lower these days with thier ads.

The desperation is starting to seep through.

------
tel
As dirty as it is, Microsoft was asking for this.

It's not polite to tease, but when the head of the pack shows they're
susceptible to it, it's going to happen.

------
aspirant
"Advertising is the price you pay for being unoriginal."

------
jyothi
Hilarious!

Ad reflects what differentiates Apple from MS. Original, highly creative and
perfect.

~~~
thorax
This confuses me-- what does Apple spend on advertising? It's surely enormous.

~~~
eggnet
Apple invests in advertising. There is a difference.

~~~
eggnet
Apparently I should have spelled out the difference. Apple sees more than a
dollar back from every dollar it invests into advertising. Microsoft will have
a very tough time tracing back more than $200 million in revenue to this ad
campaign.

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jkent
I wonder what proportion of Vista users think it needs fixing?

I don't understand the new Microsoft PC adverts either. What does having
glasses have to do with anything?

~~~
cstejerean
I don't think Apple is trying to target users of Vista, just people that are
considering moving off XP.

~~~
unalone
Why can't it be they're targeting both?

~~~
cstejerean
Anyone that has already decided to use Vista is unlikely to change their mind
because of the Mac ads. IMHO someone considering an upgrade to Vista is much
more likely to be influenced.

------
ace
low&lame

~~~
raganwald
I'm reminded of what Charlton Heston said to Bill Maher. Charlton had taken
out full page personal attack ads blasting Barbara Streisand for her anti-gun
activism, and Bill Maher asked him if this was really appropriate.

Charlton considered for a moment, and then responded. _I was unkind_ , he
admitted, _Not unfair, but unkind._

Now as to lame, is it there some factual error? Is Microsoft actually spending
more on fixing Vista than advertising it? My feeling is that if the ad is
correctly representing Microsoft's strategy, there is nothing lame about
depicting it. The un-lame thing about the ad is that it never says Microsoft
is wrong, it shows you the facts through a skit and lets __you __decide what
to do.

I wonder if people would react differently if these ads were SNL skits. I have
a feeling that some people are so emotional about one company or the other--
which is odd, these are companies, after all, not religious edifices--that
they simply cannot sit back and enjoy a good laugh.

~~~
whatusername
If you look at Win7 as "Fixing Vista" --> which in some/lots of ways it is -
then I'd guess that MS are spending more on "fixing" than on advertising..
Certainly nothing near that ratio though..

The reasonably insightful comment on reddit was that this isn't just a pissing
contest between MS and Apple - it's a pissing contest between Crispin Porter
and TBWA (the ad agencies)...

~~~
raganwald
_The reasonably insightful comment on reddit was that this isn't just a
pissing contest between MS and Apple - it's a pissing contest between Crispin
Porter and TBWA (the ad agencies)..._

I think one has the more appealing product to market, the other has the bigger
budget and the defensive position. It's a fairly textbook marketing battle
between the entrenched number one and the upstart niche player.

~~~
unalone
And Crispin is a company that's known for taking pretty daring risks. There
was an article that said it was ironic that they're running Microsoft's
campaign, because they're a very "Apple-like" company.

------
socratees
I liked the ad anyways!!!

------
LPTS
Brilliant. I love the look on Macs face when he swoops the ad money towards
fixing vista and PC swoops it toward advertising.

This is like boxing. Mac ads have had pc's reputation on the ropes in the
collective unconscious. All the sudden, after getting beat on barely throwing
a punch, PC comes out swinging. Even lands a blow on macs chin, shakes him up
a bit. But before PC can land another punch, this uppercut takes out 3 of his
teeth and drives the cartilage in his nose into his brain.

Now, everyone who sees both ads will think "Why is microsoft spending $$$ on
this without fixing vista?" This ad, and it's partner on censoring vista, just
short circuited Microsofts 300 million dollar campaign. This is microsoft
being completely outclassed by people who just get it.

~~~
cbrinker
"Mac ads have had pc's reputation on the ropes in the collective unconscious."

Do you mean Microsoft? If so, it sure as hell hasn't scratched the business
world. It's only knicked the consumer world a couple percentage points. I'd
reconsider your position.

Further, this is kind of old and becoming a nonissue in today's world. With
the migration towards non-platform-specific consumer usage of systems (ie.
internet) I don't see as heavy of a need for some bloated consumer operating
system.

I'm no huge Windows fan. I've used countless operating systems; C64, Cisco
IOS, HP-UX, AS/400, Solaris, Mac OS, Windows 3.x-Vista, Server NT-Server 2k8,
Linux derivatives galore, BSD. While developing/working on them and I can say
I'm not really impressed with what Apple offers.

Apple is just a gimmick in the world of computing systems. You can claim that
consumers aren't nerds that love command lines, but what do you think drives
the media infrastructure that panders to all the fun-filled music and video
that Apple users love to waste time on? It sure as hell isn't Mac OS.

Computers primarily run the world's business. Steve Jobs' goal is not to get
Apple tangled up with "boring" business stuff. Hell, look at the stupid
hipster getup the "Mac Guy" wears in the comercials. Jobs put the noose around
Apple's neck when he set the goal of being consumer-orientated instead of
business-orientated if his plan is digital world domination.

~~~
ratsbane
There's a lot more to it than just "Apple is just a gimmick..." OS X is unix
and unix is the real rising star here. Apple just had the good sense to catch
a ride on the bandwagon of that rising star and the competence to do a very
good job of it. Apple's market share is still small but it's been growing
steadily for years. Today's rate-of-change is tomorrow's level.

~~~
ratsbane
"bandwagon of that rising star..."

Good grief.

------
TweedHeads
Ads are really funny, unless you are on the microsoft side.

~~~
astine
if you are on either 'side,' then you either own stock in one of the
companies, or their is something wrong with you.

But that's just my opinion.

~~~
unalone
I'd call myself on Apple's side, mainly because where they go there's an
emphasis on polishing things till they shine and really caring about users.
I've had a marvelous experience not only with Apple products but with Apple
designers. Not so much on the other side.

