Apple's 'Get a Mac' Print Ad Campaign

[Doctor Q]

Over-analyzing ad wording...

the world's most advanced operating system that doesn't suffer from all the viruses that plague PCs

Logicians and nitpicking grammarians (like me, for example ) may notice that this claim could be interpreted as any of these:

"Macs suffer no viruses." (a very strong claim)

"Macs suffer no PC viruses." (but might have their own)

"It is not the case that Macs suffer from every single PC virus." (a very weak claim)

"Of all the operating systems, this is the one that suffers least from viruses." (i.e., the virus problem might be awful under Mac OS X, just not as bad as for Windows)
​

To avoid that last interpreation, they could have changed "that" to "which" and added a comma, so it would be

the world's most advanced operating system, which doesn't suffer from all the viruses that plague PCs​

That change would also avoid the interpretation that Windows is more advanced and Mac OS X is merely the most advanced O.S. within the class of virus-free operating systems.

 

[Doctor Q]

After looking at the Flikr photos, I see that we misquoted them. So some of my nitpicks in the previous post don't apply.

It turns out that there is a comma in the sentence, although it still uses that instead of which. The actual sentence is

Mac OS X, the world's most advanced operating system, that doesn't suffer from all the viruses that plague PCs.

But the use of the word "all" still makes the claim ambiguous!

 

[ibook30]

I think it is clever that they are selling the OS not the hardware... it's an awesome Operating System- oh and by the way it comes in these pretty pretty packages. Veery clever.

 

[~Shard~]

I think it is clever that they are selling the OS not the hardware... it's an awesome Operating System- oh and by the way it comes in these pretty pretty packages. Veery clever.

Makes sense though. For all intents and purposes, the hardware is just the same as a PC now, with the transition to Intel and all. So, focus on the key differentiator, and why it is superior to the PC alternative. Smart marketing.

 

[schatten]

Old News?

It looks like this ad should have been release a month or two ago. As already mentioned, the new iMacs arent mentioned (specifically the 23") nor the new Mac Minis or the Mac Pro.
It seems to me that maybe these ads were written/printed a while ago & are just now making it to distro.

Still, I like the ad. it's very colorful & informative. Best of all, in keeping with Apple's "style," the overall design of the ad layout takes a minimalist approach. There's no "reaction shots" of fake users (grinning models). There's no colorful borders or sweeping graphic clutter.
It's just products on a white background with clear, easy to read text.
So many ads these days are terribly burdended with pointless filler pics, brightly colored backgrounds jammed with logos, textures, fades, and all that crap.
I like this ad. Itproves that Less is More.

 

[Multimedia]

I Noticed The iMac Description Is Not Of The New Core 2 Duo Models

I Noticed The iMac Description Is Not Of The New Core 2 Duo Models. That's spending an aweful lot of advertising dollars to distribute mis-information about your own current and new line of iMacs.

Sorry for the redundancy. I didn't read the string before posting my first take on the subject.

 

[ryanx27]

How about in every edition of Macworld?

That's preaching to the choir, not to the public...

 

[dernhelm]

Makes sense though. For all intents and purposes, the hardware is just the same as a PC now, with the transition to Intel and all. So, focus on the key differentiator, and why it is superior to the PC alternative. Smart marketing.

Not sure I completely agree with you here. I know a lot of PC-philes looking at the mac because the hardware is so much nicer.

You may begin to see more macs running something other than OS/X running around out there than you ever thought possible.