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Not that the ads were doing much. 91% in the premium category, (which is all of their laptops) is pretty darn good. :)

They were plain lying, so they had to correct it before getting busted by Apple. MS is gaining absolutely nothing from those stupid ads, which are not only irrelevant but also flat out wrong in terms of pricing...the "edits" are a clear reaction from MS legal to avoid trouble in the near future.
 
If by first ever annual loss you mean made double Apple's profits in the last financial quarter then you are correct.

You are right. The previous poster must not have understood the reported declines were not losses but differences in revenue/income from the previous period.

Apple versus Microsoft
$2.3B operating income versus $3.99B (MSFT +73%)
$1.23B/$1.84B net income versus $3.05B (MSFT +150%/+65%)

I think Apple is only beating Microsoft in growth. Microsoft's business is very healthy with great margins.
 
Apple's ads certainly exaggerate and play up the stereotypes, but they don't lie.

And neither do Microsoft's. You can't buy a 17in Mac notebook for $1,500 dollars. (as stated in one of their ads). Do they manipulate the prices they are hunting for so they can't find a Mac for whatever price point? Of course it's marketing. :)

Apple calls out Windows about viruses and 'not working'. (the second is a lie). Microsoft calls out Apple for having a lack of choices for the budget-minded consumers and it has worked because of the current economic situation.
 
One incident out of...


Point is, Apple is gaining market share for a reason. People are generally unhappy with their windows products, and happy with their mac products.

One incident out of? What do you mean? I've had 5 Mac's, except for the Mac Mini all have had hardware failure pretty early on. I've had 8 Windows laptops and 1 had to have the keyboard replaced after 4 years, but thats it.
 
Interesting game of cat and mouse here. Apple are clearly in the right to ask for the ads to be changed but look like whiners by doing so.

Fascinating stuff.
 
This is the problem with these kind of adverts. It's not Microsoft's fault it's just how quickly prices change. It could never have been a long running advert unless you redub the actors.

Ho hum Microsoft, just make a good advert! That's all you need to do.
 
Dont people have anything better to do than blow something so minuscule out of proportion like this? Its really pathetic.
 
So here is a true tale from my summer vacation...
..snip..!
Well after fixing their problem did you tell them to create a regular user account and run as that user instead of as admin (or create a admin account and remove admin privledges)? If not, they can easily get infected again.
 
Indeed. The reason the Apple ads are effective is because people can relate to them because they've actually experienced these problems and they know they're real.

Then Apple's success is a product of consumers not using their PCs responsibly/suitably, and then choosing to shell out more money for a computer that they're less likely to mess up.

So who's the real bad guy here?

The consumer.

All the bashing that Microsoft gets is honestly a bit much. They have to deal with billions of users, millions of viruses, thousands of drivers, peripherals, compatibilities, languages & etc. I think they do a pretty damn good job of keeping things in check. Even if sometimes antivirus or software companies can't keep up with some new virus outbreak, the only reason the virus is successful and spreads in the first place is because people don't really know how to use the Internet responsibly and safely. Beyond those few instances, I honestly think that Microsoft and its partners do a very good job of keeping users safe with consistent security updates that are installed behind the scenes. If they didn't do a thing, then nobody's computer would be working properly.

People need to stop blaming Microsoft for the problems that they have with their PCs. It's like an old woman blaming the entire police force because there was no police officer nearby as she walked down an alleyway and had her purse stolen.

There's a point where corporate responsibility ends and personal responsibility begins. People just don't seem to understand where and when that occurs.

Sent from my Windows PC, which is virus-free!
Or from my MacBook Pro, which is, also!
Or from my iPhone which cost me a boatload of money but is already woefully obsolete. :(
 
Apple have been making ludicrously inaccurate claims about Windows and PCs in their ads for ages, and when Microsoft finally fights back, Apple stoops to behaving like a bunch of crybabies with no skin, like some litigous religious cult.

Show objectively where those "ludicrously innacurate claims" are; Apple Legal is not as stupid as Kevin Turner. EVERY statement made in the Mac x PC ads is presented in a way that cannot be legally invalidated. So please stop spreading FUD, it's not necessary here.
 
Why call them out for it? It was all true.

I've built and maintained PC's for over 10 years now. Never had a virus. Never had one 'not work.'

Did they break and need to be fixed? Yep, but I was able to fix them myself. Have my Macs broke? Yep and I had to pay $300 for Applecare so I could send it away to be fixed.

Neither is infallible. Neither is worth your devotion. Neither of them love you back. It's one thing to be a fanboy but another to hold them as god-like.
 
What exactly are you doing to that poor system? I've been running Leopard since the day it came out on a variety of different Macs (and even a hackintosh tower) and haven't experienced the issues you speak of at all. What programs do you use? On OS X, crashes are typically caused by badly-written applications and input managers, NOT the OS.
Nothing special... this is a month-old MBP with whatever factory installed stuff that came with it, plus the following: Adobe CS3, Cubase 5, Reason, Transmission, Logitech Control Center, Onyx, DivX, iWork, Messenger, plus driver/control panel for my TC Electronic firewire audio device.

Let's see... for starters I have a few Safari crashes every day, but that's standard for most users. I have no funky 3rd party extensions installed, just the Flash plugin like everyone else.

Then there's an issue with runaway CPU usage if I try to auto-mount the SMB drive where I have all my files. It shoots up to 100% and stays there for about 15 minutes. I have to mount the NAS drives manually. This isn't some unique problem, there are many discussion threads about it... problem is, some of them are a couple of years old, so I'm not holding my breath for a fix.

Another runaway CPU issue happens when you're downloading torrent files with Transmission or uTorrent... Quick Look Server gets into this frenzied loop where it's trying to make sense of constantly changing files. Again, a well known (and old) issue.

Yet another issue is that Finder won't let me finish renaming files. I'll start typing and then it exits renaming mode spontaneously. I have to enter file names in the Get Info box. Again, known issue.

Lots of other pesky little Finder issues, like randomly claiming during file copy/move operations that files are in use when they're clearly not, or quitting big copy/move operations halfway and leaving me with a huge mess trying to figure out which files went where.

These are just a few examples off the top of my head, but the sum total of all these little annoying things gives me a general vibe that reminds me of old Windows versions like 98 and ME. I'm not saying Vista and Win7 are perfect, far from it, but problems are handled more elegantly there, not in that crude Leopard/Win 98 way. I hope Snow Leopard is a little more, er, 2009-ish.
 
They were plain lying, so they had to correct it before getting busted by Apple. MS is gaining absolutely nothing from those stupid ads, which are not only irrelevant but also flat out wrong in terms of pricing...the "edits" are a clear reaction from MS legal to avoid trouble in the near future.
they weren't lying at the time the ads originally ran. apple introduced the new macbooks with magically lower prices AFTER those ads originally ran.

everybody is whining about these ads, but we do now have lower mac prices. i say keep it up, microsoft! i want me one of those aluminum macbook pros, and the lower the price the better.
 
Nothing special... this is a month-old MBP with whatever factory installed stuff that came with it, plus the following: Adobe CS3, Cubase 5, Reason, Transmission, Logitech Control Center, Onyx, DivX, iWork, Messenger, plus driver/control panel for my TC Electronic firewire audio device.

Let's see... for starters I have a few Safari crashes every day, but that's standard for most users. I have no funky 3rd party extensions installed, just the Flash plugin like everyone else.

Then there's an issue with runaway CPU usage if I try to auto-mount the SMB drive where I have all my files. It shoots up to 100% and stays there for about 15 minutes. I have to mount the NAS drives manually. This isn't some unique problem, there are many discussion threads about it... problem is, some of them are a couple of years old, so I'm not holding my breath for a fix.

Another runaway CPU issue happens when you're downloading torrent files with Transmission or uTorrent... Quick Look Server gets into this frenzied loop where it's trying to make sense of constantly changing files. Again, a well known (and old) issue.

Yet another issue is that Finder won't let me finish renaming files. I'll start typing and then it exits renaming mode spontaneously. I have to enter file names in the Get Info box. Again, known issue.

Lots of other pesky little Finder issues, like randomly claiming during file copy/move operations that files are in use when they're clearly not, or quitting big copy/move operations halfway and leaving me with a huge mess trying to figure out which files went where.

These are just a few examples off the top of my head, but the sum total of all these little annoying things gives me a general vibe that reminds me of old Windows versions like 98 and ME. I'm not saying Vista and Win7 are perfect, far from it, but problems are handled more elegantly there, not in that crude Leopard/Win 98 way. I hope Snow Leopard is a little more, er, 2009-ish.

Crazy, my Leopard systems at work and at home haven't ever done anything you have said. As a matter of fact, I keep Safari running all week crash free. And the fact that you use Leopard despite all the problems and calling it Windows 98-ish makes you an unintelligent user. If it doesn't work, switch.
 
Crazy, my Leopard systems at work and at home haven't ever done anything you have said. As a matter of fact, I keep Safari running all week crash free. And the fact that you use Leopard despite all the problems and calling it Windows 98-ish makes you an unintelligent user. If it doesn't work, switch.

And if he uses Mac exclusive apps pray tell what he's supposed to switch to? Tiger?
 
No, it's not. I've worked with PCs for 18 years and Macs for about 12, and while viruses and crashes were quite prevalent in PCs some ten years ago, it has little to do with a modern PC experience.

I'm typing this in IE8 on a MacBook Pro, since out of the two systems I have on this machine, Win7 is the more stable one where I don't have to look at perpetually spinning beachballs and send error reports to Apple where I usually end with asking if this system is called Leopard 98 or Leopard ME.
That is amazing because my recollection is that just last week, my boss asked me to look at his Dell D600 which had a "little" problem with spyware. It was completely unusable. It took about 2 days of running anti-spyware while booted off a CD and manually removing some of it that the anti-spyware missed for me to get the thing back to a usable state. I have a ton of experience doing spyware removal and even I found the whole thing difficult.

I have yet to understand what all the hoopla over Win7 is. I tried it and it's an improved Vista. But it's still Vista. Most of the annoying usability issues I saw in Vista are still there. Stuff is buried under ridiculous amounts of submenus.
 
Few people would have problems with unpatched machines in that time

So the problem is with unpatched machines running no firewall (even XP SP2 enables the firewall by default).

Most fresh OS installs with no OS patches or firewall protection connected directly to the internet will be in for a tough time of things.

Given that even the basic software firewall of SP2 will block any incoming attacks long enough for patches to be installed I think you need to go dig up some other misleading articles.

Also note that almost nobody connects their machines "directly to the internet".

Almost all modems/routers include SPI firewalls and use NAT to allow multiple computers to share one IP address.

These modems/routers will ignore "ping" requests (so the bad guys can't easily see that you're there), and block unsolicited incoming traffic.

While I wouldn't recommend not patching, the idea that you have a few minutes mean time to infection is not typical.

Windows Server systems come up after installation with full firewall blocks on, except for allowing traffic to windows update. Only after updating will the network traffic be allowed (or if you say "don't patch, enable now").
 
So the problem is with unpatched machines running no firewall (even XP SP2 enables the firewall by default). Most fresh OS installs with no OS patches or firewall protection connected directly to the internet will be in for a tough time of things. Given that even the basic software firewall of SP2 will block any incoming attacks long enough for patches to be installed I think you need to go dig up some other misleading articles.

Did you even READ those articles? One of them was less than a week old and mentioned that he got hit while he was trying to download the patches! Misleading my foot! Like I said, there were pages and pages of links in Google to articles like the ones I posted.



If by first ever annual loss you mean made double Apple's profits in the last financial quarter then you are correct.

Let's see... A company that is something like 8 times the size of Apple ONLY GOT DOUBLE the profits? Apple's profits went up while Microsoft's profits went down? Are you sure you want to enter that argument?
 
Crazy, my Leopard systems at work and at home haven't ever done anything you have said. As a matter of fact, I keep Safari running all week crash free. And the fact that you use Leopard despite all the problems and calling it Windows 98-ish makes you an unintelligent user. If it doesn't work, switch.
Had you been an intelligent reader, you'd know that I already did "switch". I already said that BootCamp w/ Win7 is my go-to system, and that I'm only on a Mac because Windows sucks for audio. Microsoft can't be arsed to clear a path through the system for glitch-free, low-latency playback of the kind that CoreAudio offers. OSX is better for that specific task, and I happen to make roughly 50% of my living working with music and audio. For everything else I stick to Windows.
 
And if he uses Mac exclusive apps pray tell what he's supposed to switch to? Tiger?

Find a different job I guess. I do a lot of programming, and push my systems, yet they tick like clocks. If he can't get his to work, he needs to reevaluate. Simple as that.
 
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