Microsoft Releases Second 'Laptop Hunters' Commercial

[AidenShaw]

I saw a "broken image" icon, but if I copy/paste (not using an Iphone) the URL I can see the animated GIF.

After loading it, though, I see the gif. I suspect that the web server is checking the REFERER= attribute to block deep links. (And yes, it's "REFERER" - the keyword is misspelled.)

....but in my honest opinion until the reign of Steve Jobs comes to an end the current line up will not change. As we all know Steve is like no other CEO and his powers over the company all the way down to what is put on the store shelf's is incredibly scary.

I believe that the reign ended at the beginning of the year. We're now in the post-Jobs era.

 

[KnightWRX]

The argument against minitowers was that Apple prefers a desktop to be clean, rather than a tangled mess of cables. And voilá: The iMac.

They sold the iMac besides cheap, upgradeable towers for quite a long time (up until 2004 actually, with the G5 SP at 1799$). It survives today in the form of the high-end only Mac Pro. Apple aren't against tower computers. However, they seem to have decided that the consumer desktop is best served by the iMac than what the affordable PowerMacs were. Basically, they decided to leave behind the market and go for all-in-ones, easy to setup, feature complete computers.

As for clean/cables, etc.. listen to the first iMac presentation :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BHPtoTctDY

Note that aesthetics are always mentionned last, cables are mentionned only later during the presentation. The first goal of the iMac was simplicity. Consumer buys iMac, takes it out of the box, plugs it into the wall and it works. No cables to run through your desk, no weird connectors that you can't be sure are plugged into the wrong socket.

 

[LagunaSol]

I'm here for two reasons. One being to counter the FUD spread about Windows.

Oh please. What you fail to admit is that most Mac users have extensive experience with Windows. I've been using that steaming pile of garbage posing as an OS 40 hours a week for 15 years. It's a miserable experience, pure and simple. You think we Mac users choose to pay more for our hardware and our software based on some irrational fantasy or something? No. We do it because it's better than the alternative.

Windows, and almost every other product that's crawled from the muck of Redmond, deserves every bit of derision thrown its way. Period.

Compare and contrast with the ignorant bullcrap the Apple haters like to spew about Macs, when they have little or no experience with the platform whatsoever.

That, my friend, is called FUD.

 

[LagunaSol]

...make all their cables white, despite the fact that A) it makes them extremely visible, and B) their "white era" is over, these days Macs are silver and black?

White is more visible than black??? Only if you have a dark desk and dark walls I suppose. I'd wager that most of us don't.

The white dock does look goofy with my aluminum 1st gen iPhone though...

Apple could go a long way toward eliminating cable clutter by adding more USB ports to the iMac. And a media card reader. Come on Apple, you give me this beautiful AIO computer, but make me cover my desk with cables and hubs?

 

[Anuba]

I'm not labeling you a troll, I'm labeling mosx a troll. There is no smoke screen, no reality distortion field. Apple doesn't make computers that are about raw specs and raw power.

But that is exactly how they marketed their computers until they switched to Intel and everyone saw that the emperor had no clothes.

This ad from 1999 pretty much sums up their entire ad run between 99 and 2006:

Today, the Apple keynote drinking game involves having a drink every time Steve Jobs says "unbelievably thin". Before 2006, it was "unbelievably fast". Numbers. Benchmarks. Shootouts. They kept this charade up to the very day before the first Intel Macs were announced. Only then was it revealed that by switching from PPC to Intel, Macs suddenly became 3-6 times faster once powered by bona fide PC processors. He stood there and announced, between the lines, that everything they had been peddling up until that very day, was sh*t. And what did the crowd do? The crowd who had paid through their nose over and over for this underpowered crap, while trash-talking "Wintel"? They gave Steve a standing ovation.

Afterwards, at least a dozen world-renowned hypnotists and magicians jumped on their phones to ask Steve how the hell he managed to pull off such a glorious scam without anyone noticing.

 

[KnightWRX]

Ok fair enough lets call a truce! but in my honest opinion until the reign of Steve Jobs comes to an end the current line up will not change. As we all know Steve is like no other CEO and his powers over the company all the way down to what is put on the store shelf's is incredibly scary. I predict that when his regin his over the entire line up will change to reflect a bit more of what the average Joe can afford and needs. Until that day comes its all about iPhones gadgets and iMacs the love of his life.

We can't really fault Steve or say he's out of touch. If you know about Apple's history, you'd know that when they bought NeXT and brought Steve back, the company was failling, victime of the Apple clone market, a boring line-up (generic beige boxes) and an old, out of date OS. Steve had to make the Microsoft deal to keep Apple afloat and then proceeded to make them what they are today.

So I don't think Steve is so wrong when he decides on a direction. Apple won't fail because they are a niche company. That is how they succeeded and grew. They found a few niches that could be exploited and put out products that answered the needs of these niches. That's what they are still doing today.

But that is exactly how they marketed their computers until they switched to Intel and everyone saw that the emperor had no clothes.

This ad from 1999 pretty much sums up their entire ad run between 99 and 2006:

Today, the Apple keynote drinking game involves having a drink every time Steve Jobs says "unbelievably thin". Before 2006, it was "unbelievably fast". Numbers. Benchmarks. Shootouts. They kept this charade up to the very day before the first Intel Macs were announced. Only then was it revealed that by switching from PPC to Intel, Macs suddenly became 3-6 times faster once powered by bona fide PC processors. He stood there and announced, between the lines, that everything they had been peddling up until that very day, was sh*t. And what did the crowd do? The crowd who had paid through their nose over and over for this underpowered crap, while trash-talking "Wintel"? They gave Steve a standing ovation.

Afterwards, at least a dozen world-renowned hypnotists and magicians jumped on their phones to ask Steve how the hell he managed to pull off such a glorious scam without anyone noticing.

So wait, are you saying that if Intel processors are better today, then there is no chance at all that they could've been worse in 1999 ?

The Pentium II of 1999 vs the G3, and the Core vs the Cell is the exact same comparison ?

Apple switched to Intel because of IBM's and Motorola's failure to ship low power G5s. Notebooks were stuck with G4 while Intel was making faster and faster chips all the time. Something had to give. I don't think you can fault Apple for that decision.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

So wait, are you saying that if Intel processors are better today, then there is no chance at all that they could've been worse in 1999 ?

The Pentium II of 1999 vs the G3, and the Core vs the Cell is the exact same comparison ?

Apple switched to Intel because of IBM's and Motorola's failure to ship low power G5s. Notebooks were stuck with G4 while Intel was making faster and faster chips all the time. Something had to give. I don't think you can fault Apple for that decision.

Read it again. He pointed out apple smoke and mirrors they used for years. They basic x86 chips up until they day they made the switch over to x86 (Intel)
That day Apple admitted that PPC was crap and that x86 was a better format. The same format they had been bashing for over 7 years.

 

[KnightWRX]

Read it again. He pointed out apple smoke and mirrors they used for years. They basic x86 chips up until they day they made the switch over to x86 (Intel)
That day Apple admitted that PPC was crap and that x86 was a better format. The same format they had been bashing for over 7 years.

And read again what I said. Is it even remotely possible that there was a decline in PPC chips over the years, culminating in the 2005 Intel deal ?

Or are you guys seriously claiming the G3 was a bad processor and that the Pentium II curb stomped it ? That Altivec never was able to even remotely touch SSE or MMX ?

 

[AidenShaw]

So wait, are you saying that if Intel processors are better today, then there is no chance at all that they could've been worse in 1999 ?

In the (in)famous Pentium showdowns on MacWorld stages, Apple was very careful to "cherry pick" certain tasks that ran faster. After the G4 came out, it was easier - just pick a Photoshop filter that was AltiVec-optimized (what did Apple call AltiVec - something like "Velocity Orgasm" or such) against a PC with an unoptimized filter.

Don't you remember that SSE was pure sh#t, until the Intel switch, when SSE was as good or better than AltiVec?

Or are you guys seriously claiming the G3 was a bad processor and that the Pentium II curb stomped it ? That Altivec never was able to even remotely touch SSE or MMX ?

In some sense - yes, that's what we're claiming.

Processor speeds (real speed, not MHz) tend to slowly increase for a while, then a big bump. The slow increases are minor MHz bumps and process improvements, the big bumps are architecture changes.

This give a "leap frog" effect. Brand "I" is faster for a while, then Brand "M" has a big bump and is faster for a while.

In addition, no system is "x %" faster for all applications. The "leap frog" is better for some application than others. Some applications, it might even be worse. There are probably a few tasks that a Nehalem is slower at than Core 2.

Apple's ads and MacWorld bake-offs were skilled productions - they picked the applications that best showed off whatever Apple was selling at the time.

 

[Anuba]

So wait, are you saying that if Intel processors are better today, then there is no chance at all that they could've been worse in 1999 ?

The Pentium II of 1999 vs the G3, and the Core vs the Cell is the exact same comparison ?

The thing is that since nobody was able to run Windows on a G3 and vice versa, nobody will ever know to which degree all those shootouts and benchmarks were rigged. One time, he used Logic to show how many audio tracks a Mac could juggle at once. Convenient -- Apple had just acquired Emagic and discontinued the Windows version of Logic, so nobody could compare. Another time, he used Photoshop and showed how fast it would load some huge image with hundreds of layers. Fine, only it was a special G4-optimized build of Photoshop which had no Windows equivalent at the time.

The handful of times I had an opportunity to make a direct comparison between G4 and Pentium 4 performance, the G4 fell miserably short. I remember making this song in Propellerhead's Reason (cross-platform compatible) on my old Pentium 4 which was chugging along merrily at 30-40% CPU load. I posted it online and immediately got a bunch of comments from G4 owners who tried to play the same song and said "Umm... sorry dude but I can't possibly play this one, I get 'Computer too slow' on bar 3. What the hell did you make this on, a Cray?" No. Just Windoze on a Wintel.

Anyway, that wasn't the point. The point was, you said that Apple was never about raw power and specs. Fact is, they were ALL about precisely those things. But once the playfield was level, both platforms used Intel and anyone was able to make a direct comparison on everything from performance to price, the emperor had no clothes, and it became blatantly apparent that you DO get a lot less power for buck when going Mac. Suddenly, Steve was very busy talking about design details, materials and other superficial stuff. Again, the magician at work, distracting the audience and shifting their focus elsewhere while he stuffs a few more rabbits into the hat.

 

[KnightWRX]

In the (in)famous Pentium showdowns on MacWorld stages, Apple was very careful to "cherry pick" certain tasks that ran faster. After the G4 came out, it was easier - just pick a Photoshop filter that was AltiVec-optimized (what did Apple call AltiVec - something like "Velocity Orgasm" or such) against a PC with an unoptimized filter.

Don't you remember that SSE was pure sh#t, until the Intel switch, when SSE was as good or better than AltiVec?

By then, it was called SSE3 and was actually on its third version. Altivec never quite changed until IBM produced VMX128 for the Xbox360, with a few extra features that mostly helped gaming applications.

The PPC chip architecture was better than Intel's in the P6 days. Intel was better able to play to the MHZ game though and with the volume they could generate, generally had lower price for higher MHZ chips. In the end, PPC was the better chip, but for the same price, you pretty much got the same performance.

 

[KnightWRX]

The thing is that since nobody was able to run Windows on a G3 and vice versa, nobody will ever know to which degree all those shootouts and benchmarks were rigged.

Linux ran on both. Performance wasn't world aparts, but mhz for mhz, PPC was the better performer. Altivec was better than the first generation SSE found in Pentium IIIs and arguably better at some tasks than SSE2.

 

[Anuba]

Linux ran on both. Performance wasn't world aparts, but mhz for mhz, PPC was the better performer. Altivec was better than the first generation SSE found in Pentium IIIs and arguably better at some tasks than SSE2.

Well, I never ran any G3 vs PIII tests so I can't say. But my old P4 desktop did well against Graphite G4(except the dual core models), and my Pentium-M 1.7 GHz laptop (the first "Centrino", the forefather of the Core family) was able to run circles around PowerBookG4's and play banjo at the same time. This was around the time when Apple began taking steps toward the Intel switch, I presume.

 

[LagunaSol]

He stood there and announced, between the lines, that everything they had been peddling up until that very day, was sh*t.

What in the world are you talking about??? PowerPC chips were faster than Intel's offerings at the time. Then Motorola put things on cruise control (as they are known to do, hence their downward spiral into oblivion) and progress ground to a halt. It didn't take Intel long to catch up and then leave PowerPC in the dust.

Good grief. Apparently the kool-aid flows out of both sides of the spigot.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

Linux ran on both. Performance wasn't world aparts, but mhz for mhz, PPC was the better performer. Altivec was better than the first generation SSE found in Pentium IIIs and arguably better at some tasks than SSE2.

True mhz to mhz PPC was better and it better day but problem is power PPC can not clock as high as x86 and when you factor in the much higher clock speed of the x86 chips intel wins. x86 can just scale faster and it makes up the difference.

It does not matter than ppc is better per clock cycle if it is still slower in the end.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

What in the world are you talking about??? PowerPC chips were faster than Intel's offerings at the time. Then Motorola put things on cruise control (as they are known to do, hence their downward spiral into oblivion) and progress ground to a halt. It didn't take Intel long to catch up and then leave PowerPC in the dust.

Good grief. Apparently the kool-aid flows out of both sides of the spigot.

Motaral did not do the g5 chips....... I see a lot more apple kool-aid going on here. Fan boys can not accept that their god lied to them for years.

 

[NoSmokingBandit]

Today, the Apple keynote drinking game involves having a drink every time Steve Jobs says "unbelievably thin". Before 2006, it was "unbelievably fast". Numbers. Benchmarks. Shootouts.

This is a problem, imo. Apple used to produce high power, high price models. Now its just high gloss, high price.

 

[Anuba]

What in the world are you talking about??? PowerPC chips were faster than Intel's offerings at the time. Then Motorola put things on cruise control (as they are known to do, hence their downward spiral into oblivion) and progress ground to a halt. It didn't take Intel long to catch up and then leave PowerPC in the dust.

Good grief. Apparently the kool-aid flows out of both sides of the spigot.

First you say "at the time" (I was talking about 2006), then you start talking about Motorola, which would put "the time" around the early 90's when Intel's latest offering was, what, the 486? I don't mind wearing the Kool-Aid badge when guilty as charged, but could you at least please stay in the same millennium...?

Specifically, I was talking about the final 2 years of the G-series era, when they had squeezed the last drop out of the antiquated mobile G4, found themselves stuck in a dead end, and still had the balls to call it blazing fast. 'Cause it's not like they stopped selling it while they were working on Intel machines behind the scenes, eh? So when he got up there and showed charts where the Intel Mac danced on the G4's grave (refresh my memory but didn't the PowerBook vs MacBook charts say "now up to SEVEN times faster"?), he was in fact saying between the lines that the machines they had just stopped selling moments earlier were, basically, pieces of poo.

 

[KnightWRX]

True mhz to mhz PPC was better and it better day but problem is power PPC can not clock as high as x86 and when you factor in the much higher clock speed of the x86 chips intel wins. x86 can just scale faster and it makes up the difference.

It does not matter than ppc is better per clock cycle if it is still slower in the end.

But that's the point, x86 chips don't scale better. The Pentium 4 made a lot of sacrifices to achieve it's higher clock rates, and was an even worse performer than the Pentium 3. Hence why Intel backtracked on a lot of design choices made for the Pentium 4 when they moved to the Pentium-M and finally he core architecture.

Not to mention that up until 2004-2005 when Apple did the switch, the PPCs we're following Intel just fine. The problem was the mobile chips just got trounced because IBM never managed to ship the mobile G5.

First you say "at the time" (I was talking about 2006), then you start talking about Motorola, which would put "the time" around the early 90's when Intel's latest offering was, what, the 486? I don't mind wearing the Kool-Aid badge when guilty as charged, but could you at least please stay in the same millennium...?

Specifically, I was talking about the final 2 years of the G-series era, when they had squeezed the last drop out of the antiquated mobile G4, found themselves stuck in a dead end, and still had the balls to call it blazing fast. 'Cause it's not like they stopped selling it while they were working on Intel machines behind the scenes, eh? So when he got up there and showed charts where the Intel Mac danced on the G4's grave (refresh my memory but didn't the PowerBook vs MacBook charts say "now up to SEVEN times faster"?), he was in fact saying between the lines that the machines they had just stopped selling moments earlier were, basically, pieces of poo.

Apple wasn't calling the G4 blazingly fast at the end. Steve was promising keynote after keynote that the G5 mobile chips were just around the corner for the iBook and Powerbook. Also, I much doubt what you're saying about 2006. Apple announced the switch to Intel in 2005 so I doubt they'd still be saying PPC was the architecture of choice a year later when they started shipping the Intel models.

IBM failed Apple with the G5. It was an awesome processor, but with Apple's line more and more relying on mobile chips, it just stopped them dead in their tracks.

It's not like PPC just died after that. Microsoft switched from Intel to PPC for the Xbox 360, the Cell processor is built around the POWER architecture, and is shipped in PS3s. PPC is still pretty much alive and as far as "blazingly" fast computations go, it's still king of the castle.

 

[LagunaSol]

he was in fact saying between the lines that the machines they had just stopped selling moments earlier were, in fact, pieces of poo.

Yes, right, companies should stop selling a product when they have something better in the works. Brilliant, man!

How could Microsoft introduce the Xbox 360 when they knew that the Xbox they had just stopped selling moments earlier was, in fact, a piece of poo in comparison? UNCONSCIONABLE! And how dare Microsoft work on Windows 7 when Vista is such a universally acknowledged turd? Methinks Microsoft won't talk about how much Vista sucked when they introduce Win 7. Apparently Windows users need to put down the kool-aid! They're being scammed by Redmond!!!

Geez man, I'm sick of hearing the Winbots throw the fanboy label around while they toss out truly fanboyish gibberish. IBM/Moto/G4/G5/whatever, at least I'm in the right logic universe. Everyone knew Apple ended up in a deep hole with PowerPC. You're hardly breaking a scandalous story here.

 

[LagunaSol]

Microsoft switched from Intel to PPC for the Xbox 360

Oh snap, and they never mentioned the inferior technology used in their previous product???

Microsoft fanboys must really be drinking the Ballmer-aid (aka pit sweat) to fall for such an obvious scam.

 

[Anuba]

Not to mention that up until 2004-2005 when Apple did the switch, the PPCs we're following Intel just fine. The problem was the mobile chips just got trounced because IBM never managed to ship the mobile G5.

I don't know about "following"... they weren't entirely hopeless but they were no Ferraris either. The best Geekbench score ever achieved by a G5 was a late 2005 4-core 2.5 GHz -- it scored 3244. The lowest score achieved by a Mac Pro was 3847, courtesy of the baseline 4-core 2.0 GHz. 500 MHz less and still some 20% better performance.

The 2004 2-core 2.7 GHz scored 2256, which is slightly worse than the 2006 2.0 GHz dualcore "Yonah" notebook I'm typing on now. I think I could stack ten of these inside a G5.

 

[KnightWRX]

I don't know about "following"... they weren't entirely hopeless but they were no Ferraris either. The best Geekbench score ever achieved by a G5 was a late 2005 4-core 2.5 GHz -- it scored 3244. The lowest score achieved by a Mac Pro was 3847, courtesy of the baseline 4-core 2.0 GHz. 500 MHz less and still some 20% better performance.

The 2004 2-core 2.7 GHz scored 2256, which is slightly worse than the 2006 2.0 GHz dualcore "Yonah" notebook I'm typing on now. I think I could stack ten of these inside a G5.

You do understand though that by the time that Mac Pro shipped, Intel had changed the MHZ game ? It wasn't about mhz anymore, it was about operations. Basically, they adopted the POWER philosophy that frequency wasn't the only thing that defined processors, a few years late though.

Also, are you really surprised that the Mac Pro, that came a year later than the G5, was actually faster ? Are you really telling us : "Newflash : Computers get faster year after year" ?

Because I'm really starting to wonder about what I said a few pages back. You're sounding more and more like mosx. Irrational Apple hatred. You shouldn't take the lack of a mid-range desktop that personally you know, it has nothing to do with you and Apple aren't out to get you.

 

[Anuba]

Yes, right, companies should stop selling a product when they have something better in the works. Brilliant, man!

How could Microsoft introduce the Xbox 360 when they knew that the Xbox they had just stopped selling moments earlier was, in fact, a piece of poo in comparison? UNCONSCIONABLE! And how dare Microsoft work on Windows 7 when Vista is such a universally acknowledged turd? Methinks Microsoft won't talk about how much Vista sucked when they introduce Win 7. Apparently Windows users need to put down the kool-aid! They're being scammed by Redmond!!!

Well, you may not be drinking kool-aid, but you must've drunk at least 18 Red Bull.

My point was, he was still dissing Intel and showing charts that conformed with the "Pentium Toaster" tradition when he introduced the G5 in June of 2003. Now, this was exactly two years before he got up on stage and announced the Intel transition, which means there was already a couple of developers huddling in a corner somewhere in Cupertino tinkering with an x86 version of OS X.

But the real point which seems to get lost at every turn is that Apple did, in fact, sell computers on raw power and specs, so the notion of them somehow being above all that is entirely false.

 

[WeegieMac]

My one main memory of 2003 when it comes to Apple was Steve introducing the new 17" Powerbook G4 with an "industry first" backlit keyboard and the introduction of Firewire 800. It also seen the Powerbook move from Titanium to Aluminum. This was at Macworld right enough, which would be around the usual January slot.

He also predicted that "one day" notebooks will outsell desktops ... how right he was.

Here is the WWDC introduction of the G5 that Anuba mentioned, if anyone wants to watch it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IwhYe4I9eI&NR=1