I re-read your first post which I responded to, and saw the quotes around the last lines, re-read it again and realized my interpretation of the context was off a bit. My bad.
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Microsoft to Respond to Apple's 'Get a Mac' Ads
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I re-read your first post which I responded to, and saw the quotes around the last lines, re-read it again and realized my interpretation of the context was off a bit. My bad.
Maybe for some things, but for others, for example audio, it is still demonstrably worse. Vista caused some major performance losses compared with XP.
MSFT is near its year low. It is less than HALF it's all time high at the end of 1999.
Really, you're defending Microsoft on STOCK PRICE? Are you kidding?
Vista has a much slower rate of upgrading than XP did. That's absolutely a failure.
No, actually being old is good in regard to UNIX - UNIX, which was outstanding from the outset, has evolved into a rock solid OS, thanks to NeXT's development. Windows bloated monolithic OS will not likely improve much over time, due to its massive quantities of error ridden code and backward compatibility issues. While Win 7 will be built on the same core architecture as Vista, Snow Leopard will be evolving into a more agile and responsive OS, with significant code reduction, optimization, and reduction of app size for performance. I cannot see Windows striving to improve in this manner anytime soon. "Good enough" has been their motto from the beginning, and this has been one of the many reasons MS has, and will continue to, perform so miserably.
True
As a company they are still worth more than Apple. Now they used to be worth 30x more than Apple, but they are still more valuable.
Can Hotshot Ad Guy Alex Bogusky Make Microsoft Cool?
Alex Bogusky built the country's slickest ad shop using Apple products. His next challenge: Persuade people like him to buy Microsoft's stuff.
Now Crispin has been handed perhaps its biggest challenge to date: Microsoft. The tech giant stunned the ad world in March when it passed over safer choices like Fallon, JWT, and its agency of record, McCann Worldgroup, and awarded its new $300 million consumer-branding campaign to Crispin.
It was an act of courage or desperation, depending on whom you ask. Over the past couple of years, Microsoft's already problematic reputation in some circles -- as the soulless, power-hungry purveyor of lackluster products -- has suffered a series of self-inflicted wounds.
It spent two years and $500 million on the media blitz around the long-delayed Windows Vista launch, only to see the January 2007 "Wow" campaign, which likened Microsoft's new operating system to Woodstock and the fall of the Berlin Wall, derided as arrogant and creatively void. Vista itself sold poorly, leading to price cuts of up to 40%.
Worst of all, the flop bred a new generation of Microsoft haters. "Microsoft has really lost control of its image," says Rob Enderle, an influential advisory analyst for tech companies including Dell, HP, and Microsoft. And with its two most formidable competitors -- Apple and Google -- boasting their own consumer cults, that's the last thing Microsoft can afford to do.
Nothing is doing more to carve away at Microsoft's reputation -- and contribute to its loss of market share -- than the assault launched by Apple two years ago in the form of the "Mac vs. PC" spots featuring The Daily Show satirist John Hodgman. The ads became immediate pop-culture fixtures, spawning more than 1,000 video spoofs on YouTube and taking home last year's Grand Effie, the ad industry's highest honor for effectiveness. "Nobody messes with anyone in the tech industry the way Apple has messed with Microsoft," says Enderle. "It's the first time I've ever seen a major national campaign that disparages a competitor, and the competitor just sits back and takes it. If somebody tried to do that to Oracle, you wouldn't be able to find the body."
Gartner media research analyst Andrew Frank credits Apple -- whose annual media spend is less than half of Microsoft's nearly $1 billion budget -- with single-handedly rebranding Microsoft "as a kind of self-conscious and self-absorbed nerd that is out of touch with the normal lives and needs of its users."
The whole article (it's like 7-8 pages in the mag) is online over @ FastCompany
Alex Bogusky built the country's slickest ad shop using Apple products. His next challenge: Persuade people like him to buy Microsoft's stuff.
Now Crispin has been handed perhaps its biggest challenge to date: Microsoft. The tech giant stunned the ad world in March when it passed over safer choices like Fallon, JWT, and its agency of record, McCann Worldgroup, and awarded its new $300 million consumer-branding campaign to Crispin.
It was an act of courage or desperation, depending on whom you ask. Over the past couple of years, Microsoft's already problematic reputation in some circles -- as the soulless, power-hungry purveyor of lackluster products -- has suffered a series of self-inflicted wounds.
It spent two years and $500 million on the media blitz around the long-delayed Windows Vista launch, only to see the January 2007 "Wow" campaign, which likened Microsoft's new operating system to Woodstock and the fall of the Berlin Wall, derided as arrogant and creatively void. Vista itself sold poorly, leading to price cuts of up to 40%.
Worst of all, the flop bred a new generation of Microsoft haters. "Microsoft has really lost control of its image," says Rob Enderle, an influential advisory analyst for tech companies including Dell, HP, and Microsoft. And with its two most formidable competitors -- Apple and Google -- boasting their own consumer cults, that's the last thing Microsoft can afford to do.
Nothing is doing more to carve away at Microsoft's reputation -- and contribute to its loss of market share -- than the assault launched by Apple two years ago in the form of the "Mac vs. PC" spots featuring The Daily Show satirist John Hodgman. The ads became immediate pop-culture fixtures, spawning more than 1,000 video spoofs on YouTube and taking home last year's Grand Effie, the ad industry's highest honor for effectiveness. "Nobody messes with anyone in the tech industry the way Apple has messed with Microsoft," says Enderle. "It's the first time I've ever seen a major national campaign that disparages a competitor, and the competitor just sits back and takes it. If somebody tried to do that to Oracle, you wouldn't be able to find the body."
Gartner media research analyst Andrew Frank credits Apple -- whose annual media spend is less than half of Microsoft's nearly $1 billion budget -- with single-handedly rebranding Microsoft "as a kind of self-conscious and self-absorbed nerd that is out of touch with the normal lives and needs of its users."
The whole article (it's like 7-8 pages in the mag) is online over @ FastCompany
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What you miss in your analysis is the fact that Apple has very clearly advertised that Macs can also run Windows too, and therefore all Windows software. In fact, it's been shown that Macs are among the fastest PC's for running Windows, so any compatibility argument that MS could raise has already been made moot.
Vista that can be "downgraded" to XP for a fee ....
How does Microsoft solve Vista's make or break problem? A marketing spree...
Regarding the ad campaign and the Fast Company article - trying to be cool - it ain't cool. Has Vista got it?
Vista?
Sorry Microsoft, but maybe you should spend those millions on actually making your product more secure and compatible. I'm currently planning on wiping my Vista work PC for an XP upgrade tomorrow, since the last update made everything stop working. Better yet, I might just use my personal MacBook Pro and my monitor/keyboard so I don't have to use that work junk.
Sorry Microsoft, but maybe you should spend those millions on actually making your product more secure and compatible. I'm currently planning on wiping my Vista work PC for an XP upgrade tomorrow, since the last update made everything stop working. Better yet, I might just use my personal MacBook Pro and my monitor/keyboard so I don't have to use that work junk.
Over the past decade, Apple's stock has outperformed Google. I don't think it would be fair, or possible, to compare the performance of AAPL to the dismal performance of MSFT.
M$ has got to be kidding.
I'm one of their prior customers (home and my business) that made the switch to OS X after Vista was released and I would never go back. Period!
The reason the "I'm a Mac" commercials are so successful is because they are so factual. There not just some marketing hype to sell a crapy product with some glitz. Honesty still sells is the message that M$ will never understand.
M$ will have to resort to dressing up its pig (Vista) with lots of hot clothes and lipstick in their ads since they can't rely on the truth. The problem is that everyone already knows its still just a pig so it won't work.
I'm one of their prior customers (home and my business) that made the switch to OS X after Vista was released and I would never go back. Period!
The reason the "I'm a Mac" commercials are so successful is because they are so factual. There not just some marketing hype to sell a crapy product with some glitz. Honesty still sells is the message that M$ will never understand.
M$ will have to resort to dressing up its pig (Vista) with lots of hot clothes and lipstick in their ads since they can't rely on the truth. The problem is that everyone already knows its still just a pig so it won't work.
That's not true, Dell and others are still offering XP downgrades.
http://www.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/winxp_inspndt?c=us&cs=19&l=en&s=dhs&redirect=2
http://www.dell.com/content/topics/.../business/xp_smb?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd&~tab=2
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/pos...o-offer-windows-xp-beyond-june-30-cutoff.html
You're talking about market capitalization, not stock price. But who really cares about market cap when the company has been a terrible investment for a decade?
And a company that has 90% market share isn't even double the market cap of the company with about 5-7%? That's pathetic.
This reaction by MS is yet another indicator of Apple's growing market share. They've gotten big enough that MS has decided they cannot let it continue unprotested. Whether anything they come up with does them more good than harm marketshare-wise is yet to be determined.
I have no illusions that Mac will ever be the dominant platform out there, but the past few years of growth have certainly cost microsoft billions of dollars.
I have no illusions that Mac will ever be the dominant platform out there, but the past few years of growth have certainly cost microsoft billions of dollars.
People said the same thing of IBM back in the day. And while they didn't die they did more or less become irrelevant to the PC market. They reinvented themselves as a services company which kept them floating long enough so that their hardware division could switch over to rack-mounted servers and laptops. They still design chips (Power, etc), but these are more "specialty chips" used in high-end servers and PS3 boxes, and are almost completely unused in general computing devices. There relevance now has almost nothing whatever to do with PC architecture and OS design that a consumer would use (unless you consider a PS3 to be a computer, a claim that I could not refute).
But you are right. Microsoft will never die, just as IBM didn't die. The question is how long will they continue their dominance and relevance in the areas of PC architecture and OS design? Right now, there still is no end in sight to their relevance in those matters, but their position on top is a little more tenuous than it used to be.
ADVERTISERS, ADVERTISERS, ADVERTISERS, ADVERTISERS........
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fj3FOHc-fgA
Ballmer's at it again.....
It certainly wasn't thought of "in house."
Microsoft has hired Crispin Porter + Bogusky ad agency for these ads
Microsoft has hired Crispin Porter + Bogusky ad agency for these ads so it will be interesting to see what they come out with.
Crispin Porter + Bogusky is the agency behind all those funny Burger King and VW commercials in the last few years.
There was an article in Fast Company about this a few months ago.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/126/believe-it-or-not-hes-a-pc.html?page=0,0
The interview with Alex Bogusky pointed out that they all use Macs at the agency and actually got their start in advertising partly do to how easy it was to design on a Mac. Now they all have to start using PCs to get familiar with them. I think its sad that they are doing this but business is business I guess.
Cant wait to see what they come up with - anything that even mentions a Mac can only draw more attention to Apple and OSX.
Microsoft has hired Crispin Porter + Bogusky ad agency for these ads so it will be interesting to see what they come out with.
Crispin Porter + Bogusky is the agency behind all those funny Burger King and VW commercials in the last few years.
There was an article in Fast Company about this a few months ago.
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/126/believe-it-or-not-hes-a-pc.html?page=0,0
The interview with Alex Bogusky pointed out that they all use Macs at the agency and actually got their start in advertising partly do to how easy it was to design on a Mac. Now they all have to start using PCs to get familiar with them. I think its sad that they are doing this but business is business I guess.
Cant wait to see what they come up with - anything that even mentions a Mac can only draw more attention to Apple and OSX.
I stand corrected. I hadn't seen the "extension" I was only aware of the June 30 cutoff and assumed it happened.
Here's another article on the whole thing.
http://www.betanews.com/article/Win...some_OEMs_after_all_says_Microsoft/1214960237
Still, it won't be long until XP is no longer available. Certainly, it was the original plan for it to be dead by now.