aria505 said:
Why does Steve Jobs always have to put down the PC in-order to sell his own computers?
Seriously, talk about all the features of Mac OS X (iLife, Spotlight, Dashboard, networking, security, *Parental Controls*) and stop acting like the bully in school that has to put down all the other kids to make himself feel stronger.
I think just talking about the Parental Controls in Mac OS X would sell a ton of Macs. There is a huge market because Parents are just now realizing that the internet isn't a safe place to let their kids run around on unsupervised.
These commercials really are a let down because they just use the same old arrogant mythic defense of "Everything just works on a Mac" that gives all Mac users a bad name.
I have to agree, for the most part. I'm glad to see them advertising again, but for those that have never really been exposed to a Mac it still leaves them wondering "What's a Mac?". And for those that do know (most of them thinking OS 9), I don't see anything compelling to get anyone to switch.
I'd rather see a series of ads showing off directly what it can do out of the box. Or better yet, a well produced half hour infomercial. Demo what it can do "out of the box". Show someone doing a demo for Joe Q. Public who had "no idea a Mac could do all this". Show off iPhoto a bit with photocasting. Plug in a video camera and whip up a quick iMovie. Mix the movies and photos together and make a DVD in iDVD.
Think about what Steve said when GarageBand was first introduced. There are a bunch of musicians in the home. Hook up a USB music keyboard and have Joe Q.'s kid play around with GB for a few minutes. Show off MS Office opening documents created on a PC. If they do their own Virtualization, as well as Boot Camp, then show off both methods of "still being able to run that one app in Windows, if you insist".
Basically redo a lot of what was done at the MWSF and WWDC keynotes. Hardly anyone would consider a Mac, but just don't know it, has ever seen the bundled apps in action... Show Mom off the street saying how they "could never do any of this out of the box with their Dell they just bought". (Although not free out of the box, but with the 30 day demo...) put together a club newsletter with Pages. Whip up a presentation with Keynote.
And, of course, show off Front Row, iChat, iWeb, Exposé, etc... Do some comparisons to how it's all better than Windoze, but don't make them sound like an idiot because they're using Windoze... Just explain how "you understand they may not know this, but with the Mac you can......". All without having to track down / buy extra software. And, of course, plug the Parental controls, as mentioned, without having to wait another year (or more, maybe) for Vista... "You can do it now."
Make sure you plug in a few choice subliminal lines for the people who fell asleep with the TV on, and you're all set.
And then, at the end, show how the whole half hour was done with a digital movie camera and iMovie on a Mac (other than the camera, it's all there... out of the box).
