New Microsoft Ad Campaign Targets Mac Prices

[Anuba]

Am I supposed to enjoy being called a fool for buying a Mac? Being told that Mac buyers like myself are stupider than the average person?

Come on, grow some skin. If you're secure in your choice of platform, laugh it off. PC users have been hammered by Apple's commercials for years with the message that John "PC" Hodgman, and thus by extension the users themselves, are clueless and helpless idiots who are supposedly trapped in some sort of hell. The Mac community should be able to handle a tiny dose of the medicine they and the mother company have been drenching the rest of the world in for years.

 

[pr5owner]

Um, it's a commercial.

commercials are 100% real, Justin Long is ACTAULLY a Mac computer,

seriously though, those mac ads are even worse, by PC you would be assuming ALL x86 architecture based platforms that includes linux and BSD and also Macs themselves, who is apple trying to fool?

also at the end of the day, if i were an employer i would hire the PC guy since he has some kind of technical skills, to me the "Mac" character just takes the easy way out and says he doesnt have to learn much to make a photo album (lazy hippie)

 

[Anuba]

Your opinion. The fact is that Vista has been a disaster and MS can't get out Window 7 fast enough.

Yeah, Vista is kind of a dud (better than its reputation but worse than the expectations). But they are actually getting Win7 out fast, while simultaneously closing the book on XP for good -- they're ending support for XP on April 14th, and in May they're rolling out the Win7 release candidate which will be freely available for everyone, not a limited release like with Vista. This little ad is nothing compared to the relentless hammering that will begin shortly and continue until Win7 is in the stores.

 

[SkyBell]

Yeah, Vista is kind of a dud (better than its reputation but worse than the expectations). But they are actually getting Win7 out fast, while simultaneously closing the book on XP for good -- they're ending support for XP on April 14th, and in May they're rolling out the Win7 release candidate which will be freely available for everyone, not a limited release like with Vista. This little ad is nothing compared to the relentless hammering that will begin shortly and continue until Win7 is in the stores.

Ending support meaning what? I read somewhere XP will be supported until 2014.

 

[Anuba]

Ending support meaning what? I read somewhere XP will be supported until 2014.

On April 14th they're shifting it from "mainstream support" to "extended support", which means there will be only be basic security updates, no more service packs, hotfixes, driver updates etc.

In 2014 they're ending the extended support, so anyone on XP by then is on her/his own.

 

[pr5owner]

Well, mine is pushing 6 years old, but it outperforms your assembly of stuff because its suited to my needs.

The reason is right here:



Goodness! You have less than 1TB of total storage, and without any data redundancy? I have over 4TB now...roughly 6x-7x more than you.

So how do we determine who 'won' and who 'lost'?




YMMV. I enjoy reality instead: I have roughly 25,000 of my original copyrighted images, stored redundantly, although the total would be 10-15K higher if I had all of my current film scanned too.

Thus, for my needs, data storage trumps game playing.

And gosh golly gee, we find that we're all different, so we naturally have different definitions of what is "Better", according to our needs.



-hh

FFS its true, mac people really cant play games

you realize Raid 0 is for speed right? and if my HDDs die with my games on them,.......... um who cares? all my games are on CDs (legally or i couldnt play them online) i prefer my games to load as quick as possible, i dont really care about redundancy.

i said this is a GAMING MACHINE, im not sure how else to say it, its not a NAS, its not a SAN, its not an HTPC, its not a Desktop, its not a workstation, its not some kind of rendering farm. >> GAMING PC <<

that being said i do have a Desktop, HTPC, NAS, guest computer, mobile workstation, and file server at home.

HTPC has all my movies and shows on it, 2TB raid 5 (3x 1TB Seagate F1 drives)

my NAS is Raid 0+1 for storeing pictures documents and other crap.

my desktop just has a 120GB for email and msn
my work laptop has 160 but all it runs if VMWARE machines for testing at work
my file server has 1TB for applications and temporary storge. (ill admit its for bit torrent as well)

my pictures are redundant across all computers, all machines sync with the NAS, so if i lose 5 computers at the same time, non-replacable data is still safe on 1 of the machines.

looks like i got you beat

 

[br0nc080]

after dealing iwth my girlfriends HP laptop problems with the wireless hardware, i have vowed to never purchase an HP computer the rest of my life. i can only shudder as to the girl in this commercials fate

 

[SkyBell]

On April 14th they're shifting it from "mainstream support" to "extended support", which means there will be only be basic security updates, no more service packs, hotfixes, driver updates etc.

In 2014 they're ending the extended support, so anyone on XP by then is on her/his own.

Ah. Well I guess that makes sense. That's the thing I like about Microsoft, they support their OS's for much longer then Apple does. IIRC, Windows 2000 isn't due to completely end support until sometime net year.

 

[pr5owner]

Wow, MS takes one (legitimate, IMO) shot at Macs and we get > 2000 posts (and counting). Are we Apple devotees really so touchy?

I love Apple products, but man, Apple can sure stand to be taken down a peg or two. Those Apple ads are so smug. I just want to slap Apple.

Also, this ad isn't just about price. The point is that with Windows you have a lot of choices with the hardware. Apple doesn't sell a budget 17" laptop. It only sells a top-of-the-line one. They don't sell a budget anything, actually. Apple doesn't sell a midrange tower or a midrange 15" notebook, or a netbook, etc. And the products they do sell have limited options and, for the most part, very limited expansion.

Third, does it really matter if the girl in the commercial is "real?" It's a commercial for pete's sake, not a documentary. It's designed to send a message:

With a Windows PC you have a lot of inexpensive choices: there's a Windows PC out there for everyone.

It's a fair point I think, though for now I'll stick with my MBP, thank you very much.

wow you are 5-6 levels above the average mac user to actaully say something like that.

 

[roski11]

The mac store in Santa Monica is like a haven for wanna-be actors. Doesn't surprise me at all they filmed it there.

 

[Papajohn56]

People seem to forget many retail PCs are inexpensive because of advertising contracts the manufacturers make. All the "Try AOL 9.0!" or "Try Real Rhapsody!" stuff that comes preinstalled has to get there somehow. $$$. Money talks.

 

[futureswitcher]

There are three other people in my freshman engineering group. ALL THREE of them have this exact same 700 dollar HP. At the beginning of the year, they all teased me for being an engineer with a mac (Feb. 2008 2.4GHz 13.3" MacBook). Now we use my computer for all of our assignments because it's the only one that can function without overheating. One of the other guy's computers crashed from a virus and had to be sent into repairs - he went an entire week without it. Plus they run ridiculously slowly with Vista.

I installed Windows XP with bootcamp at the beginning of the year thinking I would need it to keep up with the engineering curriculum. XP runs like a charm, but as it turns out, everything I've needed all year has a mac version which is completely 100% compatible with their windows counterparts.

My friends don't tease me anymore, but instead say I was smart for getting the mac...


...there really is no comparison

 

[awmazz]

Come on, grow some skin. If you're secure in your choice of platform, laugh it off. PC users have been hammered by Apple's commercials for years with the message that John "PC" Hodgman, and thus by extension the users themselves, are clueless and helpless idiots who are supposedly trapped in some sort of hell. The Mac community should be able to handle a tiny dose of the medicine they and the mother company have been drenching the rest of the world in for years.

I am indeed secure. Nobody in real life who has a PC and has seen how quickly and easily and productively I operate my Mac has ever told me I'm a fool for buying it and I should use a PC instead because it has a faster processor and is cheaper. So why are people telling me that on a Mac forum, of all places?

And calm too. You can tell I'm calm when I use words like 'pissant'.

 

[Anuba]

Ah. Well I guess that makes sense. That's the thing I like about Microsoft, they support their OS's for much longer then Apple does. IIRC, Windows 2000 isn't due to completely end support until sometime net year.

Yeah. Typically Microsoft keeps a system in mainstream support for 5 years, then moves it to extended for 5 years (hence, my guess is that Win2K support ends this year since it was released in 1999). For XP though, they've extended it to a total of 13 years due to the fact that it's been sold in parallel with Vista.

This is why corporations stick with Windows, when you have 50,000 people on computers you need predictability and Apple are just too whimsical. One day some port disappears, the next day they throw the whole system out and replace it with another one, the next day they switch CPU manufacturer... that's fine for home users and small businesses but would cause pandemonium at a large corporation.

 

[southernpaws]

What am I elitist about? I am not elitist against Apple, I have a Mac. I'm not elitist against Windows, I've got a Thinkpad. I'm not elitist against Linux, I run it on several PC's and servers.

I'm elitist against blind fanboys, absolutely.

elitism isn't about being against anything. it's about trying to appear better than everybody else.

 

[Papajohn56]

There are three other people in my freshman engineering group. ALL THREE of them have this exact same 700 dollar HP. At the beginning of the year, they all teased me for being an engineer with a mac (Feb. 2008 2.4GHz 13.3" MacBook). Now we use my computer for all of our assignments because it's the only one that can function without overheating. One of the other guy's computers crashed from a virus and had to be sent into repairs - he went an entire week without it. Plus they run ridiculously slowly with Vista.

I installed Windows XP with bootcamp at the beginning of the year thinking I would need it to keep up with the engineering curriculum. XP runs like a charm, but as it turns out, everything I've needed all year has a mac version which is completely 100% compatible with their windows counterparts.

My friends don't tease me anymore, but instead say I was smart for getting the mac...


...there really is no comparison

Freshmen engineering majors tend to think they're hot stuff anyway, no matter what. Until they get schooled by senior Physics majors. Our entire physics department is nearly all Mac.

 

[Papajohn56]

elitism isn't about being against anything. it's about trying to appear better than everybody else.

Exactly..you can be against something without being an elitist. I hate Linux, I think it's an inferior *nix system with a bad kernel, but it serves its purpose anyway.

 

[pr5owner]

Now we use my computer for all of our assignments because it's the only one that can function without overheating.

really ....... macs dont overheat?

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1387729&tstart=0

http://www.product-reviews.net/2009...inch-apple-macbook-pro-geforce-9600m-problem/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/409548/

 

[Apple iKid]

Bwahahaha...yeah I can totally see that happening!

Phil Schiller: So Microsoft says we charge too much for our hardware!
Steve Jobs: No sh*t? What did they say, exactly?
Phil: Well, they just started airing this ad where they give this Lauren chick a thousand bucks and tell her to find a laptop with a 17" screen, and if she finds one, she can keep it. And get this! She goes to Best Buy and picks out this crappy little HP Pavilion! It's a disgrace!
Steve: Wait, she didn't get a MacBook Pro?
Phil: Uh, Steve...the 17" MacBook Pro starts at $2,799.
Steve: No ****? IT DOES? Well, what do we do? We can't have Microsoft underpricing us! We'll go out of business!
Phil: Hmmm...I got it! Let's undersell their asses! Start selling the MacBook Pro for $899, and then Lauren will return that piece of sh*t for a decent computer!
Steve: Sounds like a plan! Done!



No, seriously...that was verbatim. I actually overheard them.

Wouldn't that be amazing. But its not like Apple.
And it just goes to show you how much better their computers really are when people are willing to pay so much more for them. So in a way, Microsoft just made Apple sound even better with this ad.

 

[i.mac]

enough already!

Wintel sucks, every one knows.

Macs are cool, nice, and 'just works'. Every one knows.

Macs are for people that want to have quality of life. PCs are for every one else. Every one knows.

M$ cannot inovate. Every one knows.

The M$ comercials are for technophobics, most of whom could not appreciate the difference. Every one knows.

Can we get a new rummor going now?

 

[pr5owner]

"Im a PC and i got just what i wanted"

"Im a Mac and i got even more than i wanted!"

what more could she do with a $999 mac than a $699 PC?

both are slow machines, they both have decent ram (except the pc had 4gb vs 2gb), however the PC has an HDMI port and the video card supports 1080p decoding (hence the ATi HD video card) if she needs just to check email surf facebook, do her taxes, and chat on msn

what can the mac do over the hp? because we are talking $300 diffrence here. $300 can buy you an Msi Wind netbook or a Dell mini 9 (both laptops are 100% comptaibl with OSX)

 

[SkyBell]

Yeah. Typically Microsoft keeps a system in mainstream support for 5 years, then moves it to extended for 5 years (hence, my guess is that Win2K support ends this year since it was released in 1999). For XP though, they've extended it to a total of 13 years due to the fact that it's been sold in parallel with Vista.

This is why corporations stick with Windows, when you have 50,000 people on computers you need predictability and Apple are just too whimsical. One day some port disappears, the next day they throw the whole system out and replace it with another one, the next day they switch CPU manufacturer... that's fine for home users and small businesses but would cause pandemonium at a large corporation.

It seems they keep adding more years of support for each OS revision. 95 had 7 years, 98 had 8 years (ME had 6, but that's understandable) I can't find a specific end of support date for 2000, but I would assume sometime between this year and 2011. I can't help but wonder why, I thought technology was supposed to be advancing faster, not slowing down.

 

[Apple iKid]

It seems they keep adding more years of support for each OS revision. 95 had 7 years, 98 had 8 years (ME had 6, but that's understandable) I can't find a specific end of support date for 2000, but I would assume sometime between this year and 2011. I can't help but wonder why, I thought technology was supposed to be advancing faster, not slowing down.

People are afraid to upgrade to their newer OS's so they have to keep adding support. haha. (just a theory)

 

[i.mac]

To any wintel user:

I'm going to purchase a macbook to my mother because is the only thing that is friendly towards older folks not immersed in technology.

Then I'm going to purchase a brand new mac pro with two giant displays.

Yup, good to like macs!

 

[pr5owner]

To any wintel user:

I'm going to purchase a macbook to my mother because is the only thing that is friendly towards older folks not immersed in technology.

Then I'm going to purchase a brand new mac pro with two giant displays.

Yup, good to like macs!

the more macs that get sold the better, once windows and mac are at 50/50 market share, we'll see which one is more secure. (see my other post about mac vulnerabilities)