New Microsoft Ad Campaign Targets Mac Prices

[bruinsrme]

This is another thing......why is it when Windows appologists come on they say "oh it needed drivers for it to work" and "that took so long for the Manufacturers to update drivers" (Note it is never MS problem, even though it is their system) that this was not an issue with 95,98, 2000, xp??? Could it be that the different windows companies, Sony, Acer, HP, etc are in collusion that they want to get peopel to buy new and newer printers, cameras etc????so when you jsut factor on top of me needing a new 3 in one on top of more memory, new graphics card that they all make money?????


Why???

Because if MS was to write the drivers for third parties you would have the same stuation as the new mac are havig with the video card drivers.

I would prefer Nvidia writing and updating the drivers for my computer instaed of MS.
Now with windows update (has been for a while) the drivrs are incorporated on the MS site, one stop shopping.

 

[173080]

Yeah, except BMW doesn't cheat by manufacturing their cars in China for peanut money. German build quality is why BMW, Mercedes and Audi are respected premium brands in the first place. Would you pay the premium for a BMW made by Brilliant?

You'd be surprised at the amount of problems a BMW can give. I had one. I didn't care one bit though, because the driving experience was so adrenaline inducing and that made it all worth it. I'm sure the Lexus is better built, probably has more power, it might even be faster, but I don't care one bit. It's truly something awesome that can't be quantified by the specs on a window sticker. And that is so worth the price premium and the extra trouble.

Now about the ad, I thought about this:

If you filled a store with equal quantities of each laptop and they were all free, opened the doors and told the customers to pick only one each, which ones would run out first? I'm pretty sure the Apple section would be the first one to be raided. And that's what people truly want.

 

[bruinsrme]

Yes, for tax and currency fluctuation reasons both Japanese and German manufacturers have opened factories in both the US and Mexico. If you think there's no difference between a Mexican Volkswagen and a German one, check out what the drivers say...

no argument there

 

[AidenShaw]

And if there's something even worse than the regular x86 Windows, that's Windows x64. Awful. Totally awful.

Lauren's new system has Vista 64-bit.

Please tell us what's wrong with Vista 64-bit - because those of us who use it extensively haven't noticed.

 

[NoSmokingBandit]

I'm not cool enough to own a BMW, but I got a Chevy for under $20K.

This point doesnt work in apple's favor at all.
That doesnt make the chevy a wrothless piece of **** like people are likening Hp/Dell/Acer/etc computers to in this thread, it just means that you can get something that does the same thing (gets you to work and back) but you are paying less because you dont get all the bells and whistles.
This argument also doesnt make sense because apple offers you only a few basic hardware setups, whereas a computer built for windows has thousands of different configurations. People like choice because they can get exactly what they want at a good price. What if i want a mac with a 17" screen (for large spreadsheets) but i only need a cpu that runs at 2.0ghz (once again... spreadsheets) and i dont care about the backlit keyboard. I have to pay for a 2.66ghz cpu and the jeyboard light whether i want it or not just to get the 17" screen. CHOICE is what microsoft is stressing, which is something Stevie-boy doesnt like.

 

[Anuba]

Yeah that Photoshop thing is rough. They really need to do a 64-bit version for OS X. I know a lot of people severely pissed about that.

Maybe in CS5. They're on an 18-month cycle so there's, what, about a year left?

And Cubase is still crap on OS X? Wow, it's been that way for ages. There's no excuse for that, if they intend upon supporting both platforms.

Yep. Then again Cubase was always like that on all platforms (I've used it since 1989 when I had an Atari). I had a go with Logic 8 but that was even worse (it was the initial release, admittedly). All I needed it for was to take some screendumps of graphical elements so I just loaded one of the included demo songs, and it crashed no less than three times in just the few minutes I was taking the screenshots! Seriously... what?

I love Reason!! such an awesome app. I've been using it since 2.0.

Same here (I love it, that is). Been using it since 1.0, and its predecessor (sort of) ReBirth since 1996. Still runs on Vista. They never made an OS X version, unfortunately.

 

[EmperorDarius]

Lauren's new system has Vista 64-bit.

Please tell us what's wrong with Vista 64-bit - because those of us who use it extensively haven't noticed.

Like, the awfulness of the x86 version + software compatibility + less hardware compatibility + less features in the programs that work (especially security programs) + a lot of more problems with drivers in general?

 

[Anuba]

Yes, but still the OS X version will be more stable.

Again with your "stable" mantra. As if hundreds of thousands of designers who use Photoshop on Windows in their profession would put up with stability problems if there was better stability to be found elsewhere? I'm one of them and I've used Photoshop on PC since the 90's (version 3.0, I believe) and I have never, ever had anything that amounts to "stability issues". Some bugs, yes, Adobe's QC is dodgy, but those bugs were on the Mac version too.

The only, I repeat the only serious problem I've had with Photoshop on any platform, in the thousands upon thousands of hours I've been using it over the years, was in Leopard 10.5.3 where Photoshop CS3 would corrupt files if you saved them to a network share rather than a local disk (link).

 

[tbrinkma]

Again with your "stable" mantra. As if hundreds of thousands of designers who use Photoshop on Windows in their profession would put up with stability problems if there was better stability to be found elsewhere?

Why not? I'm a developer and I'm forced to put up with the stability issues inherent in using Windows (and various other Microsoft products). Are designers somehow so special that their bosses don't get to choose the hardware they work on?

 

[Eidorian]

Like, the awfulness of the x86 version + software compatibility + less hardware compatibility + less features in the programs that work (especially security programs) + a lot of more problems with drivers in general?

What awfulness again?

I've been running 64-bit Vista for ages now. DDR2 RAM is insanely cheap. Why stop at 4 GB of it?

 

[Anuba]

Why not? I'm a developer and I'm forced to put up with the stability issues inherent in using Windows (and various other Microsoft products). Are designers somehow so special that their bosses don't get to choose the hardware they work on?

Maybe there are bosses like that, I wouldn't know. Sounds more like a corporate thing and I've never worked at any company with more than 70 employees. I'm my own boss since 6 years, but prior to that I worked at two web design agencies, one e-learning company and one software company, and all of them let you choose freely between Mac and PC, and occasionally both (all the developers at the software company had one of each, but I was a lowly webmaster so I only got to pick one).

At the e-learning agency it was 50/50 PC/Mac. The coders (lingo, java, ASP etc) were all on PC except one, the graphic designers were all on Mac except one (me). At the first web agency everyone was on PC by choice, except the boss, and the second agency was a Mac-head place and only two of us used PC. It varies wildly from company to company.

 

[scott:mac]

Buy a PC today!!!

Macs?
Apple Macs??


iLife 09' ... iWork 09' ?? Simple yet efficiant.

Common but elegant?
Fast and magnificant?

Nahh

PCs?
Microsoft Windows?

Cheap yet ....yet..

hm
Common but....difficult?

Ah..

Like Work? Microsoft Office 2009 comes free with Vista
hm actually it doesnt.

CRASH...

Work lost

Send Error Report.

 

[AidenShaw]

Like, the awfulness of the x86 version

...I've agreed to disagree here.

software compatibility

You are right here. None of my 16-bit DOS 3.1 versions of programs will run on Win7 x64. I've had to upgrade to 32-bit versions.

How's Leopard with OS7 68k binaries these days?

less hardware compatibility

You are right again here. That 5 MB Parallel port SCSI external drive won't work in Windows 7 x64 either.

How's Leopard with parallel port devices? How about support for a PCI-X card in a Mac Pro?

less features in the programs that work (especially security programs)

Can you give more than a handful examples of this?

a lot of more problems with drivers in general?

Any hardware or software product has to run on both x86 and x64 in order to get the "works with Vista" logo from Microsoft on the box. It's not "a lot of trouble" to check for the logo to see if it is going to work.

No one can look at the brutal way that Apple and OSX drop support for legacy hardware, and complain about Windows legacy support.

Personally, the only x64 driver issue that's been an issue is that HP hasn't released x64 drivers for a six year old inkjet printer that I have.

One Sunday I noticed that 9 of the 11 laptops on sale at Best Buy had Vista x64 pre-installed. If x64 isn't already the majority of Windows systems sold, it won't be long....

Originally Posted by polaris20
Yeah that Photoshop thing is rough. They really need to do a 64-bit version for OS X. I know a lot of people severely pissed about that.

Maybe in CS5. They're on an 18-month cycle so there's, what, about a year left?

Well, first 10.6 needs to ship so that Apple has a true 64-bit system with a 64-bit kernel.

...and won't that be interesting for the OSX driver writers!

 

[Akira1980]

http://i.gizmodo.com/5190861/we-found-microsofts-lauren-and-shes-an-actress

Confirmed, she is paid actress.

 

[polaris20]

Like, the awfulness of the x86 version + software compatibility + less hardware compatibility + less features in the programs that work (especially security programs) + a lot of more problems with drivers in general?

I'm trying to put this delicately, but you've got no idea what you're talking about. Vista and 7 should only be ran in 64-bit; it is where they are most stable, and perform the best. We have yet to have a driver issue even with 7, which is obviously still beta (used nVidia's Server 2008 drivers initially). That's on several computers. How many have you tested it on?

 

[badstarr]

Let's just step back and look at this a little objectively... it's a Microsoft ad so... surprise surprise... she didnt buy a Mac! It's a not particularly clever slight of hand; make an ad that looks like Jane Public is going to buy a computer and "objectively" bases her choice of purchase on the suitability of the machine for her needs, the law of averages would suggest that if you pick a cross section of the public eventually one would choose to buy a Mac. I would put good money on Microsoft never funding an ad that would show this scenario taking place!

 

[fleshman03]

1) I've held off on posting or reading this thred. To be honest, I think you all are giving M$ too much attention. Besides, do Mac events even get 2,700+ posts?

2) The girl is kinda cute. Has a whole darkside, M$ thing going on.

3)

Link

 

[Anuba]

http://i.gizmodo.com/5190861/we-found-microsofts-lauren-and-shes-an-actress

Confirmed, she is paid actress.

Do you read the actual articles or just the headlines?

The Gizmodo story just confirms what other articles have already said: She had no clue it was an acting job, as the ad she responded to on Craigslist was about market research (the ad agency CP+B posed as market research consultants). Then they sent out a bunch of people (including Lauren) with camera teams. She had no clue it would end up being an acting job of sorts, and one giving her massive exposure at that. She hit the jackpot.

In other words, not "Hey, let's hire an actress and stage a computer purchase", but "wow, turns out one of the people we sent out to buy computers was an aspiring actress".

3)

They had it coming...

 

[Akira1980]

Do you read the actual articles or just the headlines?

The Gizmodo story just confirms what other articles have already said: She had no clue it was an acting job, as the ad she responded to on Craigslist was about market research (the ad agency CP+B posed as market research consultants). Then they sent out a bunch of people (including Lauren) with camera teams. She had no clue it would end up being an acting job of sorts, and one giving her massive exposure at that. She hit the jackpot.

In other words, not "Hey, let's hire an actress and stage a computer purchase", but "wow, turns out one of the people we sent out to buy computers was an aspiring actress".

Yes I did read it, and maybe you missed the part where it said "She is SAG (Screen Actors Guild) eligible actress." Which means she will get paid big bucks from nationally televised ad. So she had to know since they would have to sign various contracts beforehand.

 

[APPLENEWBIE]

Whining. Self-indulgence. Blather. Drivel.

And those are the good things I have to say about this thread.

Please kill this thread... oh, please...

 

[Anuba]

Yes I did read it, and maybe you missed the part where it said "She is SAG-eligible actress." Which means she will get paid big bucks from nationally televised ad. So she had to know.

Yes, but in determining whether the chicken or the egg came first, I think it's pretty clear from this part...

"[she] booked what she thought was a "Market and Research" job regarding laptops. But that's not all she booked...actually Lauren found out they were shooting a national commercial! Tears, laughter and excitement greeted this new development."

...which is consistent with this...

To shoot the ads, Microsoft's agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, recruited unwitting subjects by posing as a market research firm studying laptop purchasing decisions.

It picked 10 people who answered a call for volunteers on Craigslist and other websites and sent them out with a camera crew and budgets ranging from $US700 to $US2000. If they found a computer that fit their criteria, they could keep it.

...that she didn't initially respond to the ad thinking there was any acting or exposure involved, but instead she hit the jackpot.

Not that I would raise an eyebrow had they gone out and just hired an actress right from the start, hey it's a commercial, I'm surprised there was actually a grain of reality in it, which is more than I can say about Apple's "Switch" commercial with Ellen Feiss, where they just grabbed some non-Mac using chick from the street and asked her to lie for 30 seconds.

If the other 9 people they used turn out to be SAG-eligible actors and actresses, though, we'll smell a rat for sure.

 

[phillipduran]

Are the 600 diapers for all the crap you have to put up with in Vista?

Might want to double that amount

 

[NoSmokingBandit]

HOLD.
THE.
****ING.
PHONE.


THERE WAS AN ACTRESS IN A COMMERCIAL!!!!
I've never heard of this before.... This changes everything... Am i an actor? Does God exists? Are puppies even cute any more? IM SO CONFUSED!!! DAMN YOU MICROSOFT!!

 

[Akira1980]

Anuba,

Maybe you are right, but I find the way they did the research little biased.

The recruits were told they could keep whatever money they didn’t spend on a PC so they had incentives to look for good values.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2009/03/26/pc-to-mac-im-cheaper/


Even I would have bought the netbook and kept $600 for my self. But it doesn't mean netbook are better than macbook.

 

[badstarr]

Ok if it was done in the guise of 'Marketing Research' where is the footage of the ones that chose to go for a Mac? I would hazard a guess at least one of the unwitting respondents would have had a hankering for one!