New Microsoft Ad Campaign Targets Mac Prices

[plina]

Update For Macbook

I love this in fighting. I need to buy a laptop for my son and he's torn betwween the Macbook or XPS or Studio 13 from Dell.
My question is when will apple update the Macbook? you can get a much better configured Dell for less money than the Macbook.
Any ideas? I'm planning to buy in the next couple of months and I want to give an equal chance between the two.

 

[yossim]

What a brilliant ad!

Microsoft and HP reinforce that "MACS ARE COOL". This completely undermines the "I'm a PC" ad campaign/strategy. Absolutely fantastic!
Who is writing your ads Gonzo! Who OK’d this ad Steve Ballmer!
No matter what they come out with MS is constantly reinforcing that the Windows Vista/XP platform is inferior. MS can't get a grip on their marketing strategy at all!

Any great sales person knows that if you don’t get the message across inside 30 seconds or less you are done for! Any great Ad delivers that message in that time, however this ad delivered the opposite of the desired.

Inside the 30 second threshold, 25 SECONDS in and Lauren declares "I'm just not cool enough to be a Mac person"
Lauren you got that bit so right honey, and thanks for being in a Mac ad!

What do most people do when they get to the adverts on telly, yep you got it genius they make a cup of tea. That means that the chances are that most viewers got the Apple logo and anyone coming back from switching the kettle on got Lauren declaring that she is just not cool enough to be a Mac person.

Now there is a significant chance that a lot of viewers are channel hopping or are now closed to the rest of the ad.

My 3 year old would’ve come up with a better ad!

Me, I sat through the add thinking Lauren you total knuckle head, I’m skint but I’d still have gone for the 13.3 inch Mac Book BECAUSE CHEAP IS A FALSE ECONOMY, and that doesn't change even in an economic downturn.

Steve J, for the love of god please don't kill yourself from laughing, I'm hoping youre back in time for WWDC 09!

Damn I can hear Vincent Price laughing as well.

Thank you for posting this. I never thought of it that way!

 

[NT1440]

I love this in fighting. I need to buy a laptop for my son and he's torn betwween the Macbook or XPS or Studio 13 from Dell.
My question is when will apple update the Macbook? you can get a much better configured Dell for less money than the Macbook.
Any ideas? I'm planning to buy in the next couple of months and I want to give an equal chance between the two.

Possibly a small spec bump as a talking point at WWDC, maybe a small price drop as that tends to happen with apple.

 

[yossim]

I love this in fighting. I need to buy a laptop for my son and he's torn betwween the Macbook or XPS or Studio 13 from Dell.
My question is when will apple update the Macbook? you can get a much better configured Dell for less money than the Macbook.
Any ideas? I'm planning to buy in the next couple of months and I want to give an equal chance between the two.

I'd definitely go for mac...
You probably know that already. just read the whole thread. that might help.

 

[Anuba]

For whoever it was that told me $130 copies of osx are only upgrades to an existsing license, you are wrong. An update wouldnt allow me to install cleanly on a new system because its not updating, its a full license. OS X costs $130, their hardware costs a **** ton more for no good reason.

What he meant was probably that it's an upgrade in that the price of the upgrade is subsidized by the OS already installed on your Mac. Since you can't buy a Mac without OS X, and since it's being argued that the cost of OS X is one of the main reasons for the "Mac tax" (see hh:s posts and his 20:1 theory), there is no such thing as a "full license" to purchase, only upgrades, even though these upgrades technically allow a clean install (so do Vista upgrades; they require a previous installation but they can wipe that one out and reformat if you want).

 

[KnightWRX]

The Start button is worse than the Apple menu at the top? And the "terminal" (aka command prompt) is just Start > Run > cmd, or make a shortcut to it if you actually use it that much. And I don't touch IE with a 10-foot pole. Firefox all the way. Windows lets you do stuff like make a quick launch bar on the side of the display where you can put about 40 icons for the stuff you use most. I don't use it at home, but it's super handy for work.

Mac OS X let's you put the dock elsewhere than on the bottom too, moot point.

And are you really comparing cmd.exe to Terminal.app ? Seriously ? cmd.exe is awful. First, it's not a terminal emulator, it's a shell. Terminal can emulate VT100, ansi, xterm-color and other terminal types perfectly, making it perfect to connect to other systems either through console cables or remote TTYs.

Second, cmd.exe fails so hard as a shell itself. Autocomplete, though it exists and has existed since Windows NT 4.0 is disabled by default. It requires a registry modification to be enabled and even then, it is very close to being unusable.

Also, cmd.exe has awful scripting capabilities, basically offering nothing better than what DOS did back in the days. This makes advanced manipulations like conditionnal execution almost painful to use automatically (Unix && or || execution). Also, pipes are emulated, ie, the shells understand that when you |more, you mean you want a pager style interface, it's not really piping anything to more.exe.

Basically, if you're trying to tell us cmd.exe is anywhere near a usable terminal, you're as bad as the Apple fanboys you're trying to denounce.

 

[VoR]

Basically, if you're trying to tell us cmd.exe is anywhere near a usable terminal, you're as bad as the Apple fanboys you're trying to denounce.

You didn't read his post very well, or the one he was replying to

 

[KnightWRX]

You didn't read his post very well, or the one he was replying to

I'm pretty sure I did. The guy he was replying to asked where you find the terminal. cmd.exe is an awful excuse for a Terminal.app + bash combo. Like I said, trying to claim it's even close to being a replacement is fanboyism on the Windows side.

The proper answer is : Download a 3rd party terminal app, there are many since Windows is ubiquitous and about everything and anything has been programmed for it.

 

[Bye Bye Baby]

Hey if it leads to lower prices- why complain?

 

[KnightWRX]

Hey if it leads to lower prices- why complain?

It won't. Why would Apple lower their prices if the ad isn't even comparing the machine with others in its segment, just comparing them on a "17" laptop" basis, which is total BS.

The only thing that will lower Apple prices is a drop in their sales.

 

[AidenShaw]

boy, did you miss the point....

What a brilliant ad!

Microsoft and HP reinforce that "MACS ARE COOL". This completely undermines the "I'm a PC" ad campaign/strategy.

Lauren doesn't like the Mac image, the "cool" comment was sarcastic.

Take this comment from Engadget

Microsoft's latest ad -- a companion-piece to its new "Laptop Hunters" website -- stars "real person" Lauren. Lauren's a little funky, a little folksy, and 100 percent real.

She doesn't have an agenda to push, she's just out in the world, living in "reality" searching for a sweet laptop that's under $1,000. She admits to herself she's "not cool" enough for a Mac (though cool enough for a Volkswagen) and gets on with her life.

She's a real American -- with an unpretentious, pragmatic life. The ad rather smartly puts the focus on our current economic climate, while expertly reinforcing that age old Apple-user-as-dick stereotype, pejoratively wielding the word "cool" as an underhanded insult -- odd, since the Microsoft portal it wants you to visit helps "socialites" pick a laptop.

All in all? It's kind of a brilliantly mean piece of work -- check it out after the break.

http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/27/microsofts-new-ad-shows-how-people-shop-for-computers-in-the-re/

It's a little bit surprising that many people here didn't pick up on the barb....

(copied and edited from an earlier entry that's too far back for people to read)

 

[Double J]

I'm pretty sure I did. The guy he was replying to asked where you find the terminal. cmd.exe is an awful excuse for a Terminal.app + bash combo. Like I said, trying to claim it's even close to being a replacement is fanboyism on the Windows side.

The proper answer is : Download a 3rd party terminal app, there are many since Windows is ubiquitous and about everything and anything has been programmed for it.

I never made that claim. I just said it exists, because I thought the first guy didn't know where the command prompt was in Windows, since he said "how do you find" and not "what's the equivalent to." But keep exploding about it, fanboy

 

[Anuba]

I love this in fighting. I need to buy a laptop for my son and he's torn betwween the Macbook or XPS or Studio 13 from Dell.
My question is when will apple update the Macbook? you can get a much better configured Dell for less money than the Macbook.
Any ideas? I'm planning to buy in the next couple of months and I want to give an equal chance between the two.

They usually bump up the speed a little once every few months, and once every couple of years they shift to a new Intel platform. Intel's next line of processors isn't due until late 2009 or early 2010, though, and they'll probably put those in the MacBook Pro first and the MacBook some time later.

As you've noticed, your son will get more bang for buck with the Studio 13 as far as the hardware goes. On the other hand he will be able to run both OS X and Windows on the MacBook, so he'd be getting two computers in one (the copy of Windows is extra, though).

Depending on what he likes to do, he may get more fun out of the box with the MacBook, or he may not -- you get iLife which is nice for editing home videos or tinkering with a digital photo gallery. But if he's into gaming he'll get more oomph out of the XPS.

You might also wanna look at the service and support end of things. Apple's phone support is better than Dell's, plus you can go to a Genius bar at the nearest Apple Store and get help there. On the other hand Dell does home repairs on laptops, while Apple doesn't.

 

[VoR]

I'm pretty sure I did. The guy he was replying to asked where you find the terminal. cmd.exe is an awful excuse for a Terminal.app + bash combo. Like I said, trying to claim it's even close to being a replacement is fanboyism on the Windows side.

The proper answer is : Download a 3rd party terminal app, there are many since Windows is ubiquitous and about everything and anything has been programmed for it.

I don't think he was trying to claim that, just pointing out where it was.

I don't know where your description of a terminal came from or who your answering, but I think everyone that needs to, already knows

To make this post slightly less pointless, I'd like to ask how modifying the registry will change the autocomplete behaviour in command prompt?

 

[KnightWRX]

I never made that claim. I just said it exists, because I thought the first guy didn't know where the command prompt was in Windows, since he said "how do you find" and not "what's the equivalent to." But keep exploding about it, fanboy

And my point just went "WOOOOOSH" over your head. I'll make it simpler : cmd.exe is not a terminal, not a functionnal one at least.

I'm not exploding, I was trying to educate you so that you wouldn't just state things out of fanboyism, fanboy.

 

[KnightWRX]

To make this post slightly less pointless, I'd like to ask how modifying the registry will change the autocomplete behaviour in command prompt?

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Command Processor]
“CompletionChar”=dword:00000009
“PathCompletionChar”=dword:00000009

This will enable tab autocomplete. However, it has a bad habit of not completing to the proper thing or screwing up your entire command line when it does.

Of course, that was back in NT 4.0. I don't know if Microsoft ever tried to make it better since they never made it the default and things like MKS and Cygwin do a much better job of giving Windows a usable terminal and command line.

 

[Double J]

And my point just went "WOOOOOSH" over your head. I'll make it simpler : cmd.exe is not a terminal, not a functionnal one at least.

I'm not exploding, I was trying to educate you so that you wouldn't just state things out of fanboyism, fanboy.

Dude, read.

 

[Anuba]

Lauren doesn't like the Mac image, the "cool" comment was sarcastic.

Take this comment from Engadget

"She's a real American -- with an unpretentious, pragmatic life. The ad rather smartly puts the focus on our current economic climate, while expertly reinforcing that age old Apple-user-as-dick stereotype, pejoratively wielding the word "cool" as an underhanded insult"

Right, and pair it with the banner ad about being able to afford 600 diapers if you pick a Toshiba over a MacBook and it's abundantly clear they're going for the McCain/Palin/GOP angle here: "It's you the little penny-pinching guys in small town America vs the smug liberal elite in the Big Apple." It's a guilt-by-association game designed to make Apple look out of touch in their aluminium tower.

 

[-hh]

I don't think anyone is asking them to pump out 30 different models, but the lineup is being thinned out and streamlined as we go along.

There's probably been close to 30 permutations, with the xMac, iNetbook and Core i7 being the most recent (and loud) examples.

10 years ago Apple had many more BTO options, they had tons of different screens (both CRT and LCD), some models like the original iMac came in all colors of the rainbow, the desktop machines (turqoise G3 / graphite G4) were not way up in the pro segment but halfway between that and a consumer desktop. There were clamshell laptops and black laptops and whatnot, and the eMac on top of that. This was at a time when Apple was an underdog, and ...

...and was so confusing to the consumer ... and cannibalizing ... that Apple nearly went under.

Today, once the white MB has been discontinued, not only will the sub-$1000 machines be history but the color options are down to those of a DeLorean: None. Aluminium across the board.

You're referring to that White MacBook that was just updated two months ago?

Glossy screens across the board unless you buy a 17" and pay extra to have something removed.

There's also an aftermarket film; try Google.

All this corner-cutting and streamlining can only have resulted in considerable cost savings on the hardware side.

From a business perspective of risk management in a serious economic downturn, it would appear that they've clearly "Battened Down The Hatches" to make sure that they'll survive.

Leaving aside my personal opinion that they are driven by a unique brand of übergreed...

Unfortunately, it is impossible for you to be objective (IMO), so long as you're continuing to use such derogatory language.

... and just looking at it from your perspective, i.e. the "black box" idea where you take the cost of software and OS development into account, is there in your opinion less or more room for price slashing today than there was 10 years ago? Or in other words, are those who choose to buy Macs today getting less or more bang for buck than in 2005, 2002, 1999...?

Tnds. From the business perspective of minimizing manufacturing costs to weather an economic downturn of unknown magnitude and duration, it would appear that there's very little risk of Apple disappearing over the next 7-10 years. Perhaps you'll recall how that marketplace uncertainty really hurt Apple in the past (late 1990s).

As such, it then comes down to how you want to incorporate and weigh this risk management factor in your own local IT plan. In other words, how much is "the company's not going to go bankrupt" worth to you when planning your degree of reliance on their product?

FWIW, this is the same type of business uncertainty factor that's utterly killing Saab & Saturn sales in the USA right now.



-hh

 

[KnightWRX]

Dude, read.

Follow your own advice :

what about the terminal? where do you find that?

Yes Double J, where do you find the terminal ?

And the "terminal" (aka command prompt) is just Start > Run > cmd, or make a shortcut to it if you actually use it that much.

But wait, cmd.exe is not a terminal! It does not emulate VT100, ANSI or even support any kind of terminal emulation. That's Hyperterm's job. However, Hyperterm doesn't have a shell or command processor, that's what CMD.exe is trying to be !

Hence :

cmd.exe is an awful excuse for a Terminal.app + bash combo. Like I said, trying to claim it's even close to being a replacement is fanboyism on the Windows side.

You basically never answered his question, instead you just said "Hey, Windows is super great, it has a terminal too!".

 

[AidenShaw]

And are you really comparing cmd.exe to Terminal.app ? Seriously ? cmd.exe is awful. First, it's not a terminal emulator, it's a shell. Terminal can emulate VT100, ansi, xterm-color and other terminal types perfectly, making it perfect to connect to other systems either through console cables or remote TTYs.

Yes, it's a shell. That's what it's meant to be. If you want a terminal app, try Putty.

Second, cmd.exe fails so hard as a shell itself. Autocomplete, though it exists and has existed since Windows NT 4.0 is disabled by default. It requires a registry modification to be enabled and even then, it is very close to being unusable.

It is enabled by default, although in ancient versions it did take a simple registry setting.

I fail to see why it's "unusable", though. I use it all the time, and it does perform its function very well.

Also, cmd.exe has awful scripting capabilities, basically offering nothing better than what DOS did back in the days. This makes advanced manipulations like conditionnal execution almost painful to use automatically (Unix && or || execution).

Actually, the NT shell is far more than the DOS cmd shell. Find a book like "Windows NT Shell Scripting", or look online at places like http://www.jpsdomain.org/windows/winshell.html for some useful examples.

There's also the Windows Scripting Host, supporting VBscript and other higher level scripting languages.

If you are really doing scripting though, look at PowerShell, which is part of Vista/Win7/2008 and available for XP. It's a modern, fully object-oriented shell that will blow any other scripting language away. (Type "powershell" at the cmd prompt to change shells.)

Anyone who complains that cmd.exe isn't a good shell is ignoring the fact that it's simply the wrong tool for complex scripts.

Also, pipes are emulated, ie, the shells understand that when you |more, you mean you want a pager style interface, it's not really piping anything to more.exe..

Wrong - pipes are real, and any application can use them without special "pager" interfaces.

"more.com" (there's no "more.exe") is an application that pages, usually text read from a real pipe.
_____________________

Perhaps some of your claims were correct in DOS or Win95, but they aren't true for Vista.

 

[-hh]

What he meant was probably that it's an upgrade in that the price of the upgrade is subsidized by the OS already installed on your Mac.

Correct.

FWIW, I would suspect that if Apple loses the Pystar (sic) lawsuit, the language that they print on their OS X boxes will change overnight.

Since you can't buy a Mac without OS X, and since it's being argued that the cost of OS X is one of the main reasons for the "Mac tax" (see hh:s posts and his 20:1 theory), there is no such thing as a "full license" to purchase, only upgrades, even though these upgrades technically allow a clean install (so do Vista upgrades; they require a previous installation but they can wipe that one out and reformat if you want).

The lack of a check for a prior license is merely a convenience for Mac customers, since no Mac has ever been sold without an OS license.

And with the Mac's worldwide marketshare being <5%, there most certainly are roughly 20 Windows licenses to every one Mac, which means (ignoring piracy) roughly 20x more units sold for Microsoft to amortize their fixed cost of OS development across versus Apple. This is Undergraduate "Economics 102" level of stuff...anyone who doesn't understand it should go Wiki Fixed & Variable Manufacturing Costs.


-hh

 

[DMann]

Any great sales person knows that if you don’t get the message across inside 30 seconds or less you are done for! Any great Ad delivers that message in that time, however this ad delivered the opposite of the desired.

This falls right in line with the brilliantly elusive Seinfeld/Gates chronicles.

Inside the 30 second threshold, 25 SECONDS in and Lauren declares "I'm just not cool enough to be a Mac person" Lauren you got that bit so right honey, and thanks for being in a Mac ad!

Her lack of "tongue in cheek" execution of the script made her alleged attempt at sarcasm unclear. Those who have the leisure to analyze the ad may actually deduce an interpretation of sarcasm there, but most likely will not.

What do most people do when they get to the adverts on telly, yep you got it genius they make a cup of tea. That means that the chances are that most viewers got the Apple logo and anyone coming back from switching the kettle on got Lauren declaring that she is just not cool enough to be a Mac person.

Now there is a significant chance that a lot of viewers are channel hopping or are now closed to the rest of the ad.

My 3 year old would’ve come up with a better ad!

Me, I sat through the add thinking Lauren you total knuckle head, I’m skint but I’d still have gone for the 13.3 inch Mac Book BECAUSE CHEAP IS A FALSE ECONOMY, and that doesn't change even in an economic downturn.

Steve J, for the love of god please don't kill yourself from laughing, I'm hoping youre back in time for WWDC 09!

Damn I can hear Vincent Price laughing as well.

Once again, another feeble attempt for MS at advertising, and another unintentional boost in brand awareness for Apple. Interesting how Ballmer made his remarks about the Apple Brand Logo days before the ad was released. He certainly does seem to have a knack for marketing.

 

[Double J]

Follow your own advice :



Yes Double J, where do you find the terminal ?



But wait, cmd.exe is not a terminal! It does not emulate VT100, ANSI or even support any kind of terminal emulation. That's Hyperterm's job. However, Hyperterm doesn't have a shell or command processor, that's what CMD.exe is trying to be !

Hence :



You basically never answered his question, instead you just said "Hey, Windows is super great, it has a terminal too!".

Oh my, forgive me KnightWRX -- please continue to educate us all in the wise and learned ways of the great Macolyte. We eagerly await all the wondrous knowledge that can only come from one so enlightened. Please forgive any transgression I may have made against thee. I humbly accept any penance you deem appropriate. Though it may have appeared that way, I was not trying to equate the obviously far superior Terminal App to the lowly Windows shell.

I JUST FRIGGING DIDN'T THINK HE KNEW WHERE THE FRIGGING COMMAND PROMPT WAS!!!!

 

[KnightWRX]

It is enabled by default, although in ancient versions it did take a simple registry setting.

I fail to see why it's "unusable", though. I use it all the time, and it does perform its function very well.

Last time I used it was back in Windows XP and it would still screw up the command line with spaces in the wrong places or simply complete to the wrong thing.

Actually, the NT shell is far more than the DOS cmd shell. Find a book like "Windows NT Shell Scripting", or look online at places like http://www.jpsdomain.org/windows/winshell.html for some useful examples.

And again, I'm not talking about scripting, I'm talking about simple command line commands that can use the Shell's built-in functions.

Basically, stupid exemple, but if you want to display the date repeatedly as it increments, in any Unix bourne shell you just type something like :

$ while [ true ]; do date; sleep 1; done

Or if you want to execute 2 commands, but only execute the second one if the first one failed, you can do so :

$ grep -v "^#" file.config | grep "setting=value" || echo "setting
=value" >> file.config

All these things are what make the command line functionnal. All of it is missing from cmd.exe. Sure Windows Scripting Host fixes a few of these, but the fact that it is unintegrated into the actual shell makes it unsuable for simple day to day tasks of administrating a system. Hyperterm + WSH + cmd are all basically rolled into one under any Unix system and that is what makes it so powerful and useful.

Vista doesn't fix this.