Maybe Microsoft should have concentrated on how wonderful (in their minds only) Windows is; instead of cheap shots directed at Apple.
I get jokes. Cheap shots. Good one.
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New Microsoft Ad Campaign Targets Mac Prices
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I get jokes. Cheap shots. Good one.
Oh, poor Apple: victimized by cheap shots from big bully Microsoft! Because they've always been so nice and polite through their ad campaigns.
/sarcasm
Well, I am just cool enough to be a Mac person. 
Is that what MS considers good marketing? Strongly linking Windows to the bargain basement PC market? LOL! My god, Microsoft marketing strikes out again. Who writes this stuff anyway? If it was intentional satire, it would be brilliant.
Is that what MS considers good marketing? Strongly linking Windows to the bargain basement PC market? LOL! My god, Microsoft marketing strikes out again. Who writes this stuff anyway? If it was intentional satire, it would be brilliant.
Actually, Leopard cost billions of dollars. The lease of Leopard cost ~129+Tax.
Sorry to hear you had such a lousy experience, but statistically speaking, your experience is extremely uncommon. Look up some statistics for hardware failure for Macs and the rest of the PC market. Sometimes Consumer Reports runs them but there are other sources. The difference is striking, especially when it comes to critical failures that render the machine unusable. I work in an environment of Macs and PCs (mostly Dells) and in the last three years, we've had no hardware failures on the Macs but dozens of hardware issues with the Dells.
It says "Windows - Life without walls". That's what this long-running campaign is called. It was up there loud and clear (this is for TV, not for tiny YouTube peepholes).
They already said from the beginning that these aren't product ads, they're profile ads (hence no mention of Windows 7, Vista, Mobile or any specific product) that are supposed to show how Windows has become part of the fabric of daily life, to the point where we no longer think about it. They want to establish a brand status of Coca-Cola proportions. Obviously, then, it would defeat the purpose of the ad if the people in it were running around repeating "Windows" like a mantra. And true to the format, she doesn't think or talk about Windows, she buys a computer and takes Windows for granted.
If you judge it on the merits of how well it managed to sell this or that HP laptop to you, the ad flew way over your head, which is either a failure on the part of the ad, or...
Here is my story...and I am 'a Mac'...
I made the religious conversion to Apple in 2008 after years of Windows 95 this, XP that and hasta la 'Vista', baby. My decision was based on the general feeling that Apple made a better hardware and OS product and, with Fusion, I could run my 3 remaining PC-only apps. It was worth the $1000 premium I paid for a comparable PC.
I began having hardware issues within 3 months of taking ownership of the 17" MBP. Apple had to replace the logic board and the hard drive.
I began to have video issues after the logic board was replaced. Apple had to replace the logic board...again.
I had to replace my 30" cinema display....twice.
I've had problems with my battery and power supply that required replacement of those as well.
I am tired of hearing the Apple Fanboys rant about PCs. My experience is mind boggling given the hype Apple spins about its platform. Now, to be fair, the one constant in all of this was OS X. A great OS..but please, Fanboys, cut the crap about Apple hardware. From my perspective, it is as weak as a Sony Vaio or HP laptop.
Oh...and thank god I had the extended warranty or I would have been out a few thousand bucks replacing my system. Fanboys. stop drinking the cool aid.
My rule is that you get what you pay for. A $500 computer doesn't do what a $1000 computer does/can do. I also agree that sometimes you get a lemon in even the greatest items (constant little things with my BMW come to mind). But at some point you should have been given an entirely new computer with that many issues over the same thing.
The untold story...
What they didn't tell you in the ad: Shortly after purchasing her laptop, Lauren sold her brand new hp on eBay for near market value and immediately took the cash back to her local Apple Store to put toward the purchase of the clearly cooler and superior 17" Macbook Pro ... and Lauren lived happily ever after ...
What they didn't tell you in the ad: Shortly after purchasing her laptop, Lauren sold her brand new hp on eBay for near market value and immediately took the cash back to her local Apple Store to put toward the purchase of the clearly cooler and superior 17" Macbook Pro ... and Lauren lived happily ever after ...
Still missing the point
A $1000 is probably all they could afford after giving all that cash to Seinfeld.
On a more serious note people who can only afford $1000 for a computer are not really the market to go after. At best they will only replace their computer every 5 years and already have a good enough PC.
Microsoft consistent misses the point that aiming at the lowest end of the market is not really going to win. They need to aim at people who will drop 2-3k on a top of the range computer and do so every 2 years.
However those people tend to buy Macs.
A $1000 is probably all they could afford after giving all that cash to Seinfeld.
On a more serious note people who can only afford $1000 for a computer are not really the market to go after. At best they will only replace their computer every 5 years and already have a good enough PC.
Microsoft consistent misses the point that aiming at the lowest end of the market is not really going to win. They need to aim at people who will drop 2-3k on a top of the range computer and do so every 2 years.
However those people tend to buy Macs.
It's VERY funny! Instead of advertising Windows (those attempts failed) Microsoft comes out with a campaign for the PC manufacturers to help them not look so bad for having shipped Vista machines. But it backfires, like all their recent attempts. Message to the public: "You're a cheap schmuck for buying a PC. No wait, um, well, maybe not a TOTAL schmuck..."
Wow, this thread is really growing. Microsoft's ad is a huge success after all. This shows that Microsoft has a point: not even Apple consumers are 100% comfortable with the high prices charged by Apple and they find the need to justify their purchases in this forum. If the Mac superiority was so evident, there would be no room for so much discussion. Nobody keeps discussing so much whether a Rolls-Royce, a Ferrari or a Rolex have to be so expensive. They just have a high price tag and people are OK with that. This does not happen with Apple products.
only reason i don't buy a pc is i don't want to run windows... but then, there's always linux. i think this ad is fair - apple is overpriced. i love apple and own a 17" mbp and am happy with it, mostly, but i felt very poor for quite a while after i bought it. and although vista totally sucks, leopard has not been without issues. i cannot run some of my audio software and hardware on leopard - and it is 18months since leopard was released. pretty poor in my opinion. apple needs to deliver better products and updates if it keeps selling overpriced units.
sub $2000 macbook 17"
I hate giving away my secrets... but http://store.apple.com/us/product/FB512LL/A?mco=MjE0NjE5MA
And she said she'd need to double her ($1000) budget to buy a 17" MBP. Where did she find such an awesome discount?
I hate giving away my secrets... but http://store.apple.com/us/product/FB512LL/A?mco=MjE0NjE5MA
Well, they're not selling the computers, they're selling the OS and a lot of the popular software that goes onto it later. Whether the machine costs $500 or $50,000 is someone else's problem.
But again, this ad isn't selling anything. It's a brand awareness ad by crispin, porter + bogusky. Their style is, basically, random and deceptively mundane things with easter eggs embedded, and the reaction they like best is when people go "What the HELL was that?" and keep talking and thinking about it for weeks. They probably thought, "I bet this one will drive them bonkers. They'll go... so am I supposed to buy a HP now or what? What's going on? Argh!"
I agree this is hilarious! all the Apple consumers are here trying to justify paying the Apple tax just to run OS X on the very same hardware that is inside every single Windows based PC look, you Apple fan boys can spin this all you want at the end of the day Apple has imbedded a huge tax on every box they sell giving you the rights to run OS X on the very same hardware a Windows user probably paid half the price for.
It was inevitable that this argument would gain more steam once Apple changed over to using the same Intel processors used in a Windows box yet they continue to charge the Apple tax for using OS X
Its time for Apple to lower or drop the OS X tax plain and simple you really cant spin this any other way! there are 82 pages of post in this thread and this is the bottom line, how much are you willing to spend in order to run OS X ?
Here is a little something I put together that you guys might like!
The analogy is so true!Attachments
Thanks for pointing that out. That's what came into my mind *) when you told me this:
Sorry. We can't watch original US TV ads here in Europe. I just watched the clips provided here.
She should look for a better hair dresser... She should buy a better computer to be able making more money for the more expensive computer and a better hair dresser (and a fancier car).
Ack.
Ack. Indeed. They made my day
Really! More of this please!*) I've taken that out of a local automobile club magazine. Here you have the original. Take it and put something in the bubbles.
OSX was just the start
This is a good point. I originally switch to Mac 4 years ago so for OSX. I had used a combination of Windows and Linux and wanted a half way house. The funny thing is now on my MacBook Pro I run OSX and Linux/Windows on top of VMWare.
One thing I would say to your point is Apple has grown beyond just OSX. They are now pushing an eco system. iPhone, iPhone, iTunes, MobileMe and AppleTV. This is something I bet a lot of companies wish they had.
This is a good point. I originally switch to Mac 4 years ago so for OSX. I had used a combination of Windows and Linux and wanted a half way house. The funny thing is now on my MacBook Pro I run OSX and Linux/Windows on top of VMWare.
One thing I would say to your point is Apple has grown beyond just OSX. They are now pushing an eco system. iPhone, iPhone, iTunes, MobileMe and AppleTV. This is something I bet a lot of companies wish they had.
What do you say
It is true that people do not have the same spending power and also choose to spend their money on different things. Wishing will never change that.
It is true that people do not have the same spending power and also choose to spend their money on different things. Wishing will never change that.
About time...for MS to admit their true nature
Good for Microsoft. Maybe they are finally giving up trying to be like Apple and admitting and playing to their true strength: pile-o-specs slap-together machines for the least bucks.
Apple: "Our products are better!"
Microsoft: "Fine, but ours are dirt cheap! And prolific! Yet still superficially similar!"
I honestly think they will have more success this way in the end (though perhaps less self-respect). It's how they built their empire. The WalMart way.
IMO, Vista really went off the rails because they tried to make it all high-octane glossy feeling like OS X and alienated their bread-n-butter Homer Simpson / IT department customers in the process (not just aesthetically but in terms of hardware requirements and so on). Vista was useful in the sense that it proved you can't just slap on a glass look and some 3D effects and become Apple. If only the iPhone imitators would pay attention.
In any case, as much as I may love the Mac, turnabout is only fair play. Apple has been punching Microsoft in the gut for the last 2-3 years with their ads. I'm frankly surprised it took MS so long to hit back with something substantive.
Personally, after spending 5+ years of my life supporting Windows machines in a medium-size enterprise environment and learning the dirty little secrets about what makes them tick, I will not even consider a Windows PC for myself again until Microsoft:
a) overhauls or eliminates the Registry in favor of something more robust (giant, non-journaled, non-partitioned, non-rebuildable binary blobs of configuration goo that everything depends on! What a swell idea.)
b) gets rid of those clunky DOS-era drive letters (hello, and welcome to preschool; let's practice our alphabet!) and enters the world of modern unified filesystem trees
c) writes a decent, modern driver model that doesn't make you sit through laggy installation of new drivers for every unique flash drive you plug in, for each USB port (wtf?! You already HAVE drivers for USB mass storage devices loaded! What are you doing? Stomping around in that awful Registry swamp, no doubt, trying to figure out which end is up.)
d) straightens out the execution hook mess that gives malware something like 87 different places to put a "launch me at every boot up" flag. (OK, to be fair Vista prevents some of this with UAC, but the hooks are still there).
e) finally tells their Windows system component dev teams that they have more than 8 letters, and even different letter cases (gasp!), available to them for naming files. Anyone want a helping of MSVBVM60.DLL with a side of ESENT.DLL? (Some geek is surely patting themselves on the back for that one. "Look! I got it down to 5 LETTERS! WOOOO! I win the bet!" Maybe they should just combine that with the drive letter concept and distill C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 down to 26 files named A.DLL through Z.DLL.)
Yes, there's Linux. Been there. Tried that. Gave up after 3 days. Wanna do stuff WITH computer, not TO it.
Good for Microsoft. Maybe they are finally giving up trying to be like Apple and admitting and playing to their true strength: pile-o-specs slap-together machines for the least bucks.
Apple: "Our products are better!"
Microsoft: "Fine, but ours are dirt cheap! And prolific! Yet still superficially similar!"
I honestly think they will have more success this way in the end (though perhaps less self-respect). It's how they built their empire. The WalMart way.
IMO, Vista really went off the rails because they tried to make it all high-octane glossy feeling like OS X and alienated their bread-n-butter Homer Simpson / IT department customers in the process (not just aesthetically but in terms of hardware requirements and so on). Vista was useful in the sense that it proved you can't just slap on a glass look and some 3D effects and become Apple. If only the iPhone imitators would pay attention.
In any case, as much as I may love the Mac, turnabout is only fair play. Apple has been punching Microsoft in the gut for the last 2-3 years with their ads. I'm frankly surprised it took MS so long to hit back with something substantive.
Personally, after spending 5+ years of my life supporting Windows machines in a medium-size enterprise environment and learning the dirty little secrets about what makes them tick, I will not even consider a Windows PC for myself again until Microsoft:
a) overhauls or eliminates the Registry in favor of something more robust (giant, non-journaled, non-partitioned, non-rebuildable binary blobs of configuration goo that everything depends on! What a swell idea.)
b) gets rid of those clunky DOS-era drive letters (hello, and welcome to preschool; let's practice our alphabet!) and enters the world of modern unified filesystem trees
c) writes a decent, modern driver model that doesn't make you sit through laggy installation of new drivers for every unique flash drive you plug in, for each USB port (wtf?! You already HAVE drivers for USB mass storage devices loaded! What are you doing? Stomping around in that awful Registry swamp, no doubt, trying to figure out which end is up.)
d) straightens out the execution hook mess that gives malware something like 87 different places to put a "launch me at every boot up" flag. (OK, to be fair Vista prevents some of this with UAC, but the hooks are still there).
e) finally tells their Windows system component dev teams that they have more than 8 letters, and even different letter cases (gasp!), available to them for naming files. Anyone want a helping of MSVBVM60.DLL with a side of ESENT.DLL? (Some geek is surely patting themselves on the back for that one. "Look! I got it down to 5 LETTERS! WOOOO! I win the bet!" Maybe they should just combine that with the drive letter concept and distill C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32 down to 26 files named A.DLL through Z.DLL.)
Yes, there's Linux. Been there. Tried that. Gave up after 3 days. Wanna do stuff WITH computer, not TO it.
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