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Jobs did a great, mmm, job at revitalizing the Apple brand after it was vanishing in the early 90s. He understood that having a good OS is not enough (how many alternative OSes exist/have existed, and how many have been forgotten no matter how good they were), and that competing at the hardware level is very risky if not suicidal. He understood that the only way Apple could survive was by appealing customers by cool design and smart (if not foxy) marketing.
IMHO Ballmer is kinda right when he says Apple is nothing more than a $500 logo (and design, may I add). But indeed thru some magic Apple manages to sell that logo.
Now with this ad MS wants to show that PCs are cheaper. That's fine, but to add insult to injury they should also show that at the same price of a high-end Mac you can buy a PC that eats any Mac alive, and that does it with style also. That would be a real attack to the Apple userbase, 'cause any Mac user will always tell you that no matter the price, Macs will always be better "for music and for photoshop".
Throw them a machine that's so powerful that no matter how much Windows and all its crap slows it down, it can still outperform any Mac in anything. And don't forget to put it in a nice, stylish case of course. And then, maybe Apple will vanish from this world once and forever.
(I have Apple products for music, PCs for computing, netbook for travelling)
All those "I'm a Mac" ads that took swipes at PCs, and now that MSFT fires back with "you're too expensive and really not all that cool" ... And Mac fans are up in arms.
That (and even the assholes like zato) is music to MSFT and CPB's ears.
"This applies to fanboys in general, not necessarily exclusive to MS or Apple fanboys. I like the new MS commercial, I think it hits hard. Some fanboys can't take it. Same could be said about MS fanboys in the past about different apple campaigns. The attacks help to make better products in the future. If the ads are too harsh, people will be turned off by the campaign, and ultimately turned off by the company running the campaign."
Let me explain why the commercial is offensive:
The commercial is proof that Microsoft is for suckers and losers. Lauren isn't cool enough to be a Mac user. She's a sucker/loser who thinks, like all sucker/losers, that she's smart enough to get something for nothing. Very quickly, she'll find out the computer she bought is a piece of junk.
The commercial is REALLY about HATE. Sucker/losers hate winners, successful people. The commercial reaches out to the losers and suckers, it supports their hate, and tells them how they can beat the winners. It's a sick world of hate and egotism we live in, and there's big money in the business of HATE and egotism. There is NOTHING like this in the Apple commercials, but no doubt a gamer/hater/ such as yourself won't see it that way.
I don't see it that way Bob. But then I'm a Mac user. I'm the hated enemy. Along with all the other targeted enemies of Microsoft, like Google, Linux, etc.
Criticize MS technology all you want, and I'm with you. But go easy on the hate.
I respond in comments to a Microsoft commercial attacking Mac prices with the opinion that Microsoft crossed a line in this ad. The ad is not about hardware or operating systems. It's about hate. It's about dividing people into the "right" people and the "wrong" people. It's about egotism. It's class-based propaganda. It's HATE. Similar to early Nazi anti Jewish propaganda. Look around the internet - this commercial has pegged the hate-o-meter.
What comes next, PC egoists? Will all Mac people be forced into ghettos? Concentration camps for Mac users?
And yet I'M the hater!
The truth is going to hurt, but let me let you in on a little secret everyone else has figured out. I respond to you because you manage to come across more ridiculous each time you comment.
But now I'm feeling bad exploiting such a situation and think we've had more than enough comic relief for one blog post. Thanks for playing, but do yourself a favor and move on. I think we're done here.
I wonder why it took this long for an ad like this to come out.
Also, before I get called a Microsoft fan-boy, let me note that I work for a company that counts Microsoft as one of its competitors. Still, why bash a competitor when it does something right?
And to lay it to rest, I work on computers for a living, fixing both Macs and PC's alike. And from personal experience, I prefer to fix a PC any day. And I run Windows on my home and work computers, and have never had a virus in 15+ years. I rarely reboot, and do not see lockups since Windows 98.
The truth is, both stories can and do exist.
"It's like any "cool" product, the difference in quality, if any, is never even close to worth the markup you pay for the "cool" product name."
"I don't care that you link to my work, but I would really appreciate it if you do not take me out of context. I think its only fair that you post what I really found offensive rather than the snippet you decided to pull.
It's really disingenuous and disappointing. I would believe you would expect me when linking to you to actually accurately represent your work rather than attempting to shoot it down by using a tangential portion of it. I think that's more than fair."
My response:
I chose my words carefully, actually. This is what I said:
"...what was the first point of the author who wanted to explain why this was so offensive?"
I actually wasn't pointing out why he was offended. Rather, I was pointing out that his post starts with the premise of explaining his offense and then jumps right into an unnecessary but apparently very important tangent (the only section of his post surrounded by bolded words) on what wasn't his point.
Does that make sense? It didn't to me, either. That's exactly why I called him out on it. But, please do go and read the full post, if you'd like. And at the author's request, I'll quote it here, from the beginning, up until the point where he explains why he's offended:
"I noticed some tweets (join me on Twitter’, @edoswald) over the past several days regarding Microsoft’s latest ad from those on Redmond’s side of the aisle. One of them specifically told “Mac fanbois” to “GROW UP,” so I decided to post this to explain why Microsoft’s latest ad is not only factually loose, but offensive as well.
“Lauren” is given $1,000 to go and get a PC. Within 10 seconds, Microsoft’s already going for the gusto. She goes into the “Mac store” — red flag here already, anyone who is even remotely interested in a Mac knows it’s the Apple Store — and within seconds is out saying how the only under $1,000 unit is the white Macbook.
Okay, true enough there Lauren. But in the car, she then proceeds to take it where I think the ad shouldn’t have gone, and where I began to have a problem with it. “I’m just not cool enough to be a Mac person,” she exclaims. Wow, just wow."
I thought that was idea from your title. As far as I know Apple hasn't responded in any way to this ad.