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Seriously, wtf is going on with Apple's Mac vs. Pc ads?

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mouser:
We've talked about this before, and my general feeling is just mild annoyance at the cult of apple stuff and the emphasis of apple on marketing and "image".

And unlike some other apple products imho, i think OS X is a quality product.
Furthermore, i do not like MS Vista.

But the latest apple ad i saw was, except for the briefest of mentions, a commercial dedicated totally 100% to making fun of VISTA (and even going so far as to basically recommend XP!).  There was a total lack of any mention of positive features of Apple's product.

Which i found kind of shocking.. Even as someone who dislikes Vista this really took me aback, like wtf is the aim of this -- just to try to increase negative feelings of your competitor?  I have a hard time thinking of other "attack" commercials that didn't at least make a cursory attempt to promote the companies own products..

I really wonder if these ads aren't on one hand really working for Apple, but on the other hand really cementing and increasing an anti-apple feeling in another population of users...

The commercial i'm talking about can be watched on youtube here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=0GWYaviIzCU



note: i don't want this thread to turn into an anti-apple fest, i'm just responding to the oddness of this one particular commercial which i think is different from the other mac-vs-pc ads, which make fun of windows but while playing up the beneficial comparison to apple features, something notably lacking from this commercial. furthermore, i'm not complaining that the add is "unfair" -- i'm just struct by it's unusualness.

Deozaan:
Strangely reminiscent of those political ads that run every 4 years here in the USA. . .

Carol Haynes:
Seems pretty pointless to me - Apple buffs will chuckle, non-Apple people will scratch their heads and wonder what Jobs & Co are on ...

Actually I often wonder how advertising works - I know it does but the ads I remember are always for products I have never bought and am unlikely to buy. For example I love the Honda ads - but I have never owned a Honda and never likely to. Similarly Carling Black Label (lager) and Guinness ads in the UK are often hysterical but it doesn't make me want to drink either (even though I drink both types of beer from time to time - just not those brands).

Stranger still are the ads that you come away from thinking "I wonder what that was an ad for?"

Maybe it is just me but the Apple ad seems to fall into the latter category!

Ehtyar:
Honestly, since the first one i was of these i saw, I've been furious at apple (specifically, that one where mac claims he can't get viruses, and vista is getting slaughtered with them, i yelled at the TV and my mother nearly fell off the couch). But i've reached a point where i've realized i can change nothing about the way apple chooses to portray itself in the media, and i now find them to be rather comical. Although they do occasionally speak the truth, mostly they're just funny. This one, ironically, seems to mostly speak the truth.....

Ehtyar.

Renegade:
Well, I like Vista. It just works well once UAC is turned off. I don't have any problems with it. It's beautiful to look at. Sure a few things are different and that requires an adjustment, but it's not that bad.

As for the Apple ads - I don't like them. Sure they're a bit clever sometimes and in some ways humorous, but they really are insulting as well. The first ad like it that I saw a while back basically said that if you develop for Windows, then you write crappy software. Huh? WTF? F^(k you! It was baseless garbage that insulted hundreds of thousands of developers in a very tasteless way. It would be like me saying, "If you use Apple computers, you're a pig-headed jackass." Huh? How does being a jackass come out of using a computer? Just silly. (Though if you're a member of the Cult of Apple, then it's likely true. ;) )

If they're trying to polarize people against them, they've got me. I'm firmly in the "Apple is run by @$$holes" camp. I have nothing against their products (except for when they don't work properly, e.g. iTunes on a PC), but they really are a bunch of jerk-offs.

Vista has a lot going for it, and the new feature list for Vista certainly beats the new feature list for the new OSX where most are tweaks to things like iWhatever.

However, I think the purpose of the ad is to throw doubt on Microsoft and undermine their image. It's not about OSX - it's clearly about saying that MS spent 5 years writing a POS. It's trying to get people to "jump ship" in favor of Apple. Can you trust MS? Will they deliver? Are their products improving? It's FUD at it's best. Or, maybe not best, but certainly FUD.

That kind of marketing is, well, it is what it is. I find it entirely slimy though.





For a company that prides itself so much on "style", they certainly have no "class".

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