New online-only Mac vs. PC ad.

[EagerDragon]

Now that was freaking funny.

 

[EagerDragon]

The ironic part is, if I load it in Safari it crashes my browser. Way to go Apple.

No issues here, check your plug-ins, disable them one at a time.

 

[robanga]

Maybe these commercials are actually intended to rally continued support among current customers as opposed to seriously persuading new customers to "convert"? Perhaps Apple realizes that many switchers only do so after talking with already passionate Mac users who are glad to give them a demo?

Good thought but I think most ad campaigns are aimed at converting new customers. (there are exceptions) Apple's marketing worked on me but in a different way. It allowed me to questions some assumptions based on the pure visibility of the mac out there and my experience with the iPod and iPhone. I would have never considered a mac even a year and half ago, but they helped me challenge some assumptions;

1. Won't I have to buy all new software? - No not really and a lot is already included out of the box.
2. Aren't they expensive for the value? - No not really
3. Won't it be hard to get the mac to talk to other non-macs on my network at home? No - definitely not. As a matter of fact its talks to them better, then they talk to themselves at times.
4. Will it be worth the time to learn a new OS? - Its really easy to learn plain and simple look at your iPod, simple.

 

[Doctor Q]

An Adweek article mentions MacRumors and this thread:

The video, which Apple fan site MacRumors.com uploaded, has received over 70,000 views since it was uploaded on late Tuesday, making it the 9th most viewed clip of the day.

...

Despite the technical problems, the push certainly resonated with techies. At MacRumors, a short post on the ad attracted more than 130 comments.​

 

[czachorski]

It would be the equivalent of a Coke commercial that spends 30 seconds simply criticizing Pepsi.

You mean like the Pepsi Challenge?

 

[ungraphic]

LOVE IT, I gave up on XP

wow, thats awesome. too bad XP isnt the windows OS you should have 'gave up' on....

sigh.

 

[JeffHendr]

You mean like the Pepsi Challenge?

Not quite. The Pepsi Challenge is more of a balanced approach. The key measure of a good soft drink is its taste. The Pepsi challenge compares both products and then emphasizes Pepsi's stronger appeal to taste-testers. ...I just believe that marketing is more effective if (at a minimum) you spend an equal amount of time emphasizing your product's strengths as you do emphasizing your competitor's weaknesses. Focus on selling a good alternative.

To each his own, but when it comes to expensive electronics, I'm all about the functionality/feature set. I think Apple's got enough creativity and quality in their products, they don't have to spend all their time dogging the competition.

 

[Snowy_River]

Which also works in their favor. Why in the WORLD would Microsoft put out an ad that says "Don't Give Up on Vista"? It's a very pathetic and self-loathing ad if ever there was one.

I'd totally buy a t-shirt with this on it. The "Give Up" highlighted, Hodgman whacking the buzzer, and Justin Long shaking his head. Back of the shirt? "Get a Mac". --Hm... I might Cafe Press one up for myself this weekend.

~ CB

I haven't tried Cafe Press, but taking a look at their site, it looks a little less powerful than Zazzle. You can add multiple images to each side of a shirt, plus text, etc. I'd recommend checking them out...

(I have no affilliation with Zazzle other than that of being a satisfied customer...)

 

[twoodcc]

i saw the ad. i liked it

 

[John Musbach]

I see it on Engadget on every single page there, as well as some pages of PC Magazine. It's a two-piece ad, with a banner on top that has an old fashioned light-bulbs-on-wood sign with a cord coming off the end that starts off with all the bulbs off reading "DON'T GIVE UP ON VISTA", and a second piece on the right hand side of the page lower, with PC holding a big red button connected to the cord (running toward the top banner, obviously,) and they talk about how people shouldn't give up on Vista; PC hits the button, and just the words "GIVE UP" light up. Then he hits it again, and "ON VISTA" also lights up. Then they go back and forth about the sign, PC hitting the button repeatedly, and "DON'T" never lights up, although the other words flick on and off at various intervals.

edit: attached a screenshot of the ad. Yes, I'm reading a PC Mag article about an early-touted Windows Vista feature that isn't really available yet. Ah, the irony.

Hahaha very funny, my decision not to purchase Vista still stands until solid reasoning appears for said purchase

 

[czachorski]

Not quite. The Pepsi Challenge is more of a balanced approach. The key measure of a good soft drink is its taste. The Pepsi challenge compares both products and then emphasizes Pepsi's stronger appeal to taste-testers. ...I just believe that marketing is more effective if (at a minimum) you spend an equal amount of time emphasizing your product's strengths as you do emphasizing your competitor's weaknesses. Focus on selling a good alternative.

To each his own, but when it comes to expensive electronics, I'm all about the functionality/feature set. I think Apple's got enough creativity and quality in their products, they don't have to spend all their time dogging the competition.

"Pepsi tastes better than Coke.", "Macs work better than PCs". Yeah, huge difference in those approaches.

 

[Jetson]

Microsoft ought to run an ad: Don't Give Up On Time Machine!

I just received my Iomega UltraMax 500GB hard drive and installed it to use with Time Machine. I'm using the firewire connection on a 2.1 gHz G5 iMac.

Set up was simple and Time Machine is running - however...

Time Machine is SLOW as molasses!

I can't believe how ridiculously slooooow this software is. After 30 minutes of running it's only backed up 400MB of 228GBs. At this rate it will take 228+ hours to back up a single hard drive.

Y O U---H A V E---G O T---T O---B E---K I D D I N G---M E---! ! !

Retrospect Express is much speedier than this.

Come on Apple, who ever told you that this was acceptable performance???

 

[JeffHendr]

"Pepsi tastes better than Coke.", "Macs work better than PCs". Yeah, huge difference in those approaches.

I hear what you're saying, and I agree that a competitor's weaknesses can be effectively used to emphasize your own product's strengths. I just don't hear Apple emphasizing their strengths when it comes to the Mac (very different approach than the iPod or iPhone). I see it as a missed opportunity for a system that I truly enjoy.

Plus, I have much more respect for an ad that states, "Macs work better than PCs" than I do for an ad that simply states that Vista doesn't work ::cut to Apple logo:: --Just one opinion.

 

[MacTO]

Hilarious!

Cheers.

 

[czachorski]

I hear what you're saying, and I agree that a competitor's weaknesses can be effectively used to emphasize your own product's strengths. I just don't hear Apple emphasizing their strengths when it comes to the Mac (very different approach than the iPod or iPhone). I see it as a missed opportunity for a system that I truly enjoy.

Plus, I have much more respect for an ad that states, "Macs work better than PCs" than I do for an ad that simply states that Vista doesn't work ::cut to Apple logo:: --Just one opinion.

I'm with you. I guess I just didn't take this add that way. Maybe I am biased by the rest of the add campaign which has been well balanced, and I am more forgiving of this one, because it feels good to seem the twist the dagger a little.

 

[HLdan]

This discussion is a dead horse. Those Get a Mac ads are talked about by people. If they replaced them with ads that showed off the OS X interface, do you really think people would talk about them? "Oh, did you see the ad showing how to check your email on a Mac?"... isn't going to happen. They need to target the heart of the matter, and that is the frustration many people experience with their computers, and the fact that there is something better out there. That's the issue being targeted... the why, not the how.

Good point, didn't look at it that way but on the other hand while I am always happy when one of my friends decides to buy a Mac I am getting tired of becoming their human Mac instruction manual. They always ask me what does this do or how does this work? And my favorite one is, "I can do this feature in Windows but I can't seem do do it on MAC!. I hate when they blame the Mac just because they didn't know how to do it.
Apple's ads could show off features like the Finder's cover flow feature like they do it for the iPhone and iPod touch and especially since the Finder mimics iTunes it's much easier for a switcher to adapt.

Leopard is much easier to advertise than Tiger was because most of the features on it like the Finder, iTunes, Safari and iLife are features of the iPhone and some of it is on Windows. Familiar features would sell very well in a commercial. IMO.

 

[HLdan]

I didn't switch to the Mac because I saw a commercial criticizing Windows that suddenly made me think, "Oh man! I had no idea that my operating system was that bad. Maybe I should check out Apple." I buy products based on their features, and I think most other people do, too.

Realistically, this type of ad campaign, focusing more on a competitor's weaknesses than your own strengths is not the norm. It would be the equivalent of a Coke commercial that spends 30 seconds simply criticizing Pepsi or a K-Mart commercial that simply criticizes Wal-Mart. It's ineffective without taking some time to offer a positive alternative. Windows users don't need Apple to tell them about Windows; they have plenty of first-hand experience.

As far as political campaigns go, most people that I talk to are turned off by candidates who spend all their time criticizing their opponent, rather than talking about their own platform. I don't vote for somebody simply because they tell me how bad the other guy is. I want to know what they believe.

Sorry buddy but you have somehow fallen short on memory in regards to the Napster ad. Remember their campaign? "10,000 songs on an Apple iPod =$10,000.00 spent". "$15 monthly on Napster and a supported mp3 player gets you unlimited downloads".

Well, it didn't work. Apple's iPod is the biggest selling portable music player ever and they hold the largest market share that no one will match.

Focusing on your strengths while bashing the competition doesn't bring in sales. It's either or but you can't do both in the same ad, it will fail as Napster's did.

 

[macFanDave]

First of all,

welcome to the Mac platform. The hardest things that Windows switchers need to get is that, on a Mac, "Close" is not "Quit," that is, the red ball is not the same as the Windows X box.

Indeed a large part of my livelihood comes from the success of Microsoft.

The sum total of many people's livelihoods comes from the many failures of Microsoft.

 

[MattyMac]

hahhaaa...amazing! Apple is really being creative now!

...I know I know creativity is an everyday thing for Apple.

 

[Jetson]

Time Machine is okay after all !!!

I hoped that someone would throw me a life preserver, but none came.

So I dug around and around and finally found an article in the Apple Support pages.

Someone there said they discovered that when Norton Utilities are running (in the background) that Time Machine was horribly slow. Then when Norton was turned off, voila! Time Machine was liberated.

I tried it and now Time Machine is going much faster. It's still no speed champ by any means, but maybe it will backup my drive in one day instead of ten days.

This is still a problem though because you shouldn't have to turn off virus protection just to do a backup. For instance, Retrospect Express isn't affected in the least by Norton.


http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5840473

 

[egsaxy]

"My searchbar was working before, but after updating to 10.4.11 it's no longer working. It's obviously my fault"

Actually it obviously was your fault because you updated to 10.4.11. All kidding aside does anyone know if apple updates the updater builds? like if i upgrade to 10.4.11 today will it be the same build as the one evagelion used a week ago?

If we can't laugh at ourselves, then people will laugh at us and not with us.

 

[FX120]

Well, it didn't work. Apple's iPod is the biggest selling portable music player ever and they hold the largest market share that no one will match.

So by that statement, these ads will never work. Windows is the biggest selling OS franchise of all time, has the largest market share, that no one will match, so therefore Apple might as well just stop trying with their clever little ads. Right?

 

[bmk]

And I said that because we routinely hear comments how Macs "just work" and they do that because the software and the hardware is designed to intermingle. Yet we DO get problems.

Let me see if I understand your bizarre logic. Because people tell you that 'Macs just work' you then feel that it is ok to criticise anyone who suggests that a problem on a Mac MAY be caused by the individual user's configuration. And then to add insult to injury you say that this somehow proves that they are saying that Macs are no better than Windows?

There is no inconsistency in saying that (a) Macs are better than Windows machines (my personal opinion) and (b) that there are times when system/software glitches/conflicts occur.

Go back and read my original post - what I was saying is hardly rocket science i.e. that an individual user's problem may have been caused by a some undetermined system/software conflict (third party software, user customisation etc etc), and may not necessarily be the fault of Apple engineers or software designers.

 

[ckinyc]

Totally...

........................................Awesome!!!

 

[goosnarrggh]

My point was not that there aren't genuine problems with the OS

Yes there are. If you claim otherwise, you are deluding yourself. But if you really DO claim that, then we can just as well say "there are no problems with Windows, all those problems people have are caused by third-party software and different hardware-configurations. Windows by itself is 100% perfect".

Gotta love double negatives. You misread the previous statement.

Let's follow through the language that was used:
My point was not that there aren't genuine problems with the OS...

That exactly equivalent to this (IMHO) slightly clearer statement,
"There may be genuine problems with the OS, but you shouldn't always assume that the OS is solely to blame for every issue you encounter."

Well, are you claiming that?

It seems blindingly obvious to me that bmk was not claiming anything of the sort.