New online-only Mac vs. PC ad.

[JeffHendr]

Therefore it is regarded today as marketing sense to follow the strategy of independent differentiation where the product is marketed on its own attributes and never compared to other brands. 2nd or 3rd place brands do better, according to the same studies, when they do compare themselves to superior brands to gain some credibility by sheer association and comparison to show what they have to offer that is similar to the leading brand.

In Apple's case, they have nothing to lose to compare themselves to Vista because they are not the leading brand in terms of overall volume. Doubly well for them is that they are the leading brand in terms of customer perception of quality... and so by chiding Vista they are exposing its weaknesses, not theirs, and doing so without giving Microsoft any measurable increase in advertising exposure that they don't already have.

I'm simply stating that Apple is making an ineffective/incomplete comparison. The recent ads focus almost exclusively on the PC, with very little information (if any) on the Mac. It's even worse when their critique of the PC is a tad bit too far over the top to be taken very seriously.

I think the desired message is "PC = bad. Mac = good." The message that I get from the commercials however, is more of a "PC = bad. By the way, the Mac exists." Come on. Surely Apple can come up with a way to seriously present at least one or two things that a Mac can do well.

 

[jayb2000]

Huh, what a harsh response.
Are you seriously suggesting that the guy should grab himself some debugger and should try to figure out what is wrong with the software that is supplied and installed on his system?

I was having a Safari crash myself while browsing the Apple webpages. I do not know what caused this crash and I simply don't care. I have not tinkered with Safari in any way besides to install Stand. So it is my fault that Safari crashed? I expect software that is robust. Meaning whatever the ordinary user is throwing at it it should swallow and give me a sensible response. If it does not able to handle this I tend to blame the developer and in this case it is Apple.

Yes, it is your fault. Or Stand's fault. If you uninstall STAND, reinstall Safari, does it work? Then it is Stand's fault.

If dozens or hundreds or thousand of people were having the same flash/Safari crash, then yes, it is a bug.
Whether the bug is Safari, Flash, Javascript, etc, would need to be figured out by a software developer, which you already said you are not.

So, let us know. If you remove stand, remove Safari, install Safari, update the software, can you browse Apple's page with no crash?