Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Tries a "Switch" Campaign
Twirlip of the Mists writes "There's a new page on Microsoft's web site that tells the first-person story of an unnamed 'freelance writer' who made the switch from the Mac to Windows XP. The author of the page -- who never identifies herself, and who could very easily be fictional or a composite sketch -- says 'Windows XP gives me more choices and flexibility.' How, you ask? Why, through Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, and modern operating-system features like separate accounts for each user and easy access to the Internet, of course. Maybe somebody should email Microsoft and let them know that the Mac has had all of these things for years now ... nah. It'd just embarrass them. Anyway, it's an entertaining read that's good for a laugh." Update: 10/14 21:12 GMT by P : Apparently, Microsoft has taken the page down, but Google has it.
Aren't there Mac versions of Office and Internet Explorer? Wait, that means they're just boasting about the "wonderful" OS. Oh well...
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
*Editor's Note: Now that we've successfully converted our writer to a Windows PC, we will be working on getting her to try a Pocket PC. Stay tuned for more developments!
So does this mean that they converted "the microsoft writer to M$" Wow they got their own employee to use their product after how many years, hmmm I am guessing at home she is still a MAC user....
Who talks in Hyperlinks?
At least the Mac ads are believable.
--Azaroth
I have a question to the guy who submitted this story: do you honestly believe that the people featured in Apple's Switch campaign are real? I mean, I know Tony Hawk is a real person. Ellen Feiss could be real, too. But when they speak about how cool macs are and how uncool PCs are, they do so because they got money from Apple. Their confessions are just about as real as those of the "fictional" and "composite" person from Microsoft.
The difference is that Apple paid someone to lie on TV and Microsoft put their story in the mouth of an imaginary person. Now who's more honest?
-jfedor
Sure, "more hardware is available for less dough", but you get what you pay for...
It's newsworthy-- in the Slashdot sense of "news," of course-- because it's funny. Microsoft's response to the Switchers campaign is so lame and so fake that it's funny.
Nobody has their "panties in a bunch." We're just kicking back on a Monday morning and enjoying a good joke. The fact that Microsoft made the joke-- inadvertently, at that-- just makes it that much more enjoyable.
The article as a whole is as funny as any of the mac switch parodies I've seen. A thousand times funnier actually because it's real. There is one point that I don't think you can argue with however. There are many more choices for hardware, and at the risk of making a sweeping generalization, PC hardware is cheaper. This is the only reason I haven't made the switch already. I can't afford to invest $2k right now for a decent mac system, plus however much to gather the suite of software that I rely on on my PC.
PS. Someone should mention to the MS marketing dept that they also produce Office for OSX.
The switcher writes:
The key to getting hardware to work with your computer is to have the correct drivers, the software that enables your PC to communicate with your hardware. Windows XP or your computer manufacturer will pre-install most of them. If not, go to the Web site of the company that makes the peripheral you want to attach to find the most current drivers.
This seems to defeat the entire purpose of the campaign.
Anyone who knows what the heck she's talking about and can correctly find, download, and install drivers has good reason for being on the OS that they're on and will not fall for this homegrown "I'm happy switching" rhetoric.
Everyone who can't do that -- 98+ percent, probably -- fall exactly into Apple's target market: people who know their computer went "bleep bleep bleep" and want to go somewhere where they won't HAVE to know how to find, download and install drivers.
MS Wrote: "The key to getting hardware to work with your computer is to have the correct drivers, the software that enables your PC to communicate with your hardware."
I'd argue that it is not only the key, but the biggest headaches of Windows. Sadly, I have used a lot of Windows in my life (and Linux). Sp when my mom bough an iBook, it was a revelation. I mean, so many digital cameras functioning on it without ANY drivers? Amazing. Also, it seems that the drivers made for OSX is more stable in the long haul than the Windows drivers.
Now don't get me wrong, I have never owed a Macintosh and, until a few years ago, used nothing but Microsoft operating systems.
The thing is that Apple users have heard all the anti-Apple flack for years and know where their loyalties lie. The average Windows user doesn't know that anything else exists. It's easy to convert or at least influence a Windows user who hasn't developed any real loyalties.
But Mac users, on the other hand, are hardcore about their loyalties and know what their OS is and why they like it. They have used PCs in public labs, at school, libraries, whatever for years and will be able to see through the the Microsoft FUD as they have been doing for years.
I suspect that the marketing brass at Apple will be (or currently are) having a good hearty laugh over all of this.
The reality is there really are many Mac users who would happily appear on TV and say the same things. I know I'm one...
Don't you think there are people as similarily pleased with Linux that would appear in ads if given half a chance? Is it so hard to believe these people could be real?
I think there would even be such a group that would happily go up and proclaim the wonders of MS, why MS has chosen to craft a person instead is beyond me. I guess it's the need for total control.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"Yes, it's true. I like the Microsoft® Windows® XP operating system enough to change my whole computing world around."
She's a freelance writer who begins her "story" by ending a sentence with a preposition. I wonder if she writes for anyone other than M$?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
``Anyway, it's an entertaining read that's good for a laugh.''
You think this is fun? This is FUD. Lies. Crap. Misinformation. Cheating. BAD BAD BAD.
I mean, advertising is one thing. Advertising the things you stole from others is quite another. XP is more multiuser than OS X? You'll make me laugh. Office XP has more features then Claris? Yes, it's called bloat and decreases usability. Besides, office runs on Mac, too.
MicroSoft Internet Exploiter faster does more for her than Netscape ever did? Yeah, popping up ads, loading up the borked MSN ActiveX control, loading Word documents inline so that people get the idea that they are a replacement for webpages. Searches go faster? Maybe if you are looking for the crap that M$ search comes up with...give me Google any day! And it's not like Netscape doesn't have history, either.
Connection Wizard - yes an old pal of mine. It's always the first program I removed. Not that removing is easy, you have to actually delete the directory it's in, or iexplore.exe will run it for you. WTF? I asked for _Internet Explorer_ not _Connection Wizard_. Why I get rid of it? Because setting up access to any provider I've used is easier without it, and because sometimes I just want to satrt a browser, without having to click away a bunch ow wizards first.
`` I started with Outlook Express for e-mail, because it's included with Windows XP.'' Here we have the fatal flaw that got us all those lovely email virii. I understand that the vulnerabilities have *finally* been fixed in the XP version, but God, did that take a long time.
``I copied hundreds of Web Favorites from the Mac onto a Zip disk, then into the Favorites folder on the PC. Internet Explorer has an Import/Export Wizard that you can use to import Netscape bookmarks, but I found it faster to do it this way.''
ROFL. Copied them to a Zip disk? Hilarious. It's called Linux. It can mount _your_ filesystem. You don't even have to buy a new computer to run it! And the OS is Free, as is most of the software you will want to use!
``Both Outlook Express and Outlook will import contacts and messages from other programs.''
Yes, and I trust that M$ have taken care that they are then saved in a proprietary format so that others can't pull the same trick on them...
``Later, I had to uninstall and reinstall Outlook''
Yes, welcome to Windows...
``The key to getting hardware to work with your computer is to have the correct drivers''
Indeed. And M$ have been so good as to make the XP driver interface incompatible with previous versions of Windows, so that if you install it on older hardware, you may not be able to get drivers for your components. A problem that Macs don't seem to have, but I might be rong.
``If not, go to the Web site of the company that makes the peripheral you want to attach to find the most current drivers.''
And download a 10+ MB file from their site that loads a lot of visual violence, advertisements, bells and whistles, and then tells me that I downloaded the wrong driver, even though the name of my device is almost exactly like the one the driver is for? Or worse, not being able to find out where to go for the driver, because all Windows has to say about it is ``PCI Multimedia Device''? Where is lspci -vv when you need it??
Pfff...it's been a while since I've been able to blow off so much steam...
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
That's the amusing bit. That MS is copying Apple's campaign. It's doubly amusing because it's a well known MS-bash that, supposedly, MS copies everything Apple does anyway.
[I dunno. Windows 1 through 3 weren't remotely Mac like. Even Win95 and up has no meta data yet. But the point has been made]
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I work in marketing too, and I think it is newsworthy because it shows that Apple's campaign is a success.
Since one can't generally can't make a correlation between an advertising campaign and increased sales (too much of a lag and too many factors), there are a few milestones for promotions that indicate success:
1. A coined term being adopted by the industry. In this case, "Switcher" is being used in all sorts of contexts, albeit in articles talking about Apple. But if someone in the computer industry uses the term "Switcher", most people in the know will think "Apple". I guarantee you someone in Intel's marketing department grins whenever an analyst talks soberly about "Moore's Law".
2. Grass roots movement/fan clubs: Exhibit A is Ellen Feiss. I doubt if anybody outside of Dell' marketing department builds fan sites for that annoying geek they're using
3. The competition is forced to respond to you. Pepsi constantly mentions Coke, but Coke never mentions Pepsi. But Pepsi's marketing department would love to see that happen. If anything, it's free advertising, because your product is being mentioned without you having to pay for it.
4. Finally, some sort of parody exists. I've seen a few on the web, but Apple would hit pay dirt if Saturday Night Live or someone painfully mainstream would do a parody. That would show that Apple's Switchers campaign has become a small zeitgeist, like the Mastercard "Priceless" ads.
The Microsoft ad was so bad because it was so easily dismissed. All the talking points could be dismissed just as easily as they are brought up. Make no mistake, someone in Apple's promotions department saw that pathetic Microsoft ad and grinned from ear to ear.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
The newsworthy part of the story is that a market leader apparently thinks it has to produce an ill-disguised clone of a market follower's ad.
You're right in that Microsoft had the choice of doing nothing or doing something. But doing something this stupid is to lend credence to your competition rather than building interest or confidence in your own product.
The Ford/Chevy analogy does not work because they have reasonably equivalent market share. The better anaolgy would be if there were ads for a Yugo featuring former Ford owners, which Ford countered with an ad featuring former Yugo owners. That would have been a massively stupid move for Ford, because all they are doing is equating the two makes in peoples' minds.
(The Yugo/Ford analogy is not intended to imply any correlation between quality of produts, just strength of market share...)
This whole thing is a charade that Apple is a willing participant of. The whole point of the "switch" campaigns is to give the appearance of competition in an industry that effectively has none. Microsoft must be thrilled, because a totally leashed, client company (Apple) is making it look like competition is nipping at Microsoft's heels. Last week they tried the "Windows and Mac users can get along" campaign, which was spooky but not surprising, given the antitrust battles going on now.
Remember that the allegation made against MS is that they don't compete fairly with their real competiton. There are boxes of evidence to support this. On the other hand, there is the supposed couterexample of Apple: A high profile, low danger company that gives MS absolutely nothing to worry about. MS is in fact crying: "see, we are running a fair race! Look at Apple! We're not bullying them at all! We're really, really competing with them using--fair methods like advertising. And oooh, we're soooo scared that they would eat into our market share, so we find it imperative to run ads which prevent this! Our position on the desktop is soooo vulnerable!"
Well, I hoped that at least the slashdot crowd could see through this. I mean, we know that once Microsoft aputates both of your legs, they are perfectly willing to run a fair race against you. Witness that Internet Explorer is now finally uninstallable. However, suddently the Windows Media Player isn't. That's because RealMedia still (sort of) has its legs. Once they're off, the uninstallability problem will suddently disappear. My point is that Apple lies somewhere between Netscape and OS2 in terms of being a threat to Microsoft. However, there is much good PR to be gained by making it appear that the two companies are locked in fierce competition. So MS are milking it. The only surprise is that nobody is calling them on it!
Microsoft is probably feeling the effects of this or predicting that they will feel the effects or this. Otherwise, they wouldn't be launching this counter-attack.
WELL DONE APPLE!
I find it surprising that Microsoft feels the need to use this style of marketing campaign. Not for the fact that is blatently copying Apple's Switch campaign, my surprise for MS copying other people's work ran out years ago.
What surprises me is that it has been found that market leaders need not identify themselves in their campaigns -- it is implicit that most consumers will choose said market-leader. For example: Campbell's doesn't need a campaign that says "Buy Campbell's" It just needs to say "Buy Soup" and most consumers will choose their soup. This marketing push of their OS by name in a popular style, at least to me, says that Microsoft is really getting worried over any change in market-share. Enough so to nitpick over a few percentage points and retaliate with a campaign like this. (Tell me, at the height of the pre-bundled, defacto-standard Windows Empire -- How often did you see their OS advertised?)
(by the by, how do tactics like this by Microsoft strain their relationship with Apple? I would think Jobs, being an artist at heart, would hate a blatent copy like this.)
Zech Harvey, MCSE, MCDBA, CCNA
how the "convert" keeps speaking using microsoft marketing jargon.... like the average user automatically thinks in terms of "oooo visit this handy tool at microsoft.com"
think you're missing the point. It's not the strategy that's amusing, it's the fact that it's such a poor effort. Microsoft doesn't offer one reason to use XP that doesn't also exist in Mac OS X. Microsoft Office? They have that for OS X. Multi-user? Yeah, OS X has that. Etc, etc.
But then again, the Apple switch ads don't offer a single reason to use a Mac that WinXP doesn't have. You can burn cds and dvds, which you can do on WinXP. You can make movies, whihc you can do on WinXP. Neither sides has any really good arguements, because people wouldn't respond to the good arguements (things like the cariety of software on Windows vs Mac or the better usage of the power of a Mac vs WinXP). Neither side really will convince someone to switch, it will just hopefully make them check out both and make a decision after looking at both of them.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
That's such Bullshit.
Phoenix 0.x is 40% faster than IE, even on Windows. I know because I'm typing this out in Phoenix 0.3 running on Windows 2000 as the default browser. I could never imagine myself running Moz or Opera on Windows. I simply hated them. But Phoenix came and changed all that.
I mean, the Mac switcher ads are already pretty - well let's say "unlikely to have really happened that way".
For Bill Gates not unlikely enough, it seems. How high is the chance that a Mac to PC convert writes down her confessions and includes:
"See Which Edition is Right for You? for more information."
Complete with link to the right Microsoft page?
I find some UFO stories more believable.
Jesus H Christ. I'm not sure if this is a troll or an honest question, but does nobody read BoingBoing besides me? Mark Frauenfelder, who was featured in the first run of ads (which are no longer available on Apple's web site) has been mainting BoingBoing with Cory Doctorow for quite a while now. I was reading his blog long before the switch ads started appearing. The cynicism of some people amazes me. Yes, the men and women featured in Apple's commercials are real people telling their real stories.
...someone has to track her down and discover that she is also a Mac user in real life-- she probably has a CRT iMac or an iBook or something, if she's like the models I know.
It always cracked me up that the Blue Man Group shill for Intel but run their shows with Macs.
~Philly
Freedom.
Freedom from DRM.
Freedom to use the OS however you want to.
Freedom to tweak and change, even at code-level.
Freedom to install the OS on any machine you want to without asking "Mother May I?"
Freedom from bullshit licenses and other nightmares.
Freedom from the vast majority of viruses and exploits.
I'd say that's a REAL compelling reason.
"But you've already got a DVD. It lasts forever....In the digital world, we don't need back-ups..."
-- Jack Valenti
Why even bother touting Office over AppleWorks. You just don't get Office for free when you buy XP.
All you get is "notepad", and "Write".
It doesn't seem fair. Also, IE6 can't do more than Netscape, Netscape has it's mail, news and etc built in.(Navigator is dead btw... duh M$).
The point is M$'s arguments are flawed all around. Multi User? They were the last to add that. When Unix was multi-user, well there was DOS, but in 3.1xxx you needed to install Windows in seperate directories for any type of multi-user environment. It's just silly!
Windows really doesn't come with much out of the box at all. Even the things they integrate suck, that is why there are billions of shareware apps for PC's.
Not sticking up for Apple/Mac, just saying MS sucks again.
Get your Unix fortune now!
The thing is that Apple users have heard all the anti-Apple flack for years and know where their loyalties lie. The average Windows user doesn't know that anything else exists. It's easy to convert or at least influence a Windows user who hasn't developed any real loyalties.
You just missed the entire point of this article. Microsoft knows they're not going to convince hardcore Apple users to switch. This copy of Apple's switch campaing, is for MS users who might be tempted to switch. If a user is considering switching to Apple, then sees that some other people are switching from Apple to MS, the user might very well decide to stay right where he is. The theory of course, is that a user who is easily persuaded to try Apple could be easily persuaded not to try Apple; get it?
Slackware forever. Honestly, what else would you trust when it absolutely positively has to be stable, secure, and easy
I hate Grammar Nazi's
Looks like they deleted it out of shame.
Freedom to install the OS on any machine you want to without asking "Mother May I?"
...I'm pretty sure he meant legally. I can, have, and still do shamelessly install whatever flavor of Windows onto whatever machines I want to. It's not permitted in the EULA though. Although Linux completely takes the fun out of this concept for me, I can take Redhat 8 Professional, (yes, the retail version - Ironically the only OS I've ever paid for) and install it on a couple of new servers and a few workstations, in a commercial environment where even I don't have the balls to use something without a license, and it's cool. Encouraged, even. Yes, you have the same option with MacOS as I do with Windows, but with Linux neither of us are getting fired or paying fines. And most Linux distributions do have a universal installer - FTP.
Not quite. I can install it on any machine I want to, assuming that the machine is compatable with the OS hardware support. The main issue of course being that there are still seperate distros of Linux (PPC, x86, SPARC). When will we see a distro with all the nessesary code in one package, and a universal install?"
Seems like Microsoft took down the page. (Here's the Google cached copy.)
Maybe Microsoft just created this page for Slashdot to link to. Instead of their marketing team putting in time and effort to create a real campaign, they put together some generic arguments and to see how well they fly over on Slashdot. Now they'll take the Slashdot arguments and turn them into a real campaign. Maybe I'm being paranoid, but Microsoft isn't stupid, and this thread gives them a lot of valuable information.
my blog
The great thing about Apple's ads are that they ARE simple and consumer oriented. They are the type of ads that DO get stuck in your head. Consumers don't care about features being rattled off, geeks like features, and the geeks are the ones that can look into it for themselves. Consumers do not want to devote their time doing reseach. Consumers like the switch ads, they speak in an easy to understand language and are done by real users that have switched from MS's overcomplicated, underperforming and out-of-date OS that they can relate to.
---- "In capitalism, man exploits man. In socialism, it is exactly the opposite." -Ben Tucker
But then again, the Apple switch ads don't offer a single reason to use a Mac that WinXP doesn't have.
And you've completely missed the exact same thing that Microsoft missed about the Switch campaign.
The point isn't to show these people talking about all the things they can do with their macintoshes. The point is to show how happy that all these people are about all these things that they can do with their macintoshes. The point is demonstrate to all those disgruntled windows users in the Great Unwashed, using real people, that computing can actually be a pleasurable experience.
Apple doesn't want you to pay attention to what any of those people in the Switch ads are saying. What they want you to pay attention to is the quiet, joyful glow in Ellen Feiss' eyes as she talks about how happy she is that she doesn't have to worry anymore about the computer going all, like, BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP and deleting, like, half her paper. (And it was a really *good* paper.)
They want people to see these Switch ads and go, "Wow. These people all seem to actually enjoy using their computers. I don't enjoy using my computer at all. Maybe if I bought an apple, I'd enjoy using my computer too."
(Of course, usually the ACTUAL effect is that people see that quiet glow and they go "Wow. Maybe if I started smoking pot, I'd be happy too". Or they start stalking Ellen Fiess. But the point is the intent of the whole thing.)
This is why the switchy-PR thing on MS's website is such a joke. [S]he's describing how "great" her experience with WinXP has been, but the experience that she describes sounds about as fun as a trip to the DMV in which the line was short and you managed to get in and out and get everything you needed done without particularly any hassle. Meanwhile, any emotion that there is in the article feels about as real as Anne Coulter.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
AppleWorks (previously called ClarisWorks) pales in comparison to Microsoft Office XP. There's no equivalent for the versatility of Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint®. Toolbars and menus customize themselves to the way I work. I wouldn't know how to function without the Track Changes and Comments features of Word. I adore the Office Clipboard, which copies multiple elements from one file and pastes them into another.
So a laptop with 512 MB of ram, Office XP, Windows XP pro, and all the other features this thing is talking about was $450.00 cheaper than an iBook? Sorry, but that is very unlikely. If you're comparing a Windows computer to a Mac, and you're saying that Office XP is better than AppleWorks, you'd better be including the $500 for Office XP in that comparison, or you're going to get burned by legal.
That someone might use stock photographs as design elements on a web page!
Sure, the 'testamonial' picture would lead you to belive that the person pictured actualy wrote the artical, but most of those pictures are just headings to pages with lots of links.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I've never had to do this. The people I know who TRUELY know what they are doing have never had to do this.
...and I refuse to believe that I'm superior to other users.
I don't fear my XP system crashing, because it doesn't.
Dude, how many people do you know who both run XP Home and know what they're doing? I can't think of any.
I was just at my uncle's house. His computer runs XP, he and his wife are the only ones who use it. One of the user accounts was so fscked up as to be unusable, so they switched to just using one of them. His e-mail didn't work, but that was because Sasktel changed their POP3 authentication method. And it was slow and somewhat unstable. I fixed these things quite easily, but I know what I'm doing with computers and my uncle didn't.
My 2K server box and my XP box are sable like packed dirt (pretty stable, month long uptimes with no slowdown), while my FreeBSD box is like a rock (multi-month runtimes -- pretty much solid between releases -- with no slowdown). I know what I'm doing, so Windows and FreeBSD work. For the average home user, Windows won't work because it's too easy to fuck up.
But that's exactly what it is. You're a better user than most of the "XP sucks" crowd. It [XP] ain't bad, but it can be fucked up just like anything else.
Or, maybe, most users just don't know what they are doing? I think I'll buy that one.
You just hit the nail on the head. People assume that they know everything or that they'll figure it out (which they probably can, but they'll end up installing it a few times before they do)
God save our Queen, and Heaven bless The Maple Leaf Forever!
...but the multiuser part of Windows sucks worse than NFS in Linux. The separation of users settings works as long as it is Microsoft's software, but many 3rd party software sucks ass big time (for instance ICQ).
Multi-user works a hell of a lot better in different unixes, even though it is very basic and cumbersom (I can't spell today) at times.
There's another possibility; perhaps they are neither inferior to you, nor superior to you, but rather just different from you.
With two decades of programming experience I don't consider myself to be any sort of a "clueless newbie". I've worked on (and programmed for) everything from embedded controllers to goverment mainframe supercomputers. I don't have a problem understanding technology, but every time I work on an MS-Windows based system I have the same kinds of problems that some other people (apparently not you) describe having, regarding crashing apps, BSOD's, etc. I've reached the conclusion that Windows is fine for most of the people in the country, but that most of the people in the country just don't think like I do. I can't get my head around Windows; it seems to be designed for different kind of thinker. (Not that I'm complaining, I like being one of the minority who can think like I do.)
And I have no quarrel with anyone who chooses to use Windows (although I encourage them to try other operating systems just to make sure they know about all the alternatives so they can pick the best one for themselves) but I will complain whenever and Windows user tries to make the argument that Windows must be the best because a lot of people use it. And my position leaves me strategically opposed to Microsoft, as a corporation, because they have a financial interest in getting rid of people like me.
Go ahead a use whatever you feel like using, and don't feel like you have to defend your decision to me. But by the same token, don't hate me just because I choose to Think Different.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.