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Microsoft Unveils Online Advertising Service
jwb4273 writes "Microsoft has released another weapon in its battle against Google. Steve Ballmer has announced today that Microsoft's web properties (MSN, Live, etc.) will no longer use Yahoo!'s advertising services, and will instead use Microsoft's new advertising platform 'adCenter'. For wanting to go in together with Yahoo, this seems like the wrong start for a good relationship."
Yeah, I also like it when I'm trying to read an article and a 20mb flash application kicks up on top of what I'm trying to read telling me about Toyota's Western Washington specials. Like TFA's advertisements. That sure is awesome.
I love turning on the radio because I'm not looking for music, I'm looking for annoying talk about some product I'm missing out on. There's nothing like nodding your head to a good advertisement of a Fat Bastard impersonator trying to get you to come to Bub's Bar & Grill.
And now you want to make my mobile device throw random messages at me. Hey, maybe you can interrupt my personal telephone calls with advertisements from an annoying sounding person! That would be great.
And advertising in my productivity applications! And my games! *eye twitches* That's just
But why stop there? What boundaries does my personal life have yet that you have failed to knock down adn ignore? What about the novels I read? Can they have advertisements that cover up the words until I read them? Or maybe you could make software that injects product placement into scripts and storylines?
In fact, I love advertisements so much, you can tattoo me and inject electrodes into my head so all I do is think about Microsoft and how badly I want the XBox 360. Yes, I would finally be able to die happy!
If you hadn't noticed, I was being sarcastic.
My work here is dung.
Seriously -- Whereas Microsoft has accomodated customers with risqué XBOX games, do you think they might cut struggling pr0nographers like me some slack and be less -- or more, rather :) --] anal than Google? At the least they ought to set the bar for advertising association at the same level as their content of their video games, the titles of which include Playboy: The Mansion, lest they exercise a double standard.
Prepare to watch 'Divide and Conquer' in action, kids!
I'm sure this is meant as a bargaining chip. "See what you have to lose if you don't go with us, Yahoo?"
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
If I actually wanted to run an ad with this service, I would go to adcenter.msn.com, click the "Sign up today" link and get "Microsoft adCenter does not currently support the web browser you are using. Please sign in using Internet Explorer 6+." If I then click the "More about system requirements" link nothing happens. I guess I'll just keep my money.
Perhaps this has something to do with Yahoo being sued over alleged pay-per-click fraud Just throwing it out there.
The only way Microsoft has to promote their inferior product has been FUD campaigns and tons of self-promotion through marketing. They don't want any allies that could be potential rivals, and that includes Yahoo. Unless they intend to buy Yahoo (like they did with Bungie and Rare), they probably don't want to support a partner in a field they could dominate themselves for more profits. The only "allies" I've seen them interested in have been PC makers, and those are more like forced partnerships than friendly cooperations.
Go ahead, mod me down. You know I speak the truth.
Ex nihilo nihil fit.
...and it's biggest liability.
They're so damned huge that the left hand really honestly doesn't know what the right one is doing. At least it sure seems that way, doesn't it?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
While anyone with a website or blog can sign up for AdSense and add it to their page... the same cannot yet be said for adCenter as for now it is only for Microsoft (and close partner) web properties.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
There's a difference between allowing people to do things with your software you'd rather them not (like looking up porn / google-smut), and actively appearing like you are endorsing such things (such as providing ad revenue for a porn site). One is passive endorsement, the other is proactive endorsement. It's like offering BitTorrent and looking the other way when it's used to rebroadcast American Idol episodes.
If there is ever a sign that a company is losing its relevance, it's when it stops innovating and starts copying its successful rivals. All this story says is that M$ has lots of places to put ads, and they're going to do it. What better way to please customers can you imagine?
What is this about them wanting to put ads into Office? Unless they are planning on giving out a free version that has ads, I highly doubt people are going to like that one bit. Paying $400 for a program that displays ads is BS. I don't any company or person is going to deal with that.
Unless they are wanting to push most people to something else I don't think that will fly very well.
Could it be that someone wanted to manipulate the stock of either Microsoft or Yahoo. If this has been rolled out in two counries, and a 6000 customer pilot program, Somebody has to have known about it before today's news. It's completely obvious if Microsoft is going to compete directly with Yahoo's cash cow, their bread and butter, their /* new aphorism goes here */ Then the probability of Microsoft buying Yahoo is like the probability of catching Michael Jackson dating a 35 year old woman.
For anyone that doesn't know it already...don't use slashdot to pick stocks
Is this going to give me a reason to choose Microsoft for something over Google??? The mind boggles.
Oh, I can just imagine how well that's going to go over in our large site. How does MS expect to sell this to the corporate market? "Yes, MS Office is the most popular productivity suite in the world! And as an added bonus, we'll kill YOUR companies productivity by distracting all of your employees with tempting ads! Think about the boon to the economy! Instead of all those employees wasting time working for YOU, they can be promoting commerce and boosting the economy by spending their working hours shopping online!"
Even making it easy to disable wouldn't assuage many CTO's, because there is still a productivity loss as the IT guys disable the ads. It may be simple for one, but when you have thousands of installations, sometimes spread out over multiple locations, it's going to cost real money to fix.
The old adage "Cutting off your nose to spite your face" comes to mind here. They're going to anger the majority of their customers, just to make it look like they're "competing" with Google. MS really has fallen...they're transforming themselves from the largest software company in the world into freaking Doubleclick.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
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I'm curious which of their many sources they plan to use to get this info. Will they just borrow as much personal data as they can from your windows box and plug it into their ad service? Will they "patch" windows the way other spyware companies do? Do they already have all this info? I suppose I simply don't the idea of another more invasive ad program out there, but then I suppose it won't effect me immediatly, since I never use IE.
Oh, BTW, how would you like your job title to be "senior director for monetization." Is "monetization" even a word?
They're doing this to drive down the stock price of Yahoo, so it will be easier to purchase. It's just another clever tactic when you want to exercise your monopoly power.
stuff |
... the interests of the advert part of MS and the OS part of MS will clash. Wonder which will win?
Funny how they tout their privacy-invasive demographic targeting stuff as a distinguishing feature of their system compared to Google. It's one thing for MS to know a lot about you, but by affecting the display of ads based on your personal information, some of it is being leaked to advertisers each time you click. No thanks, MS.
Another case of Microsoft biting it's own nose to spite it's own face?
Control of Operating System + control of anti-spyware/adware software + vested interest on datamining your box to advertise to you ======> MS Spyware(tm).
In order to combat FOSS Microsoft has set aside it's shared source licenses and opted for the shareware route. Eventually, all Microsoft products will be available free for download if you agree to reveal your age, gender, and income bracket.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
Just another ad service to list in AdBlock's filters. Nothing to see here...
Microsoft is a tough bedmate. They'll pay Yahoo a few million as part of the courting process, get a good look at the goods, scr3w them a few times, then cut and run. Yahoo will cry ("you said you loved me"), probably sue, and loose a vast quantity of market share in the process; meanwhile Microsoft will have spent a few million crippling yet another competitor and gain major amounts of insight and technologies. In the end MSFT's focus is turning this into a two-horse race - them and Google, Yahoo is an innocent victim on MSFT's butcher's table.
Damien
When a user tries to save a Word document, Office will notify that person in a large dialog with the text beneath the ad window: "Your document C:\My Documents\Work\Important.doc will be saved right after these short messages from our sponsors." *Crash*
Ads seem to work for TV but duh, weren't ads who were financiating all those .com bubbles before they bankrupted?
Ok, how the fuck can an article get tagged "floppingwienervision"? /. horde coming up with this description, and I'm sure it takes more than that to get an article tagged.
I can't imagine more than 2-3 people out of the whole
Well I guess they do plan ahead... seeing as how you cannot block anything from microsoft in the hosts file as its hardcoded
By reading this, you have given me brief control of your mind.
From the article:
"AdCenter will give advertisers sophisticated information about consumers, including their location, age, gender and sometimes, their level of wealth."
Could MS be misusing all of that registration data they have been collecting? Or have they silently added another few hundred lines to their EULA / TOS?
Strike 3 you're outta there!
It just looks like standard MicroSoft practices here, just occurring faster than normal. It usually takes a whole month before they start screwing them over.
I don't know why anyone would want to be "affiliated" with MicroSoft, considering their history. Their usual tactic is announce an "affiliation", get into the company, steal all the intresting IP they can, then screw the hell out of them.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
For years, people have wondered where Microsoft was going. A seemingly endless supply of ill-conceived and contradictory decisions, failed business projects, and general mismanagement gave the impression that there was no clear corporate vision. With the satuaration of the OS and Office software market, no one knew where MS would turn next to sustain the drug of growth.
No one except me, that is. Some said MS would go into being a conten provider. You fools. Porn sites are content providers, MS sells no porn. Others thought that Bill and Company were looking to get into the embedded device market. WTF were they smoking? Embedded devices have no need for brand names. Who cares what your VCR runs other than stinkfingered cheeto monkeys watching tapes of Enterprise frame by frame to see the T'Pol nipple shot?
No, the future is clear. MS must take their marketing talent and money to a new market. One that is unaccustomed to the trench fighting of the Tech sector. A ripe plum. Yes, I am talking about the snack cake market.
With the considerable leverage and investment capability, MS has the chance to swoop into the prepackaged pastry industry like Hitler into Poland. Sarah Lee is ripe for a takeover with the failure of their X-99 project of dehydrated cupcakes. With such a strong base, competitor after competitor could be gobbled up. In a few short years, there would be only one source for Coffee cakes, Twinkies, HoHo, DingDongs, Chocodiles, zingers, and snowballs.
Think I'm crazy? Get off the smack. The signs are there. The Xbox is nothing more than an activity inhibitor. Less active children eat more cupcakes. The BSOD was a conditioning system. Once MS introduces the blue frosting on their signautre snack bites, the dollars will flow.
This latest project is just a cover. The only ads running on the system in 10 years will be for BillBills and BalmerDogs. I just don't understand why people don't see it. Sheep.
The Revolution. Now available as a convienent six tape series from PBS.
after that coming with competing products against that company? that's not the microsoft I know... the microsoft I know would bundle the adCenter in all the versions of windows down to 3.1 and then pop ads in between any 2 key strokes from the user.
I had another sig before, but this one is better
Hey I thought you mac user creative artist types knew a thing or two about colors. Look at most grays and they have color in them. Compare a gray with magenta to a gray with cyan -- big difference. But maybe you missed that when you instantly became an "artist" because you can tweak images going clicky clicky with the one button mouse.
/early 90's. I still have an Illustrator 88 box I keep for nostalgic reasons -- it came out as the upgraded Illustrator in 1988. But I haven't seriously touched a mac since the early 90's. It's a stale overpriced platform for the pretensious people who don't know what they are doing. Plenty of OS's and machines can do what a mac does far cheaper and often better. This is why Apple has been hemmoraging marketshare on the desktop for years.
I am guessing in your rant on gray you are refering to the box color of the PC's. Which is even more revealing of your lack of artistry or metaphor -- most Macs I've seen lately are white which within the reflective color model in which they exist is not a color at all but the absense of color. A lot of PC's these days, including the Dell I am currently using, are black which is the presence of all colors.
And your sense of history isn't much more accurate. I worked extensively with Illustrator, Photoshop, AppleScript and Hypercard card back in the 80's
Apple's profits come from the iPod and most movie special effects are built in Linux that's the world we live in today.
Seriously, if Microsoft Office is your tool for creativity you might as well be driving a Windows box and save yourself over a grand in overpriced hardware. You could put the money saved toward learning a thing or two about color models and philosophy at the local community college where they probably use Windows PC's.
It's just a box. It's not a personal identity, philosophy or moral statement. It makes the same noise when the hard drive fails no matter what the label on the outside says. Who cares if you get a blue screen or a beachball when it crashes; if your not crashing once in a while your not trying hard enough!
It doesn't really matter what brand it is. You are not a different thinker just because some billboard says you are. More of those awards you rattled off have been won by non Mac users than Mac users and I am going to guess you haven't won any of them.
It's better to just be a thinker and not worry about being different. Use your brain. It's not that you have such and such piece of hardware, it's what you do with it.
Currently most computer users have more power than NASA did during the Apollo project and I haven't seen any of em make it to the moon.
...just happened to me. I tend to root for the underdog... SO WHY AM I CHEERING FOR MICROSOFT?!?!?! The cognitive dissonance is astounding.
It looks like you're interested in buying a computer!
Would you like help?
<shudder />
I could not justify my existence if I were a turkey farmer. Would I terminate myself? Undoubtably, yes.
I see you're writing a suicide note, take a look at these great offers!
Uhhhh. How about you do some research about MS' history, then get back to us on their ability to innovate.
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you wake up with fleas.
Microsoft is one of the most boring, least creative corporations in the entire Universe.
The ad business is supposed to be the exact opposite of this. Microsoft does not have corporate culture to flourish there. They are going there becouse they think that's the cool place to be, since Google and Yahoo is there. Just look at there name: "adCenter". So brainless. So not in. So microsoftish.
It's about time Microsoft finally did something for all the users who keep asking for more ads.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Well, I don't know how many offices is adCenter using in total, but there's one at a big call centre where I'm working now, those guys have the biggest room after XBox, the whole room is an expansion to the call centre, and it was built a few months ago, now it's full with small HP computers and brand new no-name monitors. Since it's a new project, operators don't know each other so well, so station has a name tag on top of it, decorated by the operator himself, you know, colours, cartoons, etc, oh, and they have a phone too, but they don't use it. Recently (I assume it's because of the official launch) they decorated the room with coloured ribbons, balloons, banners, and all sorts of encouraging phrases in the walls. The place is located in Canada, and by looking at these guys faces and accents one can tell right away that they come from all over the world. They have been here for a couple of months now, I never knew exactly what they did, I mean, I knew it was the adCenter, but those guys didn't seem to be doing anything. Now they look busy, but still relaxed, no pressure like the XBox phone guys. I say relaxed because I usually see them browsing non-job-related websites and using MSN Messenger, they also pull up some Microsoft tool(s) and do their thing, approve/disapprove ads and a lot more I have no clue about. Phone agents and supervisors from other projects have been trained in adCenter and are currently working there. And that's adCenter how it looks from the inside of the same call centre, unfortunately I don't have details on what they do and how they do it.
Ads in office...unleashing the malware of war
They don't event support firefox: "Microsoft adCenter does not currently support the web browser you are using. Please sign in using Internet Explorer 6+. More about system requirements" I need to stop supporting msie i guess.
I just get sick of all this lame ass brand wars especially the Think Different crap... what in the hell does that mean anyways? Most people I have met who use Macs and claim to be artists, such as the parent post, don't know a thing about color theory or composition.
The people they used to promote the Think Different ad campaign for the most part didn't even use computers. Many, for example Picasso, felt a contempt for computers.
It's worse than the GAP Khakis ads, because at least the dead people they were raping at least wore the damn pants, albeit a pair of khakis much nicer than the ones sold at the GAP.
I suppose I should have modded them down, but I had to raise a voice in protest. A computer is just a tool. Get over it.
Microsoft switched from using Yahoo for something to doing it themselves. How does this affect Google? Microsoft wasn't their customer before, and isn't now. The net effect appears to be 0.
That said, Microsoft's new advertising program will certainly effect Google, but that is old news.
And most PC users, like yourself, are imagination-deficient squares. The extent to which grayness permeates your thinking is evident in every reply you've made in this thread. It's just as well, I suppose; you'll never understand why you invite such contempt from your betters.
Their add service only runs if you are using Internet Exploder, er Explorer.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
Microsoft is like the Karl Rove of tech...
The only way Microsoft has to promote their inferior product has been FUD campaigns and tons of self-promotion through marketing.
You insult the Bush administration and Microsoft in the same comment on Slashdot and you say "Go ahead, mod me down." You are definitely new here otherwise you would've known that either one of those alone would've given you an instant +5 Insightful.
If you would've thrown in some devotional passages to Linux, you would've been in the running for the extremely rare +6 Super Genius.
I'm a big tall mofo.
I am already paying google too much per click. Now MSN and yahoo will have to be paid seperatly. It is getting to be too much for the smaller businesses online. No surprise there. Google is already making it impossible to play the game. I am positive the boys from Redmond will make it even harder as they compete :(.
"Search isn't the only place where adCenter will place advertising. In the future, Microsoft said, it expects to launch ads in e-mail, the Spaces blogging program, on mobile applications, in Office and on the Xbox.com Web site." Are advertisements supported by ODF? :P
--josh
The summary for the article is entirely too long. It could be shortened to "Microsoft has released another weapon in its battle against Google: Steve Ballmer" which would get the point across more concisely.
For added effect, you could mention that Ballmer is "going to f*cking kill that guy."
Mr. T pitied this fool on 27 July 1992.
I can't imagine anyone visiting MSN sites if not for Hotmail. That was probably the greatest acquisition Microsoft has ever made.
Checking e-mail with Hotmail is the only I reason I've ever been to MSN.
Microsoft just lost me as a customer in yet another market: Microsoft adCenter does not currently support the web browser you are using. Please sign in using Internet Explorer 6+.
It is difficult to call Yahoo "Innocent" anything, these days. They are just not the same tech company they used to be.
As to whether they will become victim to Microsoft, well then, it will be something they asked for. & a Sad day too.
I've posted a story about this, the day that Microsoft ACTUALLY announced the service which was 2006-03-15. What's interesting about it is that Microsoft has actually been using some time now -- if you take a look at their corporate website and all those images on the front page, and the images in the lower left corner, these are by definition ads, granted ads for their products but still.
Personally I don't think this is just a case of playing catch-up. It is the next logical step. It's like with mobile providers, first there was WAP, and everybody hated it, then one wise guy thought of providing content, then it was the big hit in telco market, wap content provider, which has currently grown to a HUGE market (sorry I can't post a number, or a link to the reports, they're proprietory). It's the same here. Ads are the next big thing. Google is making a fortune, and in a previous article on slashdot someone said Office is going down (yeah, right). Well, MS won't repell a good cash flow IMHO. But then again, would you? Cause I wouldn't!
I wouldn't say they're losing their relevance, as much as their focus. Microsoft is a technology company, who is really good at marketing its own products. This just seems so far out of its core competency, it seems like an attempt to do something just because their competitor is. When a company starts doing that, they lose focus on what they're good at. **cough** Novell **cough**.
Not to mention, there are a LOT of companies that are afraid of competition from Microsoft. Why would they want to go through Microsoft for advertising? Heck, even Google is starting to run into that problem.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
Maybe MS is just trying to drive YHOO down to make it a cheaper buyout.
Microsoft today announced that it will solve the Iraq civil war crisis by sending all its Vista developers there if they don't get Vista out by December 2006.
"Making friends and money is our motto", Ballmer said in announcing the new "employee motivation" program.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Wow, Cringley, here on slashdot. I had no idea you were a /. reader. Let me be the first to appologize for some of the things I've said about you in the past. I never realized you'd read them.
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
that a LOT of people are such sheep. Imagine if so many Yahoo! users DESPISED ms to the point that they ditched their Yahoo! accounts and switched to Google or another provider.
That's EXACTLY what ***I*** will do. I never had a Hotmail account, but I probably WOULD have had I heard of them before they got bought. I'd had have dumped it, too, once ms put their hands on it.
Do YOU know anyone who more or less feels this way?
(And, if they ARE doing this tactic to drive down Yahoo!s pricing, then the DOJ (yeh, fat dream) ought to nail ms not only in the ass, but it the brain, too.)
But, this makes me wonder what Hu Jintao and bad bill had to talk about. Maybe nothing was ever said. Maybe gates already had in his head to penetrate China by jackbooting or buying or one way or another taking over Yahoo! globally to get into China-- the world's BIGGEST internet market waiting to be tapped. I wonder if China is going to let gates do that and let him get away with it.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
For wanting to go in together with Yahoo, this seems like the wrong start for a good relationship.
One of my clients does rolling renewing contracts (3-yr or 5-yr generally) with their clients. It is relatively common when a client's renewal comes up that they go to the competitor (our industry has two big players and two to three very small players) for a minimum-length contract, usually a year. Then they come back to us when that contract is up and offer to re-sign with us - using their business as a bargaining chip in those negotiations!
Similar tactic here?
Ok too many words - let's put it into slashdot-esque
1. Drop advertising firm
2. ????
3. Use advertising revenue as bargaining chip trying to form a partnership with firm
4. Profit!
I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
You pay for cable tv? You subscribe to a magazine or news paper?
Amercians are used to it.. I doubt enough would boycott buying the ad laced prodcut to make a difference.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's kinda cool that Google or Altavista or ?? do not return those kind of ads. I wonder how they do that, hmmm
Thank you for setting me straight. Yes, you are probably right. I never realized how in the box my thinking was. I always see most desktop computers, Mac or Windows, as a personal computer or PC and generally indistinguishable. The difference between an Asus and an Apple made in the same factory? Only difference I can tell is the logo and price, obviously a square like me would never appreciate the true value of the Macintosh experience and I am probably a rube for dismissing you as being someone who confuses taste with money.
It's awfully uncreative of me to discount the mac as overpriced and underpowered. I mean sure you can run illustrator or photoshop on either box whereas the graphics software I write works on neither because I am not creative enough to think different enough I suppose. I am even so "imagination-deficient" I write my own propriatary graphics file format because as a dull gray thinker I can't seem to get JPEG or GIF to do what I want with any efficiency. And the computer I use to run the genetic software I write, the big iron that stores data in terabytes and resides in the locked server room certainly illustrate that I am not creative whatsoever. I don't think our hardware even has a boutique store in a trendy neighborhood, but what do I know I am a square. Genetics isn't creative at all, well I mean it creates life, but not creative stuff that gets written up in the Entertainment section of the Post.
To the truly creative, the ad men and pixel pushers, I bow to thee.
But the upside of being a square is I don't have to pull all nighters, I have my own office with a door, am treated really nicely at work, have job security, don't have to make 'pitches' and get paid well. Compared to the jittery hipsters I knew who called themselves "Artists" I can live with it and your contempt.
However until you write code rather than just push buttons and your work and has real world medical benefits rather than just looks pretty just keep telling yourself that you're better than me if that makes you feel better.
No, even better !
Let them put ads in their bluescreen and error message pop-ups !
This crash was brought to you by Durex Condomn (tm). Durex Condomn (tm) keeping you away from the *other* viruses since 1929.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Even in your sarcasm, you reveal your adherence to dogma and inability to think different. We Mac users are well aware that creativity comes in many forms; many of us are scientists, astronomers, mathematicians, even accountants working on humanity's most pressing problems. By assuming I am as inflexible in my thinking as you evidently are in yours, you have all but ceded the argument.
The Mac isn't for everyone. People who think like the PC, such as yourself, shouldn't even try to understand the Mac. You help nobody by straying from your PC roots; stay away from the Mac, and we'll stay away from the PC. Simple as that.
"Sorry, Adcenter does not support your web browser. Please sign in using Internet Explorer, or Internet Explorer. Thank you for using Internet Explorer."
I get:
The Microsoft adCenter system is undergoing maintenance
Microsoft adCenter is currently undergoing regular system maintenance and is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Return to the Microsoft adCenter sign-in page.
All these posts, and no one's actually supplied any relevent information.. ie, "how many lines will this add to my ad block list?"
I'm not sure, but I'm guessing it's probably as simple as *.adcenter.*
Anyone got the proper details, so we can start getting adblock programs updated?
The equation is not reflexive, just because some people who use macs are creative doesn't mean you are creative because you use a mac. Over the years the mac OS has become more like Windows and Windows more mac like. The hardware is the same and there is little difference to the interface. Still, you can't run Websphere Rational Developer on a Mac so I have no reason to use a mac.
I left the mac along time ago because the hardware stunk and Apple wasn't standing behind the warrenty. 1-800-APPLE-SOS started to become worthless in resolving issues and then to add insult they started charging for it like a phone sex line. I was an Apple certified tech and saw a lot of foobar spawned by that company and had to mop up the mess they made with a lot of unhappy customers.
At least now they're not making their junk in Mexico, but still why would anyone pay twice the price for hardware when you can buy an ASUS made in the same factory with a Windows license for half the price. Then again, why buy that when you can buy a used Solaris workstation for half that price and have vastly more power, dual risc processors, scsi array and a solid 64 bit operating system. Sun over-engineers their equipment to be solid business components. Their boxes are not designed as consumer electronics like a mac or a dell. If Apple made their gear in that manner I'd be a happy mac, but in the real world it's not like that at all.
Still I have a lot of respect for Apple. I have a dog named Woz. I made a lot of money off of their stock. But I also don't worship Apple either. Computers are not a religion. Apple's best innovations have been adopted by others and many of their mistakes they are still repeating and they seem to be adopting their competitors mistakes too (now sometimes they can turn those mistakes into gold, like the boutiques, but only time will tell how thier switch to Intel is going to go when everyone else is jumping from that boat to AMD). Your better off devoting your time to learning rather than prostelitizing and then be able to make an informed decision rather than buying snake oil because in the end it's a business decision not a religious one.
But I guess if you really want a religious war, you could launch a terminal screen on your mac and type in two letters: vi. Do that kiddo, then we can talk.