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New "Get a Mac" TV ads
Klaidas writes "Apple has introduced 3 new "Get a Mac" TV ads: "Accident", "Angle/Devil" and "Trust Mac" " Normally, posting ads would be make me cry, but these are genuinely funny and well done.
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I think Slate got it right when it comes to these ads. They're kinda funny, but really mean-spirited. They're "Haha...you suck!!"-ads that don't appeal to me. That, and the fact that they kinda make me happy that I'm running windows (not right now, right now it's Fedora all the way, I double-boot) instead of apple. It makes the PC look productive and serious, instead of the slacker Mac OS X.
They also contain alot of stuff that's plain wrong. For instance, Windows runs fine out of the box, there's virtually no advanced configuration after you've installed it. Set the date and time, account password and keyboard configuration, and bobs your uncle! Same thing with my digital camera, that works fine with windows, contrary to what one of the ads say.
Don't get me wrong, I think Mac OS X is a stellar OS, far superior to windows, I just don't like these ads.
The irony is that the PC Guy is actually the one who's interesting and funny. He's more memorable. The Mac Guy is the actual dweeb. So thanks for the ads Apple, I'd rather go with the PC Guy. The Mac Guy exemplifies everything I hate about Apple: How they market for I'm-better-than-you cool-rich-kids with bleacher jeans that go to starbucks and are a part of that race of MTV drones who somehow have a smug feeling of superiority for being ignorant.
And for the record, yes, I was with the PC crowd when Apple was still stuck in the 80's with their crappy Mac OS 9.
I'm sorry, it's the classic marketing mistake. Apple's competitors make the same one when they market their "not-an-iPods". You don't build market share by capitalizing on the fact that you don't have market share.
In other words, you don't insult your potential market. Macintosh has a lot of image they can sell, sell simply, and sell well, and yet they focus on the PC's problems?
Just because a large portion of Mac users seem to spend every waking hour mocking Windows doesn't mean that obsession is marketable (or is even what sensible Mac Fans do).
Secret of marketing: Nobody identifies with the butt of a marketing campaign, including the "PC" character in these commercial. The bald, plumpish, corrected vision types with their carefully engineered VBA-enhanced spreadsheet applications at work cheerfully latch on to iPhoto slideshows with musical accompaniment that work out of the box and make their wives and kids smile.
Only a few bitter "mom's basement" types actually latch on to loser-types in advertising.
How many Mac users even care at this point what the PC offers?
1) After being 0wn3d. Again.
2) After having to buy a desktop full of shareware to get the functionality Mac provides out of the box. Again.
3) After having their 6 year-old sign up for MSN/AOL because "it was on the desktop."
4) After the latest Microsoft updates started up all those insecure services. Again. For the seventh year running.
5) After being asked for the millionth time by PC users, "what did you use to put together that great slideshow of the cub scout soapbox derby?"
The Mac/PC campaign uses humor to deflate the Microsoft/Dell "juggernaut", and remind that there is an alternative. A humorous nod to their daily frustrations resonates pretty well with consumers, combining that with the implicit promise that Apple does it different seems like a pretty smart campaign to me.
Free Adam Smith! (Or best offer.)
Between the two, Windows is able to be more productive, consistent (home & end keys - nuf sed), meaningful (how often do I really need to scroll to the top of my terminal window's history vs going to the front of my current line, why would Home & End be bound this way by default?)
Since OS X ships with Bash, I simply use Ctr-A and Ctrl-E for that. I have never missed home and end in terminals nor do I use them in Linux, as they are too far removed from the primary area of the keyboard.
For single lines in textareas of browsers, you can simply use Pageup/PageDown to go to the start and end of line respectivly - this is the only time when I ever used to use Home/End they way you are speaking of and really it's smarter to fold this ability into the same keys where it makes sense.
Why you think Windows is in any way more productive when it does not ship with a real shell is a mystery. I'd perhaps give Linux to you execot that Expose as an app switcher is a pretty big productivity boost.
and waste less of my CPU on stupid and meaningless crap like Dashboard, software rendered drop shadows & transparencies, etc.
GPU - all that is hardware accellerated. Kind of removes your whole point there. If your GPU is otherwise sitting idle why not make use of it?
Believe it or not, I value responsiveness, consistency, and day-to-day usability over polish.
So do I. That's why I use a Mac - polish is removed easily as it only covers the ugliness beneath. Good design goes through and through a product, which is what the Mac offers and why I switching away from Linux as my primary home computer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
An excellent clarification. There are few topics that show the polarization of the crowd as well as this one.
I think the original poster's use of the term "experience vendor" is a good one, and it bears some serious consideration. It is the ultimate in branding. They have established, to a great degree, a set of expectations and assumptions around their product. That is the experience they pitch to potential customers.
We've all seen this in different sectors. When you hear the term "used car salesman," what comes to mind? I've run into may folks in used car sales who go out of their way to sell a "car-buying experience" so they can differentiate themselves in the market. These are the establishments (heck, even cropping up in new car sales) that offer "no-pressure" sales floors, no-haggle pricing, free oil changes for a year, premium coffee in the lobby, even a sales force that will drive the vehicles to your home so you can test drive them in your own neighborhood. It's the same transition mom-and-pop stores must make when giants like Wal-Mart move in. They must focus on "value-added" services to draw in customers, especially since they cannot compete on price alone.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
When I opened up my dual core mac, I had to download 123 megabytes of updates to the OS. . . I wasn't sure if it was to be "safe" or not, as there were no real details on this issue provided. So I just blindly clicked "ok." And you know what? When it was done, I had to reboot. But it was a very "advanced" reboot. Then when it came back up, it had me strike keys on my keyboard so it could figure out what kind of keyboard I was using. I thought it was the keyboardy kind of keyboard, but I guess it wasn't. Also, I noticed that my monitor and mac came in 2 different boxes. . . but the commercial indicated I could just open the box and make a webpage. Not so much. Then I discovered that if I wanted to do this "easily," I could pay an additional 80 dollars a year to rent the software that makes this easy to do. Yes. . . so advanced it makes me cry.
I see it as a trade off. Simplicity comes at the cost of options. A great example is Sony's camcorders. They have this "Easy" button. With it off, you have a relatively large selection (complicated for some) in the menu. The common person may find this confusing and not use any of it. When you press the "Easy" button, it basically locks out and automatically controls everything in that menu except for the very basic of functions. Yes, mac may be easy to use for the general public, but when it comes to some that NEEDS to do something that is not relatively basic. The ease of use can go right out the door. My personal opinion, i like windows (also linux) because if something is not doing what i want it too, i can change it. It can be something as simple as making the desktop experience more graphical (or less graphical). I like the choices. Also to repeat from your blip, for a fraction of the cost. (bootcamp isn't a solution to OSX's lack of software choices. It's joining the other side while getting charged WAY to much)
See, I would disagree with most of that post.
I can enable Apache web server, PHP, Python extensions, netstumbler(esque), ftp, modify cron, upgrade, downgrade, uninstall, reinstall, add programs to startup, remove programs from startup, etc. from Apples System Preferences. It's a wonderful little thing.
Plus, the Unix underbelly means I can do anything more complicated than that by vi'ing something in /etc.
As for "price" macbook pros/macbooks are very competitively priced compared to say, Dell. The thing is, people will look at the "Lowest end" Dell, and see "Ooh! $600! but it's about 1/2 the machine of the macbook. If you look at the equivalent machine(from a hardware perspective) it generally runs $100-200+ more than the macbook.
*shrug*
I find it sorta funny when people declare the mac or pc to be innately better. Right now I have my ibook g4 12" sitting to the left of my Dell 9400. The G4 is beauty incarnate, I enjoy using it for pretty much everything, but the 9400s screen is gorgeous. For my work(programming) Screen real-estate is important, so the 1900x1200 resolution screen is my choice. Also, the fact that I can view my webpages in the browser that is still(unfortunately :() used by 50%+ of the people on the internet(read, IE) means I use them both.
Oh, and the fact that Synergy allows me to control them both from one keyboard/mouse means I am truly integrated :)
I got sick and tired of seeing all the good games coming out for the PC, and very few of them having a Mac port. Even then, it would cost more then an arm & a leg to afford something that could run the Mac version...
Of course that was back in the Mac OS Classic, SNES - Playstation era when consoles could barely hold up to PC games. While I already had game consoles and did enjoy playing console games, I still wanted to play games like Duke 3D, Quake, etc. When I did get a PC gaming rig, I was able to enjoy titles and series like Thief, System Shock 2, Half-life, etc.
Even though PCs & consoles are now about equal in power and games are being released for both platforms, I still prefer to do my gaming on the PC. As long as console games like FPSs don't have a "mandatory" keyboard & mouse option(last I checked with the Xbox360 it is up to the developers to decide whether or not to implement this feature), consoles have a long way to go before they replace the PC.
Most of your post is innane overanalysis of what is really a fairly straightforward and quite funny set of ads. One point does, however, stick out.
I have yet to see anything done on a Mac that I can't do on a Windows machine.
A given user might be able to do a lot of things on a Mac that they can't on Windows. My mom figured out how to video conference with me on her Mac, but could never have done it on Windows. Not because Windows lacks video conferencing software, but because video-conferencing in OS X is drop-dead simple, and requires little to no configuration. The same thing with photo magement. My mom could never do photo management in Windows, because she'd have to install Picasa or something like that, which is beyond her grasp. In OS X, she plugs in her digital camera, and up pops iPhoto, again with no configuration required. The same applies for music management too. iTunes makes ripping CDs and syncing with her iPod doable in way that WMP never could.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I have yet to see anything done on a Mac that I can't do on a Windows machine. Nothing.
Show me something comparable to OsiriX (no, Osiris ain't it), and I'll kiss you.
The Mac has the video camera integrated, with no drivers to install. I haven't encountered a webcam yet that didn't require drivers in XP, but I'll assume you found one. Drivers aside, the discoverability of video chat features is substantially better on the Mac. First of all, iChat is a big, obvious icon on the dock, while MSN Messenger is either buried in the Start Menu with a zillion other things, or an inconspicuous tiny icon in the system tray (which, on most machines, even out of the box, is chock-full of other stuff to the point where the MSN icon gets hidden*). Second, it wouldn't have occurred to my mom to go to the menu to start a video chat. In fact, she wasn't even aware of the fact that iChat could do video chat. She discovered it because iChat puts a big video camera icon next to the buddy icons of people who have a video camera. That's UI design at its finest --- creating an interface that allows people to do things they didn't even know they could do.
Discoverability is a feature that's pervasive in OS X, and one that Microsoft has yet to master. Just compare iTunes and WMP. As of WMP9, anyway, ripping or creating CDs was non-intuitive even for myself (a programmer). Meanwhile, my mom rips CDs and syncs her iPod quite easily using iTunes.
*) Hiding things is another weakness of Windows. Ever since Win2K introduced the inane feature to hide infrequently-used menu entries, my parents have had trouble with it. It's something that goes against half a dozen principles of good HI design, yet Microsoft still hasn't gotten rid of it. The same is true for hiding stuff in the systray, or entries in the taskbar.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
It's cheaper to buy a decent gaming PC than a Mac and a console.
Yeh, but I'd have to buy the Mac anyway, because all I'd be using the PC for was playing games.
The only way Bill Gates could get me to take Windows seriously again would be for him to start over at around 1997 with NT 3.x and build a serious, professional operating system with a solid POSIX subsystem, a Win32 API for compatibility, and the best of the stuff that he promised us when I was setting up our first Windows NT network on NT 3.1. Where's the object oriented desktop, Bill, and the hard boundaries between subsystems, and the improved file system, and everything else you laid out for us in the '90s? Most of it hasn't even made it into Vista, because you're trying to build Vista on top of the abused child that is the NT 5 kernel... and that's just cruel.
this "i can do that on my pc" argument is really tired when nobody factors in the ease of use or quality of the final product. i'd imagine most advanced computer users can accomplish nearly all the same tasks on different platforms but that has nothing to do with the ease-of-use for average computer users. just because you *might* be able to do the same things, you might not be able to do them as quickly, efficiently and as well as they can be done on a mac. just as there are things that pc's excel at, there are things macs excel at. to claim that to be untrue is simply shortsightedness.