By now, you’ve likely seen the Windows ads complaining about how Apple is stereotyping PC people. I think it’s admirable of Microsoft to “fight back,” though they seem to be missing a couple of obvious points.
First, I don’t think most PC people associate themselves with their computers like Mac people tend to. Neither good nor bad, just an assumption based on the people I know who use PCs. Therefore, without this personal association, most PC-using people don’t see themselves when they see the PC guy in the Apple ads. Thus, this whole campaign from Microsoft is kinda missing the point.
Second, since the advent of the Intel chip in Macs, most people know that you can run Windows and all of the related programs on your Mac. In fact, I can boot my laptop in native Windows mode, essentially turning it into a Windows PC. (Not that I would want to.) Thus, this whole campaign from Microsoft seems kind of… well, odd. Why not embrace all of these Mac people and sell them software, too?
Anyway, now that there’s a full stereotypical stereotyping war going on, there are a plethora of user-generated ads making the rounds on YouTube. Lots of fun stuff, but here’s one I really like (well done, Michael!)
I think they started out on the wrong path on the Apple commercials in the first place. The biggest thing that has annoyed me from the beginning on those Mac vs PC commercials is that they are overgeneralizing EVERYTHING that’s not a mac into one small group.First, there’s Mac. Macs have Mac software. ’nuff said. On the other hand, there’s PC. PC’s have a huge, huge amount of variations between hardware and software. There are countless distro’s of Linux and Unix operating systems as well as any others out there that dont use either. They all run on PC’s – sometimes other devices as well. The point is that Windows users (the ones being poked at in the apple commercials) make up only a small portion of the PC users out there.Now that Microsoft has a hard time combating those ads, they’ve been given the opportunity to capitalize on all of those other OS’s that use PC as well, so now whenever anyone things PC, they automatically think Windows, which wasn’t always the case.Ultimately, its just a huge step backward for the OSS community now that it’s even more difficult for an average user to tell the difference between and Windwows PC and a Linux PC, and Apple started it all with their commercials. That said… I’m pretty excited about getting one of those new Macbook Pro’s (along with the cinema display) that was announced today.
I completely agree with you. The Mac commercials, like political attack ads, were very effective. Companies/politicians run commercials like that because, while we recognize that we’re being lumped into an overgeneralized group, the messages hit our nerves.
Can’t say I disagree with your comments at all. I wonder if CP+B/MSFT will “acknowledge” that they planned for all the negative spoof advertising as well.