Microsoft says Apple legal wanted 'Laptop Hunter' ads pulled - Page 3

Assuming the story is true, it puts Apple in a bad light. No matter how you spin it, it looks like sour grapes. Microsoft knows the law and much advertising stretches the truth. I don't want to see Apple and MS battling each other in court endlessly over advertising. Not good for profits nor the stock.

Personally, I think Microsoft's ads are quite effective at getting the point across that PCs are cheaper. A few of the commercials even threw Apple a bone, one even saying Apple's kit is cool.

As far as the phone call, that plays into the dynamics even more. Why would they print a C&D letter that could be used in MS's next ad? Steve Jobs loves phone calls and when you want to keep stuff quiet, you do the phone call.

So I say lets have the war. Out in the open. Harping on Apple's prices day in and day out is going to pressure Apple to lower prices. And that is a good thing. I love competition.

But there is a point that neither side can cross. I'm not a legal expert, but I don't think MS has crossed that line. If lawsuits arose out of details, our economy would would grind to a halt. Well, except for the lawyers.

To me this sounds like two problems that have little to do with it being a PC

1 it is an antivirus program that did the moving, if you remove the wrong driver from any system it will cause it to be non functional.

2 this is a work system and the IT department that supports that particular computer should have tested the update before it was released to the general office. If you are left to your own devices to update your system, this would be yet another failure by your IT depatment.

I am not a fan of Apple, and it has nothing to do with cost as two of my personal systems were over $5000 each. My complaint is that i dont have the ability to build or work Apple systems. I enjoy building systems Apple does not like me doing it.

As an IT professional i have recommended Apple and PC to differnet people for different reasons, and if Apple were to take off the locks a little i would more than likelty buy one to try them out... again remember many of us PC fans had the Apple IIe

If i misspelled anything sorry i am an IT guy not an english teacher

I think that's their big mistake - never base your ad on your competitor's terms! Why on earth validate the premise of your competitor - especially when it's a deliberately slanted premise. Even though the common perception of most people is that a PC is synonymous with a PC running Windows, this perception is wrong and mostly a result of sloppy errant marketing on the part of both Microsoft and PC manufacturers. Why reinforce it? Especially when it can so easily be exploited by your competition as Apple has done. And it has never been an advantage to MS or pc manufacturers. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people confuse Dell with HP with Compaq, etc.
They had a better campaign with the "I'm a PC too" ads - but then they went and made these ads strictly about cheap hardware and retail stores? Neither of which belong to Microsoft. I'd like to meet the people who sold them on this idea - must have been some smooth talkers.

can't speak about all of them but Lauren was outted as an actress, the rest likely were also.

and here's a fun bit. Microsoft claims they weren't paid. they got the computer and NOTHING else, the only way to get away with that (no filming day salary, no residuals etc) is to film non union. so one of, if not the, largest software company in the country is filming major ad campaigns non-union. Walmart was slammed for this for years. Wonder what the unions would do to Microsoft.

It was a vailid counterpoint, because that link doesn't prove the claim that Macs have the same number of vulnerabilities. That was from one vulnerability. Read what that reply was to:


elroth didn't properly quote it, so I don't know who to attribute that to.

Did cartwheels down the hallway? Ballmer, is that you?

My 3 year old MacBook hard drive died 2 months out of warranty in June. Brought it to an Apple store Genius Bar and the next thing I new I was signing a service order for a new larger hard drive which cost me nothing and I picked it up the next day! I restored everything from Time Machine in about 90 minutes and was back in business. Try to do that with a PC! That's why I use Apple!!

So what.

If the "story" is false, it's just some BS.

If it's true, the average user that makes up the bulk of Apple's market will never find out, nor will they care.

Apple's impressive numbers speak for themselves, anyway.

I'm pretty sure that if Balmer did a hand stand or a cartwheel his arms would snap form the weight. You have to be fit to do an actual cartwheel.

Come to think of it I have yet to see a pic of MS executive that could actually do a cartwheel. I think we are talking "figurative" cartwheels here.

It's illegal in the USA to run an ad that you know is deceptive. I don't know the individual ads, but we are talking about one particular ad out of the series that said you couldn't buy a Mac for "under X price."

I'm assuming that the ad you reference above isn't that ad. If it is that ad then Apple could sue them and win with no problem at all. The law is crystal clear on this issue and ads are pulled all the time for this reason.

OK, that ad should be dropped or updated. That was a silly claim in the first place anyways as on my MBP, three screws and $50 in memory gets you 4GB. I think Apple should have been doing 4GB standard anyway given the meager cost of the chips, but the bean counter keeping track of upgrade pricing probably had his say.

How about the claim that the price reduction invalidates a price claim made by Microsoft? That's what the story and this thread is about. I was hoping someone could clarify that one. It's possible I haven't seen a particular ad, but I don't remember any add where a $100 price reduction would have changed anything.


What were those lies? You said it twice but didn't bother to mention any specifics.

Why aren't axe ads pulled? Last time I put axe on, I wasn't sexually molested by a large group of sexy women on the beach... But then again, that may have to do with me changing the channel before the jenny craig ad came on.

Market Share is not THE reason why there are fewer hackers etc going after Macs. it's that the OS is based on a unix/linux structure. pain in the ass to program a virus for.


there are lots of companies that use all Macs. Heck the ad company that made the Laptop campaign is a known "Mac House"


same game the luxury car companies play. so why is Apple blasted so much for it. Often simply because it is Apple


none. it was likely scripted. they might claim off of interviews or paper surveys. but it was not off the cuff anymore than Big Brother et al don't have writers tweaking things to make a hot story for the air


depends on the model she was looking at. I think the least expensive 15" did only have 2 GB at that time.


No. but it would be the first volley towards one. and it would make Apple look better. "Hey we gave them too chances to fix this and they refused. Now we want the courts to make them fix it, in accordance with laws A, B and C. Thank you."

I feel your pain.

In my humble experience, when somebody stops midway thru a story to say " hey, this is a true story" it almost always isn't ....... a microsoft exec wouldn't "stretch the truth" just to make his opinion valid, would he ? ..... just askin'

They only objected after MS kept running ads with old Mac models.
It's like Chevy running ads comparing the current Malibu to the old Ford Tempo.

I think the ads are working a little, but they won't clobber Apple.

I am confused, which is not out of the ordinary, but did you start on this forum with thousands of posts or did you start with one.

I am not trying to be rude to anyone but all new users to a forum had to start with the first post.

And if Apple did that, everyone would have just as much problem with their Macs as PC users do, the main reason PCs have the problems they do is because of all of the differences in hardware that the OS has to adjust for. Universal Hardware Platform is the reason Apple has so much success, also the reason you don't have problems with Playstations, xBoxes...etc.

I'm not against first posters. That in itself isn't the question or issue.

My point was that there are people that will sign up and make a single post with no intention of ever coming back or following up on that post. Often, this kind of person makes an inflammatory one, making it a troll post. But still, it seems like a waste of time to sign up in the first place.

Gotcha

Not necessarily. Companies send out cease and desist letters all the time, even when they wouldn't have much of a case if they brought one. It's the routine method of giving notice. So the way the Microsoft guy tells the story smells a little fishy to me. He's trying to make it sound like Apple Legal asked Microsoft to cease and desist when if they were going to do that, it wouldn't be in a phone call.

Anyway, the bottom line on this story is "who cares?" Microsoft's little end zone dance makes them look silly.

Like the one that says that windows comes with a bunch of 3rd party crud ware.

Out of the box a windows install doesnt come with any of that stuff. Its dell and hp that ad that stuff their .

Also what about the fact they portray microsoft as the hardware maker in those ads? Technically i can buy a pc with ubuntu on it straight from dell and not get any of that stuff.

So yes Apple does the same things in their ads and has no right to complain .

[RANT] I'll give you the hardware part, but I'm going to have to call you on the software. Can a PC run OS X applications legally ? I would say Final Cut being the big one, the iLife suite that comes free with OS X is pretty awesome. A Mac can dual boot into Windows natively via Boot Camp without VM overhead (actually my Macs have been the best hardware I've had run Windows). A Mac can also run Windows applications even within the Mac desktop using virtualization. Can a PC run *nix applications natively? Since OS X is built on FreeBSD it comes with a full complement of open source applications built in. Before you claim that PCs offer more software choices for computer "professionals", you may actually want to use a Mac first. I would never, ever go back to the PC/Windows monoculture. As a web developer and application programmer for over 12+ years (I guess that qualifies me a "professional"), the first Mac I bought over 4 years ago was the best decision I've ever made. I will put my 2 cents in on the hardware before I end this rant. I've owned an Acer (the WORST computer of all time), a couple Dells, Toshiba, HP, several beige boxes (some built by me), and a several rack mounted servers (some built by me). None of those PCs ever compared to the MacBook Pro or Mac Pro I now own in my opinion. YMMV. I'm going to sell my 4 yo MBP for about 65% of what I paid for it with added upgrades (can you do that with a 4 yo PC?) to buy a new 17" MBP--and to me it is worth every penny. [/RANT]

yep. gonna have to agree with this. sounds too uncharacteristic of Apple to be true. Not their style at all.

I don't think you will find a single ad from Apple that says Windows comes with "a bunch of 3rd party crud ware". They are saying PCs come with other extra stuff.....and they do.

Technically PC's don't even come with Windows dude. Dell computers and HP computers come with that stuff. Are Apple ads not an attack against Microsoft?

I mean no offense, but here's a link showing that OSX is full of Vulnerabilites, page 44, i found other studies, but they had a feeling of being biased towards M$, and as i said, i don't quite think IBM is going to do campaing in favor of M$

http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/i...ual-report.pdf

Yeah, especially when the actor is a member of the Screen Actors Guild, which has very strict guidelines about minimum compensation for its members. Pretty unlikely they risked not paying her, unless they considered the computer money as her compensation for contractual purposes.

http://www.sag.org/content/commercial-contracts

And re: MS advertising other companies' hardware rather than their own software, it's interesting to do a comparison in price between the software instead, since a pro version of Windows costs way more than OSX, and the Snow Leopard upgrade is going to cost $29. Anybody want to bet that MS will only charge $29 to upgrade to Windows 7?

Impressive. For a first post, you troll like a pro.

PCs don't come with Windows? Dells and HPs are not PCs?

I never said that Apple ads are not an attack against Microsoft. But majortom1981 claimed that there was an Apple ad that said that Windows comes with "a bunch of 3rd party crud ware". That was the point I was correcting.

Also, to be totally honest, I haven't bought a PC in years but have all other PC manufacturers gone out of business? Everyone always talks about HP and Dell. What about Acer, Gateway, Toshiba, Lenovo, Sony....? When you buy/configure one of these with Windows, do they not come with the "extra stuff"? (honest question)

They gave you incorrect information.

I got word from Microsoft's Board of Directors that Ballmer actually drove to Vancouver so he could have a sex change operation and become Bill Gates' lover.

You really want a comparison? Figure the cost of Windows Ultimate Server with unlimited clients compared to Mac OS X Server with unlimited clients (still $999 IIRC).

Or, figure the cost of upgrading 1,000 computers from Vista to Win 7 (if you can find 1000 computers running Vista) compared to 1,000 Macs from Leopard to Snow Leopard. That eliminates the 'you can preorder 25 computers at a lower price' issue.

Snow Leopard looks to me more as a service pack... you're being charged for!

....Grand Central.... hm... Microsoft called it NT Executive approx 3 years ago... not so cool name though

Really, overstated, huh, I've recorded over 4,500 computer repairs as a service technician and I can tell you, at least 1/3 of those repair tickets were virus removal, and other related corrupt OS issues.

Really, a service pack that removes the majority of the legacy code, takes the installed size on the Hard disk from 8 GB to somewhere around 1.5 GB, is fully 64-Bit, and adds over 150 features? Windows 7 is closer to being called Vista SP 3.

Actually the entry-level MacBook Pro still only comes with 2GB.
Why does Apple keep on doing this?!

MS SHOULD be paying it's users to take Vista back.

A built PC doesn't come with Windows. The user needs to install it. Manufacturers like HP and Dell preload Windows before selling the machine. Common sense I know, but my point was if their ads are against PCs, why always talk about Windows? (I had misinterpreted your point to begin with so i went off on an idea without needing to lol.)

To be honest, I don't remember a commercial that mentioned third party nonsense software.

Also, people mention dell and hp from their popularity.

Perhaps full of vulnerabilities compared to my refrigerator.

If this were really the point, then HP wouldn't have had to issue a patch to run on it's AMD line BEFORE you ran XP SP3 to prevent it from never booting after the install. The problems are not ONLY with Windows in that case.