Microsoft offers first hints at anti-Apple marketing blitz for Vista - Page 2

AWESOME Idea Cool Gut!-LMAO!!!!

I suggest someone program a nice 3D mini-game, cross-platform of course. Give Jobs and Gates/Ballmer a Man-of-War and have them duke it out.

"[I] got goosebumps - just, wow," said one insider who was privy to the preview."

I'd love to see what passes for generating goosebumps in Redmond. I recall a Jobs Keynote where they hauled up one of the Office Product Managers who was positively rapturous over the fact that you could now press a control that got your Excel graph to stay on one printed page. That was the MS equivalent of a show-stopper. This was somehow the big knee-weakening reveal that was (IIRC) on the same stage as Intel iMacs, MacBook Pros and iLife 06...

I have Vista running on my Boot Camp partition. Seems just fine to me, although I'm not too impressed with Aero (WPF) performance - isn't the Quartz killer it was made out to be.

I really wish Apple would release new video drivers more often than every 6-8 months.

What they need is a periscope with an apple logo on it in the water next to the the ship.

Because they don't work.... duh....

Oh well... Let M$ run these ads. I'd much rather let M$ have the customers that are swayed by these ads than to add their stupidity to the Mac Gene Pool, which because of the recent swell of "switchers" has been getting a little more polluted than I like when compared to the late 90's/early 2000's.

I prefer our little world to stay a niche market and stay the innovator while everyone copies our style. I already loathe the day where we reach 10% of market share.

Perhaps Microsoft is finding that their old advertising strategy is beginning to fade, i.e.,
Windowsyou can fool most of the people most of the time.

Maybe Apple should counter with, "And the truth will set you free!"

Get ready . It might be next week.

Why should we trust what Microsoft says about Vista when they can't even get their history right?

It is true that when Columbus consulted Spanish theologians about reaching the East by sailing west, they told him he couldn't do it. But that wasn't because they or any other well-informed person of the day believed in a flat earth. It was because they had a more accurate and larger figure for the diameter of the earth than that of Columbus and a more accurate and smaller figure for the distance the East was to the East. The journey, even if North and South America weren't in the way, was simply impractical. The ships of that day couldn't make such a long voyage. It was Columbus who fudged the figures, making the earth smaller and the East further East to create the illusion his scheme made sense. But for the discovery of the Americas, he'd have gone down in history as a failure and a schemer with a bad idea.

From what I've read, it was late 19th century freethinkers, hostile toward anything religious, as well as writers with agendas such as H. G. Wells who spread the absurd idea that Columbus discovered the earth was round. As others have noted, it roundness of the earth had been accepted since the era of Classical Greece. Dante writing Paradise Lost before Columbus has a round earth with the gravitational pull changing direction at the very center of the earth.

--Michael W. Perry, Untangling Tolkien

I am only a recent Mac convert. I have used Microsoft's stuff from the DOS 4 / Windows 3.0 days. I was not overly impressed with Windows XP, as it seemed to be a step backwards from the rock-solid Windows 2000 (which is by far still the best OS Microsoft ever released).

Windows Vista is a system admin's nightmare come true. Coupling instability on top of incompatibility, hugely increased hardware requirements and instant loss of support for all your old tools -- it's very clear why IT shops have stayed away from Vista. I beta tested Vista for Microsoft, and I was extremely disappointed. Windows Vista shows just how poor the leadership at MS has become. It's a system that feels half-done, choppy, and inconsistent... like they glued on a bunch of pieces as an afterthought. "Aero" looks no better than some of the add-on features you could buy from software houses like StarDock, and it adds no functionality to the interface.

Vista should have been to Windows what OSX was for the Mac. It should have dropped the old programming interfaces and introduced a new, sleek, unencumbered interface. It was Microsoft's opportunity to prune the ragged branches from the code, create some easy-to-use programming interfaces, provide a VM-based compatibility layer for old programs, and finally bring the PC up to par with the Mac. But Microsoft misread what the market wanted: a brand-new Windows that could bring out real performance from incredibly fast modern CPUs and GPUs, while running smoothly and securely. The Intel-based Mac has proven that this can be done... by the right people.

Microsoft, it seems, is no longer able to produce an operating system that... well, operates.

it's an ancient lumbering target at sea!

EDIT: Not sure why, but this MS belated fuss brings up memories of episodes from Bugs Bunny
http://youtube.com/watch?v=NxkYjZVe9RE
http://youtube.com/watch?v=6lKUOhvdlug

Give me a break...it's called marketing. Very few give a flying rudder as to whether the ship is accurate for the time portrayed. In marketing it's about getting the point across and it just might...well, at least for representing a time long before Disney and Carnival Cruise ships rode the waves.

Oh yay another trying to introduce facts into marketing that doesn't apply not only to marketing but to common perceptions. Whether true or not the general thought among people is that back then it was believed the world was not round. This is marketing people and as with any form of communication if you want to deliver a message, you put it in a form that most understand...whether it's true or not.

It'd be interesting to see how some of you would pick apart Apple's marketing if you ever took off the Apple shades.

I am surprised it took them this long to be quite honest. It must have been very frustrating to see all those I'm a Mac ads for the MS crew. The new campaign will be great fodder for a new Mac campaign if Apple chooses to fight back. It'll be interesting, for sure :-)

Apple has been goading MS to respond for two years now. Now MS is spending $300 million to take a bite of Apple's tasty, tasty bait.

This will be interesting, indeed.

No one ever believed the earth was flat. The ancient Greeks calculated the circumference of the earth to a degree of accuracy that wasn't surpassed until the 19th century. The ancient Polynesians knew the earth was a sphere. All seafaring societies knew the earth was a sphere--it is not possible to navigate a ship over open seas without that knowledge. It's obvious just watching a ship come into harbor. First you see the crow's nest, then the masts and sails, top to bottom, then the hull, just as if the ship were coming over a hill--it's just too obvious that the earth is a sphere.

The only people who thought the earth was flat were the characters in a Bugs Bunny cartoon about Christopher Columbus.

As soon as they say that people used to think the world was flat, I stop listening. No credibility.

Am I the only one that thought about Neo Office the first time I saw the ad?

Better yet, have the Mac guy and PC guy of the "Get a Mac" ad campaign and set up the commercial this way...

Have "Mac" guy on the shore and the "PC" guy in old wooden boat with a sail and the PC guy says "Mac, at one point, everyone thought the Earth was flat. I'm off to spread the facts about Windows VISTAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaa as his tiny sail boat falls over the edge of a Niagra Falls like waterfall!

When XP first came out I would have agreed with you but one thing that XP had going for it was the wireless features initially that W2K lacked until wireless developers finally got their drivers and software right so they could sell to that crowd something that was stable. Early in the intro of wireless it was XP that had things working best for configuring that stuff. Of course once SP2 shipped that pretty much sealed the deal on W2k. Don't get me wrong W2k was great when it first came out as it was a huge leap forward for the industry but to claim it the best at this point...I don't think so...unless of course you're just sentimental about it.


Until you specifically mentioned a part of Vista(ie Aero) this statement has been stated by sys admins just after every Windows release. I honestly feel that Vista isn't so bad for consumers where they just need a browser and email. Anyone who needs to stray further than that is where they get slapped in the face. On the admin side it's really been a nightmare. I support pc's professionally(somewhere around 450 of them) at a local community college. Much of their stuff they introduced with Vista for managing them looks great on paper but trying to get it all to work is a royal pain in the butt...poor documentation unless you buy their books and much of the software is buggy.


Actually MS had started on something more radical but what they found out was that it was going to take alot longer than they planned to provide an OS that could keep those juicy profits going. They were under fire about security and they saw that both OSX and Linux were actually true competitors able to take marketshare away from their desktop and server line. While Mac fanboys won't like to hear it, this was really the first time in Apple's history that they were truly executing like they should and had a product to compete. MS panicked, grabbed their Win2k3 server code and began using it instead of alot of what they had already done and called it Vista. As a business trying to keep their huge customer base and stockholders as happy as possible they made the right decision but it was made way too late in the game.

Now of course with some of my comments there'll be someone who thinks I'm some MS nutcase. They would be wrong as I've used and supported Macs for longer than I have Windows and would use OSX over Windows any day of the week and twice on Sunday in most cases. Even though I support Windows at work(desktop and servers) I recently switched my main system there and my home workstation to Ubuntu 8.04 with Vista relegated to a virtual session.


It sure seems that way. It's really too bad the planets were aligned just right for them over a decade ago to get so much marketshare(much of that was the competitors'(Apple and others) fault though). The company does have good people working for them but so much of what they do with the OS now is very limited from the decisions they made back then. If Apple and MS were reversed though I'm not sure Apple could have survived as well as MS has or even would have made a successful leap to something like OSX. It's easier for a smaller company to make that break than someone like MS.

I actually think this has alot to do with Gates. He steps down with Balmer fully in charge and suddenly they're going on the attack. Of course Apple is actually a competitor to be reckoned with now. Compare Apple to back in the 80's and 90's and you'll see an Apple that is actually executing on all fronts. Apple and others back then didn't comprehend how aggressive they needed to be while MS had that perfected except that MS is now paying the price for poor technical decisions.

Not to put too fine a point on it... and to excuse the pun....

But Vista? That ship has sailed. Nobody cares. Reality be damned.. IT people everywhere (and the public) believe it is crap... and that's all that matters. Belief is enough.

This whole campaign seems a little screwy and half baked. Did you see how many statistics were quoted in the company's copy? Trash the "Get a Mac" ads, but they get the point home, and talk about consumers. MS is trying to go after consumers or IT? The consumer side will go for something they can relate to, if they're not awed by the cutting power of MS's statistical analysis of programs that don't run on Vista.

But whatever, there are people who believe that the earth is flat, but they're either crazy or uneducated.


Dante wrote The Divine Comedy, where, at the end of Inferno, they do flip upside down and start going up, with Dante noting it.

I hate to burst your bubble but isn't MobilMe turning out to be Apple's Vista?
Except with Vista you have an option to reject it and go for XP instead but MobileMe you can't choose .Mac? Just wondering

Apple immediately admitted the problems with MobileMe and offered something for users. On the other hand, MS kept saying that there is nothing wrong with Vista for the last 18 months and kept blaming others. Just listen to Ballmer here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar_r2kE9Ej4

For me, it is more about MS attitude. They never admit they made a mistake until it is too late and that's what they are trying to do now after millions switched to Mac.

Didn't the Dell Giant Blue Robot driven by a nerd with a Robot-sized Blue Dell Notebook® actually discover that the earth wasn't flat?

I think the same robot debunked the moon-as-cheese theory during one of the early Apollo flights.

Keep spending your money, Ballmer.

I call it the Messiah-versus-Mr. Hyde Complex. It's actually kind of like perpetual motion, except its fuel (cash) may actually be exhaustible one day.

No one?

Flat Earth Society

I have been using windows alongside macs for more than 20 years. I recently got a brand state of the art HP laptop with Vista from my IT department, and I have been using it extensively ever since ... or rather: have HAD to use it. Even on this brand new hardware, Vista is sluggish, unpredictable and wele - down right anoying to work with. And as others in this forum have noted - everyone I know, including a number of MS-experienced IT-professionals - have had the same experience and have or are - as I sure am - downgrading to XP.
I have no way of judggng the underlying technology, but the user experience is - I am sad to say - exactly as infuriating as the PC vs Mac adds have depicted it.

Yeah, MobileMe, while an overall enhancement of .Mac, just launched. It hasn't been sitting around for over a year with problems. It's a slow-growth service, like AppleTV is a slow-growth product. It facilitates other things, like iWeb websites, just as AppleTV helped Apple get the major movie studios on iTunes, who otherwise probably wouldn't have cooperated if the only way to watch their films was on a computer or on iPod and iPhone screens.

This reminds me of another poorly-thought out attmpt to reboot a product's credibility:

"Allow me to re-introduce myself"

Didn't work for Apple, it's not gonna work for Microsoft. You simply don't acknowledge your mistakes in advertising. Press releases, press onferences interviews, fine. Not ads.

Well, for starters Apple marketing doesn't often look like a powerpoint slide with 20 fricking words on it that basically conveys that the reader is clueless as opposed to "our product kicks ass". Worse, the purported "facts" are that "we don't suck NEARLY as bad as you think we do".

WTF? Who the hell thinks that's a good idea?

At this stage of the game, suck it up and try for a solid base hit next year. At least everyone's expectations will be suitably low.

Anyone with an MBA degree?

Yes! Am I the only one stuck without admin rights on a Windows machine at work running IE6 that is now unable to access email? Death! No laundry list of "Web 2.0 improvements" can replace the basic function of email that I require.

I'm not technical at all. Can anyone help me understand why there is not an option of some sort to access email from an IE6 machine?

At least I realize it was pointless for me to fret over webmail being down for several days when MobileMe launched....I couldn't have accessed email anyway!

I'm ready for a company to be to Apple what they are to Microsoft. Save me, little guy with big vision and dreams. Maybe the Texas Instuments 994A can be brought back to life and I can use one of those! (No, I don't think that makes any sense, is accurate in any way, or anytihng else worth correcting me over...I just mad)

If you should be using your work pc to check Mobile Me mail as part of your job, your employer should upgrade IE or allow you to download Safari.

I meant more that it's getting a bad reputation fast amongst users and will affect new adaptors. There was an article in the paper today stating how it still does not work- no mail last weekend was delivered.

So the campaign message is 'we know it didn't work very well, but now it works better'. Uh-huh. Incidentally the ship in the picture is a stylised clipper, a type of ship that did not appear until the 19th c. I'm sure I don't need to remind our American friends what Columbus' ship the Santa Maria looked like:

[IMG][/IMG]

I think that looks a bit more Vista like somehow!

What newspaper ran that story? Are you serious?

MobileMe's existence is not even known by the average consumer. Most MobileMe users are long-time .Mac users, many of whom have been wondering why they're paying for a less than impressive suite of online apps and storage.

Now they have more online storage and online apps that leverage SproutCore to make them look, act, and feel more like desktop clients. The transition has not been smooth, but Apple just recently publicly apologized, said they're working to fix the problems and extended all new users' subscriptions for another month.

You can read about it here:
http://www.macworld.com/article/1345.../mobileme.html

What they should do is take Windows Server 2008, which is often descrived as Vista without the bloat, couple it with the best features from Home Server (based on Server 2003) and spend $300M marketing that with a clear message.

Windows Home Server 2008: Refined Power...for music, videos, photos, games, web and your everyday life.

Effectively dumping the tarnished Vista name by providing a "Desktop" install mode. Then even more bloggers and magazine articles will be saying: 'this is Vista done right" which is far better than trying to polish up Vista's reputation.

http://exo-blog.blogspot.com/2008/03...one-right.html

http://www.win2008workstation.com/wo...y-workstation/

Wow, that's brilliant. Draw a direct parallel between customers who are unhappy with your product, and folks who believed the earth was flat--while of course absolving yourself of any responsibility. Gee, I'm sold! I've got another one for you: "At one point everyone thought where there was smoke, there was fire."