Microsoft to attack Mac pricing in new series of TV ads - Page 7

OH NO!!! You will open that wound again ... haha. I agree but didn't you see that last time this subject came up? Some guy went nuts for weeks about how this was not relevant, he was from Seatle I recall

It seems many of us are not impressed. But I am. I think this is a very, very shrewd ad. The comparison is unfair (in terms of equal quality), but the ad sidesteps that of course in a smart way. So, they might get away with a simple misleading comparison.

The "no cool enough to own a Mac" is IMO also brilliant advertising. Coming from what ia apparently a reasonably cool girl, it depicts Apple and Apple users as snobs and elitists.

The fact that she then behaves so enthusiastically about the 'coolness' of the PC also counters the normal customer equation "cheap = uncool, worthless, bad".

Summing it up. it brilliantly (but misleadingly) depicts Apple as hugely overpriced.

So, this is brilliant advertising. The only way I can see this neutralized is when the independent press makes big work of it in terms of misleading. People like to pick on Microsoft, so that might happen.

But the ad is utterly brilliant.

Personally, I think Apple is slightly overpriced and my personal experiences with quality are also not very good. But I would not touch a Windows PC with a pole, because of the software. At work I am a WIndows user and I am each day reminded how clunky I find it compared to OS X. I would not take a Windows laptop for free (I could probably get one from work if I wanted). It would only be more stuff to lug around.

Great Ad Microsoft.

The premise is that Windows and other software bundled with PCs are equal in value to Mac OS X and iLife. Or, alternatively, that all software on a new computer is free, and the price tag is only for hardware.

If you buy that premise, you're dumb enough to be influenced by this ad.

PC users steal s/w. "For free". MS knows it and praises it.

Yep, that age-old "macs are expensive" routine is utterly brilliant. Utterly, undeniably, pulse-poundingly, life-affirmingly BRILLIANT.

I'm sure CP+B (M$'s ad agency) really had to dig deep to come up with this ad.

"Hmm. Let's take the oldest anti-apple cliche in the book, and have it delivered by a pseudo-cool 'everyday' chick. Oh, and the fact that this cliche happens to conveniently share timing with a recession, that works out great too. Also, let's not forget to ignore any mention whatsoever of our client's product."

Utterly, utterly, brilliant.

Apple has a year round student discount. It is pretty good for students. Best time to buy is during the Summer deal. Last Summer students got free iPod Touches. That beats the hell out of a Zune or a digital camera. Just check out the education section. I guess their thinking is get them while they are young. That new Mac will take them all the way through their college years without complaints.

Oh and students buy laptops. With fully wired campus across the country, there is no reason to not take your laptop to class. Typing my notes kept them organized and readable. They were also indexable through search. My handwriting is not what it once was, but my typing skills are top notch. With the text to speech features built system wide, reading or rather listening to text was faster than ever and understanding was easier. E-books and audio books are really going to open the performance gap between those that have a computer and those that don't.

BTW student means any student. That is K-12 and college. Same great discount.

they're smart about that. competitor and any third party products are legally prohibited from being shown in ads.

Apple might be a tad concerned about this data point too, as the "premium" brand touting reliability, ease of use and quality service:

March 25, 2009 (Computerworld) For the first time, Apple Inc. dropped out of the top spot in the computer-reliability ranking of Rescuecom Corp., a Syracuse, N.Y.-based chain of service shops, and ended in third place behind a pair of Asian computer makers that specialize in laptops.

Apple's Macs, which led all comers in Rescuecom's rankings during 2007 and 2008, were beaten in the first quarter of 2009 by machines sold by Asustek Computer Inc. (better known as Asus) and Lenovo Group Ltd. Following Apple in fourth through sixth place were Toshiba, Acer and Hewlett-Packard, respectively.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/...source=NLT_MAC

Clearly they saw the value

You know, there's a difference between depicting something and that something being effective.

Just because MS paid someone to pretend to be enthusiastic about her PC doesn't abruptly change people's feelings about PCs, which, from my experience, are rarely "enthusiastic" and generally more along the lines of "I just assumed it was what I was supposed to get" or "was cheap at Walmart."

And while there may be a certain demo that responds to "I guess I'm not cool enough to own a Mac", aren't they the same people that are already pretty sure they hate Macs, Apple, Apple's customers, iTunes, the iPhone, etc.? Who endlessly drone on on the internet about how all of Apple's customers are witless hipsters, posers, wannabes, vapid rich people, sheep, etc.?

In case anyone's forgotten, Apple currently has a lot more customers than Mac owners, and they may be somewhat taken aback to have MS tell them they they're assholes.

Microsoft's ad: I'm not cool enough to be a Mac person.

Apple's response ad: I'm too cool to be a PC person.

Or recognizing a sourced, indented, color-highlighted QUOTE..... ...but hey.....

Apple has so rarely sold on price it could be argued they never sell on price. Apple has sold on the experience since 1984. And it is not just the hardware & OS, it is the bundled Apple applications.

The fact is, Windows is selling against itself here, because they have already established the fallacy that you get more bang for the buck. Did the agency, not get the underling message, clearly the ad committee at MS did. The redhead's first visit/choice was Apple, and she had to substitute a cheaper alternative. MS cannot advertise on superior usability or processing power or ease of connectivity because the have no advantage here.

They are relying on the hardware manufacturers to make their claim a reality. MS owes HP big time, because they are borrowing from HP's brand cache not their own. Microsoft's marketing is a ship without a captain and perhaps a wheel, it is drifting from one failed message to another. This ad toys with, but misses the only real competitive advantage MS has, choice of hardware manufacturer. As a boxed purchase off the shelf it is not only more expensive than the MacOS, but like Vista itself it is unnecessarily complicated to select the right version for the user.

Microsoft's pretty much gotten their asses kicked in every arena they've
attempt to storm the beachfront of the incumbent.

They went up against Tivo and failed
WebTV failure
Zune failure
Live Search vs Google failure

They haven't handed out abject defeat to another company since Netscape imploded.

No one but Paul Thurrotten is all that enthusiastic about Windows other than "what bugs can I be spared from?"

Attacking Apple on price is silly bottomfeeder stuff.

You missed it completely, she is excited because someone else is paying for her computer, not because it was a Vista OS. Her first choice was the first store she visited and everyone knows you cannot get a MS OS computer at the Apple store. Her happiest moment is when she is handed the wad of cash, not when she took possession of the HP computer. This ad only further devalues the brand of Microsoft. The agency and MS blew it again.

I'm still trying to determine the ultimate purpose of the ad. People who buy Macs obviously do so because they have done their homework and they know exactly what they are doing. I doubt someone who is intending to buy a Mac will see this ad and suddenly proclaim: "by golly, this is amazing! I can get a Windows based computer for less than a Mac! I never knew that! I'm going to go buy a $300 netbook right now!"

Aren't they just preaching to the choir? Someone who is more concerned about price and just needs a computer that will let them surf the net, watch YouTube, check e-mails probably intended to buy that $300 netbook anyway.

That is questionable at best assessment of ranking by Rescuecom Corp
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/0...ity-headlines/

They aren't even an authorized repair shop.

You misread my comment. Microsoft's ad agency never once mentioned Vista in the new ad. Vista is their client's product.

I must say, they've got a point.

Although the macbooks are nice little machines for the price, the apple tax on the pros is painful!

Have you actually used iPhoto 08 on an older C2D Mini though? Serious question, I don't give a tuss about iPhoto on an iMac or iPhoto 09, as I don't have either of those.

iPhoto 08 doesn't support geotagging, but if I spend another $80 for a program I don't like, I get that, although the Windows version of Picasa does geotagging to Google Earth for free.

Events? So? I just create a folder when importing photos into Picasa, geotag them, add some captions, tweak them, and then upload them to Picasa online. Boom, done.

As someone who experienced a house fire last year I strongly suggest you add something such as Backblaze (online backup) to your data protection plan. For $50 a year I think it's pretty cheap. Personally I use a Drobo at home, but also keep a portable hard drive offsite to ensure the most important stuff is backed up. A little overboard? Maybe, but if I loose the first pictures of my son after being born, I would never forgive myself.

--Dave

[QUOTE=ivan.rnn01;1395676]


Sorry, I thought you were refering to the Microsoft Document Imaging format. (.mdi)


True, but she is a writer, and hence, a typist.



Hey I'm all about rational. I don't use Windows, remember?


Because Boot Camp gives the user the "choices" the Windows people say we don't have.

Peace

This us where most fans are wring and I love apple but long gone are the days of "target premium". Today Apple is a target consumer company that cares more about apple iPhones, iPods and itunes. Computers are the furthest thing from their mind and one to one is no longer fir motion, shake or fcp butcinsuners wanting to learn email.

Againtgere is no premium market and apple us missing the boat fir those that kept them afloat. No mid range either.

I have worked in Marketing and Promotions, all the way to the director level, then became a music supervisor and composer.

Most websites are saying that Microsoft has a hit with the new campaign. I always thought all of their marketing was terrible given the deep pockets that they have, then again, they own the world, so who needs to market?

Anyway, can someone please explain how the "I'm not cool enough" works? Are they insane? What am I missing? How does this make MSFT seem good? I am just NOT getting it. The PR/MARKETING FIRM needs to be fired. Take that away and maybe it works. Perhaps with other spots it will be okay, but to say, NOT COOL is, well, not cool if you are a PC user.


Thoughts on how, why this is good according to most TECH and NEWS websites??????????????????

Thanks

Actually the air never sold as well as they hoped. I wonder why? Why can't we have a dedicated GPU and 10 hours and weigh one pound. I know I know. Maybe in a few years but where is the powermac ala macbook pro 13??

Still, the air is over
Priced
Big
Time

Refurb price a little, not a lot, closer.

So when I see some obsessing about the "little" stuff like eSATA ports or card readers it strikes me as odd because the real crux of efficiency is the OS and Vista and it's replacement Windows 7 cannot match Apple I don't give a damn what anyone says.

Mac users pay a premium to compute on OS X ...Windows is there by default and for years companies and users alike were downgrading Vista boxes to XP. That speaks volumes as to how they value Microsoft's OS.[/QUOTE]

Actually you are dead wrong about windows 7. As a 99.9% mac user now except in audio production where it's split. Vista failed big time and was never accepted by corporate IT however windows 7 blazes on old hardware has hardly any issues for software that's beta, IT are dying to upgrade from XP, and win7 has a ways to go. If you look at win 7 and some of the cool things it does plus think about and look at new windows movie screenshots combined with Apples bread and butter, the iPhone about to get taken on by palm and android which is why we're getting the features we want, further compounded by millions if 2 year contracts expiring AND that Apple still has NO mid range, that the MacBook has no FireWire but beget gpu (slap to pro and musicians and mom/dad cam corded), PLUS being over priced and no i7 machines, if windows 7 even remotly looks like mobile 7, aApple could be in a lot of trouble.

Let's hope that phone sales flatten so Apple can get back to making great computers and stopm releasing underwhelmingmupdats.

Typed on iPhone. My bad. :-)

Peace

Actually they cost don't cost more and they don't cost less. A good computer from the PC side would be the same price is not even more.

It was not unclear to me in any way. I followed the discussion and comprehend the discussion. That doesn't change anything in regards to the fact you made a statement that a $600.00 computer was not to be trusted. If you make a blanket statement such as that you need to be prepared to defend it and not pawn off responsibility to others. It wouldn't have taken you much more time to state you wouldn't trust a $600.00 17" laptop in comparison to a 17" macbook pro.

Too bad Apple dropped the amount of the discount on the new unibody macbooks. FWIW, they did increase it on the Mac Mini.

I see the same thing happening with the Adamo. It will sell, but not as well as Dell expects. Too expensive. The only difference is number of sales between the Adamo and the Air need to be interpreted considering there are more Windows users.

Well, the Air could have 10 hours of battery life if it had a replaceable, extended life battery such as the thinkpad X301. Too many corners cut on the Air to make it "pretty" (which it is). I bought a refurb Air and sent it back due to the battery issue. If only Apple had added a removable battery like on the Macbook unibody. The Air would still have clean lines and the battery could be replaced eaisly. I don't really care about a powerful GPU as this type of laptop isn't about gaming and such, but a lower-level dedicated gpu would still be helpful. The RAM should have been upgradeable too. I loved the Air design, but the limitations were a bit too much for me.

You know, I asked what were the marketing agencie thinking with the I'm not cool enough and it's sad when most users move on to a newer thread, sad. Sign of the times I suppose.

You talk about the Air. Lamewing replies about the Air. Nothing sad about that.

How would you know this? Apple never announced sales projections for the Air. Apple has never broken out individual sales numbers for the Air.


No notebooks exists with these types of specs, there won't be one anytime soon. Because the demands of both hardware and software continue to grow.


Based on what? What machine offers the function of the Air at a lower price?

Most Windows users own sub $1000 machines, on average Apple sells more $1000+ machines than all other computer makers.


Apple will be able to extend the Air's battery life once it uses the same battery management technology used in the 17" MacBook Pro.

Its obvious Apple will move its entire notebook line to sealed batteries.

7 pages of comment? Wow this ad really struck a nerve and put mac users on the defensive! This ad must have succeeded in its goal. MS strikes back! Even though I agree with most that it's a poor ad and a poor hp notebook. MS struck where it hurts the most to mac users. Pricing. All the explanations for macs being more expensive CANNOT counter MS attack. Maybe deep down we all wish we could buy a $699 mac.

After years on the defensive from those I'm a PC/mac ads. MS dishes it back to us. Surprised? Oddly this ad doesn't really benefit MS, but HP.

One punch and we've collectively have our mac underwear in a knot.

Not really.

An Audi owner is generally more sophisticated than a Kia owner.
Some people wear wrangles and others wear Citizen jeans

etc etc etc.

I don't want Macs to be for the commoner yet I want them to offer a good deal within the context that Macs do come at a premium rightly so.

It helps HP in a back handed way. They'd rather sell more machines that cost over $1000 than less.