Microsoft pays for inaccurate "Apple Tax" study, issues 3rd TV ad - Page 2

Good point.

WINDOWS 7 + OFFICE 14 + WINMO 7 is going to rock your world.

Performance. Elegance. Permanence.

Ballmer lost 20% of this generation to Steve Jobs, but the other Steve is fighting back with an army of 10,000 MIT grads with glasses. Lol.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/

lol, they made the kid look at the cheapest mac...and the Mom said I'm not a PC, hahahahhahahaha. and I agree MS is sooo overreacting towards the Mac market when Mac users will buy Office and etc.

I can make fun of my whitey heritage can't I? I was making a point of stereotypes of elite rich white families like on shows such as Family Ties, Growing Pains and The Family Guy.

Are there any workstation grade graphics that do work on Mac Pro, anyway..?

nVidia Quadro, ATI FireGL/Fire PRO..?

I was helping a friend set up the wireless internet on his new sony computer, tha laptop look great but man it took toooo muuuuuuuuchhhh tiiiiiimeeeee to booooooth froooooooom sleeeeep i was really this is the newest system? my 5 year old Power Book wakes in seconds. this also afects on productivity, apple should use this for a ad.

Tell your friend to install Windows 7 Build 7068 x86. Awake from sleep <2 seconds.

I am typing this on my new MacBook Pro 17" Unibody. Up until a week ago I have only used PC/Windows my entire life. My favorite notebooks were Thinkpads which I still greatly admire. They too are quite costly, but you understand they are not the same as a base Dell. Just like a Miata is not a Porsche and doesn't pretend to be. These Microsoft ads could just as well fill in a Thinkpad for the Mac and get the same result (or any other quality PC).

I switched to the Macbook Pro after a year of pawing them in my local Apple store. What won me over is the fit and finish and interface. It began with Leopard. Then the beauty and feel of the Unibody construction and the wonderful touch pad (I am already dismayed when I have to use one of those antiquated PC style touchpads!).

It is hard to put a price on user enjoyment but I think it cost me about $400.

That is said because almost the identical computer is available from Dell as the Studio 17 for $2,356 (I swear it is almost identical-But not the same video card, and I added the Sony Imagination Software as an approximation of iLife). Unfortunately the Dell computer only comes with Windows for the price and no Unibody/Multitouch Trackpad. It ain't just a different nameplate.

I certainly didn't come to Macs to be "Cool". No one is cooler than the Blackberry/Thinkpad crowd. Those dudes Rock! And so goth in their stylish black.

Does Acura have a "tax" over ford?

This Apple tax is so incredibly lame. So because Macs cost more it means there's some hidden tax. Going by their logic everything in this world should cost the same. I wonder why Microsoft is charging more for software than Linux or why Office is more expensive than iwork or open office, what a bunch of idiots.

The freggin ad is payed by Microsoft so i don't think anyone was hoping for him to pick a Mac and if he did you wouldn't be seeing the ad

So you mean there are no PC towers that cost 3000 dollars, let me go and check.

Nicely put.

Hehe . . . well if you spin it THAT way . . .

I think Apple should change the I'm a Mac, I'm a PC theme and go for something different, and make Microsoft look foolish for copying it, idiots..

Yes - interesting isn't it! \

Is Windows 7 out already (besides beta)? If not, it is too early to state how fast Windows 7 will awake from sleep. I was battling the "awake problem" in Windows XP and Vista for years and switched to Mac to get instant awakenings. Maybe Windows 7 will resolve Microsoft's awakening problem but let's wait and see how this whole thing will perform once all features are added to the final product.

No, I suspect he really does mean 3D apps, like Maya. I'm delighted as hell that Maya runs on Macs, but I'm sorry to say you might be exaggerating its supremacy in that particular field.

Look here...
Ars Technica Review
...which, after showing some troubling problems in Mudbox for Mac (alright! Mudbox! and yes I have ZBrush too) contains the following:

"Apple is gaining momentum in the 3D market, but that's obviously despite their lagging 3D hardware options. They should be making it easier for developers looking to bring innovative 3D products to the Mac, not harder. Please, Apple, if you're not going to take up the Quadro driver reins, at least get a 3D card that has more than 512MB of RAM. This is about working on a Macnot gamingand it's affecting people's work."

And that's in a review of the newest Mac Pro. So don't be too quick to dismiss what a_greer said. We can be enthusiastic about our platform and still admit the places where it needs improvement.

I would be ecstatic to discover 10.6 giving us some serious superiority over Windows. But the pessimistic side of me can picture Autodesk not implementing any huge Mac-only performance boosts until similar things were available for Windows. (But maybe Autodesk will prove me wrong. I admit that I was wrong in thinking they wouldn't port Mudbox. There are some things I'd be delighted to be wrong about)

An Apple tax implies that Apple pads their margins more than PC manufacturers, while they do have a higher margin than HP, they are not higher than a lot of PC manufacturers.

The fact of the matter is that Macs cost more to build than most "equivalent" PC's. How many PC's feature machined aluminum cases less than an inch thick, LED backlighting, slot loading drives, built in bluetooth, ambient light sensors, hard drive drop sensors, glass multi-touch trackpads, etc? The answer of course would be none. All those features cost extra but none show up in the "specs" of the machine. If you actually wanted to demonstrate an Apple tax you would have to determine how much it would cost to make an Apple machine, not compare it to existing PC's which don't have near the materials nor the research that is put into a mac.

As an individual, you must determine if you want to pay extra for features that don't directly affect the performance of the computer, but to those that want it, the value is there.

i think everyone can/has adequately comment on how the comparison charts are inaccurate and blatantly skewed, but the first thing I noticed was that the charts are quite ugly. the text is not sharp and it's hard to read. at first I thought it was cause it was copied from the original report so the resolution may be lower, but I just looked at the original pdf and it looks just as bad there.

i guess that's one thing you'll get from using a pc - fugly ugly looking results.

oh, and one more thing about the commercial - i admit i didn't watch it, but i can tell you that if you're looking for a computer for hardcore gaming, get a pc. if you want a computer for anything/everything else, get a mac (especially if you're into multimedia stuff like music, photos, videos, etc.)

taxfree, go away man, you troll. First of all it will be near impossible for all Windows 7 desktop/notebooks to wake up from sleep in less then 2 seconds cause of the different hardwares out there. That just MS giving the crap to you guys and it seems you bought it.


Erm no? its going to be better then Vista, definitely but not going to rock my world, more of yawn my world. And I take iPhone OS, Blackberry and Palm Pre over the much needed update loonymo any day.


10 000 MIT grads? where u get this from? And look at Vista, it got more programmers then Leopard, and look what work it produces...Its not the quantity, its the quality, try and get that into your head.

Windows is the most taxing OS to use of all.

The "Windows - Life without walls" thing still has me really confused - how the f*ck do you have windows if you don't have walls? Idiots...

Since I'm fed up with reading all the MS bashing (not that I actually LIKE their OS, but am forced to use it at work) and even more so the elitist attitudes of saying that certain people shouldn't use Apple products due to stereotypical reasons, I offer up a third alternative.

I would LOVE to see a Linux ad. People are fed up with Windows and Microsoft's way of programing bloat and business. Others are fed up with the prices of Apple products and Apple's iron fist of control. Bring on the free alternatives.

There are a few easy to install, easy to migrate flavors out there!
Ubuntu, openSuSE, Fedora, Mandriva to name a few. The ad could be made using all open source software, like Kdenlive, Rosegarden/Ardour, Gimp, Synfig, Inkscape, Blender. Heck, I really hope all you creative aspiring film writers at least have Celtx installed on your computers. The ad can focus on the "free" aspect of the os, the customization of the OS. The ability to still run most of your windows apps without windows (thanks to WINE!) and such. Seriously, I think its time for the open alternative!

The apps mentioned aren't close to pro aps, I know. But having worked with them there is still a bit that can be done!

In the ad, they can tout the OpenOffice offerings. NetBeans for their IDE and programing development. Compiz to make the OS have more effects than even OS X has at the moment (albet, some of them really annoying like wobbly windows) And best of all, still free, and runs on all intel based hardware (even some older stuff works on PPC chips!)

Maybe I should make this... it would be a fun project. But who would air it? How would I get the funds for it? A good number of you are railing against Microsoft (and rightly so in some cases) but there are those who don't want to use a mac. Linux is easy enough to install, but the name scares people as the "L337" OS only for geeks. That is not the case these days. Anyhow, for those railing, look at this alternative too!!

Have at 'em.

(If I leave my MS based job and make my own, I'm switching to Ubuntu!!)

Agreed. It's what everyone knows and accepts for some strange reason. I accompanied a friend to Best Buy to assist her in purchasing a new laptop. She originally looked at a low-end Aluminum Macbook and was convinced by friends at the 11th hour to buy a Sony Vaio which is the same model in the MS video.

I've abandoned Wintel completely a year ago and never looked back. I'm a Win2k3 sysadmin and use it 9 to 5. Even with all my experience with Windows horrors, she ended up buying the Vaio because the price was cheaper and she believed it had more value than the Macbook.

A few days later, she began to realize the mistake she made. Even though she did not take my advice, I was the one that ended up spending countless hours trying to make her Vista Home OS p.o.s. machine perform decently. I charge $70/hr for clients to deal with Windows issues. After I got the machine working for her, I told her that had I charged her for the amount of time I spent to get it working, she could have bought serveral MacBooks and each one would work right out of the box. Even now, her brand new Vaio with virtually no software still crawls at certain times and she complains about it. When I visit her, I purposely bring my MacBook Air, open it up and it just works effortlessly on her wireless network where her Vaio intermittently loses connections. I still can't figure it out.

That is the Window Tax. If Microsoft factored it time wasted getting their product to work, no one would buy it.

And btw, I run VMware/XP on my MBA for my 9-to-5 job which uses windows-only tools. When I get home, its OSX only. Guess which OS always runs stable? No contest.

Frankly, Apples products do cost more, but for a reason. Comparing these systems is like saying a Porsche costs more than a Ford. The Ford may have more towing capacity or a certain feature that they think customers are looking for but they preform completely differently. I'd like to see how these numbers work out when compared using systems configured as closely as possible! This study is by far the most honest assessment I've seen out there and actually makes a good attempt to compare systems that are configured as close to the same as possible. If you look at the numbers in the Microsoft report, most of the mac configurations are either just plain wrong, or they are from systems that are now obsolete, having been replaced by models that were recently released. Also the systems being compared are not even close to comparable. Ex. new Mac Pros w/nehalem processors vs. the pc configured with a core 2 duo...... WAY off there! Lets have an honest assessment. Not one from someone who's being paid to tilt the scale.

Not exactly on topic... but out of nowhere my Sister-in-law said to me the other day that Apple's definitely not worth the extra money. She said she was in JB Hifi and there was a line of great looking silver laptops, really snazzy looking, no reason to spend extra on Apples.

Of course... her first mistake was that they WERE Macs. Then she said oh well... her PC is really just as good anyway (I asked her if she meant the PC her work had given her 2 months ago that still wasn't working properly after 3 IT guys tried to get it setup, or her laptop before that that she broke the screen on).

Anyway... she decided she wouldn't comment further
ps. Another mistake is she never even THOUGHT about whether a Mac was easier to use, better screen, good trackpad, faster etc - she judged entirely on what it looked like on the shelf.
pps. And yet another mistake - decide the new-fangled computer she's just seen must be cheaper than a Mac without knowing the slightest about the pricing of either.

I have a used PC to unload. I hope the ad makes it something I can now sale. Do I have to disclose that I still can't get it to work?

If the people in this ad are any indication, then it's pretty sad how little the average computer buyer understands about the products they're comparing. "Dude, these are expensive. They're pretty, though. Let's go look at some PCs." If a computer buyer is that shallow, then it's their loss for not giving Macs more consideration.

I don't doubt that most people shop by numbers. "That computer has 320 whatsits, and this one has 500, so this one must be better." That doesn't mean they really care about the numbers. Apple's Mac/PC ads shift the focus away from pure technology to things like, can you make a home movie on it? Does it crash very often? These are the things that affect the computing experiences of average users. I imagine that's going to resonate with more people than a video of two obvious novices going through the motions at Best Buy.

So you just registered to post marketing bullshit here? (And really trite stuff at that.)

It's as if everything and everyone associated with Microsoft has a pathological tendency towards mediocrity - it simply cannot be helped. And good old Steve Ballmer serves as the pinnacle of it all.

You can say that again. Wow. Like every 1.5 weeks?

AI is getting peeved too. A bit surprised that they treat the MacBook as ancient when it's not that old, the speed bump was minor after 2 years, no FireWire, they benchmark a bit slower in some tests and no dedicated GPU.

MSFT is playing spoiler fir new iphone too. Making Apple look like fluff.
Hope apple responses. They might have too.

Younknow what? It just hit me. This isn't about msft. No, it's about Sony, mobile devices, all the record labels Sony owns and cloud computing.

If Apple doesn't respond and it IS Sony, they are toast.

Kind if makes you want to BUY apple as buying American. Although they are really made in China. Amazing how all thses companies use communist countries, Amazing.

why does everyone keep bringing up virus software? You do know that Apple has semantic on their back of Hiuse computers in the stores don't you. If not, ask someone you know and trust that works at an apple store. I actually have screen shots I took when I worked there back last spring. Shhhhhhhhhhhh.

Honestly, I know so many mac users who love office. I don't know why. iWork is so UNDERATED it is a work of beauty, works great with Word, (if you have to export), and handles brouchures so well, I started using Pages instead of indesign for marketing and newsletters for my clients.

Must be strength in numbers (go pun intended) as so many seem clueless to iWork. It's a GREAT DEAL AND worth every penny.

I did a little research when this Microsoft b***s*** campaign started. My aim was to compare as accurately as possible a new 2009 MacPro 2.66 8 core with an equivalent Dell.
I wont go into the detail, but here in Australia the Dell came out over a thousand dollars more expensive..
I know that Apple do not produce any hardware to serve the bottom of the market. But then their business model is not aimed there, and despite what those who do not use their hardware or software say, this way of doing business is hugely profitable. Apple is a business not a religion. They are in business to make money and they do that very well.

Let's not forget the amount of time wasted by developers, too, which leads to inferior quality apps on all platforms just because of the legacy crap that must be dealt with, instead of developers further improving their apps and making them cross-platform. Microsoft brings us all down, Windows-, Mac-, and Linux-users alike. It's somewhat the opposite of Will Roger's joke: "When the Oakies left Oklahoma and moved to California, it raised the I.Q. of both states." In this case, the Microsofties are lowering the quality of all software.

I'm a Mac guy but I find these ads to be very effective, no? Think again my Apple brothers, these ads are targeting the majority.

That is only if you believe that you should not pay for less weight, better industrial design and the ability to run OS X.

So where does 'hot' fit in?

No, you don't have to disclose those details. Just say it's an average PC.