Microsoft ups cash limit, takes aim at MacBook Pros in new ad - Page 6

Wait for it...

Blue ray = bag of hurt.

I made a big mistake not buying a Mini instead of ATV. I hate that I can't delete files directly on ATV like you can on a mini. And I have to keep all my movies file on my Mac permanently because if I delete them - the ATV mimics them and they disappear there as well. What a frustrating device. It really is only good if your ionto renting movies only. Even Hulu today got free ABC TV.

yeah not too big... can say the same about her chest

If you are serious about editing, and as a film student I think you would be, then you'd use editing software like Apple's Final Cut Studio or Adobe's Premiere Pro. iMovie is a fine piece of software and great for amateur, home movies, and making youtube videos, but anyone making a "film" would want to use more high powered editing software.

Final Cut, which has become somewhat the de Facto video editing software after Adobe let Premiere languish, only runs on a Mac. Funny they don't seem to mention that. Like photographers, a majority of videographers use a Mac. Why? Because they just want a computer that works and supports the tools they use, and not have to monkey around with the OS.

That's right up there with "Apple TV= hobby".
SJ- The PT Barnum of Silcon Valley.

I'm really sick of every other post here turning into Mac vs. PC price comparisons.

Is a Mac — not "Apple"*— worth 700 dollars more? To me, that's irrelevant, because a Windows machine would cost me more than $900 more from having to repurchase all the software I already own.

Different people have different needs. I don't need or want a ton of games. I want my control, command, and option keys where they're at. I want the familiar, incrementally updated interface that I've been using for nearly 20 years now.

And the fact that the hardware is more expensive — and it is — doesn't bother me a bit, because (1) I make enough money from my Mac to not care, and (2) it's a tax deduction anyway.

None of this means that Macs are "better" than PCs. I don't care if they are or aren't. I just like my Mac.

In my opinion, Blu-Ray is a gateway for HD on TV not computers. Watching Blu-Ray on a 15 inch laptop or desktop screen is an overkill. The quality might be better, but does the improvement in quality justify the price?! Do people want to spend extra $400 for BRD on their laptop or desktop and keep messing with wires every time they need to watch movies on their TV. Or do they want to buy a $300 BR player and watch movies on the HD TVs instantly? I would choose the $300 BR player.

True, dat!!!

Exactly. Now you get it. Do you think MS is going to say that they have no match for Apple?

$700? I would pay $1400 more. I use an Apple because I like it and it works, much like the previous poster here. In fact, I am not sure you could put a price on what it would take for me to use a Windoze machine. If I won one, I would throw it in the garbage where it belongs.

You get Mac blu-ray for cheap here: http://www.mcetech.com/blu-ray/

I wish Apple would be the first to offer their OS for download rather than going to a shop. I can be lazy sometimes.

Why? You "smartened" up the Windows PC by adding that stuff.
"Add: $110 for Sony Vegas/ACID for iLife like compatibility. Use Picassa and other free tools to replace iPhoto, iWeb.
The idea is to make them as equal as possible.

wow..you mean Apple has the 90% market share now??

My response is always, " Uuuugh... no way, i'll have an ice tea then."

Mate, I'll take 3 Tata nanos for the 1 VW Golf. One for me, one for the misses and another for the mistress.

Exactly. I like Apple because it works most of the time. My ATV and the stupid upgrades have it a bit screwed but it is still better than anything currently on the market. Apple just works and those arguments about Apple being for dumb people is a wasted argument. Who wants to spend their time screwing around with their computer when being productive is what it is all about. I am in a chat right now with a friend trying to fix a BSOD problem on one of his Windoze machines but he loves to talk about how underpowered, and simple Macs are. So sad. He must be a Rethuglican, I mean Repugnican. Easy brainwashing material.

I wish it was that simple.
The car comparison has been debated on many forums, by many people and I find it irrelevant. A Merc is different in so many ways from cars like Ford & Dodge. Completely different hardware.
Different engine, different gear, different interior,different software, etc.
A Mac on the other hand has similar hardware as every other high quality PC. Same CPU, same GPU, Same MB, same RAM. So we are left with 2 things really: the exterior & the OS + iLife.
As I said I am willing to pay a premium for that (especially for the OS), but there is a limit. How much do I see as an acceptable premium? I say 10% is fair.
I just can't understand why a Mac Pro with a Quad processor should cost 2,499$! You can buy a PC with identical hardware for HALF the price! Xeons these days offer only two benefits: Multiple CPUs on the same MB and ECC RAM... Other than that it is the same freakin CPU as an iCore7. If the Xeon is so expensive, offer an iCore7 Mac Pro.
So again, I am asking what justifies a X2 price?.... \

Second thing is this: not all Mac users can afford themselves the price. As you are well aware of, not all people have the same capabilities when it comes to income.

Regarding security issues on the PC. Well, it is something a user needs to be aware of. The Mac is in a much better place in this regard. My PC is behind a router, with Norton Internet security 2009 and is fully patched. I have very little problems security wise. Just take into account that most of the Mac security comes from the relative small % it has in the market - not from OS X's uber security capabilities. So there is no special effort on the side of Apple worth paying for. It is a side effect, nothing more.

As of BSODs: My Mac gave me a Kernel Panic one time. Windows got stuck several times (not more than 8 times or so) - both are the same age (about 4). Again the Mac is somewhat better, but hey, 8 or so BSODs in 4 years is not something you can't live with.

In summary, Mac is better than PC. OS X is better than windows. Premium price is acceptable - but there is a limit, and Apple's pricing at this stage is waaaaay above it.

How about you read past the part you want to hear? Specifically, "maybe Apple should consider not making their laptops so thin they can't offer the same capabilities as their competitors."

Ok guys, this thread is way over... we can't keep on discussing Mac vs PC over and over and over... we all agree PC stands for Piece of Cr*p.. and that's why we are reading and writing posts on AppleInsider.

So, let's focus on the Microsoft Ad, or... ...SHUT UP!

Yep, I said it!

Huh? There are several editing options for the MacBook Pro - Avid Media composer / Mojo, FCP and Premiere. All of them very capable editors that can do pro work. You wouldn't want to edit a feature on a system like that, perhaps but as a solo film / video maker you'd be well equipped.

Go to movies.yahoo.com and tell me you can't see the difference between the 480p and the 1080p trailers on your computer screen. Regardless, the bigger issue is 1.) Apple is stagnating Blu-Ray adoption by not giving video professionals the tools to create it, and 2.) a $2,000 Mac can't play any movie I've bought in the past year. Steve Jobs claimed 2007 was the year of HD, rolling out HD editing capabilities for mere mortals in iMovie. Two years later, there's no way to play your HD home movies on your television because Apple believes we can get all the HD we ever need from the iTunes Store.

Nothing since she does not have one, which is why she is in the commercial.

LOL and my Linux machine runs even faster with a smaller footprint. So?

Yes there are plenty of PC smarties out there. But you have to admit that over time, without maintenance, a Windows OS will degrade in performance to the point of painfulness. It is the nature of the beast. You have to clean the registry periodically--which there is software that you can buy (more $$$) to do it--otherwise it is a painstaking and potentially fatal operation. You also have to defrag the hard drive. You can schedule this to run at night, but if something happens while it's defragging (ie power goes out) you potentially could hose your hard drive. There is diskeeper software (which the ms tool that ships with windows is the 'lite' version) that preemptively defrags the system on the fly, but that's $ too ($30 for home to be exact). Of course the best remedy is to periodically 'wipe' the system and start over. How long does that take every 6 mos to a year?

For the record, I'm not so much a Mac Fanboi as I am a Windows Hater. Why? Windows could have been so, so, so much better, but MS decided to paint themselves into a corner following the architecture path they did. Vista is the grand result of following that path. It's 100% bloatware. Now MS is backtracking and figured out how to trim some of the fat off the Vista pig. With Windows 7 the pig may be skinnier and it may have some fine lipstick--but its still a pig.

Oh, I read it, but you are absolutely crazy if you think that Apple would entertain for a moment the addition of a half inch or more to their notebooks just to add a $200 tray-loading Blu-ray drive. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but Apple sells the thinnest and lightest notebooks for their performance class. This is part of their working strategy, not because they don't know to make thicker laptops, which doesn't make any sense.

But you don't get it! According to this commercial, Windows users don't care about how well the computer works, only that it costs less, is bigger, has more RAM and more, more, bigger, more, more!

That is clearly the ONLY thing that matters to 95% of the people who buy a computer...according to Microsoft.

I'm glad you like your Mac, and that it generates income for you. I had a Mac, and it did the same (until it died). Now I have a PC and it too generates income for me. Sadly, none of my computers were tax deductible.

But as someone who now only uses my video editing skills as a hobby (yes as a carrer too, but in a very different fashion) I find that I cannot afford a Mac for the hobby, yet I can afford a PC. I've even tinkered around with Linux options (Kdenlive, Gimp, etc) to see just how low I can get in terms of price vrs. productivity. Sadly, the linux tools are just not up to snuff. You can create the same content, it will just take you 5x longer to produce the same result. Yes, I spent 200 bucks on the machine, but that does come with that time cost.

Anyhow, I personally don't think a Mac or PC is better than the other, since its the same hardware. OS wise, I think currently, Mac has the upper hand in most areas. But cost wise, all I see in the difference is the profit margins for Apple. And knowing how locked down their software is, and how their company has been running as of recent, I don't want to support those margins. In the past, I definitely would, and did. My arguments are the facts that Macs and PCs are the same, and all you are paying for these days is the branding... the cool toy... that Apple logo. You can put OS X on a standard PC. My home built quad core runs RETAIL OSX (no hacks to the OS or its disk) and I use it for Final Cut when I need to. I bought the OS because it is valuable to me. But I won't buy their hardware when I can do it myself for much cheaper.


As for software re-purchasing... yes you certinately do have a point. In my case, if I wanted to keep my Mac programs, the retail disk was $150 on top of the $500 I spent on the hardware. Its an amazing machine let me tell you. OS X runs GREAT! Therefore, you can deduct that re-purchasing of software. My numbers show that as the $1410 after buying OS X. Use your old software, tinker a bit to get OS X working, and you are good to go. (Mind you, I don't know if the HPs internals have drivers... but one can research and shop around, or continue to tinker to get it working. There is plenty of help out there!)

The fact I can run Retail OS X (no hacks) on a home built computer proves my point. Same internals.

True, I built that computer to match Apple's hardware as closely as possible using off the shelf parts (and was VERY successful! Easy OS install and upgrades! Just like a real Mac!), but others will argue that "But it takes a lot of work to get OS X on my standard PC, therefore the internals are NOT the same"

Specific drivers are missing in OS X to support the plethora of hardware out there. They don't need to write drivers for the hardware because they only will support their own. If other motherboard / desktop / laptop companies wrote or could write drivers for OS X, then it could easily install on other machines. This is not a hardware incompatibility issue, but a driver issue. Same thing happens in Windows, its just a lot less fatal, and windows comes with a slew of drivers to begin with.

I will give you one hardware difference: EFI vers BIOS. And personally, I wish the standard PC would move to EFI.

I think what Snookie meant was that people think they can see Blu-Ray quality (1920x1080 video) on a screen that only displays 1366x768 or even 1440x900.

PC users must hate the I'm a Mac ads as they paint a very ambiguous picture that is patently not entirely true yet hard to disprove without going into booooring detail. They are comedic and simplistic and that is why they are successful. They help create an 'impression'. Lame as I think the PC ads are (non creative, full of holes, cheap cheap cheap), I am sure they will do their job very well. If they help sell more PC's they are successful. But if they tarnish the Apple brand by underpinning the perception that they are more expensive, they are even more successful. The danger is that they will cheapen the Windows / pc-maker 'brand' in which case the whole thing will play into Apple's hands. They certainly do seem to suggest that Apple is a superior product. The issue of TCO is a hard one to sell. People are VERY short sighted. Generally I think the aim of the campaign is to stem the tide of 'switchers'. I am not sure if it will work but I suspect the campaign will succeed at selling more laptops.

Ummmmm.....take your computer to any Apple store and a Genius will install your aftermarket RAM for you at no charge (after making an online appt, otherwise, you'll have to wait and wait usually). Can you walk into an HP store and get the same service? Oh wait, what did you say? There are no HP stores........

i play hd homies all the time on my t v thru my mini ...

The premise of this commercial -- a video "artist" or editor who is looking for a new laptop -- is so unrealistic and full of bullshit.

First of all, I presume this woman is pretending to be either an independent artist or is working for a company. In either case, she is likely already using a Mac or PC to do her work, even though most video editing is done on Macs.

So, why would someone who's doing video editing on one platform even consider another platform when buying a new computer? If she currently does her video editing on a PC, why on Earth would she even consider a Mac? And vice-versa? If she uses Macs at work for her "art," buying a PC is just going to make her life miserable because she has to learn and buy all new software and hardware.

The ad makes no sense at all and is not based on reality. And I haven't even mentioned the specs of the computers they are comparing!

This all has a whiff of desperation coming from Redmond.

Yep, it makes "Lauren" look like a shopping genius compared to this home filmaker or whatever she says she is.

fine post

It can't be completely legit, because otherwise any buyer would just go with a $1999 machine. In fact, the most profitable choice in all cases would be the $1999 MacBook Pro, since it has by far the highest resale value.

If the buyer has any freedom in what to pick, MS must give the buyer a clear spec sheet of exactly what the computer must have in order for them to be able to buy it (no more, no less). One of the items on this spec sheet would have been "must have 4GB RAM" knowing that there was no Mac laptop in that store for under $2000 that would meet that criterion.

But what you are missing is that the previous 3 MS ads didn't "tarnish" Apple's brand, they in fact reinforced the perception that Apple products are cool and good-looking and desirable, but cost a little more. But, cost certainly doesn't prevent millions of people from buying brand names instead of generic in stores everywhere, even though they may cost a bit more. So, to base your entire marketing strategy on "CHEAP" for something expensive like a computer won't have a good, long-term effect, IMO. Just look at iPods, you can get much cheaper MP3 players, so, why don't people flock to them instead if price is the overriding factor?

I believe MS is making a huge mistake with these ads, and that they won't be very effective because they focus on ONE thing (cheap laptops) and ignore so many other factors that determine what computer is right for you. Not only that, but, there's not one single mention of Windows or Microsoft in any of these ads. They seem like ads for HP laptops, and not very convincing ones.