True enough, but I'm kind of amazed that MS actually thinks they need to attack Apple directly, from any angle. It's as much as saying "Apple worries us, we think they're our main competitor, so we're going to go after them." For a company with the overwhelming market-share lead that MS enjoys, this strikes me as an expression of weakness, petty, a ringing endorsement of Apple's prospects, or all three.
Sure, Apple has been running its "Mac vs. PC" ads forever, but, one, Apple is the underdog and can get away with taking pot shots at the incumbent, two, Apple never mentions MS by name, contenting themselves with tweaking the whole idea of the PC, and three, they do it humorously.
Isn't there some kind of rule in advertising that you never mention your competitor by name, because it makes you look harsh and gives your competitor free publicity?
Microsoft is in fact kicking Apple while they are down.
When is this depression set to end again - 5 years time?
Maybe now is the wrong time to be a premium brand.
I don't trust any of them, I want to see Apple's data before saying anything, the same people have been saying Mac sales have been falling for well over year but Apple keeps announcing record profits and sales.
If Microsoft is selling so many notebooks, why did they just lay of 5000 people, I guess they are also being affected by this so called depressions. Seems they aren't kicking Apple while they are down. What about Microsoft OEM's like Dell and HP who are seeing their profits drop, I thought they were all doing fine.
No way! MS uses actors instead of real people in their ads! Shame on them. They should do like Apple does and use people they find on the street!
Well, when Apple presents people in ads as "real people" (as in the case of Ellen "beep beep beep" Feiss and that early series of iPhone ads featuring people explaining how they use their iPhone to do stuff) they actually are, you know, real people. To be sure, Apple screen tests a lot of real people to get the ones they use, but that's very different from Microsoft's tendency to build ad campaigns around some sort of bogus grass roots, just average joes kickin' it MS's awesome products vibe while all the while using actors, stock photos and paid shills.
I mean, they really seem to go out of their way to try and manufacturer the kind of fake cred that makes them seem all the more woefully out of touch.
There are few areas that Apple should address price-wise that are ridiculous regardless of what Microsoft does. Microsoft is doing nothing more than just shining a light at this.
Would it really kill Apple to have a tower available at less than $2500? Do we really believe they couldn't get by with a $1500 dollar tower which would still allow plenty of margin for keeping the Mac a quality product. The Apple pro line used to start at this price and now is clearly far above this amount. Sure they have filled part of that gap with the iMac but the issue is that it would not kill Apple to put one of their existing products out at this point and keep people on the platform or gain a sale versus losing or defering it.
Apple used to have the base iMac start at $999. Again in these times it would not hurt them at all to offer a 17 inch iMac with the same specs as the 20 inch for $999.
No race to the bottom, no substandard solutions and it isn't asking them to do something different from what they have historically done. It needs to be done to make sure Mac sales only slow versus cratering.
Whew, thanks for the heads-up. I did not realize we were in a depression!
I'll sell all my AAPL tomorrow. And, buy and hold MSFT for 5 years, riding out the recessi..... er..... depression.
Why be depressed when you own a Mac?
Value is more important and more visible in a depression then price. People are more conscious to save for value, then splurge for crap.
BTW- I thought the add was HILARIOUS!
She's a Mac lover, and she proved that many people are visiting Mac stores first. She's probably already taken the HP back to Best Buy and exchanged it for the MBP 17".
Wonder if they factored in antivirus software costs/subscriptions in the purchase price of the PC? Or perhaps the fact that the next Windoze OS will cost something like 2-3x the cost of Snow Leopard?
Software/OS manufacturer running ads about other hardware - not sure if that works.
Honetsly apple is lucky that they didnt use an asus eee pc with windows xp on it.
Maybe i shouldnt have expected decent non fanboy comments on an apple board. My gf just went with a $200 asus eee pc over an apple because why get an apple laptop for $999 when you can get a pc for $200 . Keep in mind its for internet, music, and some small text editing.
An ipod touch is not the same.
also jplevine, avast and other virus scanners are free so is openoffice and other programs.
I do have to agree though that for the first time is several years the Mac line up is looking seriously overpriced. There are lots of perfectly sound arguments for premium pricing in a recession but my loyalty is being a little tested. Getting a PC would be unthinkable, but delaying purchases isn't.
Apple foresaw exactly this kind of behavior, and they are fine with it. If you listen to the earnings call with Jobs and Cook a few months back, you'll hear that they expected their users not to bail, but to delay.
Me, I think machines are cheap these days. All machines. I think people have lost perspective, probably thanks to so much cheap junk from China.
I remember paying $10,000 for an early Compaq 386 running at the then blazing speed of 20Mhz, with a then huge 2MB of RAM, and a then gargantuan 40MB hard disk, as well as a 19" color CRT and a graphics card that could output 1024 x 768 with 16 colors.
The thing came with DOS and absolutely no applications. It had no networking capability of any kind, no CD player or recorder, no sound, actually, unless you count beeps.
Those are 1988 dollars we are talking about, by the way. The machine was built in the USA though, and back then it felt like the coolest thing...
So when I look at something like a MacBook Pro with Leopard and iLife, I have a really hard time seeing it as expensive. Yeah, it costs more than a PC laptop would, but spread over the life of the machine the difference is like $2 per day at most. If that's the OS/X and Johnny Ives tax, I'll pay it gladly.
Honetsly apple is lucky that they didnt use an asus eee pc with windows xp on it.
Maybe i shouldnt have expected decent non fanboy comments on an apple board. My gf just went with a $200 asus eee pc over an apple because why get an apple laptop for $999 when you can get a pc for $200 . Keep in mind its for internet, music, and some small text editing.
An ipod touch is not the same.
also jplevine, avast and other virus scanners are free so is openoffice and other programs.
So a 200 dollar netbook is equivalent to a Macbook?
We've been hearing from people that Apple is irrelevant to Microsoft and Microsoft has 95% of the market, guess they must be feeling heat from Apple.
That's exactly the part i don't understand: on one hand ballmer is dismissive of apple and on the other hand advertising of this kind makes it sound like he perceives apple as a threat. it just doesn't make any sense to be spending money on this kind of advertising to bolster the brand. it just makes it look like microsoft has some issues with image envy.
Honetsly apple is lucky that they didnt use an asus eee pc with windows xp on it.
Maybe i shouldnt have expected decent non fanboy comments on an apple board. My gf just went with a $200 asus eee pc over an apple because why get an apple laptop for $999 when you can get a pc for $200 . Keep in mind its for internet, music, and some small text editing.
An ipod touch is not the same.
also jplevine, avast and other virus scanners are free so is openoffice and other programs.
From what I read, Avast if free for 1 year - doesn't say what happens after that. If you need something other than home version, then there is a cost.
I'm pretty sure the next version of Windoze will not be free and as I speculated, 2-3x Snow Leopard. And don't say you can get Ubuntu as a free alternative because I doubt that is what Microsoft had in mind when creating this ad.
No race to the bottom, no substandard solutions and it isn't asking them to do something different from what they have historically done. It needs to be done to make sure Mac sales only slow versus cratering.
I can definitely see the case for having a 17" iMac available to everybody (not just education). I can also see the case for a lower spec machine with the Mac Pro enclosure. Not at $1500 but maybe $1999. Either that or a new model above the mini. A "Mac Maxi", or a "Mac mini double", the size of two minis.
What I find irritating are people asking for a crappy Apple netbook. I mean, if Apple ever does that, within a few years their R&D as we know it will be gone, and things will go downhill from there.
But you are right that in these times some of the older price points could be revived, I think without a creating problems for Apple's overall strategy.
Remember Microsoft has over 89% of the market. Windows 7 will bring them back over 90%.
I am switching back to Windows when Windows 7 comes out.
I have had my fair share of Mac issues!
Then do it already. Go buy your $699 laptop, download the beta version of Windows 7 and leave. Why do you keep coming back to these forums if you are so unhappy?
That's exactly the part i don't understand: on one hand ballmer is dismissive of apple and on the other hand advertising of this kind makes it sound like he perceives apple as a threat. it just doesn't make any sense to be spending money on this kind of advertising to bolster the brand. it just makes it look like microsoft has some issues with image envy.
Apple is growing share and especially growing revenue share, because of the high-end pricing strategy.
Still, here is the irony: Apple is taking sales to people willing to spend money on computers, so it's taking share from the high end of the market.
This advertising strategy will work... for people who wouldn't buy a Mac anyway.
The days of selling computers on speed/ram/hard drive are over. Heck even the Mac Mini is good for most people. For example I recently took my mom to the Apple store and the first question they asked us wasn't how much ram, hard drive, or processor we need but what ow were we looking to do with the computer, what software we need, this is how computers are being sold and not specs. When you go to the Apple store, they put more emphasis on software instead of specs. The days of buying on specs is coming to an end. Most computers available are fast enough for the majority of people.
While I do think that people should buy computers, based on need, Apple really can't compete on specs/price, unless you only want look at AIO vs desktops, but neither side overlaps in those well.
When my mom needed a new computer (last November), to process her pics from her new Nikon D60, I wanted something that could last her for years, and for the price ($600), it wasn't the pidly Mac Mini with a gig of RAM, an 80 GB HD, etc, but the Dell with 4 GB of RAM and a 640 GB HD, GMA x3100 graphics....
I can do the photo editing on my $600 Mini, but it's a bit slow, and the 80 GB HD is a serious drawback, and iPhoto simply sucks.
Apple really does need to adjust their prices to be more in line with the current market, especially with laptops. The thing with laptops is, most of them are the same. The same parts, made in the same factory. HP sells a number of laptops that have better specs than their Mac counterparts for less than half of the Mac. Apple's premium is OS X. Sure it's worth more money to get the Mac, but how much more? A few hundred dollars, maybe, but not double the price or more.
I've been doing a lot of comparison shopping on laptops lately, as both my wife and my mother in law want to buy new ones, and neither is all that hot on Macs. It's impossible for me to sell them on why they need a Mac (even if it can run Windows), when they cost so much more for no legitimate reason. If the specs were that much better, I could use that, but in many cases the cheaper PC laptop even beats the Mac on specs. The fact that no Mac laptop even has a memory card reader or a number pad is something I have to agree with my wife as being inexcusable. It's very frustrating, to the point that it's making me reconsider if I want to buy a Macbook Pro myself when I could get a much better HP for less than half the price. The fact that I could conceivably hackintosh it if I bought the right model is even more enticing.
Comments
True enough, but I'm kind of amazed that MS actually thinks they need to attack Apple directly, from any angle. It's as much as saying "Apple worries us, we think they're our main competitor, so we're going to go after them." For a company with the overwhelming market-share lead that MS enjoys, this strikes me as an expression of weakness, petty, a ringing endorsement of Apple's prospects, or all three.
Sure, Apple has been running its "Mac vs. PC" ads forever, but, one, Apple is the underdog and can get away with taking pot shots at the incumbent, two, Apple never mentions MS by name, contenting themselves with tweaking the whole idea of the PC, and three, they do it humorously.
Isn't there some kind of rule in advertising that you never mention your competitor by name, because it makes you look harsh and gives your competitor free publicity?
Excellent observations. Spot on.
Remember people, Apple notebook sales are dropping while Windows notebook sales are increasing.
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/conte...soft_oems.html
Microsoft is in fact kicking Apple while they are down.
When is this depression set to end again - 5 years time?
Maybe now is the wrong time to be a premium brand.
I don't trust any of them, I want to see Apple's data before saying anything, the same people have been saying Mac sales have been falling for well over year but Apple keeps announcing record profits and sales.
If Microsoft is selling so many notebooks, why did they just lay of 5000 people, I guess they are also being affected by this so called depressions. Seems they aren't kicking Apple while they are down. What about Microsoft OEM's like Dell and HP who are seeing their profits drop, I thought they were all doing fine.
No way! MS uses actors instead of real people in their ads! Shame on them. They should do like Apple does and use people they find on the street!
Well, when Apple presents people in ads as "real people" (as in the case of Ellen "beep beep beep" Feiss and that early series of iPhone ads featuring people explaining how they use their iPhone to do stuff) they actually are, you know, real people. To be sure, Apple screen tests a lot of real people to get the ones they use, but that's very different from Microsoft's tendency to build ad campaigns around some sort of bogus grass roots, just average joes kickin' it MS's awesome products vibe while all the while using actors, stock photos and paid shills.
I mean, they really seem to go out of their way to try and manufacturer the kind of fake cred that makes them seem all the more woefully out of touch.
I used Vista for over 1.5 yrs. Had little problems.
I have been using Mac OS 10.5.x since August have had my fair share of issues.
They both need to be improved!
Thats' the second time you've posted about 'issues' with OSX.
What issues? Care to be a bit more specific?
Remember people, Apple notebook sales are dropping while Windows notebook sales are increasing.
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/conte...soft_oems.html
Microsoft is in fact kicking Apple while they are down.
When is this depression set to end again - 5 years time?
Maybe now is the wrong time to be a premium brand.
Whew, thanks for the heads-up. I did not realize we were in a depression!
I'll sell all my AAPL tomorrow. And, buy and hold MSFT for 5 years, riding out the recessi..... er..... depression.
Whew, thanks for the heads-up. I did not realize we were in a depression!
I'll sell all my AAPL tomorrow. And, buy and hold MSFT for 5 years, riding out the recessi..... er..... depression.
Would it really kill Apple to have a tower available at less than $2500? Do we really believe they couldn't get by with a $1500 dollar tower which would still allow plenty of margin for keeping the Mac a quality product. The Apple pro line used to start at this price and now is clearly far above this amount. Sure they have filled part of that gap with the iMac but the issue is that it would not kill Apple to put one of their existing products out at this point and keep people on the platform or gain a sale versus losing or defering it.
Apple used to have the base iMac start at $999. Again in these times it would not hurt them at all to offer a 17 inch iMac with the same specs as the 20 inch for $999.
No race to the bottom, no substandard solutions and it isn't asking them to do something different from what they have historically done. It needs to be done to make sure Mac sales only slow versus cratering.
Whew, thanks for the heads-up. I did not realize we were in a depression!
I'll sell all my AAPL tomorrow. And, buy and hold MSFT for 5 years, riding out the recessi..... er..... depression.
Why be depressed when you own a Mac?
Value is more important and more visible in a depression then price. People are more conscious to save for value, then splurge for crap.
BTW- I thought the add was HILARIOUS!
She's a Mac lover, and she proved that many people are visiting Mac stores first. She's probably already taken the HP back to Best Buy and exchanged it for the MBP 17".
Software/OS manufacturer running ads about other hardware - not sure if that works.
http://9to5mac.com/hp-microsoft-ad-broken-down
Maybe i shouldnt have expected decent non fanboy comments on an apple board. My gf just went with a $200 asus eee pc over an apple because why get an apple laptop for $999 when you can get a pc for $200 . Keep in mind its for internet, music, and some small text editing.
An ipod touch is not the same.
also jplevine, avast and other virus scanners are free so is openoffice and other programs.
I do have to agree though that for the first time is several years the Mac line up is looking seriously overpriced. There are lots of perfectly sound arguments for premium pricing in a recession but my loyalty is being a little tested. Getting a PC would be unthinkable, but delaying purchases isn't.
Apple foresaw exactly this kind of behavior, and they are fine with it. If you listen to the earnings call with Jobs and Cook a few months back, you'll hear that they expected their users not to bail, but to delay.
Me, I think machines are cheap these days. All machines. I think people have lost perspective, probably thanks to so much cheap junk from China.
I remember paying $10,000 for an early Compaq 386 running at the then blazing speed of 20Mhz, with a then huge 2MB of RAM, and a then gargantuan 40MB hard disk, as well as a 19" color CRT and a graphics card that could output 1024 x 768 with 16 colors.
The thing came with DOS and absolutely no applications. It had no networking capability of any kind, no CD player or recorder, no sound, actually, unless you count beeps.
Those are 1988 dollars we are talking about, by the way. The machine was built in the USA though, and back then it felt like the coolest thing...
So when I look at something like a MacBook Pro with Leopard and iLife, I have a really hard time seeing it as expensive. Yeah, it costs more than a PC laptop would, but spread over the life of the machine the difference is like $2 per day at most. If that's the OS/X and Johnny Ives tax, I'll pay it gladly.
Honetsly apple is lucky that they didnt use an asus eee pc with windows xp on it.
Maybe i shouldnt have expected decent non fanboy comments on an apple board. My gf just went with a $200 asus eee pc over an apple because why get an apple laptop for $999 when you can get a pc for $200 . Keep in mind its for internet, music, and some small text editing.
An ipod touch is not the same.
also jplevine, avast and other virus scanners are free so is openoffice and other programs.
So a 200 dollar netbook is equivalent to a Macbook?
We've been hearing from people that Apple is irrelevant to Microsoft and Microsoft has 95% of the market, guess they must be feeling heat from Apple.
That's exactly the part i don't understand: on one hand ballmer is dismissive of apple and on the other hand advertising of this kind makes it sound like he perceives apple as a threat. it just doesn't make any sense to be spending money on this kind of advertising to bolster the brand. it just makes it look like microsoft has some issues with image envy.
Honetsly apple is lucky that they didnt use an asus eee pc with windows xp on it.
Maybe i shouldnt have expected decent non fanboy comments on an apple board. My gf just went with a $200 asus eee pc over an apple because why get an apple laptop for $999 when you can get a pc for $200 . Keep in mind its for internet, music, and some small text editing.
An ipod touch is not the same.
also jplevine, avast and other virus scanners are free so is openoffice and other programs.
From what I read, Avast if free for 1 year - doesn't say what happens after that. If you need something other than home version, then there is a cost.
I'm pretty sure the next version of Windoze will not be free and as I speculated, 2-3x Snow Leopard. And don't say you can get Ubuntu as a free alternative because I doubt that is what Microsoft had in mind when creating this ad.
No race to the bottom, no substandard solutions and it isn't asking them to do something different from what they have historically done. It needs to be done to make sure Mac sales only slow versus cratering.
I can definitely see the case for having a 17" iMac available to everybody (not just education). I can also see the case for a lower spec machine with the Mac Pro enclosure. Not at $1500 but maybe $1999. Either that or a new model above the mini. A "Mac Maxi", or a "Mac mini double", the size of two minis.
What I find irritating are people asking for a crappy Apple netbook. I mean, if Apple ever does that, within a few years their R&D as we know it will be gone, and things will go downhill from there.
But you are right that in these times some of the older price points could be revived, I think without a creating problems for Apple's overall strategy.
Same goes for Apple ads!
Remember Microsoft has over 89% of the market. Windows 7 will bring them back over 90%.
I am switching back to Windows when Windows 7 comes out.
I have had my fair share of Mac issues!
Then do it already. Go buy your $699 laptop, download the beta version of Windows 7 and leave. Why do you keep coming back to these forums if you are so unhappy?
That's exactly the part i don't understand: on one hand ballmer is dismissive of apple and on the other hand advertising of this kind makes it sound like he perceives apple as a threat. it just doesn't make any sense to be spending money on this kind of advertising to bolster the brand. it just makes it look like microsoft has some issues with image envy.
Apple is growing share and especially growing revenue share, because of the high-end pricing strategy.
Still, here is the irony: Apple is taking sales to people willing to spend money on computers, so it's taking share from the high end of the market.
This advertising strategy will work... for people who wouldn't buy a Mac anyway.
The days of selling computers on speed/ram/hard drive are over. Heck even the Mac Mini is good for most people. For example I recently took my mom to the Apple store and the first question they asked us wasn't how much ram, hard drive, or processor we need but what ow were we looking to do with the computer, what software we need, this is how computers are being sold and not specs. When you go to the Apple store, they put more emphasis on software instead of specs. The days of buying on specs is coming to an end. Most computers available are fast enough for the majority of people.
While I do think that people should buy computers, based on need, Apple really can't compete on specs/price, unless you only want look at AIO vs desktops, but neither side overlaps in those well.
When my mom needed a new computer (last November), to process her pics from her new Nikon D60, I wanted something that could last her for years, and for the price ($600), it wasn't the pidly Mac Mini with a gig of RAM, an 80 GB HD, etc, but the Dell with 4 GB of RAM and a 640 GB HD, GMA x3100 graphics....
I can do the photo editing on my $600 Mini, but it's a bit slow, and the 80 GB HD is a serious drawback, and iPhoto simply sucks.
I've been doing a lot of comparison shopping on laptops lately, as both my wife and my mother in law want to buy new ones, and neither is all that hot on Macs. It's impossible for me to sell them on why they need a Mac (even if it can run Windows), when they cost so much more for no legitimate reason. If the specs were that much better, I could use that, but in many cases the cheaper PC laptop even beats the Mac on specs. The fact that no Mac laptop even has a memory card reader or a number pad is something I have to agree with my wife as being inexcusable. It's very frustrating, to the point that it's making me reconsider if I want to buy a Macbook Pro myself when I could get a much better HP for less than half the price. The fact that I could conceivably hackintosh it if I bought the right model is even more enticing.