Microsoft's ads doing damage to Apple: study

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  • Reply 81 of 178
    robogoborobogobo Posts: 378member
    Um, who cares what the 35-49 segment thinks? I'm in that range, and I certainly don't drive the market. Let them have their crappy machines. They should know better. Let's see what the kids think.
  • Reply 82 of 178
    M$ can post all the ads they want. They may damage to some extent Apple's sales and vice versa. The main thing is that M$ is now forced to act. This alone is proof positive that Apple was getting into their pockets. M$ didn't just decide to place adds. Snow Leopard will win converts to Apple but M$ will see hardly any going the other way. Apple users tend to be more loyal than M$ users, so these ads basically show that if the price is right, people will jump to Apple. Also, the people in these ads are not the sharpest tools in the shed.
  • Reply 83 of 178
    cycomikocycomiko Posts: 716member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by robogobo View Post


    Um, who cares what the 35-49 segment thinks? I'm in that range, and I certainly don't drive the market. Let them have their crappy machines. They should know better. Let's see what the kids think.



    yea, who really cares about hte segment that has lots of disposable income, lets see what kids with no job think about the matter.
  • Reply 84 of 178
    parkyparky Posts: 383member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jawporta View Post


    Instead of spending millions on those dumb I'm a Mac ads. just make the computers cheaper. There's no way that white MacBook should cost $999, it should be $600 tops. The top case cracks and the hard drive is crap.



    The MacBook Air. $500. It's slow, has no ports and less parts than the MacBook.



    Do you have any concept for how businesses work?



    Apple do not need to drop the prices they charge.

    It is all about supply and demand and profit per device.



    They are very happy with the high quality, low units, high profit market they are in.

    They sell computers at a price that people are willing to pay, no more no less.

    They have a target for sales, if they reach that target at the price they are charging then they are happy.



    Reducing prices may not sell more devices, but would seriously damage thier profit.



    Apple are a 'premium' brand who charge 'premium' prices.

    It is just the same as BMW and Mercedes. Both COULD make and sell cheaper cars, but they CHOOSE not to as it is not a market they want to be in.



    Apple have decided NOT to be in the cheap end of the market. If that is not for you then buy your computer from a manufacturer that is in that market. Simple.



    Apple make approx 30% margin on thier sales, if they want to keep that margin and still produce the quality product (i.e. the costs of manufacture, etc remain the same) then they cannot drop the price. The only way to reduce the price is to compromise on design, build, quality, spec, software, etc OR accept a lower profit margin (which the shareholders will not accept.



    All this is called business!
  • Reply 85 of 178
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by teckstud View Post


    Apple is barely mentioned in their ads- WTF? Apple is causing their own bleeding , not Microsoft. Where's the Netbook, Tablet, Pad, WTFever? Where's Blu-ray? Where's matte? Where's firewire? Where's HDMI? Where's recession pricing?

    GO Blame yourself Apple.



    wheres the user experience that once you go mac, you don't go back?



    wheres the profit? the market cap? the billions MORE than "the market leader" in the bank?
  • Reply 86 of 178
    vineavinea Posts: 5,585member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Aizmov View Post


    It is interesting that Microsoft feels threatened by Apple, even though they still control 85-90% of the market.



    Microsoft is afraid of competition.

    Afraid of Apple.

    Afraid of Google.

    Afraid of FOSS.



    They know that with real competition and a leveled playing field they can't compete.



    MS has always been a company afraid of becoming the next IBM. Just under Gates they were more effective.



    Still, MS has strengths that most folks overlook. For one, they know developers and their innovation is centered around SDKs and not UI.



    If you look at WPF and Surface they have the underpinnings of making multitouch interface development easy for developers. And XNA has a lot of newbie game devs programming for it. The 360/XNA was in many ways like the iPhone has been for Apple except that since MS already dominated the market it wasn't noticeable. No huge uptick in devs, just the usual younger devs programming for the first time using the MS infrastructure.



    The iPhone SDK has been a huge game changer for Apple IMHO. One that MS should be considering very carefully even if there isn't much they can do about it.
  • Reply 87 of 178
    caliminiuscaliminius Posts: 944member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Jimmy01 View Post


    You really have to be an ignorant low class idiot to be a Windows user/deliberate PC buyer. There is no other way to put it. MS bet that 90% of the world population are imbeciles. Turns out they were right. Apple doesn't have to rule the world. We don't want that trash anyhow...MS can KEEP IT.



    Congratulations for sounding like you're part of that 90% you mentioned even if you are a Mac user.



    It's arrogant, dumb a** comments like this make me never want to mention the fact that I own a Mac to people. I certainly don't want to be associated with pricks like you, but unfortunately your kind seems to be nearly half of the Apple using population.
  • Reply 88 of 178
    dreyfus2dreyfus2 Posts: 1,072member
    Well, looking at yesterdays HP results (hint: profits down 17% and almost identical to Apple's Q2 non-GAAP figure, despite selling four times the volume, and thousands of additional lay-offs), it is obvious where the damage is taking place. This is what you get for targeting market share instead of profits, and advertising cheapness. And this is HP, they still make a fortune by selling high-margin ink and toner cartridges... it will hit others without non-PC income even worse.
  • Reply 89 of 178
    jerseymacjerseymac Posts: 408member
    Of course these Microsh!t ads are working. Tell anyone they can get something cheaper and they're all for it. I can't want for Snow Leopard to come out and make Windows 7 look like the buggy piece of junk it surly will be.
  • Reply 90 of 178
    sipadansipadan Posts: 107member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Jerseymac View Post


    I can't wait for Snow Leopard to come out and make Windows 7 look like the buggy piece of junk it surely will be.



    Amen to that
  • Reply 91 of 178
    aglaeaaglaea Posts: 17member
    I first read this on the Dutch ZDNet site and it struck me at just how brainless these interviewed people appearantly are that they fall for these clearly inaccurate ads. How serious can you take these interviewed people or the research company when people are so dramatically (from 0 to 46 and from 70 to 12,something) influenced by false information?



    Every person that has actually taken the trouble to shop for 'a laptop' and has checked out the Apple laptops KNOWS there is a fairly priced Mac laptop. Only somebody totally ignorant of this believes these ads. For those I say: you get what you deserve. For the likes of ZDnett etc. that post this news without any comment: where is your journalistic integrity by posting this without putting it in its perspective?
  • Reply 92 of 178
    caliminiuscaliminius Posts: 944member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by steviet02 View Post


    Apple has also been doing this for a long time. I have to use Win XP at work and I have had multiple machines running for years in some cases without a blue screen or a virus. On the other hand, I've had 3 crashes this year with my iMac at home. It's always something to do with bluetooth, but non the less happened.



    Yeah, Mac users seem to have short term memories when it comes to issues with OS X. I've been using the same Windows XP machine at work for over 2 years and it has never crashed. On top of that, I've had very few programs crash, IE occasionally (just like Safari but without the memory leak), MS Access (because of some poor VB code I had written), and Word.



    Last week, my 5th gen iPod decided to stop working properly. iTunes reported it was corrupt when I went to sync it. I restored it and tried to sync but it would freeze in the process after a bit. I wanted to do a surface scan of the hard drive but conveniently Apple removed the HDSCAN option from my model of iPod's service menu. So I figured I could just put it in disk mode and have OS X scan it, but as far as I can tell, OS X doesn't include anything that can do a surface scan. Windows has had that since Windows 95 (heck, it was probably part of MS-DOS for all I know). A google search seemed to indicate that to get the functionality back, I'd have to shell out some money for a program that did a lot more than I needed. As a bonus, in my efforts to fix my iPod, iTunes would lock up and locked up in some strange way that no other program would load after that point without rebooting the iMac. As a double bonus, my iMac stopped shutting down properly several months ago and the only way to restart is to do a hard shutdown via the power button; I tried a very long list of suggestions to correct the shut down problem but nothing worked.



    Yep, thank goodness OS X is flawless...
  • Reply 93 of 178
    aglaeaaglaea Posts: 17member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by TiAdiMundo View Post


    What a stupid survey. Do they really think that only some ads have such an impact? What about the reality?



    Apple hasn't really had some big new products in the last time and to be fair the rumored new iPhone and even Snow Leopard aren't really mind blowing (at least to me). Adding to this that they had some bad press about hardware issues with Nvidia and security on some hacker conferences.



    Microsoft on the other side is working very hard to fix a lot of problems they had in the last few years. Vista is getting better receptions after people really using it, the Windows 7 beta was very successful with a lot of hype about it, the Xbox 360 is flying and even the worst products they have (IE and Windows Mobile) are getting really better with the newest versions. Not to mention Windows Live is now usable and very sleek. On top of that are some technologies people call "innovative" and "cool" like Photosynth.



    And Microsoft may also benefit from PC hardware that gets better in quality and design. Manufacturers really have learned a lot from Apple in the last years (see Dell Adamo or Palm pre).



    I think all this has an impact on how people see the brand. Not only 4 or 5 TV ads.



    My perception on your comments:

    1) Consider that when Snow Leopard delivers on its promise to be faster with smaller footprint in memory use, that is a serious achievement. Vista can't run its modern interface on just any machine and nobody should seriously try to run it on a machine with less than 1 Gb RAM. Mac OS X runs flawlessly with its excellent graphical interface even on older machines. The Windows OS's are like fat, hamburger eating 500 pound mastodonts whereas Mac OS X is a trained hunter cat. That wins you the performance race.

    Yesterday a colleague of mine ran an application in IE7 on Vista and it went to use 2,75 Gb of RAM, including swap! The whole machine was slowed down to a crawl... Behold the impact of the leanness of an OS.



    2) Most businesses refuse to install Windows Vista and even M$ recently advised to skip it in favour of Windows 7. So basically Vista is a failure, despite the expensive ad campaigns. And the question is if Windows 7 will do much better, looking at the reviews of as good as no speed improvements and little fascinating new features. And then it comes in many flavours of which the top ones are double the price of a new Mac OS X version. If M$ were to upgrade their OS at the speed of Apple, then people would soon see that 'cheap buy' today is 'big bucks' tomorrow.



    3) Quality design Windows computers are a rare thing. I used to like the Sony Vaio's (looong ago) as they were stylish, now they are the same cheap looking plastic like most other laptops. My private plastic Apple laptop looks more robust than my business Windows laptop that is 50% more expensive than my Apple. The quality looking hardware of Windows machines are in the same price range of Apple's hardware, so no price hunter from these ads will buy it...
  • Reply 94 of 178
    benroethigbenroethig Posts: 2,782member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by iCarbon View Post


    thats one of the most optomistic statements I've ever heard.



    they spent, what? like 10 years on Vista, but don't worry windows 7 will be done in three and unquestionably better?



    what, are they trying now, but didn't really care before?



    Yeah, pretty much. No threat=no reason to give a crap. After Apple's gains and the charlie foxtrot that was vista, they now give a crap again. They can't afford not to. A change in direction from Apple and they could see Mac OS X competing on their turf.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Jimmy01 View Post


    You really have to be an ignorant low class idiot to be a Windows user/deliberate PC buyer. There is no other way to put it. MS bet that 90% of the world population are imbeciles. Turns out they were right. Apple doesn't have to rule the world. We don't want that trash anyhow...MS can KEEP IT.



    And they wonder why we've gotten a bad name.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mbmcavoy View Post


    Funny, I've got Win7 RC on my home PC. It's a rather nice improvement over Vista and XP. I'm hoping that my PC-centric employer moves to Win7 rapidly.



    However, my MacBook is much more pleasant to use, and remains my primary machine. I haven't even finished installing basic apps on the PC, and I don't really care.



    Windows 7 has a major flaw - It's still "Windows", with virtually all of the annoyances and maintenance headaches.



    Its not about you, its about keeping the everyday users and right now there are more of those on the Mac platform than Mac users.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nite41 View Post


    I don't think Apple needs a Windows-push to strive for development. Apple is a company that thrives on creativity and improvisation. Even if there was no Microsoft, Apple would still be as creative and good as it is now. Maybe it's in their company culture.



    The lineup hasn't changed all that much in the last 5 years and most of the improvisation has come the engineering staff trying to fit a computer into the ever shrinking dimensions of Ive's sculptures. It's getting a little too routine.
  • Reply 95 of 178
    brucepbrucep Posts: 2,823member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by calumnious View Post


    Congratulations for sounding like you're part of that 90% you mentioned even if you are a Mac user.



    It's arrogant, dumb a** comments like this make me never want to mention the fact that I own a Mac to people. I certainly don't want to be associated with pricks like you, but unfortunately your kind seems to be nearly half of the Apple using population.



    WOW YOU JUST DID EXACTLY WAHT YOU SAID HE DID .



    apple users do get abused when call ing tech supports to phone comp. etc etc

    once they hear i have a mac they get weird . and abusive . they never really help



    so maybe you can excuse us for being a bit hot headed at times ,



    and don't forget its only a box that your embarrassed to say you use .kinda funny huh
  • Reply 96 of 178
    tbelltbell Posts: 3,146member
    I think this sentiment is correct. Mac users are not going to switch to a PC based on cost issues. They, however, might put off a purchase decision based on economic factors. Microsoft's ads might effect Apple's largest growing market of potential PC users who might consider jumping ship where it not for economic concerns.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by nite41 View Post


    I've been a Windows user for around 8 years. Then, with much thought, jumped to the Mac bandwagon around 3 years back. And one thing is for sure, there's no going back!



  • Reply 97 of 178
    lilgto64lilgto64 Posts: 1,147member
    I have a number of Macs - though I have recently considered the purchase of a Dell Mini 10v - but only because it is possible to load OS X on it. In part because it is inexpensive - $300 or so - and in part because of how small it is - I have two 17" Mac notebooks (G4 and Intel Core2 Duo) along with a Mini an iMac 20" and other various external monitors etc - but when I need to travel light the mini is actually looking like it might provide some advantage over having the iPhone as my only computing device on the road.
  • Reply 98 of 178
    panupanu Posts: 135member
    I don't doubt that it's true that the ads are hurting Apple. My brother called me yesterday for advice on a laptop. He really wanted a MacBook, but he just doesn't have the money. So we discussed the pros and cons of various PC manufacturers. It was like living through one of those commercials, but without the porn-like ending when they hand the woman a wad of cash. It was as if my brother couldn't afford a hamburger, so I helped him find a half-eaten one in the trash. Sad.



    Now for some constructive brainstorming, folks. Apple doesn't have a conquer-the-world mentality like Microsoft. They are content to pick a market and make a ton of money in it, but market share is important. Steve Jobs said that for Apple to succeed, Microsoft doesn't have to lose. So let's pretend we are Apple, and we don't mind if Microsoft has the monopoly problems. How do we counter the effect of the Microsoft ads to grow the Mac? Here are some possibilities:



    Make ads that stress value, aimed at the crowd that spends $1,000-$4,000 on a computer, but without ruining the corporate image by appearing to be heartless by deprecating the people who can't afford Macs.



    Find a way to make less expensive laptops to compete in the $700-$900 tier within these constraints: 1) don't cripple the features, 2) don't compromise the quality, 3) don't create a lower level of support, 4) maintain profit margins.



    Cut prices on existing Macs without creating a backlash from current customers, like what happened with the iPhone



    Or some combination of the three.



    Anyone have ideas?
  • Reply 99 of 178
    teckstudteckstud Posts: 6,476member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Walter Slocombe View Post


    wheres the user experience that once you go mac, you don't go back?



    wheres the profit? the market cap? the billions MORE than "the market leader" in the bank?



    That, thank god, they always have had and will continue to have. OSX rules! I'm talking hardware- period. I want to buy another Mac now and nothing appeals presently, quite frankly.
  • Reply 100 of 178
    wilcowilco Posts: 985member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Walter Slocombe View Post


    wheres the user experience that once you go mac, you don't go back?



    wheres the profit? the market cap? the billions MORE than "the market leader" in the bank?



    Why the f@ck would a consumer care about Apples market cap, or stock price?



    AI should set up a parallel site, and herd into it all of the idiots who constantly reference Apple's financial figures -- as if they have any bearing on the user experience, or value of their products.
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