New Apple Campaign Target PC Flaws 819
sodul writes"Apple just started a new campaign to emphasize the advantages of Mac versus a regular tasteless PC. The ads represent a young cool looking man (Mac) and a white collar in his 40's (not cool, PC).
In one of the ads the PC repeat itself several times because it had to reboot. In an other one (and maybe the most aggressive of all) PC is sick because of a virus, while Mac is healthy.
You can watch the new spots on Apple's site "
Doesn't work (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Doesn't work (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Doesn't work (Score:5, Insightful)
The sick with a virus ad... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dumb. PC==Mac. Mac==PC (Score:5, Insightful)
The "dumb" ones are those that hold on to the notion that the worth of a computer is solely in its hardware. That "even nicer software" is what seperates the two - the consumer on average doesn't really care much about how well the hardware can perform, he/she just cares what he/she can do with the computer (other than overclock it, give it shiny lights, or add four of those latest extreme ultra super graphics cards for $500 each).
Apple should be honest (Score:2, Insightful)
This "restart" ad is false advertising -- Windows XP is an extremely stable platform (unless Apple is referring to people who are still using Windows 98 and Windows ME -- but I don't think so).
The entire campaign smacks of Apple's vintage "lemmings" ad which didn't work because it offended their IBM using audience. This new campaign is flat out calling PC users fat dorks. The potential switcher I know are tech savvy cool users, and could potentially be offended by this portrayal.
Apple should spend more time making it easier to switch -- like including a "start menu" equivalent, using the defacto standard "ctrl-c & ctrl-v" type shortcut keys, better windows-style support for right-click instead of always having to use ctrl-click to get a pop-up menu, real windows-style "uninstall" functionality.
I love my Mac, but getting my wife comfortable with the little Mac-isms was like giving her a new car that had the gas and brake pedals backwards.
Drop the contempt for your audience, Apple, and make your computer a more seamless experience for potential switchers.
boxlight
Great, mudslinging from Apple. (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not going to be one of the "I hate Windows so much that I'll..." people who are willing to jump in with both feet to another platform (and a credit card in hand).
Give me a reason to buy Apple, not a reason to leave Windows.
I think it's good marketing (Score:2, Insightful)
Apple doesn't aim to market to people who know what they are doing with a PC (I use the term in its original context, Personal Computer, without any bias to one OS or another). They are aiming for the less tech-savvy user, and hoping to create the (not entirely incorrect) impression that Mac's are easier to use than pretty much any other OS based machine on the market.
Re:Apple should be honest (Score:2, Insightful)
As far as keyboard shortcuts go, Command-C and Command V etc are much easier to hit than Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V. You can hit Command with your thumb and its very easy to thumbCommand. Trust me, it may seem "backwards" at first but once you're used to it you find it much easier. I'm on a PC for 8 hours a day at work, and I hate using CTRL because it slows me down.
You can right-click. Just get a 2 button mouse. It'll work just as you expect.
Do you know how to uninstall an application on the Mac? Drag it to your Trash Can. That's it. Gone.
Hope this helps a bit!
Re:Dumb. PC==Mac. Mac==PC (Score:2, Insightful)
Point out that a Mac is a Personal Computer if you want (it is true & I agree with you). But Joe 6-pack knows that a Mac is not a PC - a Mac is Mac and a PC is Windows. In fact he may not even know what PC stands for...
Re:Dumb. PC==Mac. Mac==PC (Score:5, Insightful)
They know that in vernacular English (rather than pedantic geekspeak), "PC" means "a computer running Windows". (Most non-dumb geeks are at least aware of this fact.)
funny but outdated jokes... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Dumb. PC==Mac. Mac==PC (Score:5, Insightful)
It's semantics. "PC" in this context means IBM PC compatible. You know, I know it, and everyone reading this knows it. Pretending to be naive about it accomplishes nothing.
Re:Doesn't work (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Doesn't work (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Great, mudslinging from Apple. (Score:5, Insightful)
From the commercials:
iLife
plug-and-play peripherals
fewer viruses
ease of use
good reviews in the WSJ
Those seem like reasons. They are not really targeting the geek audience with those reasons, which might be why you don't care. But, to someone like my mother, they seem like very good reasons.
Re:The sick with a virus ad... (Score:2, Insightful)
Pointing out how 'unsinkable' your OS is when the only reason you've managed to have such a clean bill of health is due to the fact you haven't held enough market share to warrant attack is about as wise as a fattened lamb pointing out how inedible he is to the den of lions who had previously been feasting on the fetid diseased carcass of the Ballmer.
Furthermore...as much as I support Apple, what they're doing, and encourage competition, seems to me they're satisfaction with their vast growth is getting to their heads. They should have included Steve Jobs with George Clooney's acceptance speech in the "Smug Storm" episode of South Park. They're asking for a big steaming dose of reality.
Absolutely -- MS trashes their own products, too (Score:5, Insightful)
The wrongheadedness of that MS campaign is spectacular, isn't it? You can tell what they were thinking; basically the idea was to goad us into paying for upgrades to systems and app suites for which people aren't ponying up their upgrade fees. MS needs businesses, especially, to stay on that treadmill.
Talk about insulting their audience, though. That campaign is almost up there with the RIAA folks and their "our consumers are thieves" mindset. MS even does the RIAA one better -- because the point is that we're dinosaurs who are using Microsoft's old products. They trash us, and they trash their own software!
Re:Dumb. PC==Mac. Mac==PC (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, put a Mac and a, um, Dell in front of 1000 people and ask them to point to the PC. The only one who'd say, "Well, technically,..." is wearing a pocket protector, has a serious case of nasal drip, and has distinct opinions on whether Kirk or Picard is the better captain.
Geek speak != common speech. Get used to it.
Re:Doesn't work (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Doesn't work (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, Apple does have the advantage in that most people who own PC's already hate them. They are just having a little fun with the hatred that's already there.
But really, I'm not an expert on commercials. Anybody who can point me to some hate campaigns by major companies that seem(ed) to be effective?
Hate campaigns usually require you to identify your competition, which nobody wants to do because then you are spending your money to raise their brand awareness. A "PC hate" campaign isn't really targeting a specific company (at least, not by name), so Apple can get away with it where most businesses could not.
I do have one example, though. FedEx has been running hate ads against the USPS for decades, and it has built an emprie. The simple fact that the Post Office doesn't guarantee a specific maximum shipping date, even for their high-dollar "express" delivery, pretty much wrote FedEx's "the Post Office sucks" ads for them.
Re:Apple should be honest (Score:2, Insightful)
I assume uninstalling Parallels will get better once it comes out of beta.
Apple does not build uninstaller functionality into its OS because it is not needed. This is absolutely not a deficiency on Apple's part. It is a terrific feature. The ability, for instance, to install an app just by dragging it into the applications folder is awesome. One can even install Microsoft Office that way, for example. How is that a deficiency? Don't like an app, trash it! It couldn't be simpler.
Windows users have been hit over the head with the idea that trashing an app is bad because, in Windows, it is. I think *that* is the deficiency. You still have some Windows instincts. Just let go!
Virus writing is a business (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what people said about various things Apple and users did last year, and the year before that. Still waiting....
The thing is, virus writers are mostly not in it for the bravado now. It's a business, trying to scrape as many details or get as many zombie systems as possible. An Apple "gauntlet" means nothing.
The funny thing is, just like most software is on Windows because people are too set in thier ways to learn OS X programming, so to are virus writers pretty comfortable with what they can do on Windows and don't want to really do much extra work. So macs are proteced by an inertia that should keep them pretty safe long after some arbitrarily large threshold of marketshare is reached.
Re:This comment target lack of proof-reading. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dumb. PC==Mac. Mac==PC (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple is marketing to the general public - the people who use "PC" to mean a "computer using Windows" and "Mac" to mean "a Macintosh" or "Apple computer."
They're using informal language because the people they're targeting know exactly what they mean when they say "PC" - their audience knows that the "Windows" is implied.
They don't look like retards - no more than someone who says "Kleenex" when they really just mean "tissue" or "Band-Aid" when they really just mean "a little sticky bandage." "PC" means "a computer using Windows" to the vast majority of the people who use that term. Get used to it.
Re:The sick with a virus ad... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you can find a situation where a virus could easly jump from one Mac to hundreds of others, it will likely remain that way. As someone's joke goes "You could potentially take out an art school or a small advertising agency".
Note I have "virues" in quotes because like most Windows "virues" they are acutally stupid trojans along the lines of "HAY! RUN THIS!".
Re:The sick with a virus ad... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Is Apple on the offensive (Score:3, Insightful)
(post written from an Intel iMac which is more stable, easier to use, less buggy and faster than any of the Linux boxes I've had over the years)
Re:Apple should be honest (Score:5, Insightful)
How about, instead, Windows stops using a keystroke that has meant "kill this process RIGHT NOW" for over 20 years? You know, Control-C ?
And, yes, it still does make me cringe when I have to use Ctrl-C for "copy," and Ctrl-D for "duplicate," and a few other keystrokes that Unix and VMS defined back in the paleolithic age.
Re:Personal Computer != personal computer (Score:3, Insightful)
In retrospect it was a huge mistake for IBM because they were using a brandname that they could not trademark, which only assisted with the product becoming genericized.
Re:Doesn't work (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Apple's last advertisment where they talk about "dull little PCs performing dull little tasks" (by dull little people?) was a lot worse, pretty much only appealing to the Smug Mac User crowd.
Re:Dumb. PC==Mac. Mac==PC (Score:3, Insightful)
Thus, it would be logical that all of the PC guy's behaviour in the ad applies to a Mac, too. This actually seems to be the case, though in less significant amounts than in a pure PC.
Need for an occasional reboot? Check.
Malware? Check (Well, attempts do count. And CNET articles.)
iTunes, clock, calculator? Yup.
Networking glitches? Sure.
Rave reviews? Hmm... I'm sure Vista will get some.
I'd say the Mac is a PC. Because he's younger and chooses to wear contact lenses, you can't tell, but in 15 years or so...
J
Re:Apple should be honest (Score:5, Insightful)
Lastly, and certainly not least, control is used by every version of the Mac OS I've ever used, as well as Unix, to send
As for the Chevy/Mercedes comparison, it's a wholly false analogy. Nobody drives a Mercedes with reversed pedals or a joystick. A better one would probably be automatic vs. manual transmission, but even that fails to take into account the subtleties of the issue.
What if your strength is NOT doing something? (Score:5, Insightful)
What if your strength is that you don't do something horrible? What if your strength is that you do something better than a competitor, and you'd like to show how much better you are? What if failures are rare for both products, but you want to show yourself as better? Isn't it fair in that case to contrast your success against your competitor's failure?
If you're selling fluorescent lights, and you want to contrast the short life and high power consumption of incandescent lighting against your product, is that bad?
If your cell phone service doesn't drop calls and lets you communicate clearly, isn't it better to show your competitors failing at this rather than trying to show an entire month of not failing?
If your product cleans stains effectively, isn't it fair to compare it against "the leading brand" to show how much better it is?
I see no difference between the above commercials and what Apple is doing. However, I think it's a little like calling the Titanic "Unsinkable" before its maiden voyage to brag about how virus-free Macs are. That kind of hubris is definitely going to bite Apple when the platform reaches that critical mass of interest + talent especially now that much more common x86 assembler experience can be leveraged by malware writers against the Mac now.
Re:Great, mudslinging from Apple. (Score:3, Insightful)
You seem to have failed to understand the point that I was making. The original post complained that the adverts did not provide any good reasons why one should buy a Mac. I suggested several good reasons from the commercials, then suggested that those reasons are perfectly good for the majority of computer users, though they may not cut it as far as a geek is concerned. Again, most of the world is not made up of geeks, and most people, they are good enough.
Re:Okay, so I'm late today :) (Score:3, Insightful)
The same could be said about any well-made PC.
I generally on the anti-wintel basher side, but I've set up Dells, Gateways, IBMs, and a iMacs, and damn, iMacs are freakin' slick.
I agree with all yof our responses except this one. I have yet to see a PC that even comes close to the OOBox experience you get with a Mac. The $$$ Apple spends on packaging details and aesthetics is money well spent, IMHO.
Devil's advocate (Score:2, Insightful)
With a 30% speed increase during my normal daily use, I could probably afford a little downtime for spyware or viruses now and then.
I'm pretty baffled as to what Apple is doing, it seems like their marketing people and business strategy are not inline. Everything their doing points to lowering dependence on MacOSX, yet they continue to throw out marketing slogans saying PC's and windows suck.
I hate to tell you this Apple, but the accepted definition of a PC nowadays is a machine that is IBM PC Compatible, which of course your x86 intel macs are. Your marketing spin is starting to get old... First you told us PowerPC was the only way, and x86 was crap, then you decided to use x86 becuase it was cheaper/cooler/faster. Next you told us MacOS was the only way to make the x86 Intel CPU's work well, then you released a tool so we could all install windows and see it run much faster than MacOS. What's next?
Re:Dumb. PC==Mac. Mac==PC (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Apple:"PCs"::FedEx:USPS (Score:4, Insightful)
Likewise, Macs do have fewer virus problems, better default-config security, superior media authoring software (for free and pre-installed, no less!) and tend to be considerably more reliable and more robust.
Now, Windows has gradually gotten better, as has the USPS, but neither has closed the gap, nor have their earned back their reputations just yet.
So really, it's FedEx and Apple: 1, USPS and Windows: -1.
And just like that, a "hate" campaign makes a lot of sense.
Re:Doesn't work (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dumb. PC==Mac. Mac==PC (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:Doesn't work (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Doesn't work (Score:4, Insightful)
What did you really want Apple to say? "Macs are great, but if you don't want one, it's totally cool with us if you buy a Windows PC too, because Internet Explorer runs great on them!"
Apple can talk until they're red in the face about how great their own product is, but there are clearly still a lot of misconceptions about them. The only way to really drive home the fact that they do some things better and lack the problems that abound on PCs is to put the two side-by-side. You're right that people don't react well to negative ad campaigns (there's no such thing as a hate campaign), and that's precisely why Apple has struck an extremely delicate balance in these ads.
The Mac guy doesn't come out and call the PC guy a piece of shit idiot who can't install Firefox and Ad-Aware to save his life. It's a friendly dialogue with upbeat music, far from the deep voices and forboding music of negative political ads.
Re:Doesn't work (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Mac Asshats (Score:3, Insightful)
Start Menu was more of cleaned-up version of CDE Drawers IMO.
Re:*sigh* (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Devil's advocate (Score:3, Insightful)
Huh? Everything I've seen says you only get that kind of an increase for things like games, due to OS X apparently underclocking the GPU due to heat concerns -- that's not what most people call "normal daily use." If spending however long it takes to back up data, reformat, reinstall Windows, drivers, and software is worth a few extra FPS to you, be my guest. Viruses were made for people like you.
Re:The sick with a virus ad... (Score:4, Insightful)
There's been many Mac "viruses" over the last 5 years, they just don't spread very fast or very far, probably due to a dispersed userbase.
There have? Name one.
Unless you can find a situation where a virus could easly jump from one Mac to hundreds of others, it will likely remain that way.
Imagine if someone hooked a Mac up to a network accessible by hundreds of others Macs!
Note I have "virues" in quotes because like most Windows "virues" they are acutally stupid trojans along the lines of "HAY! RUN THIS!".
So you have "virues" (sic) in quotes because you mean Trojans. There haven't even been many Mac trojans in the last five years (maybe three).
Re:Doesn't work (Score:3, Insightful)
Plus viruses really can hurt on XP. I managed to catch SpyBot, I think through Firefox, just by hitting a link on Digg. I managed to clean it manually, but MacAffee didn't peep, and an average user probably wouldn't be able to work out how to fix it.
I really am kinda looking forward to Vista being cooler to look at, and having some Java-style sandbox security, since I'll probably end up using it at work, but the XP install under Parallels on my Mac isn't getting any use, simply because all the software I need is now available on a Mac.
I think it's nice to see Apple advertising Mac though, and with fairly smart ads, not the Volkswagen Bug / iMac CRT stuff they were doing a few years ago.