When did advertisments become about putting your competitor down? Heck even the Coke v/s Pepsi wars didn't stoop this low.
If Apple can't market it's products on their own features and has to rely on this kind of negative adverts I'd say it's really hitting a low-point. The ad kind of pisses me off actually.
"If Apple can't market it's products on their own features"
I might be able to accept this technique if I could see any evidence of Microsoft actually advertising their features.
What the heck is "I'm a PC" advertising? Can you point out the features highlighted in those commercials? What about the "Wow." commercials before that? I'm trying to remember the last Microsoft commercial I saw that actually advertised a feature of its products.
The iPhone ads are almost entirely about features, and brilliantly done. As others have pointed out, many of the "I'm a Mac/PC" ads have highlighted differences between Macs and PCs. I don't see how Microsoft has any standing when it comes to complaining about advertising based on actual product features.
They're getting aggressive because they want big results.
OS X is on the rise: it's getting big pretty quickly. Apple wants to take advantage of that and force every last Apple product they can into the consumer marketplace.
I've had Vista since it came out and am completely happy with it. I thought the Apple commercials were cute, but off-base. They were funny, and they emphasized Mac good points, so I liked them.
But now it just seems mean. Hell, computer commercials are getting like political commercials, and we've all had enough of that lately.
I am sure not a full-time Mac evangelist (I use Linux myself), but have you tried to use a Mac for a month or so?
I was perfectly happy with Windows (XP then) when I decided to check the greener grass on the other side of the fence (Red Hat, first, then Debian, then Ubuntu) and I never thought about going back. Linux is so much more refined under the hood that more than compensates for the lack of software in several niches. I recommended my then girlfriend (now wife) to buy a Mac when she wanted to upgrade her PC and she loves it. I wouldn't recommend Linux for her because the added elegance under the hood would not compensate the limitations in dealing with complex (read quirky) Office documents.
Now, we both cringe our teeth because our employers issued Windows running Dell laptops for us. Argh.
...and I had to use a Mac at work for 12 months and hated every minute of it.
For every person with a convert story to the Mac, there's another person who is quite happy to stick with Windows. I'm not sure why so many people consider the prospect so crazy.
With respect to your story, I'm fairly certain there are more convert stories among people who have used the Mac than there are stories of people disliking them.
Both me and my wife have had the displeasure of using Macs in the past. I even owned one for about 6 months, a mac mini. I replaced it with Vista and Vista's Media Center pretty much owns Front Row (pfft, don't even get me started). The dock sucks compared to the task bar, you can't even see what's running on the dock. Oh and it's slow.
I've never used a Mac Mini, so I don't know how slow it is, though I'd guess that it's not in the same league as Apple's higher-end products.
Out of curiosity, what makes Front Row worse than the Media Center? I rarely use Front Row, but I'd like to know what Vista Media Center does better.
The dock absolutely is better than the task bar. The TB is cluttered - why do I need a box for every open window when I can just see the windows (hence Expose)? The Dock shows you running applications (though not background processes, though that's okay since neither does the task bar), it shows you minimized windows, and it shows you your set launch applications. I've argued before and I still believe that the presence of the dock is what makes OS X the superior system. It focuses on efficiency. The fact that it houses the Trash and the new Stacks system makes it even better: it removes a hell of a lot of clutter.
I've never had a speed problem with my computer, though to be fair I use a MBP with 2 gigs of ram. That said, I can run multiple intensive processes at once and still do casual tasks like browsing without a speed hit.
And despite what you've said, I'm still fairly certain. Meaning no disrespect to you, I've had such a wonderful experience with my computer that I can't possibly imagine people liking Windows more once they get into OS X. Again: your existence shows that I'm not entirely correct, but I'd still believe that of the people who've used both OSes noncasually, more people like the Mac over the PC.
I'm not going to get in a back-and-forth with you about what I hate about Macs.
The point is that there are a LOT of people out there that absolutely can't stand Macs. As a matter of fact, besides me and my wife EVERY single person in my office hates them (most of us are programmers and YES, we've actually used them before).
Back-and-forth? I asked you a few questions about what you said, and made a few statements of my own. You act like this is a hostile conversation.
I don't understand the sort of mindset that doesn't like the Mac, but I acknowledge that it exists. I would still guess that that mindset is in the minority, however: as a casual OS it is vastly better than Windows. Your office experience is not indicative of the majority of computer users.
Most of the products I use are built by people who use the Mac. That's why I looked into getting a Mac in the first place.
37signals. The Big Noob. The Tumblr team. Paul Graham once wrote an article on using the Mac. The Omni Group and Panic and Delicious Monster. Coudal. Rososo and Vimeo and NowDoThis. Facebook. Everywhere I looked, people told me that the Mac was wonderful and they were fanatic about it. So I gave it a try and found that I was equally fanatic.
I'm going off of every designer whose opinion I like and respect. You're going off of people who work in a single environment. If we wanted to be logical, we'd work off of user statistics, where Apple's rated as one of the most satisfactory companies in the nation. They blow competition away. Hence my confidence in my statement. Now, can we drop it, or are you going to continue to make arguments in a debate that's convincing nobody on either side?
"I'm going off of every designer whose opinion I like and respect."
For the record, I'm not JUST going off of my peers at work, I happen to belong to a number of user groups and I also happen to visit many, many real working people in corporate workplaces around the world and I'm quite confident that it wouldn't be that hard to come up with a list of awesome web 2.0 developers that absolutely adore ASP.Net...
Anyway, sure, I can drop it as soon as you can drop it :)
I use a lot of computers but I don't have that strong feelings about them. What's your point? That you know people who hate Macs? Good for you. I do prefer Linux for work, but I know many people who love Macs and even the ones who don't use them respect Macs as well finished computers with a polished OS. Remember: OSX is kind of Nextstep 5.0 and I can respect that as much as I do respect, say, Solaris, AIX and HP-UX.
You may think there is a huge number of people who can't stand Macs, but I assure you it's a very localized phenomena you are observing. Most certainly you are keeping the wrong company. Do they also install neon lights under their cars?
I use a PC and I don't really have any pain that I can think of-- but maybe I'm just used to it. Ya know, one of these days I'd love to compare RescueTime data for the aggregate Windows population and the aggregate Mac population (to see if one works harder, futzes with their OS more, etc.).
Well, it's been a while, but let's see what I can remember! I think, the fact that:
* I had to re-map certain keys on my keyboard just to get a usable # key/'real' British keyboard layout - it ultimately meant I had keys labelled as one thing that did another (thankfully I touch type)
* Pressing Apple + C or Apple + Z meant forcing my hand in to uncomfortable, unnatural positions - I prefer the spacing on a standard PC keyboard between Ctrl + C/etc
* Single button mouse - ew! First thing I did was buy another mouse.
* Navigating with the keyboard was all but impossible in many apps because the tab did nothing, or didn't behave in a logical way. Same with backspace.
* I had constant problems with crashing. It was an old G5 IIRC but my older VAIO laptop performed better.
These were just some of the things that annoyed me and reduced my productivity daily. Asking me for reasons why I wouldn't buy a Mac of my own would be another list on top of that, hehe. Anyway, I knew I was doing the right thing getting a PC in when my boss complemented my increased speed at my next annual review.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a strong believer in picking something that suits your own needs/requirements. If someone thinks that a Mac is the better option, more power to them... I just don't like the stereotype that standard PC users are awaiting some sort of holy intervention from the God of Macs.
* Pressing Apple + C or Apple + Z meant forcing my hand in to uncomfortable, unnatural positions - I prefer the spacing on a standard PC keyboard between Ctrl + C/etc*
Huh? I'm pretty platform agnostic, but I've always liked this about the Mac. The Command key can be held down my shifting my thumb to the left of the spacebar and I can copy+paste without ever pulling my hands off the home row. Trying to hold control with my pinky and twist around to hit various key combos always felt more like a contortionist act to me.
And this is why I said 'These were just some of the things that annoyed me' - emphasis on the me, if you will. What I find annoying, another may find bliss, and vice versa. Such is life.
I installed Ubuntu onto a friend's Vista box using Wubi (http://wubi-installer.org/), and it works perfectly. Apart from altering the boot manager, Wubi doesn't alter your existing setup, and it can be removed like any other Windows app. Please do check it out--but if you decide to try it, defrag your disk first.
One thing Microsoft can never, ever earn is the right to sympathy. You may say that business is cut throat, and thus Microsoft's pitiless, air supply choking history is entirely justified. But feeling sorry for Microsoft because someone is mocking them is just absurd. They have richly earned several lifetimes of ridicule.
The only difference between the two is that Microsoft was far more successful. Apple would have done everything people complain about Microsoft doing and more. They basically have in the couple product areas where they've had similar success.
I think you may be too young to remember what Microsoft was like in the 1980s, but this isn't true. The companies had very different personalities. Apple was always about making great things, whereas Microsoft's path was to ruthlessly exploit the monopoly that IBM dropped in their lap.
That path made Microsoft more successful in the short term (particularly after Jobs was exiled) but in the long term making good things seems to be the winning strategy.
Do you really think that Apple wouldn't have ruthlessly exploited the monopoly if they had come about it? Their actions with iPod/iPhone make me think they would have. Jobs is just as much the ruthless dictator as Gates. In fact from what I've read/heard from people that know them, they seem to share a lot of the same personality traits.
Not as ruthlessly, I don't think. Not because Jobs is a nicer guy than Gates, but because he has taste. He could not bring himself to ship a crappy product. And so wherever shipping something great didn't coincide with exploiting the monopoly, he would not have been able to go so far down the latter vector.
Also, shipping great stuff requires you to have great hackers to build it, and great hackers have principles. They limit how evil a company can be. You can see this most clearly at Google. If they tried to do anything too evil, they'd face an internal rebellion. Apple employees seem a bit more intimidated by Jobs, but they are pretty idealistic too. A lot would quit if Apple went too far, and Jobs is smart enough about people to know that.
"He could not bring himself to ship a crappy product."
Interesting to see this quote from Jobs during today's Apple earnings call:
"We don't know how to make a $500 computer that's not a piece of junk, and our DNA will not let us ship that. But we can continue to deliver greater and greater value to those customers that we choose to serve. And there's a lot of them."
Almost like he knew we were having this conversation. :)
I'm not particularly convinced of Apple's good will.
Speaking of the 80ies, Apple is the one that wanted to control both the OS and the hardware (still true today, from phones to computers), and Apple is the one that sued MS over 'look & feel' issues.
Back in the 80s it would have seemed bizarre to do otherwise. You used whatever OS the manufacturer supplied. It was part of the computer. That was as true with Microsoft OSes.
Apple choosing to make their own OSes instead of buy them from an outsider supplier was in those days no different from e.g. building displays or keyboards rather than buying them from suppliers.
You mean "great" from a design/usability perspective. Gates shipped products that were great in terms of fitting market need and expanding the utility of Windows. IE may have sucked to use, but it sure beat the hell out of paying for Netscape.
I actually made this point once while working for Apple, saying it was like thinking about whether the other side had won World War II.
But I think the point still stands that Microsoft has managed to cause far more harm during their reign than Apple, precisely because they have been more successful. I also think that Apple is somewhat constrained in the damage they can do, because Steve Jobs wants to be a Tyrant of Taste, more so than Ruler of All He Surveys. He has little interest, for example, in the mass business market or the clunky boxes at the bottom of the market. To have Apple branded boxes at that price range, with all the compromises that entails, seems to horrify Jobs.
As for other product areas, probably the most tyrannical is iTunes. But even there, the damage is constrained by the fact that the majority of people still just pirate their music, anyway.
iTunes/iPod are the most tyrannical because they're the only place Apple is in charge. It's not right to excuse their DRM practices just because most music isn't purchased from it. It's still the number 1 music retailer. They've sold over 5 billion songs, most with DRM. They use a proprietary system to create vendor lock in.
Their NDA for the iPhone, and the tyranny over the application store, are worse than anything Microsoft has done to the consumer. They're just limited in scope by the fact that they own such a small % of the overall phone market, but if they ever get the kind of market share there that Windows has, everyone will hate them far more.
But with iTunes, Jobs moved quickly to make iTunes Plus a possibility. And it's got more DRM-free music than its next-largest competitor, Amazon, does.
The record companies are ceding ground very slowly. But Apple's been pushing for a long time. I mean, honestly, what do they have to GAIN from DRM? It's all a matter of the people they deal with.
They gain vendor lock-in. Everyone who buys songs from iTunes with DRM is forced to either buy iPods forever, or lose the ability to play them on their player of choice.
Without the DRM, we'd see a much more fragmented player market. iPods might still be the leaders, but they'd almost certainly have a lower market share.
I agree that that would have lost Apple some ground, but I think they'd still be vastly ahead of other people. The DRM doesn't stick people. The incredible branding does.
People think iPod sounds reliable, and MP3 player sounds unstable. They go for the iPod because they think it's the only one there is.
Just to reiterate, what you say is true, and I pointed out I conceded pretty much your major points to coworkers at Apple when I worked there (it was just a couple coworkers, and just a one time comment, but it did get a laugh of agreement).
My only argument is that Apple has caused much less damage than Microsoft because they have been less successful, and in that sense Microsoft maintains the greater negative karma balance. Difference between attempted murder and committed murder, I suppose.
To be honest, I have no negative feelings about either. They're both just doing what they feel is in their own best interests. That's the responsibility of a corporation.
I find the grudge most people in the community have against MS a little juvenile and not very well-reasoned.
Since Netscape was taken down, we've seen a world where hackers can execute an idea and become successful based on their execution, sometimes abundantly so. I do not think it's accidental that this period largely coincides with Microsoft losing their anti-trust case.
Before then, Microsoft would just wait until a market formed, then take it over or destroy it by bundling something with one of their monopoly products. People who had a dream of creating a successful software business knew Microsoft's business practices made that extremely unlikely.
So, yes, many developers who were around during Microsoft's heyday likely are carrying a grudge that must seem juvenile to anyone familiar with the much less threatening Microsoft of today. Whether it's juvenile to have bad feelings towards an organization that snuffed out a lot of optimism and ambition, I'll leave to you to decide.
I don't know... on the one hand it has gotten nasty, but on the other... some of the problems Windows has are kind of ridiculous, and it's almost a feature to say, "We don't do all that stupid crap!", even if, ideally, it never would have been necessary to mention in the first place....
Then again, I feel Macs do stupid crap too, so it would seem to be a two way street.
I liked it. It isn't mean at all. It's lighthearted and funny but it does address something I've thought about before. Perhaps Vista isn't as bad as most people think but it certainly does have problems. Instead earnestly promising to address any real issues Microsoft announced a $300m ad campaign to deal with it. MS could have earned a lot more credibility and respect by admitting to perhaps even a small sampling of complaints and issuing updates to deal with them - but they didn't. By trying to address these problems with a very expensive ad campaign MS effectively blames Vista users. This Apple ad captures that in a lighthearted and funny way. This ad makes me like Apple.
I'll try not to get mean - I'm a Mac user, and I know how much I hate it when Windows users get douchey - but I think that the biggest problem they'd need to fix is the ration of aesthetic to functionality. It's what pissed me off every day with Vista. Microsoft added features that look "Mac-like" but without the inherent usability.
For instance, that window display where they're all sideways and you can scroll through them. I'm certain that's a rip off of Expose on the Mac. The difference is that Expose provides a very quick-n-easy way to access your windows, whereas that display seemed like it didn't make things particularly easy. And I forget if I tested it, but I very much doubt that it was a spring-loaded view, either.
The Aero theme is another instance. Compare that to Leopard's Aqua. They're both attempts to look modern and beautiful, but Leopard goes about it my making all of its chrome minimal. The buttons are small, the borders on every last window are 1px. With Vista, you get bulk hanging off of every window and the buttons look cartoony.
I won't go into the OS operations, because - again - I think that anything that I say will only invite flaming on the other side, and frankly I'm sick and tired of Hacker News having the same fucking OS wars that every other social news site does, and I don't want to flame things. But OS X feels like a complete solution in a way. Every part of it has been lovingly slavered over to perfection. From the feel of the computers to small things like the message windows (there was an article here talking about on OS X message windows are more direct than their Win/Lin equivalents) things are polished to a fault. And that's something that Windows or Linux need to "fix" before they can really seem like a decent competitor in my eyes.
No. I've played with Ubuntu in each iteration, and its level of polish is on a magnitude below what Apple's doing. Compared to Windows, it's very nice: I'd pick Ubuntu over Vista at this point without hesitation. But OS X has polish to a level that's uncanny: it's the sort where I'm still finding out new things about my computer that make my life slightly easier every day. It's really beyond comparison to other operating systems as the other systems stand right now.
Still, what works for you works. If Ubuntu's doing the job for you, then congrats and have fun. Just don't make the mistake of comparing it to the Mac systems without spending a lot of time in each.
Ubuntu is not more polished than even Windows XP. The main things keeping me from switching my day-to-day work to my Ubuntu partition are (1) text rendering, (2) reliability, (3) battery life, and (4) Lenovo's Thinkvantage tools. Windows XP absolutely kills Ubuntu in these aspects.
1) That has changed recently with the addition of the Liberation fonts, but I agree - a few months back it was a hack
2) What? I don't think many people will agree with you on that aspect. The fact that most Linux crashes you can just reset X and be back at the login screen, where as a Windows crash needs a full reboot means that even if Linux did crash more often - which I don't think it does - you spend less time getting screwed
3) Really? I haven't found much of a difference on my Dell laptop.
1) No fonts for Linux compare with Microsoft's ClearType fonts (the C* fonts). And, Ubuntu's anti-aliasing still isn't nearly as good as Windows's or Mac OS X's, as of Ubuntu 8.
2) My Windows XP machine hasn't crashed once since I've had it (over two years). Ubuntu 6, 7, and 8 have all consistently crashed when resuming from hibernate on my laptop (Lenovo T60, one of the most common in the world).
3) Ubuntu 8 usually runs about 45 minutes to an hour less than Windows XP on my laptop's battery.
That's entirely possible. I've never used Ubuntu on a laptop setting.
From my experience with it, it works great if and only if you can find the right drivers. When it runs well, I like it more than Vista and most likely more than XP. But XP is certainly more supported overall, and that's another thing that's definitely worth considering.
You make some good points. However, I haven't noticed a lot of what you've said.
The keyboard on the newer computers is beautiful. I didn't like the old big keyboard: the new ones feel wonderfully responsive to me. The heat is a problem, but I guess I'm biased, because I rarely have my computer on my lap. I keep it on my desk or in my bed. And I use a fan program to speed up my fans when I need to, and it usually works.
The proprietary formats are a pain, yes, but that doesn't affect me very often. With iTunes, I get most of my music from other sources. I have perhaps 10 CDs that I got from iTunes, and that's mostly from Plus, so it's open enough to send to other people. Everything else is MP3 and MP4, which means - among other things - I can click and drag songs to iChat and it works.
The mail import took me a long time, for Gmail. But it imported my other emails first, and with Gmail it imported mostly the archived email, so I could use it right out of the box. I don't use Maildir, so mail works pretty much beautifully for me.
What does that optimization do for the fonts? Do you have an example? And either way, I'd take the Apple default fonts over anything else I've seen to date. I'd kill to keep Zapfino.
the optimization just gives you really nice smoothing (i wish i could upload pictures here). i currently use the android font on emacs 23 on a thinkpad (black on light blue) and i find it to be much easier on the eyes (the powerbook fuzziness gave me headaches)
anyhoo, enjoy. the hardware is indeed beautiful. and the new aluminum ones sure are tempting (but i'll wait until someone gets ubuntu working properly on them)
and not to beat a dead horse, i really tried _hard_ to get the powerbook to work for me. i was really determined to like it. but no dice: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=131930
Yeah, i've been using kubuntu since 7.04. Unfortunately kubuntu is less polished than the gnome version, but for the last year and a half it got better and better with every next release. Hopefully the next release will not be a disappointment because the still raw kde 4.
How about that it's much slower than it's predecessor, requires tons more hardware, and generally all around just kinda sucks. I've reverted to XP pro myself at the office, Vista's a piece of crap.
yup. that pretty much covers it. funny thing is that XP sucks too. it just looks soooo much better in comparison, that i began to actually like it a bit.
Compatibility. Nothing draws me to Windows other than the programs I NEED to run on it for work. For me, Solidworks 2007 is needed. It doesn't run on Vista/Linux/Mac, but it does run on XP. So I will never upgrade until we upgrade Solidworks versions (unlikely), or Microsoft or the vendor fixes compatibility issues (unlikely). If you want to talk about day to day use, Windows is far inferior.
Perhaps it's because Apple offers nothing worth switching for over a Microsoft solution that is generally cheaper and more supported by not only oem manufacturers and colleagues, but software and hardware manufacturers?
If Apple can't market it's products on their own features and has to rely on this kind of negative adverts I'd say it's really hitting a low-point. The ad kind of pisses me off actually.