who cares if it's contrived, it's an ad. i guess the mac ads aren't contrived. it's a commercial, that's it.

The trend is clear:

Ad #1: Lauren's not "cool" enough to use a Mac

Ad #2: Giampaolo's not "sexy" enough to use a Mac

Next:

Ad #3: Bruno's not "smart" enough to use a Mac

Apple ad to come:

Lauren, Giampaolo, Bruno...you're all correct.

The trend is clear:

Ad #1: Lauren's not "cool" enough to use a Mac

Ad #2: Giampaolo's not "sexy" enough to use a Mac

Next:

Ad #3: Bruno's not "smart" enough to use a Mac

Apple ad to come:

Lauren, Giampaolo, Bruno...you're all correct, you aren't.

Yeah, Jeff. That's a great way to sell computers.

Macs, we're the computers for snobs.

Dude, 2gb ddr3 ram is far superior to (and costlier) than the 4gv ddr2 the HP comes with.

What the hell do adverts have to do with the tech sector??
Is this all there is to blog about?? God dam , Joe is getting more and more retarded every day. What do you do for a job? Oh i blog about adverts. Man this country seriously needs to do something if we are going to remain relevant to the world. Geez as if Americans havent suffered enough adverse publicity due to stupidness. Every one in the rest of the world thinks Americans are dumb, after reading this tripe i think i have to agree.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2009/04/04/microsofts-latest-ad-attacks-mac-aesthetics-computing-power/

I would never buy that HP laptop personally. And i'm planning to replace my Macbook Pro with a ... Macbook Pro.

However, re. mugunth's comment
DDR3 is far superior to DDR2 RAM, yes. but whether it's better to have 2GB of DDR3 over low-end 4GB DDR2 would very much depend on the use-case.

Well, at least we finally see a fair comparison of specs vs. price. I don't see a $500 difference between those computers but the non-Mac has the better specs; what a pity I can't (easily) install OSX on it.

Lauren was an actress? I'm shocked. Why would anyone cast an actress in a role on a TV ad?

I agree with Jeff and Wes though - not cool enough, not sexy enough, not smart enough, maybe the fourth ad will also be for MS: not snobbish enough.

Watching the reactions to the ads is more fun than a game of croquette.

Hello everyone. Back again after an extended holiday. I see someone did use my name for some other purpose. Never mind.
As for hardware purchases, i just dont like that you have to get Windows on branded hardware but us savy linux users build our own anyway so its a non issue except with laptops. I still can order a made in australia laptop build without the windows tax through a locally built laptop though. Even so i dont mind buying some good branded hardware and installing linux. Usually Mint Linux cause it has all the codecs and flash already installed not that its hard to install anyway onto ubuntu but its also a bit more polished. I like Mint and their reporting system as they always take feedback and give back to the community and they have FAITH in their users ability to say what they like about a product and not criticise feedback they dont like. Those mint guys are really great people. I also like Mark Shuttleworth as he is trying to give a good system and spending a fortune on it as well. I like Mac hardware as well and will one day try their OSX system as well.

What about all the invisible features that make the hardware much easier to use and more high quality? Things like:

- Ambient light sensors
- Very very high quality screen (the best in the business), LED not LCD, glass not plastic.
- Drop sensors to protect your hard drive
- Single-piece aluminium enclosure (stops creakiness).
- Smooth large glass trackpad instead of an RSI-inducing small pressure-sensitive pad or a nipple.
- Built-in high quality webcam, not cheap and grainy.
- Mag safe to prevent you killing your laptop if you trip over the cable.
- Slot loading CD, instead of creaky low-quality plastic drawer.
- Lights that shine through metal instead of plastic.
- No pre-installed crapware.

Are any of those available as an optional extra to the HP? If so, add them on before doing price comparisons. Otherwise you cannot compare them.

I saw a comparison recently on UK TV where they compared an iMac to the usual suspects. They loaded pictures, movies, web etc etc and each computer handled it well. Then at the same time they copied a large file to a USB stick, the Mac completed it in about 1:30 compared to about 2:00.

My next laptop will be a MacBook for sure, but I will probably use Linux on it because I am really picky. I must have the best hardware and software.

Anonymouse sort of touches on what should be the REAL focus here. The hardware is not what Microsoft is trying to sell. They just want people to buy any platform that is loaded with Windows. And that is where a Mac truly shines! OS X is, IMHO, a far superior platform. It is cleaner, simpler and generally more secure. I was a dedicated Windows user until 2002. Then I got my hands on a Macbook with OS X on it. I was sold. It wasn't the laptop itself, it was the OS (even though I am a fan of the new Mac laptop designs).

Take into account that I am not a computer gamer. I stick to consoles like my Wii, PS3 and XBOX360. This is somewhere that PC's have historically been stronger. But, neither of these commercials have even ventured into gaming yet. Maybe they are missing a strong point.

So look past what Microsoft is shoving in your face and see what they are really driving at..."buy anything that runs OUR software". They just can't win by focusing on their own product. They have to push other companies hardware.

How would you respond to the Microsoft ads?

Microsoft is positioning itself as "cheap" against "cool".

If I were Apple, I would respond: "Yes, we are cool. If you want cheap, don't look for Microsoft: look for Linux".

That would put Microsoft in the corner: if it continued to use the "cheap" card, people would always remember that there is a cheaper option. The only solution, for Microsoft, would be to silence.

Perhaps Apple could make a series of ads where Linux and Mac make fun of Windows...

Linux: "I'm free!"

Mac: "I'm cool!"

Windows: ???

That would make Microsoft STFU.

Good luck when you have to complete a call report form or go to an IE only website on your Mac or Linux machines. Compatability is huge. And you might say "oh, well you can run windows on a pc"...but the speed is like a netbook. Oh let's do my work on the Windows boot and check my e-mail and browse the web on my Mac boot. You are still using Windows so obviously it is more usable then Mac.
We know that when you compare prices computer to computer that Windows is less expensive. If you are going to talk about add-ins, think about hardware and software. There isn't much competition with Mac accesories so the prices are higher...now that adds up.
It's an obvious choice.

A Mac with the exact same configuration would have cost at least $500 more. The configuration is choose is not the same.
They way you twisted the fact of a much smaller screen size (which is a major cost factor in laptops) is laughable...

"Dude, 2gb ddr3 ram is far superior to (and costlier) than the 4gv ddr2 the HP comes with"

Dude, it's costlier, but most benchmarks show only modest performance advantages in most real-world scenerios. So it's quite possible that 4 GB of DDR2 would be more beneficial than 2 GB of DDR3.

Elizabeth says:

"Good luck when you have to complete a call report form or go to an IE only website on your Mac or Linux machines. Compatability is huge. And you might say "oh, well you can run windows on a pc"...but the speed is like a netbook. Oh let's do my work on the Windows boot and check my e-mail and browse the web on my Mac boot. You are still using Windows so obviously it is more usable then Mac."
----------------------------------------------------
You almost have a point or two here Elizabeth, almost, but not really. In the last two years Firefox in Linux has let me surf (safely too) any page I wanted too, only one page would not work correctly for me, that was tracfone.com. Most likely due to some of M$ magic of activeX. The work around was very simple, I used Opera in Linux as a backup web browser for that site, minor problem solved.

Now,as far as your second point of Mac users using windows in a VM are still using Windows, so what? If they paid for, and still have a legal windows license, why would you have a problem with that??? When people convert over to Linux or Mac, they don't have to instantly convert at one time or at all. I myself use Virtualbox to play one online game once in a blue moon. Someday there will be either a native port of that game, or it will run in a newer wine. For now, Virtualbox gives me the ability to run almost "any" software for almost any platform within Linux.
--------------------------------------------------
Beat the next Windows (Vi$ta7) expensive upgrade cycle, and get the sweaty monkeyboy off your back and out of your wallet. distrowatch.com it will set you free!

Interesting that these ads mention nothing about netbooks and Linux. Probably because the lion’s share of netbooks (including Linux preinstallations) is going to Europe, not the US.

The truly picky person would choose a Mac, Joe? I guess the rest of us are just idiot slobs, then. I don't think I'll be reading your articles anymore.

"Actually, he's not picky enough. A pickier shopper would have bought the MacBook. :)"

Your own recap of the criteria shows the HP ahead in 3 of 5 categories. And "portability" could just mean he wanted a laptop. So the HP offers a faster processor, more memory, a larger hard drive, dedicated memory for video, a bigger screen, and a lower price. He gives up some battery life, but not anywhere near the fantasy "5 hours" for the Mac.

forgot the bigger keyboard too.

I was just in Best Buy a couple of days ago. All the Windows PCs were cheaper, but all seemed damaged. Keyboards broken, BSODs on the screen, etc. Whereas the Macs all seemed really good and were working fine.
I think there is definitely a quality problem with brands like Acer, eMachine, HP, etc.
It's sad since quality and durability used to be a major concern for HP with their calculators, now they don't seem to care anymore.

You forgot Vista.... See how much of the usable RAM is available once you boot. No comparison there. Same goes for processing power - vista overhead removes any advantage this HP PC has over the Mac. Customisations lead to unreliability, we all know about that and Microsoft.

So want do you want in your life? A half baked throw away or something that takes into consideration usability and design, and something that works every time.

"Tools like PowerToys allow for greater customization."

Just a little quibble - Microsoft has not released PowerToys for any version of Vista. There are a few third party tools out there - for free - that will do the same thing, but they aren't (technically speaking) PowerToys.

I'm beginning to wonder if the ad firm Crispin Porter + Boguksy are cousins or long-lost half-brothers of Bill Gates. They're certainly not being chosen for their clever marketing skills.

First, they do the Bill & Jerry skits, which make no sense whatsoever and do nothing to promote Microsoft or Windows. Then, they come up with the "I'm a PC" ads, which make a little more sense, but not in any significant or compelling way. Next, they have the series where a precocious little kid drags and drops a picture into a folder. Hmm. Now, there's a revolutionary idea! Too bad everybody and their brother has been doing it for years, and before MS ever did.

Now, they've run out of bad ideas altogether, and are going to start pointing out the obvious. Apple users buy Apple computers because they're Apple computers? I didn't know that! Silly fuckin' me! I thought they were buying them because they didn't know how to spell "HP"! Stupid Mac users.

Next thing you know, they're going to be making fun of the fact that Apple users prefer the ease of use and enhanced security of OS/X. Won't that be an eye-opener?

If any marketing firm out there couldn't come up with a better scheme out of nothing more than the side effects of a Nighttime Nyquil buzz, and for a damn sight less than $300M, they should file Chapter 11.

@koppypoppy :

Is your only role here bashing the commentator?

Dude why don't you shut the fuck up. If commenting about tech on a website is so lame, why the fuck are you here posting about commentators on the internet?

Get lost shitbag.

@foo : "How would you respond to the Microsoft ads?"

If it were me, I'd start working on disconnecting the "PC" from "Microsoft" or "Windows". Remove that association, and they'd have to concentrate on Windows, which

a) Doesn't have a great reputation, and
b) Would confuse everyone who isn't aware of any OS.

"But Macs to me are about ascetics more than they are the computing power. I don't want to pay for the brand. I want to pay for the computer."

I wonder what he does when he goes out to eat? Gosh it probably tastes like space food, but its the nutritional value that counts! He's not going to pay for the brand if he can get the same nutrients from a lower priced product.

Is he going to get a house or a home? Because four walls and a room make a house, but hardly a home.

IMHO it is our concern for aesthetics that distinguishes us from animals. Or drones for that matter. A pound of truffles will buy you a lot of fries and feed you for days. But it isn't the same is it?

I have to agree with billybob. There are key distinctive features between a Mac and other PCs, not in the field of processing power, that distinguish one from the other and justify the cost difference.

On October last year I purchased a Dell Studio 17. With the features Giampaolo mentions and then some. Yet my Power PC G4 Mac feels better. It doesn't have a built in camera, it doesn't have two hdd bays, it doesn't have an HDMI output like the Dell.

Why do PCs have a lack in style while Macs are stylish is beyond me. I see no reason to have an unstylish design which includes Windows as an OS.

Apple can shut Microsoft mouth in 30 seconds:

Create a commercial that shows a young man using a Macbook loaded with OS X, Parallels runnings Windows and VMWare running linux at the same time and the voice over telling the man: you can be cool or not, you can run your cool mac os x apps or you uncool windows softwares or you can be even smarter running your linux stuff right from your mac.... 3 worlds, one price=not headaches.

wow, you notice that every time they look at the macs they look at the lower end macs like the ones that obviously wouldn't meet the specifications because they are not meant to be high speed computers. macbooks are meant for the lower end stuff the computers they should have been looking at are the macbook pros. they don't even touch on the other stuff that make macs far more superior then a p.c. such as viruses, spyware, oh and the fact that macs last so much longer then a pc. And macs are far easier to use. there only selling point is there cheaper (and that works on two pc's levels (are cheaper because there cheaper computers they might as well be paper weights) macs are more expensive because they have far better quality. Pc's last for a few years macs live forever lol.