Apple wants Microsoft ads pulled...

[samstephens]

Facinating story!

Microsoft: Apple wanted 'Laptop Hunters' ads pulled | Apple - CNET News

It's not to start a new Windows PC v's Mac war, but it's interesting to see corporate marketing battles!

cheers
Sam

[GeorgR.]

i have to say that Apple are MAREKTUNG GENIUSES (from that point of view the topic is actually not off - however i think that Apple's PR strategy is very annoying.

They try to push that "Windows users are nerds and boring, Apple people are so much more creative and cooler" image - and it really kind of annoys me.

Not every PC owner is a uncreative "office nerd". I'd like to MS actually give them a kick in the butt since Apple is arrogant. IMHO. Still...their marketing dpt. is phenomenal.

[HappyCommando]

Originally Posted by ramone_johnny

Off topic.

I think there is a valuable lesson to be learned and an opportunity for any IM'ers who want to deliver more meaningful goods.

There are a lot of IM "gurus" out there (in the forum, too) who are little more than snakeoil salesmen pushing out in-bred products, member**** sites, rah rah seminars that do little more than make the sucker feel good in the short term. I have been that mark too many times, and too many will continue down the slippery slope of 'hope', spending money they don't have for little more than a feeling.

Both Apple and PC are in my home, so I am not opening that can...

The PC commercials seem to encourage people to 'stop and think' before you spend your money. Get past the cool feel-good image and shiny features. Look at the hard facts and put some analysis behind your purchase. Apple is pretty ticked because they have a good thing going on with folks taking the feel-good path.

Apply this to the spam in your email inbox coming from the great guys in shiny cars, hitting vegas, etc. Yes, it feels great to think buying your product is going to give me that life too.

Then there is reality. People are mostly lazy. Most will only buy the crap, feel good, then look for the next steaming batch.

Here's the opportunity: IM'ers with genuinely good character (vs. entertaining characters) deliver a complete, standalone set of goods and services (spare the shiny fluff) that truly deliver effective, objective results for the masses. One of the best examples I can think of is Mark Joyner. Check out his Simpleology series for starters and see what I mean.

This is very doable and can be generously (though not greedily) monetized. Its a matter of will.

Though this model is not nearly as economically profitable as the churn and burn, 360-sell approach some IM spamarketers push, I think it would be more rewarding intrinsically and leave a greater legacy.

Warriors: What good examples have you seen lately?

[Kael41]

Good for microsoft. Getting tired of the apple pr move over the last couple of years. It was getting tiresome.

[worlok]

I wrote about that on one of my other tech blogs. Apple has no reason to complain here. They have run those other anti PC ads for years, AND the ads are correct. Apple products are expensive. There is a good reason for that, but it is accurate that you can get a pretty darn good Windows notebook for ~$600 and MUCH less if looking for a netbook.

I also wrote about the upcoming Apple touchscreen netbook/notebook/iPod Touch "fusion" hybrid coming this October, which Apple denies. Going to be in the US$800 range. Brilliant idea if it turns out to be true. Looks like ol Steve Jobs still has some tricks up his sleeve.

I have owned Macs before and I have 2 iPods so I am not anti Apple.

[garyv]

Apple's systems are too closed and proprietary. They'll never be as cheap as a comparable PC until they start opening it up more.

[Loren Woirhaye]

Smart move by Microsoft. I wonder what took so long. Those
Apple commercials are pretty snide and Microsoft has been a good
sport about not hauling Apple into court for them. *(Maybe they
did but I never heard about it).

[talfighel]

Very interesting. Thanks for sharing this with us Sam.

Tal

[Smokey_Joe]

Traditional (and, well, boring therein):

Microsoft plays the price card.
Apple plays the image card.

It's getting kinda tiresome. I wonder if people will ever come up with something a little bit more creative - not the "don't buy (...), buy (...) instead".

[Kael41]

i thought it was funny, but destined to failure (and it was), when MS tried the Gates/Seinfeld commercials. Although some of them did have their funny moments..

[Dan C. Rinnert]

Steve Jobs called me this morning and told me this wasn't true.

What? You don't believe that Steve Jobs called me? Why ever not? I just told you he did.

That's about the sum of this "story." The only source is this one Microsoft executive. So, we're to believe that an Apple lawyer just picked up the phone, called Microsoft's COO and asked him to stop running their ads? Doesn't even sound like a credible story. I suppose it's possible some newbie lawyer thought he could get Microsoft to pull the ads or something and make himself look good, but even that seems a stretch.

No press release from Apple, debunking the ads? No letter from Apple's legal department? Sounds more like a "story" by Microsoft designed to get them some additional attention as they (once again) copy Apple--this time by opening their own stores.

[Loren Woirhaye]

You do have a point, Dan. Jobs is way too smart to authorize
something like this, but it wouldn't surprise me if somebody in the
legal department did make the call on his own volition.

In any case, I'm sure Apple will adapt. It's a strong, progressive
brand. Microsoft moves slowly.

I seem to recall Gates got the better of Jobs in the 1980s - I don't
remember the details, but I think Gates basically fooled the Apple
people into thinking he wasn't going to do anything like release
a competing operating system and then snuck Windows onto the
market right under their noses.

Windows was based on some opensource code I think. Unix stuff.
It's an interesting story. I'm trying to remember what marketing
book I read about it in.

[tommygadget]

Originally Posted by samstephens

Facinating story!

Microsoft: Apple wanted 'Laptop Hunters' ads pulled | Apple - CNET News

It's not to start a new Windows PC v's Mac war, but it's interesting to see corporate marketing battles!

cheers
Sam

Sore losers. Bill Gates laughs good-naturedly at the PC-Mac ads and Apple sends in their lawyers...

TomG.

[Kevin AKA Hubcap]

This story doesn't pass the smell test.

On a related note, why does any one care about what computer somebody else uses.

If you use windows and it works for you...great
If you use Mac and it works for you...great
If you use unix and it works for you ...great
If you use an abacus and a typewriter from the 50s and it works for you.... great.

For marketers and others who use these machines, IMHO, this PC vs Mac war is silly.

[JoMo]

I have been a PC user since 93. I like to build my own machines, and you just can't have that kind of fun with macs. But I have enjoyed most of the apple adds with the PC and mac guys, mostly because I like the actors. But after MS came out with the "I'm a PC" campaign, apple started getting desperate and their adds turned from cute to mean. There was actually one add where they were blatantly yelling at MS for spending too much money on advertising! WTF! Talk about the pot bitching about the kettle.

[clbeav]

Screw Apple, Microsoft finally comes up with a pretty good marketing ad campaign and Apple pitches a fit.

I'd much rather watch the Microsoft ads rather than those ads with some guy who is supposedly "cool" and some lame duck they call PC. Seriously? Computers being portrayed by Humans? Come on Apple, no use in crying now.

[BIG Mike]

It wouldn't surprise me in the least - and while the two companies are obviously much bigger than your average IM'er business, spats like that occur at all levels.

Nice post Sam!

[BIG Mike]

Originally Posted by ramone_johnny

Off topic.

Not in my opinion....seems to me it's all about marketing.

[raiko]

I've always found the Apple commercials humorous but I have always owned PC's (for no particular reason). Even though I had no real brand loyalty to the PC platform the Apple commercials left me slightly offended because felt they were basically implying that I'm a dork if I use a PC. I started to feel a little more antagonistic towards Apple and defensive of PC's - especially the users. Previously, I never thought about Apple users in any way shape or form but now I'm more defensive and like to portray them as the unproductive slugs of computing society that just sit around all day listening to cool music, playing cool games, typing useless comments on cool social sites etc. etc. Ok, I know that's not completely true but Apple's commercials do insinuate that that is the more important aspect of computing as opposed to those loser, dorkster, nerds that just use their PC's for productive tasks.

So Apple's commercials actually transformed me into a more loyal PC user.

[Lloyd Buchinski]

Originally Posted by Loren Woirhaye

Jobs is way too smart to authorize
something like this

Oh I don't know about that. If I remember right, Jobs personally mention that Safari was "the fastest browser ever" when the Windows version was released with the usual Macmouth hype.

So far it has just been sputtering along. I saw a few bits of an after midnight space invasion movie. When the aliens wanted to leave because of nasty things happening around here, they got into the flying saucer, it got about 30 feet into the air, and then it started sputtering and crunched to the ground. Kind of like Safari, at least according to the W3C stats.

I thought it was neat because who would have thought that could happen to a flying saucer. The spaceship handyman finally got it going with parts from an old farm tractor, but they didn't mention if the tractor ever ran again.

And of course who would ever have thought that could possibly happen happen to anything mac?

Pardon me, I've thought of the literary style as 'macmouth' for a long time, inspired by threads in this very forum, but never mentioned it before. No offense meant at all. I have certainly done the same about another thing, (much more important than computers) and regretted it, and of course we are all just learning. If I am doing something dum, even really dum, I would like to know and in fact do appreciate feedback and hope everyone does. It is just a question of whether learning is more important, or ego.

best wishes,
lloyd
.......__o
.......\<,
....( )/ ( )...

Ps edit I'm not against macs. My first computer, which I did not fall in love with, was a mac and they do have things that I like. But they also do have a lot of things that annoy me, one of them being price, a part of the op. You don't even have a choice about getting a web cam, unlike Lenovo for example.

[jasonl70]

I've used both for a very long time (I taught myself to program when I was seventh grade [around 1982?], using the neighbors shiny brand new Apple II plus!).

Apples really have always been better, but more often then not I went with windows machines because they were cheaper and had a ton more software available. Yes, most of my machines have been windows based, but windows has always a step or 2 behind apple and copying them.

Originally Posted by garyv

Apple's systems are too closed and proprietary. They'll never be as cheap as a comparable PC until they start opening it up more.

That was true in the beginning.. but it's based off of freebsd now (an open source unix system - like linux). Their closed approach really wasn't such a bad idea though in terms of business decisions.

Who created the PC?

IBM.

IBM was more open, which then triggered all the PC clones (which was any PC that wasn't made by IBM) as well as the OS wars (OS2 anyone?).

The PC architecture took off, but look where it left IBM:

IBM is no longer even in the PC business, when by it's very definition a PC WAS an IBM.

Originally Posted by Loren Woirhaye

but I think Gates basically fooled the Apple
people into thinking he wasn't going to do anything like release
a competing operating system and then snuck Windows onto the
market right under their noses.

true story - they 'tricked' apple into showing them a lot of their technology under the pretense of porting some software between the 2, then came out with windows (which was a very poor copy of apple's OS). MS has actually has a long history of doing this while it was becoming what it is today.

Originally Posted by Loren Woirhaye

Windows was based on some opensource code I think. Unix stuff.
It's an interesting story. I'm trying to remember what marketing
book I read about it in.

Gates landed a contract with IBM to provide them with an OS, then went out and bought the rights to an existing OS and named it MS-DOS. No unix like qualities to it at all, though. Gates/MS created windows well after Apple came up with their graphical interface (which apple 'stole' from xerox!).

[Loren Woirhaye]

Thanks for clarifying that.

Either way, Jobs and Gates both are two of the sharpest players
ever. They're well matched and both companies will exploit
any advantage aggressively.

[Quentin]

Its interesting when Microsoft owns quite a bit of MAC.

Its all marketing.

Q

[Dan C. Rinnert]

Originally Posted by JoMo

I like to build my own machines, and you just can't have that kind of fun with macs.

I've built a Mac or two.

Originally Posted by jasonl70

Gates landed a contract with IBM to provide them with an OS, then went out and bought the rights to an existing OS and named it MS-DOS. No unix like qualities to it at all, though. Gates/MS created windows well after Apple came up with their graphical interface (which apple 'stole' from xerox!).

There's a difference, though. Apple had only seen Xerox's graphical user interface. Microsoft, on the other hand, had programmed for the Macintosh and knew the ins and outs of the operating system.