New Apple Campaign Target PC Flaws

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

Pretty much all hate campaigns I've seen against another product just didn't work out. Logically, I'd also think that showing people how good your product is (rather than how bad the other product is) has a much more positive effect. 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?

Re:Doesn't work

Diod you watch any television during the last US election?

Re:Doesn't work

Most politicial campaigns?

Re:Doesn't work

I'm going to go out on a limb here, and make a wild guess that Linux users aren't the target audience of this marketing campaign.

Re:Doesn't work

Another reason why this might well not work is that if you go on the site it doesn't even seem to work in Linux

I'm sure you can play .mov files if you just spend a day or so reasearching what's available that passes ideological requirements, and then download it, build it, debug it, configure it for your GPU...

Well, that's life with Linux.

-jcr

Re:Doesn't work

What a load of horse hockey. There are plenty of replacements for most of the Mac OS X major apps:

Don't like Finder? Try PathFinder http://www.cocoatech.com/ [cocoatech.com] or RBrowser http://www.rbrowser.com/ [rbrowser.com]
Don't like Safari? Try OmniWeb, Firefox, Camino, Opera, iCab, or even IE5
Don't like Mail? Try Eudora, Thunderbird, GMail, Entourage, Notes, or any number of other mail clients
Don't like Quicktime? Try VLC, RealPlayer, or Microsoft's crappy media player [although QT is better than either of the latter 2]
Don't like Dashboard? Try Konfabulator
Don't like Keynote/Pages/AppleWorks? Try ThinkFree Office, OpenOffice.org, or Microsoft Office

You could replace nearly all the major applications and many of system components of Mac OS X, but then it wouldn't really be a Mac anymore, would it?.

Absolutely -- MS trashes their own products, too

Well look at Microsoft's current campaign, they aren't criticizing their competitors, they are criticising you. You're a dinosaur.

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:Doesn't work

I'm not an expert on commercials

Well the PC guy (John Hodgman) is an expert. He's the daily show's resident expert and the author of "The Areas of my Expertise". Which was reviewd on slashdot [slashdot.org] and by the Onion [avclub.com].

Re:Doesn't work

This doesn't really look like a "hate campaign" to me. The ads give an affectionate look at what people commonly believe are Windows failings while strongly promoting what Macs can do. As played in the commercials, you don't hate the PC, he even has his strengths ("The things this guy can do with a spreadsheet"), but he isn't cool and competent like the Mac is. As to whether they work, advertisers do comparison ads all the time, so someone thinks that they work.

Re:Apple:"PCs"::FedEx:USPS

Well, in addition to the numbers game, FedEx actually does reliably ship overnight, while the USPS Express mail occasionally takes longer.

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

I have to agree. It's a pretty fine line, but these ads seem to fall into the "observational humor" category without being too over the top.

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.

What if your strength is NOT doing something?

Logically, I'd also think that showing people how good your product is (rather than how bad the other product is) has a much more positive effect.

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:Doesn't work

You're an idiot. Clearly these ads show the Mac and PC as two guys who have differences, yet get along. There's a playful tone to the ads. It's not a "hate campaign." Did you just make that up?

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.

ah...

now it all makes sense why MSN was running the other day with a story about how macs are not secure and will cause you to get viruses etc... they must have got wind of this early. Its a shame I'll never get to see these adds on TV though, the Advertising Standards Agency wouldn't let them air, they recently blocked a mac advert because it said that the CPU's job in a PC was boring... : S... I wasn't aware that CPU's could really get bored

This comment target lack of proof-reading.

"In one of the ads the PC repeat itself several times because it had to reboot."

"In an other one ... PC is sick because of a virus, while Mac is healthy."

Is the submitter actually a robot manufactured by Apple to demonstrate what happens when you make a language engine out of MS Office's grammar checker?

The sick with a virus ad...

Just seems to be a challenge to the virus writers. I expect it won't be long now.

Re:The sick with a virus ad...

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.

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...

Being an administrative user on an OSX machine means that your account is a member of the group "admin" which is the administrative group on OSX. This is a requirement for invoking sudo or being able to "su root". It does NOT mean that you are the system "Super User" or Admin.

Please do not comment about what is going on underneath the hood of the OS unless you know something about the underlying architecture.

Re:The sick with a virus ad...

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).

Virus writing is a business

Just seems to be a challenge to the virus writers. I expect it won't be long now.

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:Virus writing is a business

That's a pretty astonishing theory, and I don't believe it. We've already seen spyware that attacks Firefox, and it started at the about the 10% boundary. I see no reasons why virus writers, who as you say are in it for the money, would pass up the opportunity to get on up on their competitors by ignoring the Mac.

Yes, but very little still compared to the level and sophisitcation of IE exploits.

By stating virus writing is a buisness I am attaching to that all the typical behavious software releases have in relation to the mac - in that even though the market share for a platform grows it sometimes takea while for a company to ramp up to that new platform. Thus the greatly diminished virus profile on Firefox and also the Mac. I am not saying we'll neve see anything, just that it comes later in the marketshare percentage than you would think because for the most part it's not some really motivated kid working nights and evenings to get a virus done because he's driven, it's some guy deciding to hire X more russian hackers for X dollars to probe for Mac weaknesses.

Actually some time ago in jest I proposed that the russian mafia all used macs and that's why we didn't see spyware - they didn't want to soil thier own nest.

I also don't see anything in the Mac that makes it technically more resistant to viruses than Windows. You don't need administrator access to do many of the things viruses/bots usually do, and the security system it inherited from FreeBSD is basically all they've got.

Now that part you got wrong. First of all, there's nothing like the registry - a target that gives you keys to the kingdom if you access. Furthermore as noted ad nauseum mac users are not running as admins and so have less access to the system as a whole to install things like rootkits. Even if a virus is encounterd a user would at least have to enter a password for that virus to have much of a lingering presence.

Also, it's much harder to truly hide the precence of a virus under OS X as it's harder to hide a process where it cannot be seen by at least some tool. Windows makes that simpler.

Given that stock Linux, MacOS X and Windows are all equally crappy when it comes to security, all with "bolt-on" security systems designed in the 70s for a totally different threat model, I would be very hesitant with making any claims that Macs are more secure than PCs (which basically means MacOS is more secure than Windows). Right now they ALL suck! Apple have had more than their fair share of stupid exploits, often ones which worked in the same way as Windows exploits released months or years before.

But it's kind of hard to argue with the reality of the situation in that there are well over 10 million macs in use today and yet we do not see any viruses. Market share is a part of that but if they were as easy to infect that would not have been an impediment after the first million computers came online. You know how much each zombie computer fetches on the black market?

Yes Apple computers also have exploits, but not ones that are as easy to reach and not ones that are actually being exploited. You have to make a distinction between an expploit being used in a while vs. a theoretical attack that no one is using because it's too hard to reach and wouldn't effect enough people. An example of that on a Mac is an SSH exploit - while a problem SSH is not enabled by default on OS X so the practical result is that no-one writes SSH exploits for the mac because it would not have enough payback.

I'm putting my hopes in MAC security frameworks like SELinux and AppArmor ... I'm itching to get some spare time so I can experiment with hardening a system against malware/viruses/spyware threat profiles using them. My dissertation was on security, there's a whole lot more work that needs to be done before yet.

Ultimatley that will probably be the best approach, or at least part of a whole defense in depth approach that we will all need.

Re:The sick with a virus ad...

Yup, any day now. What with this commercial egging them on, and CERT's "sky is falling" report that says they expect Mac viruses and spyware to sharply rise. It will happen, just you all see. Maybe not right now, but soon. Well, eventually. You will know when it does. I know we have been saying this for a while but seriously, just give it time. It has nothing to do with system security, or response to vulnerabilities, or anything like that, it is simply a function of how popular something is. OS X will soon become a cesspool of viruses and spyware, it HAS to happen if they get more popular, popularity is the ONLY reason windows has this problem.

Finkployd

Re:Apple should be honest

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'll let others flame you about the start menu and shortcut keys (If you want MacOS to behave exactly like Windows, why not just use Windows?) but:

a) Right-clicking should work the same as ctrl-clicking.

b) MacOS doesn't have "windows-style "uninstall" functionality" because uninstalling is trivial.

Re:Apple should be honest

Want a "start" menu? Drag your applications folder to the dock (next to the trash). Right-click to operate.

Re:Apple should be honest

If Apple wants Windows users to switch, they have to stop sticking to their guns on the "Apple way" of doing things -- Command-C instead of Ctrl-C is a perfect example
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:Apple should be honest

The use of command keys instead of control keys is superior for a very simple reason: you can do it with your thumbs without moving your fingers from the standard touch-typing positions. If I want to use a control key shortcut, I either have to twist my wrist in order to use a thumb, or move one hand off of its position in order to use a pinky. This slows down the use of keyboard shortcuts (I can save, print, or cut/copy/paste in the middle of typing without losing a beat). Furthermore, on laptops with reduced-size keyboards like the iBook and the small Powerbooks, there's only one control key. That means you really have to remember a different set of fingers to use when using the control key as when you type normally. That's very bad.

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 .... control characters! You ever wonder why, when people on Slashdot want to make a joke about having to delete some text they mistyped, they use "^H"? That's the printed representation of control-h, the keybinding for the ascii delete character. You couldn't do this at all if control were used for keyboard shortcuts, breaking virtually every interactive Unix program ever written. I suppose you could come up with a different set of keyboard shortcuts for applications that need to use control characters, but that would mean that different apps have wildly inconsistent keyboard shortcuts. So you might as well have every program use what the applications that need control characters use, so that every application can be consistent. For this purpose, I nominate the command key. Once you get used to it, you'll wonder how you managed to get anything done using control keys for that stuff.

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.

Re:Apple should be honest

...using the defacto standard "ctrl-c & ctrl-v" type shortcut keys...

Why? On a Mac, I can use my thumb to hit the command key (the clover leaf), and use any other finger to hit any other key. It is a very simple reach, and works even on my laptop, where the size of the keyboard limits me to only one command key. Under windows (or Linux, for that matter), the control key requires a pinky finger, and a rather large reach (compared to, say, the shift keys). I much prefer the modifier key right next to the space bar. I am glad that Apple have decided not to change this. And, honestly, it doesn't take that long to get used to a different system, and if you are constantly switching back and forth from one kind of machine to another (I have Windows machines at work, Macs at home), it ceases to cause any confusion after a day or two.

In fact, most of your complaints are fairly trivial, and represent the cost of moving from one OS to another as much as anything else. Why would we need an uninstaller on a Mac? Most, if not all, dependencies are contained in the application bundle. To uninstall a program, move it to the trash. There is no registry to get corrupted, and no .dlls. Why is a Start Menu needed? Open up a Finder window, and you have access to your applications, documents, movies, whatever. If you don't like that, launch applications from the dock. Put aliases (shortcuts) on your desktop. Hell, I suppose you could create a folder full of aliases and put that on the dock. A Start Menu really is not needed -- a couple of days to get used to the OS would likely demonstrate that. As for right-clicking, get a better mouse.

Again, the complaints that you raise seem fairly minor and trivial, and would only really bother people that have been using Windows for a long time. Apple is not really targeting the hardcore Windows market, as far as I can tell. They are trying to target those people who do not have a great deal of computer experience, like the archtypal grandmother, or the computer illiterate English major. These people are not really going to care that the keyboard shortcuts are different (how many of them even know that there are keyboard shortcuts?) or that there is no Start Menu.

Cmd-C, V came first

And let's not forget the history: It was Apple who came up with Cmd-z, x, c, v. Windows started out with that Shift-Ins, Shift-Del stuff. It's Windows that was trying to be more like the Mac in the first place when they finally changed their shortcuts.

Also, Cmd has been the traditional shortcut key on Macs for a long time, since the days of Apple II, when it was the Apple key, so there's a long history there. In fact, the Control key didn't even exist on Apple keyboards until years later.

Re:Cmd-C, V came first

Agreed. Also, recall that Windows isn't exactly the Land of Standardization when it comes to shortcuts for everything else.

With a few exceptions, I can be guaranteed that any Mac app can have it's window closed with Command-W, quit by Command-Q, a new window created with Command-N, and hidden using Command-H. There are a ton of others, I could go on and on.

On my Windows machine, I've never bothered to learn the shortcuts because they're mostly too complicated to save much time. (Except for the applications that have adopted Mac-like shortcuts, only replacing the Command key with Control, there are quite a few of these now.) I know of a bunch of programs that use Alt+F4 to close a window -- who the hell ever thought that was a good idea? I have to move my entire arm to do that.

It's definitely Windows that could use some serious reconsideration of its shortcuts, dump a whole lot of cruft, and maybe get on par with what the MacOS has had for a while now.

I could accept Apple perhaps offering an option in System Preferences somewhere to reverse the behavior of the Command and Control keys, for Windows users that really can't stand using their thumb to use hotkeys, but I think ultimately Apple has a strength in its use of hotkeys, and they realize this.

Maybe the solution would just be to have keyboards that have a little switch on them for "PC compatibility mode" that swapped the keys (my KVMP switch does this, I use it to make my Linux machine more Mac-like, although I could probably do the same thing in software somewhere).

Re:Great, mudslinging from Apple.

Give me a reason to buy Apple, not a reason to leave Windows.

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.

*sigh*

The thing that struck me about the ad I saw last night was the way the PC and Mac users were dressed up. I feel like I am not cool enough to own any Apple products. The story of my life, sadly.

Ever notice how Macheads never comb their hair? It must be like buying a Volkswagen.

Penny-Arcade

There's a perfect Penny Arcade comic to go along with this comment:

The Hipness Threshold [penny-arcade.com]

Re:funny but outdated jokes...

Vista is peeping around the corner...

Yes, and every time and peeps around the corner it seems to have fewer and fewer promised features. By the time it is finally released it will probably just be WindowsXP with some OS X inspired window dressing, "are you sure" boxes for every operation (someone at MS is convinced that makes things more secure), and of course the real reason for Vista's existance: DRM. Tada! An OS built around a single feature that nobody wants. Although I guess there are some people out there who believe that their computer is capable of doing too much and does not limit them enough.

Finkployd

Macs don't freeze?

I think when the PC guy freezes, they shoul hit the Mac guy with a big spinning beachball!

Over the usage of "PC"

People, people!

To the ones complaining that "PC" is not "a machine running Windows", please note that no Linux (or *BSD, or Solaris x86 or, or...) using geek/nerd/unsanitary person is ever going to call a Intel-based computer running the said operating system a "PC". It's a "Linux box". The cooler ones use the plural "Boxen"

You know it's true, now focus on bashing either Apple or Microsoft, or maybe Dell or some big PC manufacturer, I don't know.

(It's [trying to be] funny, laugh)

Great

Way to convince me, Apple [fmethod.com]

Re:Dumb. PC==Mac. Mac==PC

Do you own an Intel Mac? Seems like lots of people who make the PC==Mac argument don't own an Intel Mac. I'm not attacking you, I'm just wondering. I ordered a MBP yesterday (can't wait till it gets here!) so I'm not going to comment on the hardware yet. I know that my iMac G5 is *much* better constructed than any PC I've owned (or built for that matter). Just because two computers share the same chipset, does that really make them equal? For my part, the jury is still out.

Re:Dumb. PC==Mac. Mac==PC

I'm starting to seriously question your credentials, man.

The two cases where a mac user uses the term PC are:

1) Disparagingly, as in a comparison to Macs

2) Defensively, when claiming that Macs are PCs, since PC stands for Personal Computer.

It's in Chapter 1 of How to Be an Irritating Fanboy, page 17.

Re:Dumb. PC==Mac. Mac==PC

Yes, I do think that's in Apple's advantage. But they should say "windows" rather then "PC", so they don't look like retards.

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:Dumb. PC==Mac. Mac==PC

modern Mac's are a bog standard Personal Computer (that comes with a nice box & even nicer software)

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).

Re:Is Apple on the offensive

I think you're absolutely correct about Apples marketshare in homes. Most of the hardcore Unix/Linux guys I know and have worked with over the last 20 years or so have switched to Apple gear in the last 5 years. I realize that my experience is limited to geeks, but in many companies geeks influence the descisions that less knowlegeable peers make. Careful geek-watching can inform one about future trends in computing.
So from where I'm standing, it looks like Unix geeks are switching to OS X on Apple hardware for home use. At work, in a surprising turn of events, we're looking at buying a bunch of Apple's Xserve gear to build our SAN. Don't know if it'll happen, but the fact that it's being considered is pretty darn exciting.

Re:The Linux Guy

Your sig would actually has 4 different values:
00
01
10
11

So, it should read as such:
There are 1 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.

You just established yourself as one of the ones who can't.

10 = zero in the "ones" plus one the "twos" column. In base-10, you would write that as "2".

1 in binary is the same as it is in base-10 or hex. It's 1. You can't have "one types."

You also made an enormously stupid fencepost error.

You don't assign one item as "0" when counting how many things you have. Even if you do say something like "the apples in this basket are numbered 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4", you still have FIVE apples in your basket.

Also, where do you get 11 from??? 11 is more than 10. He said 10 types of people. Counting them would be done thus:

1.
10.

Done.

Re:The Linux Guy

How many nerds does it take to count to two in binary? 10

Re:Is Apple on the offensive

To 'Ghost' a disk to another, just use Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html). It will make an exact bootable copy of your hard disk with all applications and settings. It can even make a disk image out of it so you can put it on the network and install from there. It even has an option to synchronize one disk to another.

I use Carbon Copy Cloner to backup my entire desktop and laptop drives to an external hard drive. This works very well and if something happens, I can simply boot from the external drive and everything is exactly as I had it on the other disk. I've tested it a few times and everything worked exactly as expected. So, the ghosting software you talk about is very easy to do on Macs, unless I am missing some other aspect of what you want to do.

Or, you could use rsync (installed by default) to sync two computers over the network. I use this to sync various things on my laptop and desktop.

Re:Dumb. PC==Mac. Mac==PC

Or do they believe that PC stands for something other then "Personal Computer".

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.)

Re:Dumb. PC==Mac. Mac==PC

<sarcasm>I'm sure every random Joe on the street would say that, too.</sarcasm>

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:Dumb. PC==Mac. Mac==PC

Does Apple think a mac is a supercomputer?

At least in the past they did: http://www.architosh.com/news/1999-08/0831-supperc .phtml [architosh.com]

Re:Dumb. PC==Mac. Mac==PC

I bet you're one of those people who thinks you sound smart when you insist, "America isn't a democracy! It's a representative republic!"

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:Dumb. PC==Mac. Mac==PC

Well, to be fair, the Mac is a PC.

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:Okay, so I'm late today :)

14. Awesome out of the box.

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.