“As usual, the truth lies somewhere in between. But a little whining from Apple isn’t going to stop Microsoft from running the ads.” Looks like Devin was right, as he often is. Microsoft has updated the “Laptop Hunter” ad that had annoyed Apple, and now it’s much more benign.

This is the ad as it appears now:

(The original version isn’t available anymore.)

You’ll notice that the lines have changed somewhat. In the original version, the lines were, “This Mac is $2,000, and that’s before adding anything… Why would you pay twice the price?”

Now the line is, “”It seems like you’re paying a lot more for the brand.”

The brand isn’t mentioned by name, of course.

Microsoft had this to say, as to why it edited the commercial:

We slightly adjusted the ads to reflect the updated pricing of the Mac laptop shown in the TV advertisement. This does not change the focus of the campaign, which is to showcase the value and choice of the PC.

Our long national nightmare is over.

via AdAge

As usual, the truth lies somewhere in between. But a little whining from Apple isn’t going to stop Microsoft from running the ads. After all, Apple didn’t stop running its “Twice as fast, half the price” ads after they admitted its claims weren’t “statements of fact.” Why should Microsoft stop running a consumer dog-and-pony show that has them coming out on top?

From the transcript of a presentation at the Worldwide Partner Conference today:

And you know why I know they’re working? Because two weeks ago we got a call from the Apple legal department saying, hey — this is a true story — saying, “Hey, you need to stop running those ads, we lowered our prices.” They took like $100 off or something. It was the greatest single phone call in the history that I’ve ever taken in business. (Applause.)

I did cartwheels down the hallway. At first I said, “Is this a joke? Who are you?” Not understanding what an opportunity. And so we’re just going to keep running them and running them and running them.

What the real content of that phone call was, we’ll never know — probably something along the lines of “Your ads aren’t really taking into account pricing changes we’ve made.” I doubt Apple would actually ask Microsoft to stop running the things. But the truth is that the ads, however much we may rail against them as artificial and the choices made in them as unwise, seem to have done Microsoft nothing but good among the not-bloggers crowd.

They can’t run them forever, covering every $50 increment and price point, but as long as they’re effective, why not? The retail store will be a whole new adventure for them (dangerous, too) and they can make some wacky, misleading ads for that come the end of Summer. They’re on a roll I tells you!

[via Ars Technica and Engadget]

Matt, Olivia and Jayden are a getting an HP dv7! Is it just me or is Olivia mildly attractive?

All of this is according to daily interviews conducted by BrandIndex to track the relative strength of each brand. On a scale from -100 to 100, Apple current rests a little above 12 points, while Microsoft is sitting pretty at 46. A score of zero means that an equal amount of good and bad things are being said about a brand, so both brands are getting more positive than negative feedback.

I wonder if the perceived value of Microsoft in the younger demographic has more to do with ignorance? That sub-$1000 PC laptop will only come with a trial version of anti-virus software, and won’t come with much in the way of productivity software. You can get OpenOffice and a free version of AVG antivirus, but I’d wager that most folks will want to buy a commercial antivirus product for that extra peace of mind; and many will feel obligated to buy Microsoft Office because it’s what everyone else uses. Suddenly that value laptop has a couple more dollar signs attached to it.

Of course, everyone and their brother know how to troubleshoot Windows PCs (”turn it off and back on!”), so the long-term maintenance may be cheaper. Apple machines are black boxes with few user serviceable parts under the hood of the operating system. You need to take your system to the Genius Bar and risk feeling like a complete moron under the scornful gaze of a hip twenty-something who gets to play with fancy Apple toys all day long.

At the end of the day, both Macs and PCs are tools, and one should buy the tool that they feel will best help them do the work they need to do. Neither is, prima facie, more valuable than the other, so all this posturing and advertising and talk of value is a waste of time. Spend the money making better tools, rather than trying to convince us that this tool is better than that one.

Okay so a PC is slow or has a small screen or has viruses causing you headaches. Apple’s response to the Laptop Hunters is just a little smarter than Microsoft’s ads. Or not at all. What’s more interesting is this other ad about customer care. Go check them out.

Also, does that place look like a sweatshop to anyone else?

[via Wired and Cult of Mac]

As for video editing (her priority), a $2000 laptop is going to be much the same as a $1000 laptop in that case. Mobile processors aren’t particular gifted and if she really cares about the video card’s role in editing, she should be considering her sources and formats instead of just asking a blue shirt:
“Is this graphics card going to be powerful?”
“Mmhm.”
“Wow.”

The ins and outs of choosing a laptop are too complicated to be represented in a little minute-long tidbit like this, and I think that makes it stand up poorly to couch criticism. You know, when you’re sitting on the couch and you see this, and someone just says right afterwards, “Why didn’t she just add some RAM to the Mac?” or “How come she didn’t look at models with two hard drives, if she wants to do video?”

So they aren’t exactly showing why the PC is better. I mean, maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, but the things they have in the commercial are far from key differences. Whatever. Are they going to do $2500 next month?

Ironically, this spoof on Microsoft’s Laptop Hunter videos is the closest video to the truth. A shopper admires a Mac, but it’s a tad out of their price range so they slump to the world of PCs only to discovery Windows Vista, anti-virus software and plastic. They end up buying a PC ’cause, well, there isn’t any other option. Yay! It’s a PC.

via 9to5Mac

The anti-Apple campaign has been around for a while. Look at the kid. He is stoked that he’ll finally be able to release his creative itch via Photon Paint on his new Amiga! How exciting.

Adding commentary to these things is getting fairly tedious. The Mac attack wasn’t very egregious: “They’re kind of popular with this age,” eh? At least this model performed a bit better in standard benchmarks and it has Blu-Ray, one of the bigger draws for most people. Sadly, it’s not really a “full-HD” (1080p) laptop and it’s as big as a pizza box.

Here’s the product page in case you want to pick one up.

I’m sensing a trend here. Microsoft is working with a formula for its new advertising campaign, dubbed Laptop Hunter. The gist: A good-looking yet accessible actor goes into a mall. They look around, decide Macs are too expensive/cool/exciting for their down-to-earth lifestyles, and then buy an HP, in this case an HP with bad battery life. While I’m totally down with attractive people being happy, I wonder what, exactly, Microsoft is selling here? Design? Laptop quality? Even HP? It’s definitely not selling anything it makes.

First we saw the Seinfeld commercials. That hot mess took the PC totally out of the picture. It made Microsoft all about Bill Gates (much as Apple is about Steve Jobs) but because no one would want to drink beers with Bill they added Jerry for charm. Again, nothing about Windows.

Then they made people the PC. “I’m a PC” became the battle cry of a beleaguered majority of computer users who use Windows – well, a PC, really – because it happens to be in front of them. You could have put Linux on the box and they could have also said that they were PCs. No mention of Windows.

Finally, they’ve stripped the product out of the equation entirely. Lauren and Giampaolo (“a recent college grad and engineer,” which suggests a real person this time) hit the shops for a bit of hardware shopping. The laptops they bought – both from HP – could have been running BeOS for all they cared. They were shopping based on price. As Harry McCracken points out, again: this isn’t about Windows.

Maybe that’s the goal. With processing hitting the cloud, most of the apps that Windows users would fire up from the Start menu are now in their Bookmarks bar. Mail? On-line. Photo sharing? On-line. Gaming? On the XBox. The average Windows user doesn’t need to think about Windows – and should ignore Vista entirely – and maybe later Windows 7 will straighten things up. As Harry writes:

I keep coming back to variations on this metaphor, but it’s kind of as if Chevy ran ads showing economy-minded car shoppers choosing a Cobalt or Malibu over an Audi Q5 or A6. The folks in the ads would be making the right decisions for them. But you gotta wonder how many actual people in the real world there are whose buying decisions would be affected by the comparison.

Price is obviously important. We’re in a recession. As Giampaolo says, he doesn’t want to pay for the brand, he wants to pay for the computer. But are we saying that HP isn’t a brand? That Microsoft isn’t a brand? That Giampaolo isn’t getting paid by Microsoft to pick a Windows machine? What, if anything, is MS trying to say here?

Or perhaps we’re watching the rise of post-modern advertising, in which the point is that there is no point. Perhaps this is about reinforcement, especially considering most people bypass the Apple aisle anyway. Or maybe we’re watching Microsoft looking into itself, its mind scoured by madness, giving away thousands of its hard-earned dollars to handsome shills. We will never know, sadly. We’ll never know.