Laptop Punters
by John Paczkowski
Posted on July 24, 2009 at 6:57 AM PT
Microsoft COO Kevin Turner must be so disappointed. Remarking on the company’s “PC Hunter” ad campaign last week, Turner said he’d been ebullient when attorneys for Apple (AAPL) called to complain.
“The ‘PC Hunter’ ads, the ‘PC Rookie’ ads clearly have been winners in the marketplace,” Turner said. “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. 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.”
But only after tweaking the ad in question to reflect Apple’s recently lowered prices, Ad Age reports.
Microsoft’s (MSFT) Laptop Hunters ad, which once depicted the supremely annoying “Lauren” opting for a $972 Dell (DELL) laptop over a $2,000 MacBook Pro now features no reference to that machine at all. Which is appropriate, since it was replaced with a new $1700 model in early June. And now, rather than harping on that $2000 price point, “Lauren” simply suggests that Mac users are “paying a lot for the brand.”
Not nearly as much as Microsoft is paying for these silly commercials. Anyway …
“We slightly adjusted the ads to reflect the updated pricing of the Mac laptop shown in the TV advertisement,” Microsoft told Ad Age. “This does not change the focus of the campaign, which is to showcase the value and choice of the PC.”
The new ad:
The old ad:
Comments
It’s a shame that these ads are so misleading. Is there a slight premium to the Apple brand sure there is but look at what you get out of the box. You are ready to roll immediately, no configuration is needed, and you get a high end laptop (in the Macbook Pro). Look at the specs, go out and try to find the same specs in a “windows” based laptop and you are right in the same price point. Plus you get the stability of a UNIX based PC not the unstable mess of Windows NT.
I currently us both systems on my Mac. I have Windows installed on primarily for games. I use the Mac for all other computing, especially graphic intensive processing. Try to run the Mac OS or Mac apps on a windows machine lately? Good luck getting it to work, the architecture can’t handle it. The hardware and the OS architecture on a Mac is far superior to the “windows” world.
Do a little research before slamming a company. Is an Mac right for everyone? definitely not. Not everyone needs a fully loaded computer.
Posted by Brian Jarvis at July 24th, 2009 at 8:18 amShame on you John for demeaning someone as if that increases your argument. Your characterization of “Lauren” is extremely insulting and adds nothing to your argument. Is it your aim to be supremely annoying in order to gain more ads revenue than Walt who has integrity? Do some soul searching. Please.
Posted by Todd Oberman at July 24th, 2009 at 9:24 amBrian: The main reason you can’t run OS X on a PC is that Apple doesn’t want you to. Apple could claim unique use of hardware when they ran PowerPC chips, and they could have done some fairly interesting high end things in that realm, but they chose to make Apple computers more like PCs, and in fact there is very little difference in the technology. There are supercomputers made from PowerPC chips, all the game consoles use them (for speed) and there is a lot of commonality in PowerPC and the chips used to build IBM mainframes. But no, they weren’t “good enough” for Apple.
Now, to show I’m an equal opportunity hater… It’s clear now that Apple’s (or Jobs’ anyway) goal was to comoditize the Apple computer, make it MORE like a PC, and thus cheaper to stamp out by the thousands in some far away country, just like Dell and HP do. Other than unibody Aluminum enclosures and chicklet keyboards, there is less and less that is unique about an Apple computer with every revision. Apple is instead turning to innovation in total user experience, making computer, multimedia, phone, and online products that seamlessly (or more seamlessly than the alternatives anyway) integrate.
Why does Microsoft have to advertise products (PCs ) that they don’t even make and hardly mention the part of it they are responsible for? Well, I think that question answers itself. There is nothing new and exciting about operating systems, any of them, and there isn’t really much that is new an exciting about the hardware either. We are finally approaching the cliff that turns our interaction with computers into something akin to our interaction with TV sets and refrigerators. A greater reliance on hardware standards (an idea pushed early on by Microsoft of all companies) has made the technology differences in PCs (including Apples) minimal which means that the OS has less covering up to do. That coupled with a greater reliance on the Internet, means that prices on both hardware and software will continue to erode. This will force both Apple and Microsoft to make uncomfortable changes to heir business models. Microsoft is responding by becoming more of a network player. Apple is playing a move ahead by concentrating on non-PC technologies, while at the same time milking the high-end market for all it’s worth. Neither of these strategies are sure bets however.
As details of discreet vs integrated circuit boards and variations on Dolby are no longer the subject of talk by any but the most fanatical audiophiles, in a few years nobody will be talking about which operating system you use. There may never be an OS XI or Windows 8, or if so they will go unheralded by most people. There will also be less talk about losing all your e-mails, personal photos or music files, because most of that stuff will be “online”. Even most large businesses now forbid employees from storing important thtings on the local hard drive. E-mail and documents worth saving go on networked drives, making the desktop system easily re-formatted with no backup-restore. You have to wonder why you would need a $400 OS for such a task.
In the early 90s when some of my mainframe colleagues proclaimed PCs just a fad they were right, it’s just that the fad lasted a lot longer than they thought it would. Thankfully it is coming to an end.
Posted by Mac Beach at July 24th, 2009 at 10:28 amTurner says the ‘PC Hunter’ ads “clearly have been winners in the marketplace.”
Posted by Chip Winter at July 24th, 2009 at 10:42 amFor whom? And what marketplace is he looking at? PC sales are down and Mac sales are up.