In the end, Apple just couldn’t help itself. Microsoft’s new “I’m a PC … and I’ve been made into a stereotype” ad campaign was just too wide and deserving a target. Apple could no more ignore it than Steve Jobs could hold back his pitching arm upon finding Steve Ballmer sitting above the dunk tank at the Santa Clara County Fair.
An interesting metric for you: Of the products listed on Amazon’s Top 10 Bestsellers in Computers & PC Hardware, five are Apple MacBooks. One is an ASUS Eee PC running Linux. One is a Samsung HDTV monitor. And the remaining three are netbook/mini laptops running Windows. Windows XP Home, that is. None run Vista.
If there was any comic relief during Tuesday’s Apple event, it was provided by Microsoft, which played Curly to CEO Steve Jobs’s Moe and COO Tim Cook’s Larry. Discussing the dramatic increase in the Mac’s market share in the past year, Cook said it was driven partially by “something we didn’t do: Vista.”
At an invitation-only event at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced the company’s latest revision of its line of notebooks. Before demoing the hardware though, Jobs invites COO Tim Cook on stage to offer an overview of the Mac ecosystem.
The appeal of Fox’s reality show, “The Simple Life,” may have eluded you and me, but it has clearly struck a chord with Microsoft and its new ad agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky, which seems to envision Microsoft chairman Bill Gates and comedian Jerry Seinfeld as the Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie of tech. To wit, “New Family,” the second spot in the CP+B-produced campaign for Microsoft, which features Gates and Seinfeld moving in with a family of “real people” and connecting with them.
Not quite sure what to make of Microsoft’s new ad campaign? Here’s how Bill Veghte, senior vice president of Microsoft’s Online Services & Windows Business Group, explained it to the company’s employees Thursday evening in an all-hands memo: It’s an “icebreaker.”
So Microsoft’s widely publicized “edgy” ad campaign, the one designed to counter the Apple ads that have so eroded its brand, is to feature Jerry Seinfeld as celebrity pitchman. In many ways, that does more to illustrate the sad differences between the two companies than the “Mac vs. PC” ads it’s designed to combat.
I’m not sure which is more humiliating, the fact that the opening ceremony for this year’s Olympics in China culminated with the unwitting projection of the Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) onto the roof of the National Stadium, presumably in full view of Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, who was in the audience. Or that the organizers of the event decided to run Windows XP and not Vista.
You can’t put frosting on manure, although Microsoft seems intent on doing just that with its new Vista ad campaign. During a keynote address at Microsoft’s annual Worldwide Partner Conference, Brad Brooks, Microsoft’s vice president of Windows Vista consumer marketing, admitted that Vista hasn’t met with the success for which the company had hoped.
Windows Vista is a good product. The quiet majority of millions and millions of Windows Vista users out there are going to have a great experience. The message is ‘Move to Vista. The time of worry is over.’”
– Brad Brooks, corporate vice president of Windows Consumer Product, explains Microsoft’s decision to support XP until Windows 7 arrives at market in 2011.
Microsoft (MSFT) has extended the availability of Windows XP nearly as many times as it has extended the ship dates of Windows Vista and Office 2007. The company had planned to cut off XP sales through the retail and original equipment manufacturer channels on Jan. 30, 2008, one year after the Vista’s debut. But the poor reception given the new OS and “feedback” from XP advocates, gave it pause to reconsider. So Microsoft adjusted the deadline to June 30. Which makes today XP’s last on the retail market.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best use of the Beeker “meee” ever.
While the technology behind the Telephone is new, the design is reassuringly old-fashioned, reminiscent of a phrenologist’s horn or ear-candle in form. We found the experience far more comfortable than the one we had with the Telegraph.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
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