After a day of mucking around in Seattle, dealing with emissions tests, licensing, getting my tabs renewed (and license plates changed), and then dealing with insurance, I came home to run tests on the parental units' new computer, which I'm going to be running south to Eugene at some point next week. Now, in the midst of cleaning up the bloatware on their admittedly fast and awesome new machine, I did come across this little gem on Wired.com regarding the prices of new Macbooks, and the knowledge that what I use daily is called a "premium" machine.
Microsoft's ad campaign, conducted in a neo-sleazy advertising "reality" show format, has bothered me for multiple reasons - namely, that if you actually know what the heck you're doing, an Apple laptop is just another machine, albeit one without a laptop button. Microsoft, on the other hand, picks young women shopping with their mothers and/or young attractive women with a slightly ditzy air to them fast-tracking to different machines and making disparaging chicky-type comments about the machine's surface appearance.
The Apple format on their laptops is pretty basic and standard - silver keyboard layout with backlit keys, comfort, and a trackpad. What I'm writing on at the moment is a simple, basic one I pulled from the Apple Refurbished Store for an incredible deal when the new Mac lineup came out - and it's still miles ahead of any PC out there on the market simply in terms of processing power and markups. Plus, it's a Mac, so I know that if I need it rebooted so that someone more competent than myself needs to muck around with the innards, someone has the capacity to do it.
Now, this ad from Microsoft has two women meandering through Best Buy - which is a multiple-unit store with limited range in computers and limited specs available on each machine. And what I find so disingenuous about the ad campaign is that Microsoft is impugning the hardware of a Mac - not the software.
The funny thing for me is that Mac really is a machine supplier with a boutique OS. I use Mac OS X not only on this machine, a Macbook Pro, but on the Hackintosh used in the living room which also has the capacity for Ubuntu and BeOS - neither of which is used very often. To build the machine in the living room cost very little - and yet this machine still outperforms the PC-built computer in many functions.
The little blonde soon-to-be law student and her mom are the epitome of "just plain folks" - the pair for whom buying a pair of shoes on sale is a major score. And yet when you're buying a machine, you want something that's durable over the long haul, not just capable of looking good with a summer dress.
Ultimately Lauren and Sue, in the Microsoft commercial, go for the $900 Dell laptop - more specifically, the Dell laptop that has been rated "better used as a frisbee" on multiple computer component rating sites. Sure, that battery is going to last as long as you need it to in a lecture hall, but what lecture hall doesn't have a power supply? What lecture will you ever need to spend more than five hours a day running your computer on? And last - a Dell computer that tends to overheat is exactly what you pay for.
The thing is, Microsoft is advertising for their operating systems, not the machines that other companies make, and yet they're doing it by sponsoring female shopping sprees into large chain retailers. I say vaguely creepy, because the money handed to the two women at the end of the show reminds me all too much of a techie version of a "Girls Gone Wild" video, complete with "real live women" instead of the paid actors who are running through the motions.
I know why they're doing it this way - because Apple happily says, "I'm a PC, and I'm a Mac" and note the stability of the Mac system and the ease of use that is built into the Apple system. And so help me, Mac built in the shiny of their design long ago to make sure that the sexy factor continues. But Macs, for all their slick ads and clever humor, are advertising brand identity - not software. PCs are advertising their software by trying to hit up Mac on their price point.
I guess I'm biased, because Nipper, my roommate and friend, has a Mac that he has owned for over seven years that still runs, still does what he wants it to, and doesn't have the issues that plague seven-year old PC laptops - two of which are currently under my surgical screwdriver in this room at the moment to see if I can shock their systems back into a semblance of a life. The idea that if you buy a Dell laptop now and in two or four years must buy a new one is annoying to me - though I like the upgrading challenges of a PC, I'll never really go back to a PC hardware. But that shouldn't matter to Microsoft.
I run Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, and Microsoft Office on my Mac. I am a happy consumer, and even as I write this, I'm doing it in a legal boot copy of Microsoft's product. I have Silverlight, I play and work in Microsoft's world a lot, and it still is one of the more comfortable systems I use on a daily basis.
But I'm working on Apple hardware. If Microsoft wasn't a software company, and instead built an incredibly cool desktop system and laptop line with the same style and edge to them that Apple currently has, I'd be all over it. I have Microsoft up the wazoo - they're the only company that makes keyboards comfortable for my hands and a trackball I can deal with for long periods of time. I am a dedicated Microsoftie and view the quirks of the operating systems as...well, just that. Quirks. Most PC meltdowns are due to bad design by the PC manufacturer or user error, not the operating system, in my experience, and so each time someone whines about how expensive Macs are or how frustrating it is to use a PC, I laugh my head off at them.
As it stands? I'll happily boot Windows 7 and Vista on my Macbook Pro with insane battery life that I got for (ready for the price tag?) $850, plus tax. From an Apple retailer. And it runs Windows most of the time. That whole "one button" thing? I remapped the keys. It's not hard. It just takes a wee bit of brainpower and the willingness to go outside one's comfort zone.
The key is knowing what you're purchasing, when you're purchasing it, and not relying on salesmen and advertising to make the decision for you. And the market of PC users have glutted themselves on machines that simply are far too powerful for what they need them for. A gamer might need 120 frames per second on their video card - my mother, who intends to use her new machine to surf the internet, work on her bookkeeping, plan gardens, and keep track of volunteers - does not. Yet she had the impression she needed a really good video card and a power supply capable of powering a microwave - thanks to misleading advertising.
Honestly, I think what bothers me most about the ad linked above is not so much that the women involved were happily bouncing around Best Buy looking at computers, but that the women who made the purchase was going into law school, and hadn't done any research at all.
One only hopes she doesn't become a public defender and screw up the defense trials of any serious criminals. I also hope she takes the money and makes legitimate purchases of the Microsoft software she had "installed" to her machine. One can dream, I suppose.
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