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Ugh, enough is enough.

Yes Apple took the mick out of Microsoft for it’s 300 million us dollar budget for Vista. And yes Apple’s yearly advertising budget of about 500 million us dollars is bigger than that. Apple’s advertisements known by pretty much anyone who watches TV these days, and they have a massive street-advert presence also. They’re visually fantastic, show off the product well and encourage sales of iPods and Macs to no end. They also have to compete with Microsoft’s hold on the PC market with Windows- people have to see that there is an alternative to what they’re used to and without a heavy advertising plan they wouldn’t even consider it. They wouldn’t even know about it.

It seems that people have missed the point completely- why did Microsoft put out the adverts for Vista? Because they messed up royally and have to clean up their own mess by attempting to make Vista seem not as bad as everyone thinks. I work in the computer section of a John Lewis, and was there for the Vista launch. During it’s first few months I couldn’t even begin to count the number of people who came in for a Mac after being seriously disappointed and let-down by Vista’s bugs. I couldn’t stand the annoyances it came with, and as such am still running XP Professional- probably still the finest product Microsoft has come out with. It’s a fantastic operating system, although personally I feel you do need to get rid of the original theme…

Vista was probably one of the best things that could have happened for Apple at the time. The “I’m a PC” ads are nothing but a (late by two years) response to the attack on Vista, and taking Apple’s own stereotypical “PC” option and attempting to argue back. Aren’t you forgetting something?

Rant over kthxbi.

As a sideline point, the original I’m a PC adverts are fundamentally flawed. You show an imitation of John Hodgman’s PC, therefore instantly making people think of the Apple advert, and then show a mix of different people saying that they use PCs. Hooray for them but here’s the thing- the guy with the Polar Bears is looking for a way to protect them, while it’s not just PCs that are energy efficient. The entire MacBook range is Energy Star 4.0 compliant and the Mac Minis is the most energy efficient desktop currently on the market. (Well, it’s just about still on the market anyway.) The musicians saying they are, when most professional music recording is done on a Mac with Logic Pro. Sigh.