(Found at Daring Fireball, of course. More at the online remains of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. With a name like that, no wonder they went bankrupt.)
(Found at Daring Fireball, of course. More at the online remains of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. With a name like that, no wonder they went bankrupt.)
Comments
5 responses to “Not cool enough…”
Almost wonder if you are fishing for a comment from me on this one. So I’ll bite. I think it is a decent add. I think I am one of the few people who loved the Seinfield/Gates adds. These I’m a PC adds are too Vanilla for me. I have to say though about the only way I see adds anymore is sites like this. I skip past them otherwise with my DVR.
It’s not a terrible ad, I’ll give it that. I guess I was probably fishing a bit, of course. I didn’t comment on it myself because I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. Ultimately, though, I think the $699 HP she ended up with is probably hobbled with weaker specs; the myth of Macs costing (substantially or even modestly) more than comparably-equipped PCs just lives on despite how easy it is to do a side-by-side comparison to disprove it, especially now that Macs essentially are PCs.
True, you cannot buy a $699 Mac laptop, but that’s because Apple’s not going for the low end. You also can’t buy a $16,000 BMW — as much as I hate the Apple/BMW analogy, and I fully acknowledge that our only car is a $16,000 Honda. But I don’t need antivirus software for my Honda, and it doesn’t have a cheap plastic case, and it won’t become obsolete in six months.
OK, I’m rambling. That’s why I didn’t bother to comment on the commercial in my initial post.
I don’t know if this aired nationally, so maybe only Twin Cities/Midwest readers will have seen it, but do you remember that “Jack My Price Up!” commercial Qwest had a couple years ago? I know the guy who played the contestant, and in real life he was a Comcast user. I wouldn’t be surprised if “Lauren” really uses a Mac. Or maybe I’ve just said something about my weakness for redheads.
Regarding the “Macs are more expensive” argument, here’s an interesting comparison by someone who cared to take far more time to research prices than I have.
http://technologizer.com/2009/03/31/hey-lauren-is-apples-17-inch-macbook-pro-expensive/
Bottom line: Apple came out (decisively) on top amongst several laptop makers when specs were comparable.
I would say that its better than the Seinfeld adds which seemed to have no direction or point for that matter but we’re speaking comparatively. The thing that I don’t understand is that in spite of me seeing the windows logo at the beginning and end of the commercial at no point in any of the adds in this series is there any mention of a Microsoft product. Now whether its because all the PC’s out right now still only have Vista and they don’t want the average braindead consumer that they are marketing to in the commercial to actually wait until 7 becomes available I don’t know. The only common denominator in these adds is that speaking about mac’s makes up about 25% of the commercial. So in closing in spite of this add not sucking it doesn’t really do much for me and for several reasons. It avoids speaking on all the “hidden costs” that go along with your bargain basement PC the complete and utter lack of any customer service to support the product they just purchased and of course the fact that I can run windows on my mac for the 2 things I need to use it for. So I suppose its everything i’ve come to expect from Microsoft something uninspired with lots of a holes and empty rhetoric. I can’t wait for the Microsoft stores to open up so I can throw my 360 against the wall and feel some closure in what has arguably been the most irritatingly defective product I’ve ever owned. I hope someone starts manufacturing hardware for Ubuntu so there’s a third player in the mix and Microsoft will have no choice but to suck less in order to remain a viable platform. Actually I don’t really want Microsoft to stop sucking because then there would be no one left to flame.