Andrews Family

We recently saw a new “Get a Mac” TV commercial that made Jenny and I look at each other and say, huh? It was their “Misprint” ad where ‘PC’ is calling PC World magazine to correct the fact that in a recent article they said that the MacBook Pro was the fastest laptop that they have tested running Microsoft Vista. Yes, that is correct, you can run Vista (or XP) on Mac hardware using Bootcamp.

We weren’t sure we even heard the commercial correctly so I did some research. First the hardware. PC World said that the laptop configuration they tested cost $2949, but if you go to the online Apple store and configure the same thing it costs $3499. Turns out RAM is VERY expensive from Apple and the upgrade to 4 GB costs $700! Come on Apple, $700 for 4 GB of RAM, get real. I’ll cut PC World a break and assume they bought their RAM from someone else for $150 to get to their price. But they are still forgetting to add $220, which is the retail cost of Windows Vista that you have to pay to run it on your Mac. That makes the cost $3169. WOW, that’s one heck of a laptop and if I’m paying that much it better be fast no matter what OS I’m running.

But what is Apple trying to say? That isn’t a rhetorical question; I’m really not sure. Are they saying that Apple makes better hardware than Microsoft? That’s easy since Microsoft doesn’t sell hardware. Are they saying that Mac OS X is better, faster, easier then Vista? Well, then why would you make claims about how fast Vista is on your hardware? Are they trying to convince you to buy their hardware and run Windows on it? That doesn’t sound so bad for Microsoft since they don’t sell hardware and that would be a full retail version of Windows. I’m pretty sure their margins are pretty good on manufacturing those DVDs. I give up, I just don’t get this commercial.

I’m not done yet though. While on Apple’s website I found their list of “Thinking about upgrading to Vista? Even more reasons to get a Mac.”

1. No upgrade nightmares. Basically they say that Mac OS X runs on seven year old Mac hardware so you won’t need to upgrade your hardware. But this is supposed to be people thinking about upgrading to Vista, who I would assume would be PC users, and you can’t run Mac OS X on a PC. So that guy probably doesn’t have a seven year old Mac laying around that isn’t made into a MacQuarium. (Lisa, please can we make yours into a Macquarium for the kids.)
2. You can even run Windows. That is #2? You can buy both? So basically they are saying that it’s hard to survive in the world dominated by Windows. That doesn’t make me want to switch to Mac too badly if I still have to deal with Windows.
3. It’s simpler. No complaints here. This is actually a valid reason.
4. You don’t have to buy new stuff. They say that all your hardware (printer, camera, cellphone) will work with a Mac. True that most stuff does work these days, but this a deficiency that they have improved recently. Microsoft is still the dominant platform and has a high compatiblity rate. For example, my logitech webcam isn’t supported on Mac.
5. Know iTunes? You know Mac. Maybe if I used it I’d be more impressed.
6. Macs run Microsoft Office. A second item on the list that would generate revenue for Microsoft. And it’s Office 2004 by the way which is soon to be 4 years old. How about a nod to something like OpenOffice that is free? That’s what I recommend on Windows systems.
7. You can take it with you. I’m fuzzy on this one too since it sounds like they are saying they can do what everyone else can do, not how they are better. They talk about how Apple has adopted computing standards for things like files and they give the example of Microsoft Office files working on the Mac. Really, I didn’t know that the Office format was a standard other than being the de facto.

I’m not trying to debate which OS is technically superior here, just taking a look at the marketing campaign. So come on Apple. You’ve got so many loyal fans whom you’ve inspired (and who are probably ready to let me have it in the comments), but this is what you try to convince me with?