Microsoft's latest
ad -- a companion-piece to its new "Laptop Hunters" website -- stars "real person" Lauren. Lauren's a little funky, a little folksy, and 100 percent real. She doesn't have an agenda to push, she's just out in the world, living in "reality" searching for a sweet laptop that's under $1,000. She admits to herself she's "not cool" enough for a Mac (though cool enough for a Volkswagen) and gets on with her life. She's a real American -- with an unpretentious, pragmatic life. The ad rather smartly puts the focus on our current economic climate, while expertly reinforcing that age old Apple-user-as-dick stereotype, pejoratively wielding the word "cool" as an underhanded insult -- odd, since the Microsoft portal it wants you to visit helps "socialites" pick a laptop. All in all? It's kind of a brilliantly mean piece of work -- check it out after the break.
[Via
BoingBoing]
posted Mar 27th 2009 10:58AM
I think this commercial nails the sentiment pretty well, honestly.
I also thought it was very effective. I mean, if you are normal person [read: NOT an engadget reader] who checks email, surfs abit, occasionally writes up a Word doc and looking for a 600-700 laptop/desktop - Apple has no answer.
That market is most people I think.
@Johnny5-
http://store.apple.com/us/configure/MB463LL/A?mco=NDE4Mzg4Mw
It's $600, Writes Word .docs, checks e-mail, can go on the internet, is a desktop and is by Apple.
Yeah; unfortunately, if this chick really were "real", you'd quickly find that all of her pot smoking artist friends all have macs; Apple's strongest marketing campaign. If she really needed a 17" notebook (the commercial cleverly leaves out what the hell she's using it for), I have no doubt in my mind that this chick would've put $1,000 down and put the rest on her credit card.
I'm a Windows PC user and I'm so "uncool". Nice image for PC users, Microsoft. Thanks for helping to sell more Macs.
@yopladas
You should compare it to desktops then if you take macmini, and it.s pretty hard to write Word .docs, checks e-mail, go on the internet without keyboard and monitor. The price will come to 800$ with those. (If you select apple monitor it'll come to 1500$)
If you want to bring macmini to the table you should compare it to the desktop machines. You can get a decent desktop with monitor and keyboard for 400$.
I didn't know that Volkswagen ownership was iconic of being cool, or directly correlated to Mac ownership.
I have a VW and a Mac.. so stereotypes are true.
:)
Where I live, there's a correlation between Subaru ownership a Mac users.
But then again, there's also a correlation between Subaru ownership and sexual orientation (no lie, I swear 80% of the Subarus around here have that rainbow and/or '=' sticker on their cars).
actually they are. also, owning a volkswagen beetle or jetta is directly correlated to being a girl. especially for the jetta.
Too bad Apple doesn't price their computers like VW prices their card. You know, competitively
True...VWs cards are very competitively priced, especially with easter coming up.
At one time, there were rumors swriling that Apple was working with VW, and instantly VW because the best auto manufacturer in the world, at least in the eyes of a small group of people - read the very first comment at http://www.autoblog.com/2007/08/29/apple-volkswagen-creating-the-icar/
A little related to this article, compare this ad where Microsoft shows real people living their life. Then look at http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/464/1051464/apple-redraws-world-map where Apple removes entire countries, excluding populations and manipulating the face of the earth just to make themselves look better.
Yes VW ownership has a stereotype mostly parallel with Apple users.
@ Mavrick
I find a sizable portion of lesbians drive Subaru's. Gay men have different tastes.
@Ken
You mean they are more than happy to pay more for a dolled up product of questionable reliability?
Id do her. End of Discussion.
I drive an Audi A4, have a WM phone (Sprint Diamond,) a Vista x64 computer, and a Zune 16. I guess Audis dont count in this stereotype...
"I drive an Audi A4"
I think that fits just perfect. You drive an overpriced Volkswagon to try to compensate for cool. ;)
"yet cool enough for a VW" - my thoughts exactly.
Wow, a hippie that drives a VW. I find it hard to believe she doesn't own a mac, and listens to John Mayer.
So true.
so let me get this straight, if i'm given $15,000 and i can't buy a bmw but i can buy a kia then the kia is obviously better ?
Cars != Computers
In the current economic climate, yes.
But I do understand your point of what you get is what you pay for.
You're really reaching here. The PC laptop here isn't the KIA to Apple's BMW. It has all the capabilities if not more. Probably just as much memory as most of the Mac laptops available.
If that KIA had a look just as awesome as the BMW, which all of the features, if not more, then yes, your comment makes sense. If you're trying to say that the Mac is so ahead of the laptop that is makes it budget/obselete/"just good enough" then you really make no sense.
True, some computers are cheap, but this is only half of the story. We need a follow on story when Lauren decides it's time for a new laptop. How much will she be able to get for this one in 2 or 3 years to put toward a new one? It starts to even out when looking at total cost of ownership.
Typing this on my Macbook Pro, I can only commend Microsoft for finally hitting Apple's weak spot. Expect Massive Damage.
@pavelbure
A better comparison would be if you were given 90k$ and had a choice between a 911 Turbo and a Nissan GTR. The Nissan GTR is just as good as the Turbo if not *better* but costs 25k less. The extra 25k really goes towards just a brand name, so which would you choose? I'd choose the GTR.
Same example applies with an Acura RL v. a BMW 5 series, or a Genesis V8 v. a BMW 5 series.
I looked up the specs on that HP G70t she bought:
1GB RAM, 2.0 GHZ Core2 Duo, GMA 4500 graphics, 250GB hard drive, 6 cell battery and pretty much zero warranty.
Yeah, but it has a 17" screen which displays up to 1440 x 900. Good luck running that piece of crap on Vista!
My bigger question about this ad is why she went to the Apple Store in the first place. Does Microsoft really think I'm stupid enough to believe that this chick didn't know she couldn't get a 17" laptop for under $999.
It's all in the operating system anyways, comparing Mac OS X, which is Unix BSD based, and built pretty much from the ground up, to Windows XP, or Vista (if you want to make this too easy), which is built out of a quagmire of 1,000,000 lines of code, 13 years of legacy support, shitty design practices (registry, the C:\WINDOWS\system32 clusterfuck), and crappy multi-user permissions management is like comparing a high rise condo complex to a brazillian shantytown.
And the 17" laptop she bought lacks fast wireless 802.11n, fast Gigabit Ethernet, digital audio inputs and outputs, weighs 7.75 pounds, and only features the screen resolution of Apple's 15" notebooks: 1440x900, not 1920x1200.
Lets compare apples to apples before calling Apple computers overpriced.
LOL I think the car comparison is perfectly valid. Have you ever driven a BMW? The only thing that's MILDLY superior to an average car is the turning/braking/acceleration. Even then, once your body adjusts to how your particular car should be handled, those slight differences become moot.
I'd even venture to say that the BMW is a stretch in the other direction. When you own a BMW, your repair bills, your insurance, and your gas (you need to get premium gas every time you fill) will all costs significantly more than with an average vehicle. With a Mac, the initial purchase is expensive, but much of the software that most people are looking for is MUCH cheaper than a PC. $99 for OS X, $79 for iLife (maybe iWork, too) and a developer community that is heavily rooted in freeware.
And by 13 I mean 23.
No pavelbure, it means when you go to a shop to buy a car, you MIGHT check the price of the BMW you intend to buy before saying "this one is so much cooler than that Kia shit !"
Now if you translate this into the PC world : Yes a MBA is much nicer to have than a EEE PC 901, but one costs 10 times the price of the other, and you do the exact same thing with the EEE PC than with the MBA.
It seems like a very good argument to me.
Got it ?
Unix' permissions systems cannot hold a candle to Windows' permissions systems.
In Unix, you are either no one or you have control of everything on your system. If you want to give a process the ability to kill processes, you also give it the ability to scribble all over your hard drive (on purpose or accidentally). If you want to give a process/program the ability to back up all your files, you also give it the ability to erase all your files, to create and kill tasks, and to create super user accounts.
Unix has an awful security model and permissions system compared to Windows.
Right on PAC Man! Digging into Apple's pricing in this economic climate is good marketing. It's dirty, but Apple slings mud on a daily basis. Pumping crap computers and equating them to good ones is idiocy and only seeks to exploit people who don't know anything.
That 17 inch notebook she bought will have a battery life of all but 30 minutes, especially with all those wonderful Vista features turned on. All those cheap PCs that are being churned out for $699.99 (what no taxes in the US?) list decent amounts of ram and a decent CPU... the rest are junk... and as PAC Man found out, have no battery life to speak of. I guess they give you a big enough battery to run from outlet to outlet.
Pretty lame add. Again MS shows they can not only misuse comedic genius Seinfeld, but also screw up a cup of coffee!
Wait....NO TAX.....????
Apparently, its am a PC and I smoke weed!
i giuess i touched a nerve with you felix. haha
haha
That would be correct if Mac OS X used basic Unix permissions. Which it hasn't since 10.4.
All you people complaining seem to be missing the point of this commercial. It's for everyday people. The everday people that buy computers. Do you really think she is going to notice the difference between 802.11g and n? No. She's not going to be streaming HD movies from her media server from the other room onto her laptop. Which is also why she wont notice that her screen isn't 1920x1200. What she does get, is a computer that works, for fucking cheap
@PAC
wait... I thought she bought this computer:
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9166635&type=product&id=1218041148373
it has 4 GB of RAM and is 699 just like in the ad... don't know where you were looking.
@pavelbure
Not the same, really. I'd agree with Bryant. People should definitely buy within their budget, but if I had $2000 to spend, it wouldn't be on an Apple. I don't have anything against them, in fact I would love to have one, but at the same time I could budget my $2000 better and get a laptop with comparable specs and still have money left over for a nice HDTV. Just like if I had $100 would I get an HDMI monster cable, or one from monoprice, plus the wall mount, any other cable that I want, including shipping, and take my wife out to dinner for the price of that one monster cable. Do you still believe a $100 HDMI monster cable is better than the $6 monoprice one?
Don't insult "everyday people", with that low expectations bullshit. That's like saying people in developing nations don't deserve the same quality of life as us because they're not used to it.
@ why not the LS2LS7?
I don't believe your statement is correct....if I want to give a process access to kill another process, but not allow it to wipe a harddrive, I change the group settings of the kill/killall command, and add the user executing the process that might need to kill another process to that group.....after ensuring that group level perms are set to give execute access.....Might not be as "user friendly" as windows, but most definitely infinitely scalable...you just have to think a little bit....
Ben:
There's more to permissions than file permissions (ACLs, as you refer to).
Mac OS X added "sophisticated" file permissions. But user status in UNIX is still either "user" or "superuser". If you want a process to be able to backup all your files, you must run it is superuser, which means it then can create a setuid root shell or other executable anywhere on a mounted filesystem that it wants. If you run a single program that you downloaded from the net as root once on your UNIX machine, you may have just been hacked and your machine is wide open forever.
This is not true on Windows where you can run them as a user that has permission to read any file but not permission to write any file, let alone put setuid on files or create users.
Again, UNIX permission control system cannot hold a candle to Windows', and it will remain that way until UNIX has concepts of user privilege levels other than "normal" (user) and "all" (superuser).
@Bryant
That's complete bogus.
- You don't know the specs of the two computers. You can't say that the HP and the MBP 17" perform just as well
- Apple's computers don't include the junk trialware which PC OEMs use to subsidise the hardware costs. This makes Macs slightly more expensive, but the experience is better and for people who are scared of reinstalling the OS, the Mac will work better than a windows PC full of trialware.
- Market comparisons have shown that Macs are typically only slightly more expensive than the equivalent PC. As mentioned above, the lack of trialware accounts for this price disparity.
- Apple's products tend to be better designed. Design isn't just about making stuff look nice. People who study design don't spend years learning how to make things look nice. They learn how to make things functional and intuitive. For example, the MagSafe adaptors on Apple's laptops are an example of good design. They don't make the hardware look nicer, but they make it work better. Better designed products usually are more expensive. Whatever market you're in.
- Apple's machines also tend to be made of higher quality materials. I'd bet, for example, that the price of making the aluminium unibody enclosures for Apple's laptops is far higher than what it costs Dell to mould a plastic case for one of their laptops. Higher quality materials mean higher prices, just as real leather shoes cost more in the same style than fake leather.
- Apple's customer support is also much better than PC OEMs. If I have a problem with my VAIO (and when I owned a VAIO, I had loads of problems with it), I have to call up some call centre, be put on hold, wait for them to send the box, send my laptop and wait for it to be fixed and redelivered. If I have a problem with my MacBook, I make an appointment at the Genius bar, go right there (maybe wait for 5 minutes max), and speak to somebody face-to-face. If there's a problem they can't fix for me right there, they'll take my machine right there and have it ready for me the next day. I don't pay extra for that better service - it's in the price of the machine. And it's so worth it.
- Apple provides student discounts. I've yet to see that replicated by PC OEMs (at least in the UK)
I bought a MacBook a year ago. Yes, I may have paid a bit more than an equivalently priced PC, but I really don't regret it. It was my first Mac, and it's so much better than any of the PCs I've owned. In fact, with my student discount, I managed to get the BlackBook (top of the MB line) with AppleCare for less than the base model. I certainly don't feel ripped off.
Can someone find the cache size of that HP G70t? I cant seem to find it anywhere
Let's not forget that the first thing you see on a brand new installation of Microsoft Windows (after it loads the desktop) is a balloon popup that warns you that, without antivirus protection, your computer is insecure.
That's the first thing somebody sees after Windows is installed. It's one of the great facepalms of the user experience world.
"If you want a process to be able to backup all your files, you must run it is superuser, which means it then can create a setuid root shell or other executable anywhere on a mounted filesystem that it wants."
not entirely true, you can set the permissions of the file to give the current user read but not write privileges and then run the program as the current user. That way the program won't have permissions to open the file for writing but will be able to for reading(which it will read in and copy them somewhere else)