Mac Ads Respond to Microsoft’s Campaign?
2:03 am, April 20th, 2009, Nicole Martinelli
The “Get a Mac” campaign has four new ads, the first out after the launch of Microsoft’s controversial “Laptop Hunter” series.
The four reasons you should get a Mac over a PC?
Fewer viruses (the PC has to wear a hazmat suit), facial recognition for iPhoto, stability (no freezing, crashing, error messages) and low maintenance (stability doesn’t depend on security patches, virus scans etc.)
Hmmm. The ads are cute, especially the future one, but I’m not sure if I were really weighing a Mac vs. PC any of these things would convince me to go Mac.
What do you think?
Via Mac Daily News
Posted by Nicole Martinelli in News | Comment on this article
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If you need ads like that to go Mac you shouldn’t go in the first place.
Macs are not for everyone as we all know and I got to the point where I stop evangelizing (is that a word?) and let people try and find out themselves.
Sometimes I think Apple makes those ads just to lets us feel better for choosing the right product.
phaty, on April 20th, 2009 at 2:37 am
I do like the new Microsoft ads; however I am now starting to find the Mac ads childish and annoying. They are also becoming very repetitive.
Liam, on April 20th, 2009 at 4:42 am
I agree they are cute, but the truth is mac’s are not perfect either. As a systems administrator working for a company that uses both mac and pc’s. The mac’s tend to crash more when functioning over network connections, file sharing, and PRINTING! Mac’s tend to have corrupt fonts and when you have a designer working on a project and a font goes corrupt it causes problems not only for me but the designer as well. It then cost time and money finding a new font or fixing the corrupted fonts. Let’s not even talk about compatibility.
The truth is that the OSX operating system is built off a UNIX core as was Windows. The mac then derived off the Linux core and in which is an open source operating system. Hacking a Mac is easier than hacking a PC, it’s been done people!!! ( http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9072959 )
…Just some food for thought
-Harry Caskey
Harry Caskey, on April 20th, 2009 at 5:20 am
Ads convince no one, it just shows more choices.
That is what these ads are.
They are more sneaky!
Deocliciano Okssipin Vieira, on April 20th, 2009 at 6:52 am
@Harry Caskey
The article say:
Security researcher Charlie Miller exploited Safari in two minutes
… and please read it.
Deocliciano Okssipin Vieira, on April 20th, 2009 at 6:55 am
I feel compelled to point out a few inaccuracies in the comments left by Harry Caskey. First, I must agree that OS X is not perfect yet. that being said it is head and shoulders above any operating system Microsoft has ever offered.
I support now and have supported in the past thousands of PC’s and Macs. After the advent of OS X I have never experienced Mac’s crashing when functioning over a network. My initial reaction to that statement was that you should perhaps check out your network.
As for printing I have never experienced the printing maladies on any Mac that plague my fleet of PC’s on a daily basis. I am convinced that printing is the bane of any computer persons existence.
I will admit that corrupt fonts can be an issue but if they are that frequent and take you that much time to fix then I would recommend learning a little more about the operating system the you purport to support.
Windows was not and is not built off of a UNIX core no matter what you would like to believe. The version of Windows that you are using be it XP or Vista was based off of Windows NT which reveals it’s heritage when you learn that it was originally called OS/2 3.0 while it was being developed. OS/2 itself was developed by Microsoft and IBM to be a better DOS that DOS.
As for OS X, it has as its core the MACH 3 microkernel which traces it’s roots through NextStep to BSD. Which as a number of people from Berkeley would like to point out existed a full 14 years before the 1991 initial release of Linux.
Hacking a Mac easier than hacking any Windows PC. Well I think the results speak for themselves. Yes Safari was able to be exploited in two minutes. In order to do this you have to run SAFARI and go to a compromised Web site. Whereas two minutes is about the lifespan of an unprotected Windows machine that is running NOTHING but the OS.
Shawen
Shawen Donnellan, on April 20th, 2009 at 9:29 am
[...] further about the new Mac ads — and how if I were considering buying a Mac over a PC they wouldn’t sway me — I [...]
Switch & Bait : The Ultimate “Get A Mac” Strategy? | Cult of Mac, on April 20th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
My apologies Shawen is correct, I had my history of Windows mixed with Microsoft’s early product Xenix which was an OS they made deriving from their own version of Unix.
Compatibility will always be a challenge as an administrator. I will admit that I have seen Leopard show a dramatic increase in compatibility to the network share and Active Directory. OS X is getting better with every new release, but when they rub it in your face how their OS doesn’t crash I can’t help but chuckle.
One thing people really don’t see is how Apple mark’s up their hardware. People get ripped off left and right. We had a macbook hard drive fail. It was no longer under the warranty by about 1 week. I thought I would call Apple to see how much it would cost to get a replacement HDD and OS. They wanted around $140 for a 60GB replacement laptop hard drive (more than likely would have been a refurbished hard drive). Then they wanted the old hard drive back or there would be an additional charge for not returning the bad HDD of $100. Then the OS would be an additional $129. I told the kind lady you have to be kidding me!?!? Let me also mention that they are Toshiba hard drives which are one of the cheapest on the market. So I chose the next best option I bought a 60GB seagate hard drive from newegg.com for about 60$ and purchased the OSX for $129 and saved the company about $180 bucks by not going through apple–and kept the bad hard drive to perform data recovery.
Long story short, if your mac is not under warranty try to either go to a apple vendor or replace the products yourself. If you go through apple you will spend more money for cheaper, low quality products. But you should do your own research compare apples to apples per say.
-Harry Caskey
Harry Caskey, on April 21st, 2009 at 8:52 am