6 ms·

Where by "working" they mean "are making Microsoft look like a value proposition and Apple less so". In other words, they make Microsoft look cheap and Apple lo

by bonaldi 17y ago

Where by "working" they mean "are making Microsoft look like a value proposition and Apple less so". In other words, they make Microsoft look cheap and Apple look premium ... this is not a message Apple is going to be upset by. The entire campaign has struck me as strange. "Hey, we know you want a cool, desirable Mac, but you can't afford one -- so settle for us, we're cheap!" Microsoft: Which second-best do you want to settle for today?

maukdaddy 17y ago
To be fair, it has worked quite well for Wal-Mart ;) But I agree completely, that message does not upset Apple at all.
- GrandMasterBirt 17y ago
  I hate mac because I need a mac to test with. If apple allowed us to VM macs, well, they wont be as horrible. The point is that for the same price as an iMac I can get a pretty damn awesome gaming/compiling machine with 4 cores 8 gigs of ram, 260gig hdd, a nice video card, a giant monitor, and be able to upgrade it. Why would I want a mac? But in the end, Mac OS is a superior OS compared to Windows XP. Congradulations Apple, you are finally able to compete with a 8 year old operating system. Thumbs up. Vista is actually pretty good, granted that some software is not compatible, but other than that it can work on the high-end PCs. People tend to compare vista's performance on a low-end pc with a high-end mac + mac os. Guess which one will run faster.
  - makecheck 17y ago
    That's just a random list of features, "I can get" anything too. What you need to do is link to some online stores where you've built machines with an exact set of features and prices (assuming that initial purchase price is the only consideration anyway, which it wouldn't be).
  - swombat 17y ago
    I always find these "Macs are over-expensive" arguments pretty ignorant. I suspect they come from people who have never used a modern Mac regularly. I have a recent Macbook pro sitting in front of me. Granted, you could match it feature-for-feature and probably save a bit of money (not as much as you think, though), but, there's one feature you wouldn't get with any alternative: build quality. This lovely piece of kit is far and away the best laptop I've ever owned, from a hardware point of view. Not only is it sleek and elegant, but it feels really good and solid (thanks to the single-piece shell). The trackpad is second to none. The keyboard is brilliant. The suspend/resume is flawless. Everything is basically perfect about it (ok, except for the glossy screen). You can't get that by cobbling together hardware like most other laptop manufacturers seem to. And for a piece of kit that I sit in front of for about 14 hours a day, it's nice to have something that's so finished. No dell or HP or Acer or whatever ever did that for me. So, no, you can't get the same hardware for cheaper. Because the way the hardware is put together is part of the hardware.
    - old-gregg 17y ago
      I have a recent Macbook pro sitting in front of me. Granted, you could match it feature-for-feature and probably save a bit of money (not as much as you think, though), but, there's one feature you wouldn't get with any alternative: build quality I am typing this on a recent $2,200 Macbook Pro equipped with a econo-Sony-style el-cheapo keyboard and 6-bit low-contrast (and, therefore, glossy) TN display capable of only 256K native colors, the same junk Dell puts in their $599 laptops. My wife's white macbook is falling apart, literally - little pieces of plastic just chipping off its shell, I think it was by far the worst laptop we ever owned. My previous MBP used to overheat when pushed to full CPU/GPU speed (just like any other MBP). As far as hardware is concerned, Macs aren't "premium" - they're quite cheaply built yet beautifully styled objects overpriced beyond funny. Go for Thinkpads and HP EliteBooks, the latest Dell Precisions/Latitudes are pretty well built too. HP, for instance, is the only laptop manufacturer in the world who still offers 24-bit LCDs as an option, i.e. you can actually use their laptops to look a a photo without connecting an external display. All these machines require Linux, of course, to be HN-approved :-)
      - 17y ago
kierank 17y ago
In other words, they make Microsoft look cheap and Apple look premium I think the ads go further than that. They make Macs look elitist - in every ad the person representing someone real that the viewer could relate to to says something like "I'm not cool enough to have a Mac". Once they manage to get that message across to the majority of people that these Macs are elitist and PCs are more down-to-earth it might well become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
- GavinB 17y ago
  It’s actually in Microsoft’s favor to cast the choice as “Mac vs. PC.” There’s plenty of room in the market for a premium brand and a value brand. The endless Mac vs. PC flame war has been tremendously profitable for both companies, and it keeps other competitors from gaining a foothold. If Microsoft looks like a good value, the idea of a free OS or a browser-based OS can’t penetrate the consciousness of the mass market.
- berntb 17y ago
  So Apple should pay me lots of money to show me with my Mac...? :-) With or without my Linux computers? :-) (Sorry for wasting reading time with a joke.)
- grinich 17y ago
  /Ubuntu/ is down-to-earth, not Microsoft. Even look at their UI. Microsoft has been going for slick/future/gloss while Ubuntu wants to keep stuff warm/friendly/earthy.
- GHFigs 17y ago
  There is no shortage of consumers wishing to be part of the elite.
zaidf 17y ago
they make Microsoft look cheap and Apple look premium ... this is not a message Apple is going to be upset by. Wrong. Apple should be upset and is upset because the market for "premium" computers is a lot smaller than the market for non-premium computers. With this ad, Microsoft is making that premium market even smaller for Apple. Us geeks can laugh about the ads all day. But for Microsoft, it's a hit. If WalMart did an ad campaign to steal potential Gucci customers, Gucci should be very worried.
- cduan 17y ago
  I'm always surprised how many people think that the introductory solitary sentence "Wrong" is an appropriate response to a comment. Particularly so when the original comment is hypothesizing about someone's opinion of something (whether Apple will be "upset" by these ads). Not to say the comment is "Wrong." It seems like a decent hypothesis that Apple's marketing strategy is to broaden its customer base, and that Microsoft's ads are hindering that strategy. I do think, though, that part of the reason behind the incivility of online discussions is the tendency of members to express opinions in the form of terse, unqualified statements of fact.
- axod 17y ago
  >> "If WalMart did an ad campaign to steal potential Gucci customers, Gucci should be very worried." How successful would such a campaign be? I'd say not very at all. If I were Gucci, and Walmart were doing a campaign, I wouldn't be worried in the least. Some people buy based on price, others buy based mainly on quality. Neither will be particularly interested in the other.
  - zaidf 17y ago
    How successful would such a campaign be? A better question is: how successful would the campaign have to be in order to get Gucci worried? I'd say not a lot because Gucci has a very small market vs. Walmart. If Walmart can get even a small slice, that amounts to relatively large $ revenue loss given Gucci's pricing. Neither will be particularly interested in the other. That is what a good campaign does: flips customers from one category to another.
jerf 17y ago
'The entire campaign has struck me as strange. "Hey, we know you want a cool, desirable Mac, but you can't afford one -- so settle for us, we're cheap!"' Know. Your. Audience. Where are these commercial being run? America. Now, I bet they'd crash and burn in Western Europe and I'm virtually certain they'd crash in Japan, but in America, they work. Also, it should be pointed out that it is not just that they are cheap, but that they "do everything I want" (which is all the Apple could do) and that they are much cheaper, not just a little cheaper. "Does everything I want" for $2000, or "Does everything I want" for $900 is not a bad sales pitch. (Incidentally, I'm not trying to be anti-American, nor do I think this is anti-American per se. Being cheap is neither good nor bad; it has advantages, it has disadvantages. Being able to be sold something "premium" just because it's "premium" isn't necessarily a good place to be, either. It is simply that American culture will take cheap over almost any other attribute.)
- arien 17y ago
  Being an European (albeit probably not the standard one), I don't really sense the "cheapness". The ad to me is just saying: "why pay more if you can get something that does what you want for a lot less?" (which I agree on, and it's basically the reason I don't own a Mac). The issue as I see it, is more about being practical and not just falling for trends or overpriced quality. It's like buying expensive branded clothes or non-branded ones. Is someone who doesn't buy Nike, Versace, Gucci, whatever brands being cheap or simply being consequent with their real needs?
- jamesbritt 17y ago
  "Now, I bet they'd crash and burn in Western Europe and I'm virtually certain they'd crash in Japan, ..." Based on what?
  - jerf 17y ago
    Business experiences. I would point out I labeled them opinions, but they would match the business experiences I've seen. Getting a true survey would be difficult. It is also quite unlikely that all cultures have the same preferences on the price/quality tradeoffs, and Americans are pretty heavily loaded on the "price" side. (I believe Wal-Mart is having some success overseas, but they had explosive growth in the US for a reason, and I'm talking pre-recession.)
cnlwsu 17y ago
I buy many products from food, clothing, gardening, and house supplies that practically advertises the "off-brand" "cheaper" point. I like my cheap crap t-shirt from walmart. In a consumer market quality is not always the thing people are looking for. I get frustrated with my 100$ vacuum cleaner plenty but never enough to go buy a 600$ one. I don't think Apple should get upset, I think they should provide some lower end products. Even if the cheap apple computers are running P4's with 256m of memory, putting some products in the price range people are looking to spend would kill this advertising strategy and I will finally be able to convince my mother to get a Mac. (maybe throw a monitor on a mac mini and reduce the hardware a little). Just a note: the emachine I bought 2 years ago for 200$ is still running great.

by bonaldi 17y ago

maukdaddy 17y ago

To be fair, it has worked quite well for Wal-Mart ;) But I agree completely, that message does not upset Apple at all.

GrandMasterBirt 17y ago
I hate mac because I need a mac to test with. If apple allowed us to VM macs, well, they wont be as horrible. The point is that for the same price as an iMac I can get a pretty damn awesome gaming/compiling machine with 4 cores 8 gigs of ram, 260gig hdd, a nice video card, a giant monitor, and be able to upgrade it. Why would I want a mac? But in the end, Mac OS is a superior OS compared to Windows XP. Congradulations Apple, you are finally able to compete with a 8 year old operating system. Thumbs up. Vista is actually pretty good, granted that some software is not compatible, but other than that it can work on the high-end PCs. People tend to compare vista's performance on a low-end pc with a high-end mac + mac os. Guess which one will run faster.
- makecheck 17y ago
  That's just a random list of features, "I can get" anything too. What you need to do is link to some online stores where you've built machines with an exact set of features and prices (assuming that initial purchase price is the only consideration anyway, which it wouldn't be).
- swombat 17y ago
  I always find these "Macs are over-expensive" arguments pretty ignorant. I suspect they come from people who have never used a modern Mac regularly. I have a recent Macbook pro sitting in front of me. Granted, you could match it feature-for-feature and probably save a bit of money (not as much as you think, though), but, there's one feature you wouldn't get with any alternative: build quality. This lovely piece of kit is far and away the best laptop I've ever owned, from a hardware point of view. Not only is it sleek and elegant, but it feels really good and solid (thanks to the single-piece shell). The trackpad is second to none. The keyboard is brilliant. The suspend/resume is flawless. Everything is basically perfect about it (ok, except for the glossy screen). You can't get that by cobbling together hardware like most other laptop manufacturers seem to. And for a piece of kit that I sit in front of for about 14 hours a day, it's nice to have something that's so finished. No dell or HP or Acer or whatever ever did that for me. So, no, you can't get the same hardware for cheaper. Because the way the hardware is put together is part of the hardware.
  - old-gregg 17y ago
    I have a recent Macbook pro sitting in front of me. Granted, you could match it feature-for-feature and probably save a bit of money (not as much as you think, though), but, there's one feature you wouldn't get with any alternative: build quality I am typing this on a recent $2,200 Macbook Pro equipped with a econo-Sony-style el-cheapo keyboard and 6-bit low-contrast (and, therefore, glossy) TN display capable of only 256K native colors, the same junk Dell puts in their $599 laptops. My wife's white macbook is falling apart, literally - little pieces of plastic just chipping off its shell, I think it was by far the worst laptop we ever owned. My previous MBP used to overheat when pushed to full CPU/GPU speed (just like any other MBP). As far as hardware is concerned, Macs aren't "premium" - they're quite cheaply built yet beautifully styled objects overpriced beyond funny. Go for Thinkpads and HP EliteBooks, the latest Dell Precisions/Latitudes are pretty well built too. HP, for instance, is the only laptop manufacturer in the world who still offers 24-bit LCDs as an option, i.e. you can actually use their laptops to look a a photo without connecting an external display. All these machines require Linux, of course, to be HN-approved :-)
    - 17y ago

kierank 17y ago

In other words, they make Microsoft look cheap and Apple look premium I think the ads go further than that. They make Macs look elitist - in every ad the person representing someone real that the viewer could relate to to says something like "I'm not cool enough to have a Mac". Once they manage to get that message across to the majority of people that these Macs are elitist and PCs are more down-to-earth it might well become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

GavinB 17y ago
It’s actually in Microsoft’s favor to cast the choice as “Mac vs. PC.” There’s plenty of room in the market for a premium brand and a value brand. The endless Mac vs. PC flame war has been tremendously profitable for both companies, and it keeps other competitors from gaining a foothold. If Microsoft looks like a good value, the idea of a free OS or a browser-based OS can’t penetrate the consciousness of the mass market.
berntb 17y ago
So Apple should pay me lots of money to show me with my Mac...? :-) With or without my Linux computers? :-) (Sorry for wasting reading time with a joke.)
grinich 17y ago
/Ubuntu/ is down-to-earth, not Microsoft. Even look at their UI. Microsoft has been going for slick/future/gloss while Ubuntu wants to keep stuff warm/friendly/earthy.
GHFigs 17y ago
There is no shortage of consumers wishing to be part of the elite.

zaidf 17y ago

they make Microsoft look cheap and Apple look premium ... this is not a message Apple is going to be upset by. Wrong. Apple should be upset and is upset because the market for "premium" computers is a lot smaller than the market for non-premium computers. With this ad, Microsoft is making that premium market even smaller for Apple. Us geeks can laugh about the ads all day. But for Microsoft, it's a hit. If WalMart did an ad campaign to steal potential Gucci customers, Gucci should be very worried.

cduan 17y ago
I'm always surprised how many people think that the introductory solitary sentence "Wrong" is an appropriate response to a comment. Particularly so when the original comment is hypothesizing about someone's opinion of something (whether Apple will be "upset" by these ads). Not to say the comment is "Wrong." It seems like a decent hypothesis that Apple's marketing strategy is to broaden its customer base, and that Microsoft's ads are hindering that strategy. I do think, though, that part of the reason behind the incivility of online discussions is the tendency of members to express opinions in the form of terse, unqualified statements of fact.
axod 17y ago
>> "If WalMart did an ad campaign to steal potential Gucci customers, Gucci should be very worried." How successful would such a campaign be? I'd say not very at all. If I were Gucci, and Walmart were doing a campaign, I wouldn't be worried in the least. Some people buy based on price, others buy based mainly on quality. Neither will be particularly interested in the other.
- zaidf 17y ago
  How successful would such a campaign be? A better question is: how successful would the campaign have to be in order to get Gucci worried? I'd say not a lot because Gucci has a very small market vs. Walmart. If Walmart can get even a small slice, that amounts to relatively large $ revenue loss given Gucci's pricing. Neither will be particularly interested in the other. That is what a good campaign does: flips customers from one category to another.

jerf 17y ago

'The entire campaign has struck me as strange. "Hey, we know you want a cool, desirable Mac, but you can't afford one -- so settle for us, we're cheap!"' Know. Your. Audience. Where are these commercial being run? America. Now, I bet they'd crash and burn in Western Europe and I'm virtually certain they'd crash in Japan, but in America, they work. Also, it should be pointed out that it is not just that they are cheap, but that they "do everything I want" (which is all the Apple could do) and that they are much cheaper, not just a little cheaper. "Does everything I want" for $2000, or "Does everything I want" for $900 is not a bad sales pitch. (Incidentally, I'm not trying to be anti-American, nor do I think this is anti-American per se. Being cheap is neither good nor bad; it has advantages, it has disadvantages. Being able to be sold something "premium" just because it's "premium" isn't necessarily a good place to be, either. It is simply that American culture will take cheap over almost any other attribute.)

arien 17y ago
Being an European (albeit probably not the standard one), I don't really sense the "cheapness". The ad to me is just saying: "why pay more if you can get something that does what you want for a lot less?" (which I agree on, and it's basically the reason I don't own a Mac). The issue as I see it, is more about being practical and not just falling for trends or overpriced quality. It's like buying expensive branded clothes or non-branded ones. Is someone who doesn't buy Nike, Versace, Gucci, whatever brands being cheap or simply being consequent with their real needs?
jamesbritt 17y ago
"Now, I bet they'd crash and burn in Western Europe and I'm virtually certain they'd crash in Japan, ..." Based on what?
- jerf 17y ago
  Business experiences. I would point out I labeled them opinions, but they would match the business experiences I've seen. Getting a true survey would be difficult. It is also quite unlikely that all cultures have the same preferences on the price/quality tradeoffs, and Americans are pretty heavily loaded on the "price" side. (I believe Wal-Mart is having some success overseas, but they had explosive growth in the US for a reason, and I'm talking pre-recession.)

cnlwsu 17y ago

I buy many products from food, clothing, gardening, and house supplies that practically advertises the "off-brand" "cheaper" point. I like my cheap crap t-shirt from walmart. In a consumer market quality is not always the thing people are looking for. I get frustrated with my 100$ vacuum cleaner plenty but never enough to go buy a 600$ one. I don't think Apple should get upset, I think they should provide some lower end products. Even if the cheap apple computers are running P4's with 256m of memory, putting some products in the price range people are looking to spend would kill this advertising strategy and I will finally be able to convince my mother to get a Mac. (maybe throw a monitor on a mac mini and reduce the hardware a little). Just a note: the emachine I bought 2 years ago for 200$ is still running great.