Apple’s latest Get a Mac commercial targets the recent laptop hunters ads coming from Microsoft. It shows a number of PC characters and Mac, with a woman in between who wants to buy a computer. She mentions a number of features she wants, and the number of PCs becomes ever smaller. Then she says she wants a computer without “viruses, crashes or headaches”, which makes all the remaining PCs leave, with only the Mac left standing.
Well, f*** you too.
Why won’t the Apple website show me the videos?
My Iceweasel can play .MOVs just fine.
How does one get the links for the other two new videos?
You can click on name of the video (not the picture) when you’re on a different video’s page.
http://movies.apple.com/media/us/mac/getamac/2009/apple-mvp-custome…
http://movies.apple.com/media/us/mac/getamac/2009/apple-mvp-pc_choi…
Upgrade your iceweasel. (Iceweasel I’m using: 3.0.9)
My version with my codecs installed from Debian Multimedia work just fine.
Edited 2009-05-13 21:21 UTC
works for me on ubuntu with totem and Totem Web Browser Plugin
Ubunutu 8.04 with VLC and Totem it works perfectly. It played directly in the Firefox web browser and when I copied the .mov from the firefox cache directory.
Retorting to the windows’ ad is like saying they feel threatened. Doesn’t this mean that “the ads are working”?? That’s what people said when the “I’m a PC” ads started showing up.. Honestly though, I didn’t expect apple start posting ads that backlash.
MS retorting to the “I’m a Mac” ads with the “I’m a PC” ads is like saying MS is threatened. Except that it’s even more ridiculous, since MS has 90% market share.
Funny because they used to have a 95% share. Mac’s and Linux are taking a bite out of their share.
Funny that. I was just about to mention the same thing. I remember when MS had 95% market share and now it’s already down to 90%.
Every time I hear about how Windows has viruses, spyware, crashes, etc., I can’t help but think that’s just a bad joke, an easy way to downplay its usefulness. It’s so juvenile. Same as always saying, “Macs are teh expensive!!!” It just makes my eyes glaze over.
Sure, I think Windows could be improved in many ways (heavily bloated, stupid EULA, progressively worse compatibility, really arbitrary design decisions), but to be fair, viruses and spyware will always exist no matter what anyone does, and it’s definitely not the fault of MS / HP / Dell / etc. (Besides, as most people know, Windows NT-based OSes never crash anymore.)
In other words, I feel like advertising is always lying to me (and it usually is) all in the name of the almighty dollar. Why can’t people compete on technical merits (and not browbeat us to death, at least)?
I’m a Computer Systems Analyst at an organization with over 10,000 employees. Plus all my friends know I’m a computer geek. I can assure you that Windows NT based computers (including XP and Vista DO crash.
Most of the problems we have are with Microsoft updates including Microsoft’s Foundation Class.
Because 90% of the target audience aren’t geeks, and don’t have much appreciation of technical details?
It *IS* a bad joke to me that every Windows user out there is already settled with the fact he has to run several programs online just to stay protected from viruses and spyware. It also *IS* a bad joke that every Windows user out there is ok with the concept of a reinstall solving problems. And so on…
Face it, Windows still has these problems and just because they got hidden or diminished by great efforts (like wasting your ressources for anti virus) they didn’t really ever get away. The Windows platform has improved a lot in the latest years but there is
a) also regression (sadly enough)
b) f–king lots of room for improvement left
Because if you look at the competition, they get these things right for years now. Not to say that competition is always best or superior for a specific usecase. Still, it is a bad joke that specific problems of a single platform are now considered as being fundamental to computers and not worth talking/advertising about.
Right on – because Linux and OS X doesn’t have anti-virus packages…,.oh hang on, they do. And apple even recommend users install them.
Windows might leave the door wide open, but malware will always exist so long as there are users stupid enough to download and run untrusted software (remember the recent article about the OS X botnet?)
The only anti-virus packages for linux out there which are used by more than 2 people and a cow are for mail servers to strip viruses out of emails before they arrive Windows machines.
Get your facts straight.
This is btw. exactly my point: people start to argue that you have these problems with every platform, but in practice it still is a unique feature of Windows to date. Face it or it will never get properly fixed. Or do you really think in 10 years time we still need/want to fight viruses?
Edited 2009-05-14 13:54 UTC
* I stated that Linux and Apple have anti-virus packages and they do.
* You may argue that Linux desktop virus packages aren’t used by many people, but that doesn’t change the facts that I stated.
* You might choose to completely ignore the point I made about Apple, but that doesn’t make it wrong either.
So my facts are straight.
You do know the first ever viruses weren’t on Microsoft platforms?
You do know that Linux webservers have it’s fair share of malware due to poorly coded PHP scripts?
Sure, Windows is one of the worst offenders for security, but to argue that malware is a windows specific feature is elitist BS.
And by the way, I’m a Linux and Solaris user. So don’t start shrugging off my opinion as narrowminded fanboy talk.
I think we’ll always need to fight malware, though I certainly imagine it taking different forms ten years from now. NO matter how secure you make it, there will always be someone who will break it. Action and reaction is the way the world of security will always work. No security measure is perfect, or will ever be perfect, and neither are the methods used by malware writers.
That is not to say, of course, that the operating system should make it easy for them and, at the moment both due to its inherant insecurities and its large demographic, malware is mostly configned to the Windows platform.
That doesn’t mean, should Linux or OS X become dominant, that you’re automatically safe. You’re not immune just because it hasn’t happened. Once there’s a large enough payoff on another platform, it will be targeted, and eventually there will be success on the part of the malware author, no matter how secure by design the system is.
Well said. Security is not a state, it is a process.
So why argue with me when I made the same point yesterday?
How can you say that?? It is ALL Microsoft’s fault. It’s there lack of tightening up their default security settings. They took a step in the right direction with Vista, but then everybody complains and Microsoft is about to botch the default settings again with Windows 7 (as the tests against RC showed – white-listed applications like calc.exe and notepad.exe running at administrator privileges). Why the hell does calc need admin rights!!
Under OS’s like Linux where it’s drilled in that you don’t run day-to-day usage as root (Administrator for those Windows users) viruses simply can’t touch the normal running of the OS. It anything, it can only affect the users profile directory.
Well, to be fair, I’m still going to be pretty pissed off if a virus screws up my home directory since it’s… you know, where all my files are stored. In fact, I’d rather have the os get screwed up and my data in tact than the other way around. Yes, I do keep backups… but even that isn’t perfect. True story, I had my main drive fail, so I put in the backup drive… then a power surge overloaded my surge protector and fried the backup drive too. I did have a backup of most of my important files, but I did lose quite a few that I had no room to back up anywhere else at the time.
Bottom line: If my data is gone I could give a rat’s behind about the os still running.
I like the customer service ad; try ringing up the Dell, HP or Lenovo customer service – I remember one time I was speaking so slowly I ended up sounding like colonel clink, “Yaaa, I voont to puuurchase aa coompuuter” – the effect when one slows down speaking it ends up taking on an accent of its own.
Its good to see that Apple have finally stood up and said, “yes, our computers cost more – but this is what you get for it” to which most people would sooner pay the extra and not have to deal with the soap opera that comes with conventional PC’s.
If PC vendors take exception to the ads from Apple then maybe these PC vendors should cease selling their soul to Microsoft, hire 1000 programmers each, and customise a Linux or *BSD based operating system and invest into a stack of easy to use applications that can run ontop. I don’t see that happening, it would require the PC vendors to take a long term view on this rather than the current situation of ‘racing to the bottom’, even if it ends up killing their own business in the process.
Yup. I just got back my MacBook Pro with the second hard drive failure in six months. They handled it without question and even upgraded my hard drive size to make up for the hassle. I didn’t even complain.
Say what you will about the up-front cost, but in my experience Apple has always taken care of me when I have problems.
I just imagined that the girl in the ad asks for a small and portable computer which Apple does not offer.
What do you mean?? They have the iPhone 🙂
The OP said “small and portable computer,” not “PDA” or “smartphone.”
OS X as trojans, which are a type of virus; and it also has headaches if you’re one of the people who haven’t been able to connect to a WEP wireless network. Apple still hasn’t acknowledged that its network manager doesn’t work with passphrases, only with keys, despite the program having a option for you to input the passphrase.
I’m sure Macintoshes do crash as well, but I haven’t used one for long enough to see.
Apple should withdraw the ad and run something a bit more truthful.
Asking for truth in advertising? You might as well wish you could breathe under water.
Edited 2009-05-15 11:59 UTC