Mac/PC ads: Why doesn't Microsoft refute them? (1 Viewer)

[DaveF]

While absurb from an advertising effectiveness point of view, it's the truth. Apples can do boring office stuff well (Mac Office), and PCs can do art well (Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc.)

The idea of people having multiple computers per task is appealing, but I think not generally attractive for most. But the new Intel Macs promise just this. One computer to rule them all.

I can do fun Apple things. I can BootCamp / Parallels for Window-y things. And if they'd offer a suitable GPU I could also play games in Windows. And the iMac would be a near perfect desktop PC for taking to LAN parties, if one were so inclined.

 

[DaveF]

Adam, I've not explored iDVD enough to know how much the templates can be modified. Maybe not at all?

But what's available on Windows that (easily) lets me edit video, create a DVD and burn it? With the flexibility you want. And less than $100. I honestly don't know.

....
Yes the Mac ads create false dichotomies. And the Superbowl Coke ad showed a wondrous fantasy land inside the Coke machine. Ranting about inaccuracies in Mac ads is fishing in air.

 

[Ken Chan]

I was responding to Mark's assertion that Macs don't do "any sort of high end 3D, period", which is of course baloney just like many of the other statements made subsequently in this thread. But I have neither the time nor the inclination to address them, because people will continue to spout the lies they are comfortable with anyway in these tiresome Mac vs. PC "debates"; so what's the point?

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

The difference is that a reasonable person wouldn't believe that there's a wondrous fantasy land inside all the Coke machines. A reasonable person who isn't particularly computer savvy could very well believe the falsehoods propogated by the Mac ads.

 

[David Williams]

I'm not incredibly knowledgable about financial software, but I know at the very least Intuit's Quicken is available for Mac since I use it.

 

[Chris]

Well, the other way to look at it is this:

Microsoft's open development platform has led to numerous people developing all sorts of software, from wide open games to other applications. And it's led to having kids who quickly became big-guns in the industry.

ID Software? Started with a shareware PC game called "Castle Wolfenstein" distributed by another shareware company (Apogee). Then Doom, Quake, etc.

On the other end, think of things that came to make exclusively because someone on the PC side thought of an idea of how to do something or an approach that no one had tried because of this wide berth of developers.

Here's a couple examples of things that were developed on the PC because of the open platform that now have widespread use just as file formats:

DiVX
FLAC
FVF
RAR

The widespread use on the PC has made some things which I can't discuss under Hometheater Forum rules possible in regards to archive purposes that I couldn't live without

The wide variety of choices does mean that you're more likely to come across a dude or a clunker piece of software now and again.

But, imagine this flipped the other way: If apple had 80% marketshare, would things be the same? The government demands of microsoft a wider-more developer friendly OS because of how many users. If Apple were in their shoes, would they be forced to do the same? Yep.

So, Apple has the position they have in large part because of their smaller installed base. It's the reason why I can find something like 800+ different Online Role Playing games for the PC, and on the Mac... And so on. The smaller base means that if a developer is going to put something out, they need it to be great in order to justify development expense.

But, I'd stick by the notion as posted above, people who think the mac is "bug free" do not work with macs in real production environments daily. If they did, they'd understand why MacWorldExpo had it's #1 feature request was less bugs.

 

[Sami Kallio]

So when you run into problems with PC, it's the machine. When he runs into problems with Mac, it's the user?

I work on PC's 12-14h a day and I don't run into problems with them. I develop software and if anything, that is something that can boot down a machine quickly if you're careless. Back in the day with the old MS OS'es you didn't even have to do anything wrong but today they are very stable. Of course as a computer person I would like to see Linux take over which is much more likely to happen than Apple taking the market lead.

In my world, everything happens in a machine running either Linux/Unix or Windows. If it wasn't for work and games, I'd be running a PC with Linux in it at home. Well, I am running several actually but none of them is my main machine.

 

[Joseph S]

How is that codecs which weren't available before Quicktime and QT architecture being introduced and other algorithms were closed off from creation under OS 7, 8, 9, X etc??? Heck divX was nothing but a hack of a Microsoft codec and RAR was developed for DOS. Piracy and cheap parts are far more of reason for Microsoft's initial success than "open-ess."