I'm not sure if this is a good ad for apple. I read it as "if you're a ditzy girl high on paint fumes, you should switch to apple."
Posted by on 16 October 2002 at 12:36 AM
The girl on TV who "saves Christmas" is a pretty bad representative too. It seems that Apple is targeting folks who are complete morons. Operating a computer isn't that difficult anymore, especially with Plug and Play and USB. Some of their ads are effective, but I don't really agree with their "if you're a dope like these people then you should switch to Mac" campaign.
Posted by Chris Hill Festival on 16 October 2002 - 11:19 PM
Ooh ooh, flame war!
If somebody would rather not have to waste an hour downloading "drivers" (or otherwise compensating for stupid design flaws) on family centric days like holidays, I hardly think that that person deserves to be called a moron.
I think a lot of CS people don't like the "I saved Christmas" ad because they don't believe that it's true. But it is true, no drivers are required for half-way decent digital cameras under Mac OS X (and Windows XP!), where they are required for Windows 98 and Mac OS 9 (if drivers even exist for OS 9).
Which person would you consider smartest:
(a) the one who spent three hours searching for and reading Linux HOWTO's trying to figure out how to get photos off the digital camera, another hour playing around with random text files, possibly rebuilding a kernel, and another 15 minutes figuring out a filing system for the photos that get copied onto the computer
(b) the one who spends 10 minutes locating a Windows 98 driver, 30 minutes downloading it over a 56k modem, and another 15 minutes installing it, then starts transfering photos
(c) the one who uses a computer that was designed with reasonable defaults, and can have a photo album layed out within 30 minutes of first plugging that new digital camera into the computer
I think the general populace would classify type (a) users as morons compared to type (c) or even (b).
Posted by Charlie on 17 October 2002 - 1:25 AM
I make no comparison with Windows 98. Anyone who uses Win98 when their computer is upgradable to XP (i.e. they have enough RAM, etc.) is a moron. XP has automatically detected every random device that I've thrown at it so far, without having to donwload drivers.
To make a long story short, the newest version of MacOS should be compared with the newest version of Windows, not with an older version. I could go on and on about older versions of MacOS that required users to manually allocate memory resources...
Posted by Chris Hill Festival on 17 October 2002 - 12:45 PM
It only took MS 10 years, but they finally got Windows cloe to right with XP. Of course, XP still has issues, like a worthless Network Neighborhood.
Posted by david on 17 October 2002 - 1:42 PM
People of type a) are hobbyists, not morons. I'll be the first to argue Linux is for hobbyists/CS-folk/nerds/etc. and not for the general population as of yet.
As for b) vs. c) I don't think it's hard to say who's a "moron" here. b) being halfway un-moronic, notices that the hardware comes with a CD-ROM with drivers and helper programs (photoshop se, etc) and will install it, and even under that OS we all love to hate, Win98/ME, it will work just fine most of the time -- and in more reasonable OS (2K,XP) it will work great with the same success rate as OS X.
Then we have consumer c) who has decided to spend more money on a computer that limits their hardware and software compatibility, and has the same basic features as b)'s computer.
Sure, OS X is light years ahead of OS 9 since Apple followed Microsoft's lead and used the core of a unixish OS to build their modern PnP, GUI OS. (The NT kernel is based on VMS.) But what's the compelling reason to switch? It looks cool and cool people in the graphic arts field seem to be using it? I've read the "Top 10 reasons to switch" on apple's site and I don't buy any of it.
The MAC with OS X is a great computer but "switching" doesn't make sense for the majority of today's users. It's different from what they use at work, has less software available (what software company in their right mind wants to waste time developing for 3% marketshare? -- see http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000051.html for a good discussion on this), and has less hardware compatibility for legacy devices. The MAC can do a lot, and do it well... but so can my pc with WIN XP. Switch? Why?
Let the flames begin... (continue?...)
PS: David, the Network Neighborhood thing is mainly due to the continued support of NetBEUI which has been dropped as of WinXP. It was there for legacy comptibility, etc...
Posted by Adam on 17 October 2002 - 3:06 PM
I was commenting on Apple's ad campaign more than their product. Being a former Marketing major, I'm a geek about stuff like that. I just don't think that it's a very compelling campaign when a) you're showing people acting like ditzes and b) you're making claims that you can't necessarily back up.
For instance, am I to believe that Apple can promise that I will never lose a document? The situation the girl "high on paint fumes" described could happen under any operating system, which is why you should alway save early and often. It has nothing to do with Apple vs. PC. In fact, editing documents on Unix with Emacs is probably more stable than either one, but I don't see Apple advocating that we switch to Unix.
And how about the guy who wants to make movies. Notice how when he talks about how his Mac is much better than his PC, he also slyly slips in that he bought a new digital camcorder. A digital camcorder is a $700+ piece of equipment, you can't exactly compare downloading an analog movie to your PC to downloading a digital movie to a Mac. Again, it's not the Mac/PC difference, it's the extra $2-300 you spent on the digital camcorder over an analog.
As a Windows XP user who will purchase a new computer within the next month most likely, I cannot think of one legitimate reason to switch to Apple based on these commercials.
But Charlie, this isn't a knock on you, it's good to have all viewpoints represented (arguments are more fun that way). It's more of a knock on the Apple ad guys, who aren't here to defend themselves. He he.
Posted by Chris Hill Festival on 17 October 2002 - 3:35 PM
This is slightly off the Apple/Windows sucks topic, but apparently the girl in that ad has attained some kind of cult status.
Posted by david on 17 October 2002 - 6:11 PM
I disagree about the effectiveness of showing a ditzy person in an ad. I think the point of doing that is for the viewer to reason, "Hey, I might not be a computer expert, but I'm not as stupid as the person in the ad. But if even a person that stupid could get it to work, I can for sure!" Also, you get the effect of the viewer feeling superior to the person in the ad. Since your ad made them feel superior, they'll have a positive view of your company/product.
Posted by Tzadik on 30 October 2002 - 2:35 PM