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The Microsoft “Lauren” Ad - It’s Kinda Funny Watching an Elephant Be Frightened by a Mouse
Wednesday, April 29, 2009 / PowerMax Culture
In the old cartoons it was pretty common to see a large elephant’s eyes grow wide at the sight of a mouse, and stampede away or cause all sorts of damage in its frenzy to get away from the vicious “monster.”
Apparently Microsoft’s executives spent a lot of time watching cartoons when they were kids (or perhaps still do). The little Apple mouse is making this elephant of a company run so scared that it’s airing competitive ads against Apple, despite the fact that it still commands roughly 90% of the market.
The one I get the biggest kick out of is with Lauren:
If you watch the first part of it closely, you’ll see her walking into an Apple Store (which they call the Mac Store) to do some “shopping.” The very next scene where she walks out of the store, you can see that she actually spent about three seconds inside, because the guy on the sidewalk approaching the door at the same time has only made it a handful of steps past the door when she walks back out. Apparently Microsoft doesn’t have the budget for an editor good enough to properly fake it?
The other interesting thing in the commercial was when she says, “I’m just not cool enough to be a Mac person.” Hmmm. So I guess they’re going after the ten percent of the Mac computer market that doesn’t consider themselves cool? To top it all off, Lauren is an actress… apparently it’s hard to find someone on the street who would be excited to be given 700 bucks for a free Windows laptop? Heck, I’d take that deal (I’d just return it later and exchange it for something I’d actually use).
My two main thoughts on this campaign are thus:
1) If you feel you have to compete on price, then you’re pretty much admitting you don’t have the same quality of product. The whole ad is a sham of course, and it’s pretty easy to prove that the “cheaper” thing is as well. I won’t go into as much detail as I could, and in any case any Windows vs. Mac debate usually ends in name-calling because some people like Windows (I personally think they are simply used to it) and some people like the Mac OS, but if you only look at the fact that Apple controls most of the user experience by marrying hardware and software (which is what has made the iPod so dominant), while Microsoft has to contend with multiple hardware manufacturers for the computers, not to mention all the peripherals, video cards, etc., you can extrapolate that just in working around driver conflicts and viruses alone, Mac users are probably more productive overall. Let’s give them a ten percent advantage for the purposes of this point.
So let’s say you use your computer twenty hours a week. If you’re ten percent more productive over those twenty hours, you’ve gained two hours over your Windows counterpart. Over the course of a year, that’s 104 hours of more productivity. If you make $20 an hour, that’s $2,080 a year in time saved or productivity gained. Heck, cut it in half, and give the Mac a 5% advantage. Still over a grand. And that’s at $20 an hour; a lot of people make substantially more than that. In addition, Macs are not anywhere close to $1,000 more than their equivalent PC counterparts… and those savings, with whatever numbers you want to plug in there, are for just one year; most people keep their PC’s for three to five or more.
Personally, if I had to use a Windows machine I’d probably be about 50% as productive because I’d spend so much of my time being annoyed. On the other hand, my salty language vocabulary would expand significantly.
Throw on top of that the fact the Macs hold their resale value an order of magnitude better than virtually any PC. We should know; we take used Macs in trade all the time. Find out how much you can get for a five-year-old Windows laptop. Pretty much nothing. Compare that to the $700 or so you we’d give you for a five-year-old 17” PowerBook. Even if a Mac were many hundreds of dollars more than an equivalent Windows PC, in a few years you’d have gotten that difference back in cold hard cash, plus some.
If Microsoft’s marketing department ever takes on local amusement parks, you’re going to start seeing the slogan: “We’re Cheaper than Disneyland!”
Yeah, but…
2) No one with half a brain should really believe that having only one company in a market or industry is good for any consumer. It’s why we have anti-monopoly laws. What Microsoft is proving with this ad campaign is they don’t care a whit about the consumer, because obviously 90% isn’t enough for them. If Microsoft isn’t happy unless it’s a monopoly or near-monopoly, then it’s not happy unless it can exploit it’s customers to the fullest possible extent.
They dismissed Apple as irrelevant when they only had 5% of the market. But now that they’re making it into double digits, somehow this leviathan is getting a bit jumpy… with ads that scream, “Oh yeah? Oh yeah? Well… we’re cheaper, that’s what! Yeah, we’re cheaper! Take that you cool Apple users!”
But this message that “they really are cheaper” is just as fake as Lauren’s shopping trip into the “Mac Store.”
May 1st, 2009 at 11:19 am
Great article. Funny to see Microsoft stoop to such levels.
Moreover, I find it ironic that the smart-glasses donning, scarf wearing, hipster “Lauren” doesn’t think she’s “cool enough” to be a Mac person. I guess MS didn’t want to bolster their chubby hubby persona in which Apple has done such a fantastic job in branding.
Probably a good time for Microsoft to look into replacing their current marketing team.
May 7th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
to find out what the average PC user looks like… go to any Best Buy. Then go to an Apple Store and see what the Mac (and soon to be Mac) people look like. In my experience there is quite a difference.
What do looks have to do with it? Seriousness I would say about themselves AND their computing platforms. (Plus I hear PC guys bandying about a lot of jargon which doesn’t convince me they know anything. The Apple guy at BB on the other hand, seems to know both platforms, and these days if you ask, you will find they own Macs OR are going to get one.) Take that Mr. Ballmer.
May 7th, 2009 at 3:19 pm
meh.
and because of that, i’ll go into a long-winded story behind the “meh.”
i’ve been a macintosh owner for a whole 6 months now. it started 4 years ago with an ipod mini, the first apple product i ever owned. a few years after that, i started to consider a macbook, but after trying one out, was a bit deterred by the learning curve associated with familiarizing myself with a new OS considering i have extensive experience with windows. when the new unibody macbooks were released last year, the design put me over the top and decided to go for it last december.
after a couple of months with 2 laptops to allow me to dig deeply into the mac os and get really intimate with it before dumping my windows laptop, i then replaced my media center with the new mac mini after the recent refresh. i absolutely adore both of my macs, and am considering a mac pro (although a used one due to its steep price) for my graphics workstation/photo processor.
what do i love? the stability afforded by deep integration between hardware and software. the os and third party software is so much more powerful and efficient when developers can focus on a limited range of hardware. combined with my weakness in succumbing to my right brain’s love for Jony Ive’s clean, efficient, and understated design, the current generation of macs and their simplicity within and throughout is truly a match for me; my left brain is fed by the power, stability, and customization afforded by top of the line hardware and thoughtful software, while my right brain is appeased by graceful lines and the allure of forged and milled aluminum. then you top off this elemental sundae with the applecare cherry… if anything goes wrong and i cant fix it, there is an actual store i can bring my machine to filled with people who can.
and that’s where it ends. what i dont comprehend is the extreme “fanboyism”. apple chooses to know no bounds in the quest to build lustworthy computers: they build the best computer money can buy for the few rather than a mediocre computer for the masses.
the argument within this post sort of disregards the history between apple and microsoft back in 1997. no, microsoft didnt “bail out” apple, although it could be seen that way. more importantly, microsoft made a good-faith investment in apple. why? to ensure innovation through healthy competition and the only way to make microsoft’s products better was by making sure they had a worthy, healthy competitor in the marketplace.
i doubt this “attack” on apple by microsoft is truly what everyone thinks it is, but is more their attempt to capitalize on the current economic situation to try and tarnish the apple brand a bit. not so much to take back any marketshare, but to stop the bleeding or otherwise make people think twice about their priorities and how it should dictate their budget in these economic times. it’s less about wanting apple’s 10% than it is microsoft trying to help people forget about the vista faux pas.
people create a budget for their personal tech and justify their means. for some, only the what is necessary may be their approach, while others will spare no expense. but either way, i just dont understand the fanboy bashing of one system over the other, especially by a small but fervent group who “know” their system of choice is superior. if you’re confident in yourself, is there a need to brag?
i love my macs for what they are. but it seems the mac community has fallen for microsoft’s trolling hook, line, and sinker. and i’m, sad to say that because of that, i’d rather cover the logo on my laptop than to be “lumped in” with the more fanatical of mac users out there. why? because i know i chose a superior product and most of all, know WHY it is superior.
May 7th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Well, I don’t know how you use a PC, but I’m not constantly installing drivers, so you can subtract, oh I don’t know, 100 hours of time there. Installation of new hardware is usually pretty easy. Even if you’re installing a legacy product, driver installations aren’t constantly requiring time. Last time I checked, once I installed something, I was done installing it.
Mac’s may have the easy life now when it comes to virus’, but that is quickly changing. Even still just about any free antivirus and a simple $20 router ought to keep any PC pretty safe, save surfing random porn sites.
Even though I too think the commercial is silly, the arguments aren’t that far off. So Mac “marries” software and hardware, la di da. If anything, that just means there is less competition so they can charge what ever they want… which they do. Why should I have to pay $40 more for RAM when PC RAM has the same exact same specs, but MAC decided to make a RAM slot that has its notch 2 pins to the left just so people can buy anything else. Oh and wait, “you mean I can’t just replace the battery in my iPhone/pod…”
Maybe your right and Microsoft is scared. I have to hand it to Apple, they know how to market. If I didn’t know anything about computers, I would believe all their commercials too. “Only on the iPhone”? My ass…
I think I’ll stick with my $700 PC (specs better than the top of the line Mac Pro single Quad core Apple, $2500) and my HTC G1 with an open-source Android OS (soon to have Flash support, can your iPhone do that?).
Is this the part where I start the name calling?
May 7th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
As a mac-user for a number of years in both a design and marketing career, I believe it’s safe to say, I’m NOT an Apple fanboy. I buy whatever works, that is fast, and give me the most performance for my dollar. My last computer was a Mac G5 Tower with 8GB of RAM and a 10k ROM hard drive with a terrabyte internal backup. I paid for this and upgraded it to my needs (design).
Right now, I am working on a work-issued 2.2Ghz MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM and connected to an external monitor. But here’s the kicker… I am typing in a form field in Windows Explorer 7 in Windows XP-SP2 in a Windows Environment.
Or in short, I am running two operating systems on my MacBook Pro.
And why?
I need an environment I can test in (for web apps) and also be able to keep compatible with other Windows users internally and externally.
So the compromise.
I personally like the Windows ads. They make sense to me. I am one of the rare ones who finds Vista a fairly easy and visually appealing OS. And given that one can get a good Vista laptop for around $600 to $700… for the rest of America who just needs email, internet, some web sharing, photo stuff… I can see why people would go for a $700 15.4″ Cinema PC versus stripped down (cheesy) white MacBook 13″.
Flame-suit on…
May 7th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
I have a postproduction facility, with ALL the computers being Macs even the administrative ones, do you think I have a inhouse tech guy? no because I have almost no problems, and the problems I have I can resolve them myself, lololol
I could do that with a windows base facility?
May 7th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Having worked extensively with Macs and Windows PCs, I generally subscribe to the “whatever gets the job done” philosophy. With this said, a few years ago I retired my last Windows XP laptop and our network is now 100% Apple / Mac. Subjectively, I prefer the elegance of Mac OS X, and objectively, I much prefer iLife/ iWork plus the multitude of excellent inexpensive productivity apps available on the Mac. I’m not a gamer and would rather buy a Wii or Xbox for gaming anyway.
Here is what always surprises me in the whole Windows-versus-Mac debate. Mac OS X is Unix. Unix is a big deal yet this is seldom talked about. It is bulletproof, time-tested and has an excellent pedigree, e.g AT&T, Bell Labs, C, Kernighan & Ritchie et al. Unix is the grandaddy of mainstream enterprise-level OSs.
Conversely, Windows on top of MSDOS was conceived as a single-user GUI to compete with the likes of GEM on top of DR DOS. Reality is that Windows was pushed into the enterprise from this starting position for marketing reasons, and this is why Windows has more demonstrated security holes than Unix which was born in and for the enterprise.
May 8th, 2009 at 9:52 am
I’m damn well cool enough to use a Mac, but I don’t “think Mac”. So I use a PC. Lot’s cheaper and when I do finally break it, just get another. I do NOT, however, have to use M$ on the PC. I use Ubuntu…and OpenOffice…and anything else I need that is open sourced. I am NOT technical. But rather practical. I do enjoy watching the M$ people squirm.
May 10th, 2009 at 12:34 am
I think someone is missing a technical point of having XP on a Mac. Apple would not pay Microsoft for the API to the NTFS file system XP is designed for. So with that said, doesn’t a segment of the Mac hard drive have to be set aside for FAT32 file system, which wastes space on large drives? Or does some other software have to intercept those disk drive parameters and convert it to what the Mac actually uses? That takes up CPU time for the conversion of hosting XP on a Mac with OS X. What does OS X (Unix) do in this case? I would love to see a technical answer, since I can’t find it anywhere. What is the Mac file system called?
Why does Apple limit the size of the hard drive for it’s users and doesn’t offer a terabyte RAID 5 array for video and the new DSLR cameras that put out at least 25Mb per RAW shot plus up to 15Mb of JPG at the same time?
That eats up disk space pretty fast, not to mention saving the fixed up RAW files in addition, so your looking at possibly 100Mb per shot. That is what the entry to the DSLR market is offering for a 12.2 MPixel camera. They do have a 15MPixel camera, and a PCMCIA Type II hard drive is required for it, not a memory chip.
Professional DSLR photography is beginning to be so disk intensive that manufacturers have called a halt to the CMOS density at 12.2MPixels. There is nothing between the top of the line point and shoot 5MPixels that generate JPG only and the 10MPixels of last year’s DSLR model.
So when you make that jump into the DSLR line, you have to be prepared with ample disk space. The editing software works on a Mac and PC. So if it’s going to be disk intensive, I’d rather have a RAID 5 array to handle it. RAID is a very proven technology that lets you get away with not backing up files so often since there’s a backup built into it anyway.
This probably means that I would have to get a Mac Pro to do what I need to do and pay exorbitant prices for Mac RAID capability - if it exists. In this case, I’d rather go the PC route since the price would be substantially cheaper because I can get the RAID equipment at Fry’s Electronics and put it in myself with money left over to buy a standard Mac too.
I hear all the video people using Macs for production and postproduction. Sure MPEG files are nowhere near what DSLR RAW files will take up, Where are you going to be getting the needed disk space from? 250Gb is not enough to hold DSLR plus everything else. Am I missing something about the Mac Pro’s storage capabilites? I’m sure I’d love to have the new 192 core graphics card to speed things up as well and that has it’s own requirements on either system.
May 14th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
In the Mac world, we don’t really want to run Windows but sometime you just gotta. And yes, it does take up some of the hard drive but it’s not really a big deal.
Apple doesn’t per se, limit the size of hard drives. One can always upgrade their hard drive size and hard drive sizes are blossoming in ever larger sizes but most folks don’t RAID 5 on the boot drive. They’d use external hard drives for that or if you did go with a Mac Pro Tower, you could add a couple of Terabyte drives and raid those through a software raid. Software raid is not the most effective solution though which is why most media folk working with large files would be working with external raid storage. There is a wide range of reasonably priced external hard drives/raid arrays that are designed to be used in a variety of RAID configurations and many of these are configured with the photo and video professionals in mind and offer great tech support. Check out: http://www.powermax.com/cats/disp/storage
Wow, I missed the part about the manufacturers calling a halt to producing point n shoots over 5 megapixels! Interestingly, there are loads of so called point and shoot digital cameras that offer well over 5 megapixels, well up into the 12 megapixel range by all the major camera manufacturers and you can find them here at Powermax. There’s lots of choices but check out this one:
http://www.powermax.com/parts/show/q07288
And it’s true that these incredibly large files sizes and RAW files eat up all kinds of gigabytes so for sure there are ongoing discussions on how to archive files but again, one rarely stores files long term on your main hard drive when you are working with files of that magnitude. Many photo and video professionals are looking at Blu-Ray as an option for long term storage.
May 16th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
All I’ve ever owned have been Apple computers. My first was an old Apple IIe, bought just months before the first Mac was introduced. I used that computer for nearly 10 years before upgrading, and when I did upgrade, I bought a Mac Performa 450, and the Apple IIe was given to an organisation that was donating computers to schools. From there I upgraded to a Quadra 650, then a Powermac 8500, then a Sage iMac, then an eMac, and now a 12″ G4 iBook (and am now considering upgrading to a refurbished MacBook). Every one of my computers, when they were retired, were still working. Anytime I’ve had a problem with any of my Macs (which has been EXTREMELY rare), I was always able to fix it myself (usually by rearranging how the old extensions loaded on the pre-UNIX OS).
By contrast, I’ve lots of friends who have gone through more PCs than I have Macs, and it’s not because they’re retiring those machines voluntarily. It’s because something has gone so horribly wrong that they’re forced to buy something new. It really goes to prove the old adage that you get what you pay for. So, I think the BMW/Yugo comparison is apt. It’s like buying a cheap pair of tennis shoes from Wal-Mart just to save money versus buying a good pair of Nikes from Foot Locker that will last three times as long.
At work, with PCs so ubiquitous, I’ve used only PCs. However, I work in the cellular industry, maintaining switching equipment. Every PC has had some version of UNIX installed. And if they weren’t PCs, then they were Sun MicroSystems workstations, or even Silicon Graphics workstations. But all ran UNIX. The only PCs at work that run Windows are those used for email.
I can remember once talking to the head of the IT department for a company I was working for a few years back, and I was astounded to hear her say (and I’m not kidding here) that she was actually FRIGHTENED! by the reliability of the Mac OS.
Because I’ve chosen to use Macs at work, I can add to my resume that I’m not only familiar with PCs and Windows and UNIX, but Macs, as well. While Macs are not the primary machine found in the offices of cellular companies, they are found there, and when I can show that I am versed in UNIX, Windows, and the Mac OS, that tells an employer that I’m flexible and that I can learn new things easily. So, there’s more to Macs than just increasing one’s productivity. In my case, I think it’s also increased my marketability when it comes to looking for work.
May 16th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
EDIT OF MY PREVIOUS COMMENT: The opening sentence to the last paragraph should read: “Because I’ve chosen to use Macs at home,…”
May 19th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
I’m responsible for a dozen networked PC’s at my day job, and run Macs at home. There’s a good reason for that.
A good 20% of my tech time at work is me being called over by some baffled co-worker who wants to know “Why is it doing this?” Most of the time, I admit I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I tell them the computer is confused, and that’s why you aren’t getting work done, so reboot and see if that fixes it.
They do and it does.
I’m getting paid to do that at work. At home, working on my cat advice website… not so much.
I don’t have these problems at home.