Apple's panties in bunch over Microsoft ads Apple's legal arm asked Microsoft to pull its ongoing series of Laptop Hunter ads, according to one Microsoft exec. On Wednesday, at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference 2009 (WPC09), the company's COO, Kevin Turner, gave a traditional partner-stroking talk that alternated between thanking and exhorting the assembled …
Which is more probable - that someone in the Apple legal department, instead of contacting the Federal Trade Commission (the most probable step) or sending a letter to the Microsoft Legal Department (the "nice" option before writing to the FTC), calls up the Chief Operating Officer of Microsoft and whines about their inaccurate commercials - or that the Chief Operating Officer of Microsoft is lying in order to try and boost support for their products?
Heck, even giving him the benefit of the doubt, it's much more probable that someone at Microsoft actually called the COO as a prank...
Microsoft should keep running them. Mac's are nice if you're rich, but over priced if you're not. Naturally those who have them will argue that fact. Why over pay for something that is "stylish" when you can get more for less by thinking out of the box. Typing this on a dual booting Acer laptop that runs Vista and Ubuntu. Won't be buying an Apple or a "Pear" any time soon to run either Windoez or Mac OS
I couldn't watch the I'm mac commercials, they made me so angry. They were outright lying (at the very least expanding the truth) about everything they said. Hate me if you want, but vista isn't THAT bad of a product (it could have been better).
I waited and waited for a response from Redmond Marketing, and then they came out with that Seinfeld CRAP. I hope someone got fired over that.
I'm glad they came out with these ads. They make sense, they're true, and best, it hits Apple in their most vulnerable spot.
/i'm not trying to troll
//i'm a pc
Now it's apple's panties. Is ElReg developing a knicker fetish? If so, the average age of your readership will drop another 5 or 6 years, and Sarah will go apoplectic[1] when moderating ;-)
That said, ALL advertising is misleading. It's not designed to accurately display the goods/services being pushed, but rather to display the goods/services being pushed in a light that'll convince the GreatUnwashed to purchase said goods/services.
[1] I'd have said "have a stroke", but that would probably not pass moderation ...
@Cirby: Though Apple and Microsoft in the public eye are bitter enemies, lets not forget there are numerous microsoft products for Apple, and their CEOs regulary appear on each others stages. This is more of two highly competitive collegues trying to best each other than two comanies hoping the other dies. Though a call to the FCC and FTC would likey have had these comemrcials yanked, possbilt with fines attached, Apple had the coutest to "ask" they be removed now that pricing was in fact in line. Though, this could easily be a microsoft prank as there's no counter from Apple yet....
@Eric: Price compare a machine from Apple and any equivalent machine you can get in a retail store. Apple is in line, and often CHEAPER. No, there's no $500 mac notebook, but there's no $11,000 deisel powerd utility truck either. The mac is not sold to be a generic web surfing laptop, its sold to be a machine to edit video, manage tens of thousands of images, and display your life for others to see. You can't do that on a piece of plastic crap with a $500 price tag. Look at a Dell Studio 14". the closest config possible is $1179 to Apple's $1049, and the apple has better specs and features (and in internal CD drive). Sure, the Dell STARTS at $579, but with crap components, no bluetooth, Home Basic, Wireless G, a 2 hr battery, and no optical drive at all. Bringing it up to Apples specs (and bumping the drive in the apple to a 250GB to match) makes the dell cost more, and that's not including having to buy a few hundred dollars in photo and video software the mac comes with free.
@reality: In the US, adds like this are "questionable" and the FTC rarely acts. In other nations, failure to make a DIRECT feature comparison on price would be illegal, and serious fines for microsoft's commercials would be sent flying. in other countries, simply comparing yourself to anyone is illegal, you can only speak to your own stats and prices and leave the consumer to check for themselves. Fact is, compaying a 15" pro series macbook with a dozen more features and faster compnents to a 13" plastic POS for $780, especially when the price displayed in the commercial is $400 higher than accurate pricing today, Microsoft will either comply, or the media attention will have the FTC looking into it without Apple's insistance directly. (especially when their suppoosed "random" people have turned up in at least one commercial to be actors, and they're clearly "paid" for their performance, and are aware it;s a promotion and aware of the vendor in question).
The machine that apple sell that's comparable to the XPS laptop that they buy in the comercial is actually the MacBook -- which is only $999, so yeh, there's a deal of lying going on from MS here. Not forgetting ofc that the person in question here could have got a student discount from apple, meaning it's only $949, and gets an iPod Touch thrown in for free.
Apple isn't such a bad deal after all.
Stevie J called his mamma first but she told him to stop whining and grow up. So he called Bill G. (you remember him, he gave Apple $5M to stay alive) but Bill was out being a good guy so he then called the Microsoft receptionist. The dear lady just didn't know what to do so she transferred him.
Poor old Stevie J is just a basketball being passed hand to hand while they decide what they'll do as the ad campaign continues.
Classic corporate clown act.
Journalism at the Reg continues to slip. Panties in a bunch with no mention as to what kind of panties they were. Something suitably metrosexual I'll wager.
I love stories like this. Why? As much as MS have their faults Macs are just the same but for more money you can have shiny cases and non-removable batteries while remaining thousands of times more pretentious than anyone else.
Even U2 are selling CrackBerries now.
Your new British->American dictionary tells me that "panties in a bunch" is the American version.
And yes, I'm a Mac. Those "unscripted" laptop hunter ads are the bees knees. I always need a good laugh, and they're pretty good for that. But then so are the I'm a Mac ads. Knowing that they make a Windoze fanboy (or fanboi) mad is extra icing on the cake.
Oh yeah, I'm an American too.
"But these are adverts, an artistic form in which truth takes a back seat to impact."
As are press releases. I suspect the phone dialog was fabricated. We are talking about the creator and master of FUD here.
OS/2 was FUDed to death, as was Novell. Both great products. Netscape got FUDded and look where we are with IE. Thank god Mozilla lives on. Word Perfect got FUDded. Many people thought it was far superior to Word at the time. Linux got FUDded but recovered. Had it not been FUDded, it may be further along in overall usage.
FUD is Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt for those that haven't read about it.
I've seen the laptop hunter ads. They are the best ads out of Redmond in years. Good for them.
As for people like Ben Lambert getting angry at the Mac ads? I can understand maybe if you didn't find them funny, but angry? How could they make you angry?
Overall the Apple ads are more entertaining, but the MS ads might have more impacts with hard numbers (however questionable they may be.)
Just don't understand how the Apple ads could make someone angry... Fail because Ben Lambert must take things too seriously.
Hard to believe anyone would be influenced by the MS ads except on price, which just confirms Apple's better market image.
The Apple campaign was quite persuasive.
But the parody is in a league of its own compared to either Apple or MS. If I was hiring at those companies' ad agencies I'd be looking at the talents behind Frank.
Comparing Dell with Apple is like comparing a Perodua Myvi with a Mini. Sure the Perodua will get you to the shops every week, but it's cheap, nasty, plasticky, rattly, squeaky, badly made and above all uninspiring. If you have to have a laptop just to get the job done then a Dell will be fine. If, however you want something well designed and well made that will last and inspire you, buy the Apple.
I'm not even talking particularly about software here, personally I prefer Linux because it's easier to create the user interface you want. Rather than have somebody else's idea of the perfect GUI thrust upon you. Nor am I particularly having a go at Microsoft, you can get quality hardware to run Windows, but not at bargain basement prices.
As such Microsoft's advertisement is a crock of shit. "This Perodua Myvi has four wheels and an engine, so does this Mini. The Perodua is £4000 cheaper. Therefore the Perodua is a better buy." Yeah right.
OK, so you'll have to search around to find a decent notebook without Windoze pre-installed, but chances are, if you do, you may be able to get it significantly cheaper than one with. And you don't get half the HDD filled up with 30 day trial versions of software designed to make the "Software Bundle" look impressive.
I put together my own boxes. This means that I get a far better system for considerably less than what I would pay for a system put together by some marketing dork.
Yes, I have one Winblows box on my network. That is used for gaming and that is all it is used for. Everything else is done on a Linux box, including the second hand laptop next to my bed.
But, the point of the MS ads seems to be that you have a greater selection of laptops (specifically) in the under $1000 price range when you look at windows machines vs apples, and, that due to that increased competition, the hardware >in that range< is better value for money than on the apple side.
After reading all the people saying "oh this is so true" and "this is total BS, MS are lying liars" I figured I'd do some non-scientific investigation. Simply, taking the lead from one of MS's ads (the one with the kid), I looked at prices that Best Buy has for both.
In the under $1000 range ONLY.
Mac has 1 computer in this range. a Apple® - MacBook® with 13.3" Display - White for $999.99.
MS runners have 5 computers in this range (in laptops, only, not counting netbooks). They range from $929.99 to $999.99.
So it looks like the claim of greater range of competition is accurate. So, next I looked at the variety of hardware involved.
The cheapest of the MS laptops has the same size screen, faster CPU, double the memory, over double the hard drive space. Both have Nvidia graphics chips, however I'm not certain on the relative strengths of each. Both end with Ms, so they are both meant for mobile use (no surprise) the mac one is a GeForce 9400M, while the Samsung one is a 105M.
Looking at the remainder of the MS laptops, it seems that they all, predictably, have better stats in one or more ways, than the cheapest of their ilk... and thus better than the mac.
Thus the assertion that you can get better value for money in low end laptops when buying MS-running hardware than a Mac holds true. But we all already knew that, I think.
Now, to the prices displayed. I only recall one actual price displayed on the commercials that I've seen. It could be that I was just unobservant, however I only recall them showing the register once... it had a price of $699 on it as they were saying that the total came out to be less than $1000 for everything. This is slightly misleading, I suppose, however, they didn't actually directly say that the laptop cost $699... any more than apple ads directly say that ALL PCs are virus ridden hell-traps of permanent drudgery, so I'll give them the same pass that apple gets: you're both a bunch of marketing liars <shrug> welcome to the pack with every other major company.
The reality
Mac are inferioir grossly over price generic x86 hardware in a shiny plastic case
It does not matter how many false advertising Ads Apple gets. That fact will never change.
idiots with a IQ in the lower single digit get a Mac. For the reste of us there is PC With CHOICE AND COMPETITION.
I am too tech savy to be con into buying ANY apple products.
I use Windows, but lets run the Apple Elimination with a PC... using Linux..
"Hi, I'm a Mac"
"And I'm a PC (running Linux) there are tons and tons of PC's out there (all capable of running a wide variety of Linux) so I brought them along to find the one thats best for her"
"Whistle - thats a lot of PC (shit, consumer choice and not locked down?)"
"So what do you want?"
"Well I want a computer with a big screen"
"Ok, small screen computer, beat it"
"Well I want a fast processor"
"Ok, slow PC's beat it (even though Linux doesn't really need a fast processor, and hey, its Linux, you could have a PC running in SMP with 4 CPU's, real CPU's too! Hell, you can even turn off one of the CPU's and remove it, whilst the OS is still running - apparently)"
"I just need something that just works, without crashing, or viruses or a ton of headaches"
"What the fuck? Are you stupid or something? Do you actually have the first iota of knowledge about a computer? The OS generally is a stable as hell and doesn't crash, its the applications that crash. But hey, I'm running Ubuntu, it just works, is stable and yeah, how many more viruses does the Mac have compared to Linux? Wait, Mac, why are you leaving? Oh you have viruses, sorry dude"
Moral of the story, Linux guys get all the girls.....
I'm myself, am a big UNIX/Linux user so I run Linux on a couple second hand laptops from IBM or HP. For the most part, these laptops work fine.
For my family, I switched from a so so PC hardware running Windows to a iMac. Working in IT all day long (Storage Admin working on EMC/HDS/IBM gear) I just got tired of coming home and working on the PC regarding some stupid issue. Of course it didn't happen every day but enough to drive me crazy. So I decided to get a iMac for my family to use. I suppose if I got better hardware on my family PC running Windows I might not have had as many issues, but the iMac has turn out to be solid.
for example, comparing Apple lappies to similar models from Dell, Tosh, HP/Compaq, Asus, Acer
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-10442_7-6511774-1.html is a good start, with lots of benchmarks, but not very recent
http://www.macworld.com/article/139901/2009/04/mac_windows_1000.html is newer, but about the MacBook, and doesn't list any bookmarks
worth spending a bit of time on it yourself, really, isn't it?
<QUOTE>And obviously too tech savvy to be able to spell or type in English.</QUOTE>
Ad hominem arguments are much lower on any scale than bad spelling or grammar.
Ad hominem arguments based on bad spelling and grammar are even lower than that.
Keep your Mac. Don't care if you enjoy or not, but you sound so smug I suspect you do.
Yeah, what he said.
Microsoft is basically lying that these people are "normal people". They're actors, paid to select a Windows running product. Which is ok, but they shouldn't lie and pretend that they are, in fact, "people on the street". Apple might stretch things in their ads, but they don't outright lie in them.
As for prices: when you compare apples to apples, Apple prices are in line (except for what they charge for memory, that's a total and utter rip off). It's when you start comparing Apple to rotting unidentified biological matter that Microsoft and their shills get to say that Apple is "way overpriced".
As said before Apple are pretty good at lying. Security through obscurity is not security.
As for price, last I checked, for a PC with X hardware you pay least if you make it, about 80-500 more to get it pre made with windows at the same spec and the same difference again for a mac.. Back when a slightly OCed E6700 gave you a desktop processor money couldn't buy I built a system for about £1400, my friend spent the same amount on a mac, got ram that was one step down, a processor one step down, instead of a HD2900 graphics card it had the midrange card which was about 40% of the cost and performance ... Even with those price cuts, I imagine PCs with equivalent spec are faster. The price cut will have done a lot to help but in the end you pay a LOT for OSX. Microsoft should just post edit the videos and be done with it.
I have to agree about the Mac vs PC ads, they were bad enough in the UK (Dave, Rob, what were you thinking?) but I was on holiday in the US and saw one of the ads on the TV, it seemed like they were just saying that Bill Gates, and therefore by extension all Windows users were socially retarded idiots and that Steve Jobs and therefore by extension any Mac user was the coolest thing since James Bond. I was quite shocked.
I generally speaking detest any of the new form of advertising whereby direct specific comparisons are place on the major competitor, you know the stuff: At Tesco X costs Y, but at Asda it costs Z, it just makes me think that everything else is not comparible. If a product can't sell itself and needs its competition to be sold, it's probably not that good.
"All those did was make Mac owners look like smug..."
They got something right then, eh?
This is the thing that gets me about Apple product owners. They feel the overwhelming need to gab on about their purchase. Presumably as an attempt to offset the fact that they've just paid a good wad for it.
But what do they say about their shiny white gadget? They say it's _so_ easy to use, looks _great_ and is so _stable_ and _immune_ to viruses.
My experience? I've no love for the iPod wheel and Macs don't have a delete key. 'Easy to use' is a matter of opinion, based on what you're used to as much as anything else. What they really mean is 'they do things for you'. Looks are a matter of opinion & a decent looking laptop or phone is not hard to find these days. And I've not had a virus since the days of surfing without anti-virus in Win95. Can't remember the last crash I had in XP. Vista might well drag it's heels sometimes, but (to me) it seems to be even less likely to actually fall over than XP.
Apple owners _choose_ to buy Apple, yes. But their choice is to pay up so they _don't have to choose_. Windows users just accept that MS is a totally sufficient de facto standard (in the vast majority of cases). Linux users are either doing very specialist tasks or using it based on an ideology - even the splendid Linux Mint is not up to spec compared to XP/Vista for many users.
. . . is that Apple lowered their notebook prices after the laptop hunter ads started running, making them even more misleading. Perhaps not a response triggered by the ads; just as likely MS knew Apple would reduce prices this year and got in first.
The funny thing about it is that Macbooks are also PC's, and plenty of PC laptops are more expensive than Macbooks. So logically the ads are simply telling us that if your primary interest is sticker price, Apple don't make the bendy plastic notebook you'll be getting, with undersized battery, subsidized by nagware, with a cut down Home version of the OS.
And, sensitive Microtards everywhere, the "I'm a Mac" ads didn't tell you you are stupid; you're not: the actors represent the computers, not their owners. The ads point out the many stupid things about your computer, starting with the fact that it's on permanent energy sapping antivirus medication.
Oh for the love of Pete. I was going to stay out of this one, because Mac vs PC discussions always devolve into religeous flame wars, but really.
Geoffrey, you can't attack one side of an argument for making an ad-hom attack in response to an ad-hom attack. And yes, "idiots with a IQ in the lower single digit get a Mac" is an ad-hom attack, and it *is* grammatically incorrect. If (Mectron) you're going to insult me, please try to get it right.
John, he's right. And there's several better ways to point out the holes in Mectron's arguments; such as for example the fact that my Macbook's case is made of solid aluminium, presenting a rather more solid form-factor than the average Dell. Or the fact that a Mac *is* a personal computer, and is such is *part* of the competition.
Yes, I have a Macbook. However I'm typing this on my office desktop PC, which like my home desktop runs Windows. Vista here, W7RC at home. I'm also personally responsible for several Linux (mastly Debian, one Ubuntu) servers, so I feel sufficiently to say the following:
Windows historically presents a pretty bad user interface. This has been improved with W7 and Vista, although Vista screwed the pooch with UAC (which has been toned down in W7). The downside to that is that the old familiarity has gone away. Popular Linux window managers (both Gnome and KDE) make me grimace; other WMs tend to be insufficiently well-featured. OSX provides a wonderful UI - it is widely acknowledged that Apple are the masters at this - and being based on BSD it allows me to Get Shit Done(tm) in the same way that Linux does. However, yes, the hardware is overpriced.
Basically, it boils down to what you can afford. Windows is okay because it's familiar (up until recently, anyway) and is much better from a stibility perspective than it used to be; Linux is stable, powerful and very customiseable if you've got the time and inclination to learn; and OSX is stable at the cost of expensive hardware, powerful and very easy to use.
There. Now can we please learn to live and let live?..
"My experience? I've no love for the iPod wheel and Macs don't have a delete key. 'Easy to use' is a matter of opinion, based on what you're used to as much as anything else."
I like the iPod wheel. It sure beats having 8 or 9 seperate buttons like my last MP3 player (which for the record ended up full of fluff from my pocket and volume up stopped working)
That's just by-the-by.
The real point in my reply is to point out that Macs DO have a FUCKING delete key.
I'm tired of hearing this lame old duck being quacked. Some Mac laptops don't have one but then my PC laptop doesn't have a numloc key, so what? If you've got more than one hand (and one brain cell) you can easily press the 'fn' key..!
Just for the record, I "grew up" with DEC Alphas, Solaris boxen and HP unix machines (as well as Amigas lol). When I got my first Windows PC it was like getting kicked repeatedly in the nuts. Not much has changed except that their shoes are now a little more polished (and you can get games - big wow). That pretty much says it all about your "ease of use" argument, doesn't it?
I use Linux (CentOS and Red hat flavours), Windows XP, Solaris 10, and Mac OSX at work - I have 5 screens _and_ still need a KVM! - and each have their advantages/failings. Based on my experience with them all four years ago when I had to pay out _my_ money for a laptop I ditched Windows and bought a G4 Mac.
It was the best choice I made.That was OS X 10.3, and since then it's performed faultlessly and reliably, and the upgrades to later OS versions - it's now on 10.5 - have actually made it run faster. You can't say that about a PC, especuially if you're doing video work. At the same time it has a better UI than linux (OK, subjective statement, YMMV), but still has the BSD underpinnings that made setting it up and running it as a XAMP server a piece of piss. Plus it gets all the command line tools linux developers take for granted.
Cost to buy might have been more than a Windows PC, but for TCO I think my Mac has nothing to prove.
On the train yesterday, all of the older PC-laptops were showing scuffs where the shiny-grey-plastic coating had worn through to the underlying off-white plastic. The MacBooks that I saw (including mine) were - although scratched - still pristinely white.
Build quality matters (at least to me)
Problem with Laptop Hunters is that they are "bending" the truth so far they are pretty near the blatantly fraudulent territory. They also show now respect for consumers' intelligence. The whole thing goes terribly well with Microsoft in terms of low-style dodgyness, but that doesn't make those terrible ads any better. They are shameful and if they were not able to create endless flamethreads fueled by the wrath of 13-year-old fanboys, they would have never made it on-screen.
I'd also say it's all a hoax. You don't fuck with Apple Legal as far as I'm informed.
Did some price checking the other day for a mate who wanted a laptop. Nothing fancy, just for interwebbing etc. For £400 I found him a 2.5ghz dual core, with 4gb ram and 500 gb hdd. (From ebuyer i think) MacBook Pro at a similar spec was pushing £1700. Yeah the mac is pretty with a slightly quicker cpu but who on earth would spend £1000 more for almost the same spec but in a shiny case.
Beer cos its friday and soon I will be drowning in the stuff :)
The mac ads while mildly amusing where truly awful, typical American up-front BS advertising. Pitch it anyway you like, then if you get slapped, pay the fine and re-write the add to remove the single offending part. They were really having a serious go at Windows specifically and it was not comfortable to watch them BS so much. Windows it a great O/S, if it's setup correctly, if it's nurtured correctly, but no average Joe punter clicks away on email links and web-ads without a care in the world and then wonders why he has to pay PC World 265 sovs to fix his PC ( yes PCW do charge that for a complete "healthcheck"! ).
I own a Mac and am happy to be away from Redmond, but come on Jobs play nice with little Billy or you'll both be facing opposite corners of the room and then send to bed early with tanned hides!!
The Macbook PRO that you are referring to is the £1699 15" MBP. The CHEAPEST (in caps as not to confuse) laptop with the CLOSEST spec on eBuyer was this one http://www.ebuyer.com/product/167405. Still a lot cheaper at £941, but not £400 as claimed, and cannot really be considered to have a similar spec anyway. To clarify, a similar spec would be 2.8GHz Core 2 Duo T9600, 500GB HDD, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 9400M AND 9600M GT with 512MB RAM (yes, the MBP that you are talking about has both), with a battery life of 7 hours. As an "interwebbing" machine, it's overkill to say the least. This is machine is aimed at professional designers, photographers and their ilk. As far as I can tell, you cannot get the spec that you "found" for £400 - the Acer Aspire 5935G has a 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo P7550, 500GB HDD, 4GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT 130M - in no way is this a fair comparison! The Mac has a better, faster and more expensive processor; faster RAM and 2 much better graphics cards. The only thing going for the model on offer at eBuyer is the Bluray drive - and that's not saying much IMHO! It's like going out to by a little run-about, comparing a Yaris to a Landrover and deeming them to be similar (they've both got wheels and a boot) and saying the Landrover is a ripoff. It is if all you need is a Yaris. Come back with like for like, and I bet Apples price will be there, or there abouts...
hehe i may have done a bit of generalising there and the specs are a bit different but still I couldnt believe the cost difference between a cheap laptop and a slighly better specced mac. Tis Huge!! I stay away from macs cos I like my games but im all for choosing the right tool for the job whether its a mac or pc but OMG macs are pricey! And isnt the OS based on a flavour of unix/linux? So shouldnt it be free? Could be completely wrong here but im sure that the mac os was developed from opensource..
Beer again, cos its nice :)
OS X is UNIX. There is actually a good description of it at Wikipedia that explains its development. The underlying kernel (XNU) is opensource and available for free.
You are right, the kit is expensive, but by no means as expensive as some of the equivalent PC available - especially when you consider what Dell expects people to pay for the Macbook Air equivalent, the Adamo! I'd also argue that a T9600 Core 2 Duo is not just slightly better than a P7550 Core 2 duo, as are 2 graphics cards (Nvidia GeForce 9400M and 9600M) vs. 1 Nvidia GeForce GT 130M! That's another debate though.
Beer, have one one me!
I just bought my first personal laptop (used company stock before) a Dell Studio XPS 16. I got most of the part upgrades minus a BlueRay drive or 9 cell battery. This machine is the closest you can get to a Macbook in styling and features (minus battery life). I spoke with a sales person and got a better config and deal by using Dell Financing (paid off immediately, I don't work for Dell)
My Systems specs:
XPS 1640, Intel Core 2 Duo T9550(2.66GHz/1066Mhz FSB/6M L2 Cache)
4GB, DDR3, 1067 MHz 2 Dimm
500GB 7200RPM Free Fall SensorSeagate Hard Drive
ATI Mobility RADEON HD 3670 - 512MB
8X DVD+/-RW Slot Load Drive
16.0 inch Wide Screen 16:9 1080p FullHD RGBLED LCD
3 year warrenty
$1,585.84 (including taxes and shipping)
Similarly speced (slightly smaller display, added 3 year warrenty, Macs have better batteries, weaker video card) Macbook Pro 15
$2,498.00 (free shipping, not sure about taxes)
So, Apple fanboys....STFU
Can you?
I've never looked, Apple's all about overpriced junk. It might look pretty for a couple of months, but let's face it, it won't last, it's technology, only people with more money than sense buy that crap, iPhones, iPods included, like buying a Landrover when all you need is a Yaris, it's about status, some people feel the need to supplement their status to others by buying this sort of rubbish.
I don't feel the need to supplement my status, and my dick is of adequate size.
If you can't buy one without paying for OSX then that's got to be as bad as or worse than MS?
In the laptop hunter commercials M$ says it will pay to pick a computer.
They never say but imply if the cooing coed goes Mac they will pay also.
It's not very fair if the coed is told pick a PC and it's free but pick a mac and its out of your own wallet.
Then again this is a commercial and M$ is fond of telling porkies so maybe the question answers itself.
@Dustin 1: That model you got must have been on special offer or you got lucky. In the UK, that spec XPS costs £1,561.01 inc VAT (tax) and delivery - the Equivalent Macbook Pro, £1499. Looking on the Dell US website, that machine costs $1669 after an arbitrary $304 retraction from its 'original' price of $1975. the Equivalent Macbook Pro is $2149. Which is more, but not quite as sever as you are making out - especially when you consider that Dell have this model on permanet special offer and are taking big losses ATM. Add adobe elements to it (photoshop and Premiere) to (sort of) make up for iLife and the actual price becomes $All the US prices Exclude tax and delivery. Windows Fanboy, an apology please...
@Richard 120: I wrote loads having a go back, but I chose to delete it. You're just an opinionated prick. You may be happy with the size of your dick, but I bet it doesn't get used much.
Let me clarify my statement.
First, there are always differences in prices for the same exact products “across the pond”. Generally the UK tends to pay more from what I understand. How exactly the different vendors modify their prices I cannot begin to speculate about. I also cannot comment on profit margins.
Second, I was attempting to highlight the price differences at the hardware level only. Let me start by describing how it was that I came to the prices and specs for the two machines. I will address your software complaint afterwards. I also have to question your method of configuration for the Mac you specified, did you change the HD to the 500GB 7200 RPM option and add the 3 year support contract? I think not.
The exact Dell system that I configured could not be done so through the Dell sales web portal. My main concern was that I required a 7200 rpm hard disk. I therefore contacted a sales representative via phone to determine if I could get such an option. I could and was offered a discount for talking to a sales rep, plus I was offered a further discount if I chose to purchase by opening a Dell Financial Services account. I made the purchase after I was approved for said account, intending to make payment in full as soon as possible (Which I did). The price that I listed is the total cost to me after making the one and only payment after delivery.
Now, the MacBook Pro 15” model which I configured on the Apple store portal is the 2.66 Ghz CPU model which has a base price of $1,999.00 listed as including free shipping and no indication of applicable taxes. I added the 7200 RPM 500GB drive option and the 3 year apple care option. These two options are what I decided best matched the machine to what I purchased, which brings the portal quoted cost to $2,498.00.
While I am uncertain of the options for purchase through Apple, I’d wager that the discounts that I received would not be mirrored. I’d have to say that your attempt at the comparison was flawed at best.
As for the free software bundle would you like to compare what comes bundled with the Dell systems. Or what I can download for free that far outperforms iLife for MY needs. I personally use drag and drop for photos and video as I like to keep all of my item organized on disk how I like it, not the software vendor. I then would download and use Gimp to manipulate photos. For a quick and dirty video editor, I would probably use the free software from Pinnacle/Avid called Video Spin. But for My needs, I would use Premier or Vegas.
So, no apology for you cousin. ;)
You might want to take a quick look in the mirror at your own sense of smug superiority. No Mac user I know is smug about using a Mac. They just realize that they once were like you too. Blinded by MS FUD and innacurate price comparisons, choosing a computer solely based on initial sticker price while ignoring the TCO, too blind to see that constant upkeep and care of a Windows machine is a unnecessary waste of their time, etc. What you misinterpret as smugness is the Mac user trying to open your overly sensitive ego up to the concept that there is a better way. It's much like a parent trying to teach a child a lesson to save them years of pain, and trying so hard that it makes the child angry. Is the parent smug? No. They are only trying to help. But, as they say, you can lead a horse to water. . . .
Go on have a go back, I'm quite amused you seriously think people always buy stuff because they need it?
I was playing on the fact that certain types of vehicle are viewed as compensation for those lacking in the tackle area, the actual size of my penis is absolutely none of your business I was making a point you don't seem to comprehend.
Whats to get, I can run any OS I feel like on hardware of my choosing at a cheaper cost for very similar internals. I can even run your precious OSX.......muahhhh hahahahahahahahha..... And what indicats that my purchase is a bargain basement machine? Considering Foxconn makes Apple's hardware, I would rethink your assumption.
Nice job stereotyping, quite a few of you.
I own a Mac laptop because it was a gift.
Choosing a Mac is choosing not to choose? That's arrogant presumption. Maybe the chooser decided he liked the Mac better? His priorities are not yours. Arguing on the basis that they are is just ego-centrism. Get over yourself.
Don't like Macs? Don't buy one. Don't like anybody who owns a Mac? Don't associate with them. Frankly, I have more important criteria for choosing my friends. But my priorities aren't yours. One of my criteria is depth of personality; I shan't be choosing anybody shallow enough to use laptop brand choice as their top criterion. I think that works out nicely, don't you?
You can run Linux on your PC? Good for you. I can run OS X, Linux, Windows, BSD, and probably a few others on my Mac. Everything you can, plus one. I know a guy who has a MacBook Pro and only runs Windows XP on it. Your point is...?
*peers at his keyboard* I see a key marked "delete" right here. OK, the MacBook layout isn't my favorite, I'll admit. OTOH I've run into some really crappy PC notebook keyboard layouts, and this one, if not ideal, is at least usable.
"Mac are inferioir grossly over price generic x86 hardware in a shiny plastic case"
That's odd. This is the best laptop I've ever owned. It's lasted 2 1/2 years and still going strong, the original battery has at least 95% capacity. It doesn't need major upgrades to run the latest OS, which is not an over-priced, under-performing, bloated piece of shit (IMHO) designed to force you to buy new hardware even if your old hardware works just fine. I use it daily. And while this one is in a shiny plastic case, a number of models are not. Seems to me that most PC laptops are made of generic x86 hardware and stuck in shiny plastic cases. In fact, I can't remember the last time I saw a Windows-based PC that didn't have a plastic case. As for over-priced, well, that's a matter of opinion. I'd say I've more than gotten my money's worth out of this computer.
"It does not matter how many false advertising Ads Apple gets. That fact will never change."
Sorry, your "facts" are not on a one-to-one correspondence with reality, we've already shown that.
""Apple owners _choose_ to buy Apple, yes. But their choice is to pay up so they _don't have to choose_."
"idiots with a IQ in the lower single digit get a Mac. For the reste of us there is PC With CHOICE AND COMPETITION."
It's odd that when people scream "choice!" the first thing they want to do is take choice away from the rest of us. I can choose to buy whatever computer I want. If I want to buy a Mac, that's a choice too. You've chosen to limit your choices by refusing to buy Mac. I have did not limit my choices, and in the end I chose a Mac; that doesn't mean I refused to consider PCs, it just means I didn't make the choice you would have. I think your logic is inverted -- I had more choices!
"crApple is just a fashion accessory for gay folks"
Yes, I'm happy with the Mac my wife bought me. What of it? ...Fashion accessory? No, actually, it doesn't match my shoes. I just use it as a computer.
I own both apple and windows pc's.
The mac is massively limited by it's cost, lack of support and upgrade ability. Great if you want to spend hours cataloguing your friends in iLife.
My MacBook's "SuperDrive" (which twat named it that?) has died just out of warranty, Apple want £200 for the parts alone (I can pick up an equivalent for less than £100) and they wanted another £150 to fit it. I sold my mini because I found no use for it.
For less than £300 i recently upgraded my Windows machine with a quad CPU, 4 gig of ram, ASUS motherboard (with splash top linux) and a decent ATI graphics card. It did not add to PC sales figures but then most Windows owners can install a driver without a support call.
Not hard to guess which company is ripping me off?
The MacBook won't get replaced.
The tards - well they deserve each other. Always saying how Apple's figures show that Mac's are selling more machines than anyone else and yet it still has less than 10% market share - same as last year, the year before and probably next year. Apple's failure to cash in on Vista's poor performance and refusing to create affordable netbooks and desktops will leave them in a poor position as Windows 7 files off the shelf faster than you can blink.
Even if I believed Macs lasted longer than PCs (I still haven't seen all these cheap POS computers that break down after 2 years as Mac fans will have you believe), PCs are easier and cheaper to fix anyway. And yes you can get more for your second hand Mac on ebay but this just highlights the inflated value of Macs. A second hand Mac is going to be more likely to breakdown and if it does will be more expensive to fix. I should know, its happened to me twice.
I can't stand the way Apple owners harp on about OSX being so much better than Windows. It just plain isn't and thats not a matter of opinion. I can understand its your preference, but at the end of the day Windows and OSX both are point and click. Do you really have trouble double clicking desktop icons? Using the Start Menu? Are you really baffled by Control Panel? Control Panel may have more options than System Preferences but its still one central location, just like a Mac. Stop exaggerating.
Another exaggeration Mac users make is the virus one. Keep your free virus checker up to date and you will be fine in Windows. It isn't a case of "buy a PC and straight away you will catch a virus" as seems to be the Mac user suggestion. In fact, buy a router and stick to sites you know and you can run without a virus checker too.
Integration of software and hardware basically means you can't eject a CD without being booted into OSX (yeah they fixed it in later Macs, should have done it sooner though). Not to mention that is pure marketing hype. If the OS can be run on a PC (and my PC does run it, and runs it faster than anything but the Mac Pro) that is not a very compelling argument for integration of software and hardware. The integration seems to consist of function keys controlling brightness/volume and not having a manual eject button.
So Macs look nice and run an operating system that you prefer to Windows, these things I can unnderstand you would pay a premium for. I can't stand all the bad mouthing and lies that come with it.
None of this makes MS any the better for their business practices, but Apple are the pots calling the kettle black arse as far as I'm concerned.
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