Apple fanboys are foaming at the mouth over the latest wave
of Microsoft adverts which happen to point out that their over priced toys are
more expensive than ordinary PCs.
Furious letters are flying everywhere on
the net about the adverts which point out that when the economy is in tatters
the last thing you want to do is spend more than $1000 on a computer which does
less than those that are cheaper. The television ad shows a young woman
who's confused by the lack of sub-$1000 computers on offer at her local Apple
Store, but who finds shedloads of cheaper Windows-based PC options at her local
retailer. The advert has clearly got under the skin of Apple which has
ordered its tame lackeys in the trade press to gun for the campaign.
Serious
tech magazines have been ringing up Apple resellers to ask what they think. Not
surprisingly they think the campaign is pants. However none of the people we
have seen interview deny that the adverts are true. One Apple reseller said
that “lots of PC users have fallen for the 'big spec sheet, low price' trap”...
this would be the trap of buying a computer that actually did something for less
cash.
Using even more dodgy logic he said that Apple should not be making
such an advert because it does not make computers. Some said that if
Microsoft wanted to talk about price it should compare the price of Microsoft
Office to Apple's iWork, or the “complete version of Windows” versus OS X?.
Last we looked OS X was more expensive than Windows Home which is its comparable
product. Iwork is cheaper than Office but has less functionality. OpenOffice is
free and works nicely on Windows.
Another reseller claimed that it was like
taking someone to a BMW dealer and asking them to find a car for under
$20,000. Er not really, the build quality of Apple has gone down the toilet
recently and anyway you can get a really good quality PC for $1000, and you
cannot get a good Mac for that amount of cash.
Our favourite attempt to
defend Apple's outrageous pricing came from
Cnet
which pointed out that the adverts were bogus because Microsoft didn't use a
'real person' and that the young woman was 'just an actress'. Sheesh and we
thought the 'I am a PC' and 'I am a Mac' blokes were real hardware.
Strange
that none of the Apple koolaid drinking press thought that it would be a good
idea to compare prices and specs. If Apple is more expensive for the same spec
then why aren't they helping their readers make sensible buying decisions rather
than helping a proprietary company screw more cash from punters who do not know
any better.
We think it funny that when Apple scores a hit, like it did with
the I am a Mac adverts, the fanboys and their tame press dance joy jigs in
print. However when Microsoft scores, they pull out all stops to shout
down a valid message.