It really begs reading into. Use some literary sense and you can see there’s all kinds of analogies to the computer industry, user acceptance, Windows XP, legacy applications. I thought it was funny that the giraffe had being the family for 6 years (the amount of years since Windows XP came out).
What I don’t get though, is what exactly is the intended overall message?
Is it really: Real people are boneheaded and idiosyncratic, not snobby and perfect (like Mac users). Thus Microsoft/PC’s are the REAL WORLD and if you are an average joe, you should use a PC?
The Apple ads always have reminded me of the old Road Runner cartoons. Even though you know that poor Wile E. is going to fail, in the end, you find yourself rooting for him because the Road Runner is a bit of a prat.
But the reason those ads work is because while leading you in with humor, they put forth the message that PCs are clunky and schluby and get in the way. The other thing that I think Microsoft misses with their response ads is that every Apple ad articulates a clear message about a single feature that (in Apple’s eyes) differentiates the two OSes. The message is always more than PC=dork, Mac=cool. That part, and the comedy, is just the leader to get you watching.
The first Microsoft ads were a disaster in this respect as they don’t even mention the damn product. The new one is a bit better, but it still doesn’t do at all what the Apple ads do really well: articulate a concrete reason to buy the OS. At best, it says lots of people get their work done with Windows, which is better than the Seinfeld ads, which essentially say nothing.
If I were Microsoft, I would stop with the losing battle of trying to out-cool Apple and instead concentrate on those features were Windows does better than Apple.
I was wondering what the book Gates was reading in the ad was.
I haven’t read Code Complete, so I’m not familiar with all the wrinkles of his explanation of Table Driven Methods, but based on the descriptions I’ve found online, there is a section in my favorite programming book, SCIP, on a similar technique, dubbed Data-Directed Programming (see: http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-17.html#%_sec_2.4.3 ).
(And just to get my personal dig into the platform wars, I switched to Mac from Linux when I realized an iBook was basically just a Unix laptop where all the drivers and software actually worked out the box.)
Say what you want about the I’m a PC, I’m a Mac ad campaign, but there’s no denying that Apples market share is going up fast…much faster and in the opposite direction of many other computer companies. So I think Apple hit it out of the park with that concept. MS’s response is a little lame and desperate feeling…plus they are indirectly equating themselves to PCs, which they are not (linux runs on a PC).
Man, I think that your unhealthy fascination with that book has nothing to do with Matthew Eckstein’s unhealthy fascination with that book. I mean, who could ever know, from 20 words, which book Bill was reading?!?
To the poster on top, thats true, until they hit the mark. The mark will be when their commercial target get’s tired of their lame OS, their lame practices and their lame dictatorship business rules. At least Microsoft never told me not to build something for their architecture.
Anyway, the ads are sort of funny, thanks to Seinfeild I suppose. I just loved the Chinese food delivery guy sketch. But somehow, while watching it I was over at Sun’s Web Site downloading the latest SDK… that’s irony or not, but who cares?
Microsoft cribbing from Apple’s successful ad campaign reeks of desperation. We want to be cool too, like Apple, whilst simultaneously insisting we’re not! Or something. Why Microsoft even feels the need to address Apple, an insignificant gnat nipping on its heels, on behalf of its OEMs, is a complete mystery. I guess it’s slightly wittier than the recent Mojave/Punk’d silliness.
John Hodgman is the stronger satirist of the two, and he’s an easy character to love and feel sympathy for. And that’s exactly the point. If audiences couldn’t relate to him and his gripes about Windows, the ads wouldn’t work. Remember, in the ads, PC isn’t Windows, he’s just the more abstract PC. Windows is his inescapable burden and he’s trying to make the best of it. The subtext has nothing to do with Long; Its all about relating to Hodgman and then realizing that, unlike him, you have a choice.
The MS response ad is like a political ad. It does counter the argument. But in this case they’re still letting their opponent frame the debate. And they still seem to, in many ways, miss the point of the Apple ads. Nowhere is this more apparently than the utterly forgettable, inane world without walls tagline.
I bought the book after reading so much about it here, and in other programming blogs.
Haven’t finished it yet, but it certainly hasn’t disappointed so far!
Thanks! I’ve been trying to learn from what book Gates was reading. Code Complete has been on my list for awhile; perhaps now I’ll borrow the copy from work.
How much would it cost to rewrite IE and make a decent browser out of it? Microsoft image started to crumble with the first release of IE and it has not stopped since. As soon as Microsoft discovered the Internet Age, the Virus/Trojan infestation started. Every week, for the past 10 years, MS has been releasing security patches.
That’s a lot of security holes, many of those in the IE bird’s nest API.
Not to mention poor memory management in IE or the severe incompatibilities between IE6 and IE7 (rendering issues, actually, but when something is ugly, it is ugly nonetheless).
Making IE faster and secure by design would improve MS image instantly.
Justin was the hacker in Live Free or Die Hard, which I have to say was much better than I had expected. Was it silly? Absolutely. Was it completely ridiculous? Of course. But it was also a lot of fun, certainly more than I had in the second and third installments and Justin did extremely well as the non-action star computer geek.
You killed a helicopter with a CAR!!!
I was out of bullets.
You just shot yourself!
It seemed like a good idea at the time.
or not, but who cares?