Bill Gates Cries ‘Foul’ Over Apple TV Ads February 5, 2007
Read more Apple , Gizmodo UK , Laptops , PC , TV
Some of the PC Vs. Mac ads from Apple are amusing, if a little too long in the tooth. Even as a PC user, I can see some shreds of truth related to some aspects of owning a PC. Is the campaign working though? Well, that all depends on what the goal was. If Apple was trying to piss off the world’s richest man, Bill Gates, they have been a resounding success.
In an interview with MSNBC, Bill hit out at the ‘lying’ ads, especially the one about PCs needing upgrade surgery [watch it above].
“Well, certainly we've done a better job letting you upgrade on the hardware than our competitors have done. You can choose to buy a new machine, or you can choose to do an upgrade. And I don't know why [Apple is] acting like it’s superior. I don't even get it. What are they trying to say? Does honesty matter in these things, or if you're really cool, that means you get to be a lying person whenever you feel like it? There's not even the slightest shred of truth to it.”
He also points out that Microsoft invented most of those funky Mac OS features – the ones in Vista - first, just failed to launch them first. Hmm, I sense a debate coming on.-Martin Lynch
Editor and Contributor | Martin Lynch
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Comments
Can't believe no fanboys have posted yet...
.....quite disappointed actually.
Oh well...here goes...
Bill, shut up whining and admit defeat in the originality stakes.
Originality? Mac os is far from original, ever heard of Linux? I find the mac vrs pc ads to be very ignorant, but then I find that most mac users are also ignorant. Who the hell would complain about a $500 upgrade against a new $2000 computer? Macs are for people who have no idea what a computer is or how it works. As an electronics and computer technician I have never met a mac user that had any idea about how the mac even got started or how a computer worked. Another thing I've found is how ignorant mac users are to the fact that you can buy a PC and install mac os on it and have a cheaper, better computer.
@Scout: You do a good job of misrepresenting the Linux community – people like you give it a "bitchy" reputation and I have never understood why people are so cynical about Macs. Allow me to undermine your points one by one:
1. A $500 upgrade to standard hardware will most likely last you two years.
2. A $2000 computer will probably last you ten years (that's a real figure: our 333 MHz G3 – running Ubuntu, no less – will see its tenth birthday in the summer).
3. Macs are for anyone but the ignorant people, they are for the creative masses – think for a second about the huge influx of graphic designers to the platform compared with Windows and Linux distributions: yeah, exactly.
4. Credentials don't necessarily mean you're right.
5. I have never met a Linux user that had such ignorance of the Mac platform that the notion never entered their mind that the advert was about hardware as well as software, nor have I met a Linux user that was unaware that Macs run Linux themselves.
6. Another thing I've found is how ignorant you are about the fact that Apple hardware is designed with Mac OS X in mind, and that using a run-of-the-mill Dell tower to hack and run results in a cheaper, but broken, computer.
7. Originality? That's right, Linux pioneered Dashboard, Time Machine and Exposé. That's my bad, clearly.
yeh, some of those adverts do have a bit of false truth. like the one about him saying if you move your mac the power cable comes straight out the back.. oh great?
I've just watched the "cool" Mac adverts which I have to say are both clever and funny.
Ironically, the adverts played perfectly on my old Dell pc running on windows XP, but remarkably I can't watch them on my Apple iBook (G3 running OS X 10.1) Why ? Because Apple's technical department have told me that the machine and its IE browser are no longer supported and that (at not yet 7 years old), its too old to upgrade to Safari.... turning a quality and expensive piece of hardware into a piece of environmental waste. How "cool" or green is that ? Ironically, it makes these humorous adverts really quite hilarious.