Apple Asked Microsoft to Stop Laptop Hunters

LOL

I don't buy it, personally I think that Microsoft is taking cheap shots at Apple with these adds. In one of them a kid is looking for one for "gaming" and he spends under 800$, not possible if this kid is playing anything REMOTELY recent. They have a side up on Apple because Apple relies on loyal customers, Windows relies on stupid customers that they can lure into getting a laptop, regardless of weather or not it will perform well. They use tricks like big HD's and just putting FAST! next to any processor, even though they never top 2Ghz for the most part, and for the most part, they pick on uneducated buyers and get them to believe what they're getting is good.

Not to mention, these people haven't even taken their laptops home and REALLY used them yet, how you they know?

Yeah... decent story, but is it really newsworthy?

First, let me say I don't believe this story is true no matter how much MS wants it to be.
I just saw a new one yesterday and they allowed $1,500, enough to buy a new 2.53 Ghz 13″ Macbook Pro with 4Gb DDR3 Ram, 250Gb HD and Nvidia Gforce 9400M graphics and the little part I love, a automatic backlit keyboard.
When the actor stopped at the Mac the comment was something like like Macs are all about looks and don’t have good guts inside. He had a point but not as extreme as one would believe. I would rather have a little less horsepower and get better battery life than the opposite and battery dies under two hours. Then there is the one of the key issues, OS X vs Vista, no comparison, OS X rocks. The actor then choose a HP with Millennium II in it, LOL.
I would grab the Mac for sure but I am sure I more informed than the average Joe that MS is targeting with these adverts.

and this is different from what apple does how?

man you just screw yourself there, if you see 90% of apple user are 100% technology uneducated, that is the reason they buy macs in the first place. They don't even realize what they are getting, because when you buy a mac, the spec are in a little, very small sticker on one of the remotely seen side of the box. Because almost non of the mac user knows what are those gibberish.

I want to believe it. It does make sense in this economy. Who would pay for Apples, all be it nice looking, overpriced systems when they can get a PC for less? No matter what when money gets tight people are going to go for what they can afford regardless of anything. Besides at least the M$ commercial tend to deal with the price of a PC and not the OS which is what Apple does. OH windows can't do this or that. Well if I have a PC who says I have to run windows. I can run any number of OS's. At least I have the choice on the PC. OH and if I build my PC it will cost me even less then if I bought one and more than likely have better hardware to.

... the ad's must be... one month testworking with Apple and OS X, and one month testworking with PC with Vista ... and then i would gladly see the results... don't misunderstand me... i'm a PC user my self... because Apple don't haz an AMD option... but... but wen YOU work with any apple device, YOU can feal the care and that it just works...

Apple..... Have you no shame with 12% of the market.

As you can w/ a PC. I have four PC's including my work computer and they all work all day every day.

What exactly do you need more than a 2.0 GHz C2D on a consumer grade laptop for? Are you willing to hurt your battery life and heat dissipation for it? Do you understand that in the laptop market, 2.0GHz C2D actually IS fast?

"They have a side up on Apple because Apple relies on loyal customers, Windows relies on stupid customers that they can lure into getting a laptop, regardless of weather or not it will perform well."

That's one of the most absurd things I've read. Apples relies mostly on the art/photoshop community and users who don't want to know what goes on inside a computer. That is why they are "easier" to use.

Most people who use a windows os at home use it because that's what they use at work and it's familiar.

Are there Apple uber geeks out there who tripple boot OS X/Linux/Old Apple DOS? Yes and they know what they are doing. But 99% of Mac users wouldn't know a line of code from an line of iambic pentameter.

REally? that's the best call he's ever gotten?
i think the next call should be from Viagra or something.

i got an A on my American Pop Culture paper about how people like you buy things just to stand out and see themselves as higher class.

the commercials display people(i seriously doubt these are unscripted) with certain needs that sometimes a MAC can't handle. the same way a lot of people that do hardcore photo editing and graphic design that prefer to do it on mac's.

Regulas: You are an idiot. $1500 for a tiny 13" screen and an Nvidia GPU that will probably fail? Besides, 99% of laptops spend 99% of the time running at 800mhz to conserve power and avoid overheating, that clockspeed means nothing... No laptop can run full load all day everyday at max clockspeed...

The guts are the same. A mid range laptop has a core 2, 3-4gigs of ram, 160-320gb HD, and say an entry level Nvidia 9300m-9400m (ATI 3200 etc). The Mac version costs $1500, vs say a Dell Studio at $800. Thats almost twice the price in "Apple Tax".

It's true too. An experienced user can get anything out of a windows pc that they can out of a mac, and an entry level user will get all they need out of either.

In addition, $1500 will put you in the desktop replacement budget range with cards like Nvidia 9800m or ATI 4800 series, which performs in games almost immeasurable better than it's apple counterpart in the same price range. If you aren't playing games, I see it as extremely difficult to justify spending over $1000 on a laptop.

If OS X was really that great, I'd buy a windows laptop and throw OS X on it. Same hardware, but it really isn't that great. Productivity? Windows XP. Gotta have DX10? Not OS X. Sorry Apple, you lose this round, have fun with that iPhone.

HAHAHA I totally believe some Apple knucklehead did this, it fits right in line with their backward thinking policies.

As far as OS X being better than Vista - well, don't believe what the monkeys tell you. It's not. If you like the OS to handle things for you instead of allow you to do MORE, then fine, OS X might be for you. Otherwise, go with Vista - better yet, Win 7. Same philosophy as the iPhone compared to the Palm Pre.

Buy a Linux distro over OS X - which is nothing more than a Linux distro itself, and the most expensive one their is.

OK, first, you better cite a source. Then, cite a source showing PC users have a better level of technology education.

Also, customers don;t get to see the box, except from a distance, until; they make a purchase decision. All the technical detail and pricing is displayed on the card in front of the displayed machine, and is exactly identical in content for both PCs and Macs. What's it issue is that little card only sais Processor speed (not type/model), RAM size (not speed), HDD size (and typically not speed), Optical drive type, and wireless card type. It lacks inclusions about backlit keyboard, 7 hour battery, graphics adapter (sometimes included), web cam, bluetooth, aluminum construction, firewire, and other hardware features nearly every mac has that few PCs in the same processor and size class come equipped with. It;s simply not a fair comparrison of specs.

Go to Apple.com, pick almost any model, then go to Dell and try to configure a machine to match the specs, same or better on all counts (i'll even let you exclude the battery life, SD reader, and backlit keyboard, and i'll even let the Dell weigh up to 2 lbs more)... Good luck. Get a gaming notebook from dell under $1500, a video editing notebook under $1000, a 24" anything, an 8core Xeon for even CLOSE to the PowerMac's price and features, a battery lasting more than 3 hours that's not in a netbook that offers a GPU and and even half the value adds of the macbook pro, they simply don't have it.

Yea, if you're looking for a generic POS to do little more than surf the web, email, and blog, absolutely there are cheaper machines out there, I'm not contesting that. That's not Apple's market, and they really could care less. Apple is only interested in selling machines to poeple who want to do something with media, like manage tens of thousands of pictures, edit video, or run higher end software. Look at their adds, short of the whole "OS X doesn't crash" thing, it's all about doing things el-cheapo PCs can't do at all, or do so aggrivatingly slowly.

... yea... but YOU feel skilled in the PC area... i imagine YOU know, what to do, when some errors appear and how to solve them? but what about a novice user...

oh yoy yoy. Mac boys. My LG r310 with t5800, intel x25-m and 4gb of ddr2-800 gets 5 hours battery life and with vista x64 will run rings around any macbook. Best part $1450 tax inclusive CND:-).

Now eat your heart out mac

There is one simple reason that the average laptop hunter chooses a Windows machine. They want to use various productivity apps (like Office) and to be able to share files with others. Many also have a PC at work and want to be able to share files and apps there too.

So, you could say that a Windows laptop is a social and collaborative machine.

Someone picking a Mac would be able to share some file types as attachments in emails with people that use Windows machines. Would it be an over generalization to say that anyone buying a Mac is not thinking or caring about using it as a social networking machine (other than via emails)?

First that's cuz dell sucks, second i have configured a laptop at hp that cost 1100 dollars and it was sick, good battery, like 3 and half hours, 2.5 ghz C2D, 4 gig of RAM, Vista 64 bit, With Nvidia G20M graphics with like 1 gig of VRAM, configure a similar MAC and tell me how much it will cost, even if they have those options it will be around 3800, for which price you get a laptop with a quad core processor at around 2.8 ghz and like a 260GT with blu ray. But if you get from the right place you could get an i7 laptop for 400 more, not that i would recommend an i7 on a laptop.

Sure the battery life will be depleted but that is cause ur are playing games on or doing tons of photography on it. in which case you won't be doing it in a public space, Playing Crysis in a restaurant? i don't think so

No, I'm pretty sure that Apple's ads are all about "people who use PCs are nerds and those who use Macs are hip and cool". Whatever else they say in the ads is just background for that idea. Personally, I'm insulted by them and will never buy a Mac because of them- and I'm not alone here.

Watch the Mac documentary. You will see all these people claiming that the PC is too hard to use... and who are these people (that are now using mac's?)??

Answer: Old People and DUMBASSES!!

Now THOSE are the people that use crapbooks err Mac's.

They are confused and told a $1199 computer with crappy specs is way better than a similarly priced $1199 pc computer.

ex. I went to best buy and saw a 17" HP laptop with a QUAD CORE Q9000 processor, 6GB memory, 500GB HDD, 1GB ATI 4650 Graphics card for $1299.

Now you are going to tell me that a 13" Macbook Pro with an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.56Ghz processor with 4GB of memory and 250GB hdd, ONLY an SD card reader (not even full sized) and only 128MB Nvidia 9400M at $1499 (a whole $200 more than the PC) is a better deal than the PC????? HOW BOUT NOOOO!!!! The crApple is a TERRIBLE deal!!

so you are saying that if you buy a regular mac you are able to edith professional video and do 3d animations and many other professional stuff, in el cheapo way?
or i'm wrong..
because as far as i know, the mac that i own, macbook pro "Was a gift from my sister" does not perform in a professional way when i'm about to render some 3d graphics. instead, if i want to render something 3d i have to buy a 3,000 usd mac workstation, and beside buy the video card, that they will sell to me for 2500 to 3000 more, because they have certified, when i buy the same workstation video card for a little bit more than 1000.00 in the market, and put a better spec workstation, with some opteron for half the price they are trying to shove into me.

sorry to open your eyes, if you want to do some professional work on mac, you have to spend, the double or triple in hardware and buy your professional applications. It just happens to be a lot cheaper on a pc.

they all suck but dell laptops are definitely way better than the crap laptop's/ PC's HP puts out there

@zelanni:

Since you posted a bunch of useless crap this is what caught my interest most...

"Apple is only interested in selling machines to poeple who want to do something with media, like manage tens of thousands of pictures, edit video, or run higher end software."

First: I know plenty of pc users who manage thousands of pictures. I've got well over sixty three. Yes 6-3 thousand pictures that I manage. The fun fact is that now, Macs aren't the super exclusive media producing power houses that they used to be. Bands and Media creators use Pc's too. Look at workstations. You can dump less money into a pc workstation that performs better than any mac on the market. Last, what exactly is "high end software"? OS X? Must be, because there isn't much else that you can't get on pc...besides what, GarageBand? When there is a multitude of programs on pc that handle music production better given you take the time to learn it.

You know what else tom's? Nobody talks about the horror's of mac's repair process because everyone thinks it's great. How's this for you. Sister buys a new macbook against my wishes, Hard drive fails and shorts inside the damn thing. All kinds of crap goes wrong. She ships it off to Apple and four months later, FOUR MONTHS, mind you it was about one month old, she gets it back. They were busy apparently.

@Zel

You're so full of shit, its just sad to see how brainwashed people can get.

A Baseline Macbook Pro 13" costs $1200...
It has only 2.26GHz Core2Duo, 2GB of 1066MHz DDR3, a 160GB Serial ATA Drive @5400 rpm. The screen and videocard are OK... (9400M integrated, kinda low res LED screen covered in glass with "meh" view angles). Build quality is pretty good, and its a nice aluminum case.

The closes thing Dell has is a XPS M1330. It comes stock only a 2.1GHz T8100 (slightly weaker CPU), but 4GB of RAM, and 250GB HD. Upgrading to a 2.4GHz CPU comparable to what's in the Apple raises the price to $900. Upgrading to a 320GB 5400rpm HD costs nothing or 250GB 7200rpm HD is also a free upgrade (regardless the HD is better than Apple's).

So, basically for 900 dollars you can get a system that is pretty much on par with a $1200 Macbook. And thats with pretty minimal edge going to Apple on things like support and build quality (I think Apple support is a joke, but that's another rant). For a the 300 dollar difference, a college student could add a larger battery and TV tuner to the dell, and still have enough to upgrade to a better processor... making the machine easily superior.

There are Gaming notebooks for under 1500, they just are usually a little bulky, or require compromises. The NP8662, my personal favorite, has a starting price of right about 1500 depending on where you buy. Several Asus, MSI, and Gateway gaming laptops are well under 1500, or even have dropped below the 1k mark at times.

Apple computers are still priced a few hundred dollars too high. Their prices are at least within the realm of reality now, but still somewhat unreasonable in this type of a global recession.

Well, at the very least I think the spell check on my PC works somewhat "aggrivatingly" fast-ish.

Also, I suppose I tend to run middle-end stuff. So I see your argument there. Although I have to confess, sometimes I give in to my urge for some highest-end fun!

I do have a question - do excuse me since I am easily confused - are you saying the specification card in front of apple machines do or don't include the info as you pointed out? I don't know about you, but CPU model/type, RAM & HD speed are all kinda important, at least to me. I would hate to buy a machine speced at say 3GHz only. Is it AMD? Intel? *gasp* PowerPC?

I don't see what is so bad about these commercials. Apple has been bashing Microsoft with their "I'm a mac and I'm PC" for years. If Apple's 'impeccable' brand can't stand the heat, maybe they should stay out from the kitchen.

I don't know but if they didn't it must have been a real mess buying a mac the year they started rolling out the Intel macs. they all look the same but you don't know if you have a powerpc or intel inside when you go buy it