Apple posts new ads

They're terrible. Apple to orange (wordplay!) comparison and blatant stereotyping to make ill-conceived points, spackled and delivered with seriously condescending dialogue. The zealots are tryin' real hard if they're finding positives in this gross advertising misstep.

Telling the existing PC users (you know, the market share Apple doesn't have yet and is purportedly advertising to) they are unhip, ugly and boring? Apple should keep the masturbation on their website, and make a few ads that actually appeal to the non-Mac-as-religion types who just want a functional machine.

@#25, mono:
I agree with your sentiment. I sometimes feel like these commercials are mocking or making fun of people who use PCs, the very people they hope to switch. It's sort of like when someone makes a stab at your fashion or way of life, and then expects you to convert to their style. It's a bit pompous. You try even harder to prove that your way (PC, for example) is all right.

Has anyone in the US recently seen a commercial for HP (I think) laptops with a young man's hands during a very Minority Report-esque moving through digital photos, websites, etc.? When I first saw that commercial, it really, really caught my eye. Just like the commercials from Microsoft aimed at children which show waterpaint animals and all sorts of things coming to life and then saying, "All made possible with software available for WindowsXP." These commercials are colorful and engaging because they use less words. Every time that HP laptop commercial comes on, people around me notice it. It just looks "cool." I understand Apple's "less is more" and "quirky" goal with these commercials, but they're not going to get someone like my mom who desperately wants a computer for herself and the kids (she won't let them use the WinXP computer now because she's afraid of pop-ups, spyware, etc. because she just learned how to use Google!). She doesn't understand XP vs. Mac OS X. Actually SHOW something that the computer can do in those 30 seconds, and I think people would be sold. Heck, the quicktime videos from Apple's website on iLife are better...

Apple may have dropped the ball in having the cooler cultural figure (hodgman) portray the PC....

I don't think Apple are too bothered by market share. At this point there is little difference between 2%, 3%, whatever. If it was a question of being pushed out of business by the dominance of Windows and people not wanting to use OS X as a result then again the percentages are so small as to not matter, if it did they would have gone under already, plus with bootcamp et al it's not an issue anyway. A single digit market share is still a lot of computers and as such they're worried about profitability and they're comparitively very profitable - and sales are going up.

never mind the new ads, i still havent seen any of the old ads on my TV!! whats withe apple only advertising the ipod on TV in the UK. the last apple ad i remember seeing on TV over here that wasnt for the ipod/itunes was way back in the G3 era! or am i just not watching enought TV?

anyone else notice the lack of macs on british TV?

Apple has always made one of the biggest mistakes one can make in advertisement. They preach to the already coverted and make future buyers look bad.

Apple should go hunting for an Ad Agency that uses PC's (surely there must be such a creature out there somewhere) and give them a fat budget to sell the product to PC users.

It is possible to have both brand loyalty ads and ads for increasing the user base. And it is _imperative_ to keep them separate. Because they are two completely different animals.

Just finished watching Galaxy Quest on TBS. I'm sure someone brought this up a while ago, but I noticed that the guy who plays the MAC was the head nerd in that movie. Funny...

@Brent:

Did you actually *read* the article you linked to?

From the article:

"Apple is somewhat stronger in U.S. consumer market share, with Gartner giving Apple 5.8 percent in 2005 and IDC at 2.9 percent.

It's also worth noting that Apple's worldwide market share did move up slightly last year from 1.9 percent in 2004, according to Gartner, or 2.0 percent, according to IDC.

That's because Mac sales are exceeding industry growth rates. Apple shipped 38 percent more Macs in the fiscal year ended Sept. 24, 2005, than in the prior year, and shipments were up 20 percent in the last three months of 2005."

Out of the Box is great. You'd have to have rocks in your head to run a PC out the Box without first enduring hours of security and OS updates ( at worst you might spend 10 minutes running OSX updates). And you certainly need to spend half a day pulling all the preloaded stuck in boot up programs and junk installs the typical PC is loaded down with (comparisons to ilife and MS office trial ware here are completely off the mark. The reference is not to useful trialware installed on the computer which you have the option of even loading or not, it's to mostly useless junkware not only installed and but preloaded and configured to run at every boot boot up and slow your PC to a crawl).

Pie Chart is not bad, but they don't have any counterbalance to that dull pie chart. Maybe another take off on the Japanese digital cam, have his family next to the Apple kid at the beach or something.

Touche is not so hot, because it highlights typical perception of Apple user snobbishness, and most PC users won't be able to follow what he is saying about the use of touche.

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