Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, OS, Retail, Odds and ends, Apple
Full text from "Legal Copy" ad isn't quite PC-specific
You've probably seen all of the new Get a Mac ads we posted about on Sunday, and if you haven't yet, go ahead and watch them now. We'll wait. Just let us know when you're back, we'll be playing a little Zen Bound. Done? If you saw the Legal Copy ad, you know that's the one where as PC makes crazy and crazier statements about PC reliability, the screen fills up with unreadable legal copy. Unreadable, that is, if you're watching on a computer, and not so much if you're watching on a huge HDTV.And so yes, MacJournals has actually retrieved and reprinted all of the text that appears in that ad. When Hodgman says "PCs are 100% trouble free," there is a long paragraph about how computers are targeted by spyware and malware, and how you have to install software drivers if you want to use any peripherals, how PC users should back up their systems, and how if they are not under warranty, they are not guaranteed a refund or replacement.
But wait a minute, says MDJ, don't those last few notes apply to Macs as well? Are Mac users able to avoid requiring backups, and is Apple trying to say that even after their warranties expire, they'll be giving out refunds and replacements (actually, they sometimes do that, though it's definitely not guaranteed)? Still, if the PC faithful wanted to nitpick -- and where exactly are the PC faithful these days, again? -- there's definitely plenty of nitpicking to do here. It seems like Apple needed to fill out the text for the joke of the ad, but it's too bad they couldn't just stick with PC problems (and there are plenty of those) rather than include some common computer issues in there as well.
[via Aulia Masna]
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
bhyahoo said 9:38AM on 4-21-2009
Does no one realize that some of the 'fine-print' about ease of use and children is poking fun at the MS ads with the little girl editing photos?
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yoo.chul.chung said 9:39AM on 4-21-2009
Considering that the World Wide Web escaped from the lairs of CERN only in the '90s, it might be a tad difficult to find an '80s Apple web site ... (I can see how easy it can be to forget that there's more to the Internet than just the WWW :)
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yoo.chul.chung said 9:40AM on 4-21-2009
Sorry about this irrelevant comment, I blame autofill ...
yoo.chul.chung said 9:39AM on 4-21-2009
To be fair, does the Mac guy actually claim that Macs are "100% trouble-free"?
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Joseph said 4:52PM on 4-21-2009
To be fair... The context was in regards to PCs. You can pull anything out of context and make it about whatever you want. We just saw monster do this with engadget (a renowned monster hater).
colouroflight said 9:46AM on 4-21-2009
To answer your question, the PC faithful are all on Digg, the land where Vista "isn't that bad" and Windows 7 will "blow OS X out of the water."
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Ryan Trevisol said 1:07PM on 4-21-2009
Not to mention commenting on engadget.
nano said 5:49PM on 4-27-2009
Windows 7 is no different then Vista - at least that's what the last 2 beta's have shown me. Every OS has it's place and people, well most of them, are free to choose which one they want to use.
I manage XP, Vista, 2003, Red Hat, SuSE, VMware, EMC and CISCO systems all day long, ...from my Mac Book Pro.
cmsb55 said 8:11PM on 4-21-2009
I have Windows 7 on my computer and I think it is a major improvement over Vista in many ways, although I don't think it will blow OSX out of the water. It is faster, looks better, has major productivity enhancements, and is more stable than Vista (which I think has matured into a good OS in time) even in beta.
Matthew W. said 9:53AM on 4-21-2009
OK, Apple, we get it...PCs are "nerdy", Macs are "cool" and Justin Long is an insufferable douchebag. Can we move on now?
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*Just some girl said 2:00PM on 4-21-2009
I concur.
Nerdy boys are in this year though :D
jon said 10:25AM on 4-21-2009
But do Apple actually state that Mac's don't need any of this stuff, or is it just implied?
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ChuckB said 10:34AM on 4-21-2009
It's just making a point with humor, something notably absent in the Microsoft ads, other than the inscrutable Gates/Seinfeld spots that left everyone going "Huh?".
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cmsb55 said 8:13PM on 4-21-2009
Yeah those Gates/Seinfeld ads made me want to go buy a Mac.
JMR said 5:45PM on 4-23-2009
Apple pulled similar tactics in their summer 2006 ad-campaign where they put up posters in the store saying Macs are "crash resistant and virus free." The last time I checked, Windows didn't come shipped with a virus preinstalled either. Nonetheless, they're fooling their target audience, which is the casual PC user (Macs are PCs, too) who doesn't know any better.
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Aaron Brown said 1:43PM on 4-21-2009
I totally agree. The big reason PC's have more malware is that more people have PC's and there are more unassuming consumers to target. It has less to do with the underlying architecture of the OS. There are plenty of other reasons to dislike PC's (and Macs), and I'm tired of hearing this one.
taiki said 4:33PM on 4-21-2009
Blaster? Conficker? These kinds of worms don't happen in OSX and UNIX space commonly. it has nothing, i repeat, nothing to do with how popular OSX is versus Windows. It has to do with the fact that Windows, before VIsta SP1 with NX and ASLR, is vulnerable. I believe that NX and ASLR are bandaids to the real problem too.
cmsb55 said 6:37PM on 4-21-2009
Correction, it has EVERYTHING to do with the popularity of Macs. Macs can be hacked into just as, if not more, easily than Windows machines. Just as an example: The first OS to be hacked into in the last two Pwn2Own competitions was a Mac and the hacker in the last competition has been quoted as saying that Macs are less susceptible to viruses, but only because so few people use them that no hacker is going to waste his/her time writing a good one. He says, "For now, I'd still recommend Macs for typical users as the odds of something targeting them are so low that they might go years without seeing any malware, even though if an attacker cared to target them it would be easier for them."
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/03/pwn2own-winner-says-macs-are-more-safe-though-less-secure.ars
So those arguments that Macs are more secure are simply invalid.
justflybob said 1:25AM on 4-22-2009
You just can't help yourself, can you?
Miller allows a few openings for you with well chosen words that you DON'T quote, so you just rewrite his "quotes" to spew your own version of what he actually said.
And people wonder why animosity exists between PC users and Mac users.
cmsb55 said 9:29AM on 4-22-2009
What do you want me to paste the entire article in my quote? The statement that I did paste into my posting pretty much sums up the article, and I also included the link to the article so I don't see what the problem is.