I will probably catch a lot of flack for this one, but I can’t sit idly by and let MS feed me these commercials without a proper retort.
First things first, I don’t consider myself a Mac Fan-boy, at least not completely, although I am strongly Mac biased. I all but abandoned Windows in college, I grew to love the way unix/linux systems work, so I started using various Linux flavors. Unfortunately, I couldn’t completely give up Windows because I couldn’t give up Photoshop or Illustrator. When I realized Macs were based on BSD (a unix operating system), I realized I could have my cake and eat it too. I never looked back. I still keep a copy of XP around so I can test cross platform software and test sites on IE7/8.
Now that you know where I’m coming from. How do you think the commercials featuring very young looking children using Windows attracts the average citizen? I always think to myself: “Sure printing pictures and such is easy, what about setting up a wireless network, updating drivers”, simple tasks that have confounded even some of my most computer literate friends/colleagues/family.
Easy enough for a child. Does that make Windows a toy?
I recently helped out a friend set up a wireless network using WPA encryption on Vista. What a pain in the neck that was, the network had been previously configured to use WEP, and Vista was not helpful in changing the settings, I actually had to give up and tell my friend to “google it”.
So the whole easy-enough-for-a-child thing is only true for some things, and I’m sure most children don’t have a whole set full of people guiding, directing and making things go Hollywood-smooth either.
Recently there was a commercial featuring a girl named “Lauren” who was an every-day, average, computer shopper looking for a laptop. She ends up buying an HP machine. All good and well, but a friendly Gizmodo reader stepped forward and challenged her to try a Mac and make an intelligent decision on which is better for her by offering her a *FREE* 17″ G4. Although the mac is slightly older, it would still hold its own against a Windows machine any day.
In an effort to locate said shopper “Lauren”, Gizmodo tried to locate her to present her with the offer for the free Mac, in doing so they found out that “Lauren” is actually a paid actress. She has since commented that she signed a NDA against talking about her experiences with the HP laptop. Hmmm, interesting.
Here is the full story: Lauren is an actress
Well, truth in advertising isn’t a high priority among advertisers, but MS takes the cake here.
The whole affair has left me with a bad taste for Microsoft. If Microsoft does anything right with Windows 7 it will be to give people a true idea of what it is to be a “PC”.
