Mac Ads More Compelling When Based On Reality
Usually, I don’t find Apple’s series of “Get a Mac” ads all that compelling. You know the ones, they start, “Hello. I’m a Mac. And I’m a PC”. It’s not that they’re not well-made. They are. The reason why I don’t find them compelling is that they’re often based around ideas that just don’t ring true. For example, the idea that you can only use a Windows PC for spreadsheets, not for entertainment. I just don’t think it works.
However, Apple have made a new ad in this series that is genuinely funny and compelling; and the “reason why” is that it’s based on a legitimate criticism of Windows Vista. Check it out.
Incidentally, on the topic of these ads… in the UK, they are performed by a comedy duo called Mitchell and Web. However, the rumour is that they weren’t the first choice. Apparently, Apple’s ad people asked Ricky Gervais if he would come in and chat about doing the ads.
“These commercials,” the advertising execs explained, “have a nerdy, loser-type ‘PC guy’ talking to a really cool, trendy ‘Mac guy’.”
“I see. Well yes, I am definitely interested in this,” replied Gervais. Then he paused, before adding, straight-faced, “Tell me, who are you thinking of getting to play the nerdy loser?”
Asam Bashir wrote:
We’re not happy in the Mac world today. Leopard been delayed till October,
http://www.apple.com/hotnews/
Not sure what this means for UK iPhone version, if October taken up with Leopard launch might be delays. Damn, might have to suffer a N95 for 7 months then break contract through carphonewarehouse thingy.
You try the Navigation on a N95 yet?
Posted 12 Apr 2007 at 9:10 pm ¶
simon wrote:
re: Leopard… Apple said,
“We had to borrow some key software engineering and QA resources from our Mac OS X team.”
Not a surprise. Remember that blog of mine from 14 March entitled - “Is Apple Overstretching Itself?”
http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2007/03/14/is-apple-overstretching-itself-about-to-lose-enterprise-customers/
I guess we now know the answer to that question is a definite yes. I seem to remember that you regarded the suggestion as “laughable”
As for iPhone European release schedule, it depends in part on whether Apple feels they need to change the feature-set of the device.
I think they do need to enhance the feature-set for Europe e.g. 3G, ideally, state-of-the-art HSDPA. Otherwise, it will get a lot of criticism.
Whether this will now be a priority, I don’t know. I should think Apple wants to tie the release of Leopard to the release of some brand new Macs. And, they also need to update the iPod range. And, also, they really need to push ahead quickly now with getting ready some kind of “iPhone nano”, which will need different software to the main iPhone.
So, they have a lot to do, and probably not enough people to do it.
Re: Nokia N95. No, not tried it. I’m not keen on the design: too chunky for a 2007 device. GPS is a neat feature to have built-in though. I will likely get an N76 - much closer to the ideal mobile phone form factor in terms of size dimensions - see: http://www.psynixis.com/blog/2007/03/30/smartphones-finally-get-mass-market-form-factors/
Posted 13 Apr 2007 at 7:21 am ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
Oh get over it, it was a good debate anyway ;P Remember what I said about Apple listening very closely to what’s being said and it does respond, and this is probably what’s going on with Leopard release.
I think the iPhone is just a convienient distraction, there is more going on with the Leopard development then we’re lead to believe. It’s interesting that Longhorn server with built-in hypervisor is also being delayed. Maybe the super-secret Leopard features are going ahead full steam and Apple has decided it needs to do more work to build a bullet-proof OS that will appeal more to Enterprise. If there are significant features added to Leopard that no one out-side of Apple knows about, then it would be right to hand it out as a public beta at WWDC and have some months for developers to check compatibility and testing. Apple is doing the right thing here, expectation is very high for Leopard and a few extra months will be worth it.
As far as I remember the Smart2go navigation will be available on more N-series so it is probably possible to use the Nokia navigation on N76 with an external GPS? N76 also doesn’t have WiFi though so that’s the deal killer for me.
Posted 13 Apr 2007 at 2:41 pm ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
“The sources pointed out that the launch delay is not due to software design problems with Leopard but instead is attributed to Apple’s plan to have its new OS support Windows Vista through an integrated version of Boot Camp. Boot Camp is an Apple software application that currently assists in the installation of Windows XP on computers using Apple’s latest OS. The company hopes with support for Vista, Mac computers using the new OS can grab more market share, according to the sources.”
http://www.digitimes.com/systems/a20070322PD214.html
Posted 13 Apr 2007 at 3:26 pm ¶
simon wrote:
I think the support for Windows Vista is a red herring. It might be part of the story, or it might not. However, I think we can invoke Occam’s razor here, and take Apple at its word. That is - Apple doesn’t have enough top talent to develop all the software and hardware it wants, to the right quality level. And, you need top talent on any project to make it really succeed. The truth is - most people aren’t very good at their jobs; and it’s always the handful of people that represent the “top talent” that save the day.
It will be a while until Apple can fix this. You can’t solve this kind resource problem by growing headcount rapidly (I suspect Google is going to learn that lesson pretty soon). So simply saying, “let’s hire more three thousand more people” won’t work. Top talent is a scarce resource, and it takes time and effort to find those people; and to figure out how to let them succeed (lots of people are threatened by top talent and try to stop them being effective)… especially in a large company.
So, for now, in what is obviously a heavily resource-constrained environment, Apple has some tough decisions to make. The opportunity for Apple in the consumer space is vast. They’re not quite on the money with their mobile phone strategy yet, but I think they’ll get there. And when they do, it’ll be transforming for them.
Posted 14 Apr 2007 at 8:47 am ¶
Asam Bashir wrote:
Just to be clear, Bootcamp already supports Vista in 32 and 64 bit versions. The keyword used by the Digitimes source was ‘integrated’ - so the dual boot option already works, but what might need work, if Apple chooses to, would be a virtualized solution running on top of Mac OS X, like the way Parallels or VMWare work, an in-house Apple hypervisor. That would need huge development though, and might have been easier for Apple just to buy Parallels, unless it has already done work on its own super-secret hypervisor. The way they envisioned in their own patent several years ago. It might explain why it needs the beta to go out for testing for several months to the wider developer community.
But yes, agree now that Apple is heavily resource-constrained over the short-term but once Leopard is out, it needs to work hard to increase it’s resources for the mid-term. It knows its current weakness and must be given credit for this, its a sign of a healthy Apple, gauging and responding in an appropriate manner.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/04/13/top_secret_features_suspect_in_apples_leopard_delay.html
Even with Tiger now, 8-core 3 Ghz Mac Pro beasts, 802.11n as default, Adobe CS3 universal products and Office 2008 in final beta testing, hardware and software wise they’re still ahead of any other company. They can afford to be careful and cautious with Leopard.
Posted 14 Apr 2007 at 2:13 pm ¶