dlovell, Fri, April 25th, 2008
I promise this will be my last Apple rant for awhile. Sometimes I just get stuck on things, and need to get them off my chest. If I don't, odds are I'll try to start a movement or boycott or something. So better to vent and move on, I suppose.
Here's the "bah" generator for the past couple of days:
Apple's newest commercials for the Mac are appalling. Most of the "I'm a Mac" commercials are cute and funny, even if they are misleading and insult PC users. I still laugh at them. And the Mac kid reminds me that I used to like watching the TV show "Ed." Anyway...
The newest commercial, which I'll attach, makes claims that Mac's hardware and software are "all made by the same people," and that PCs don't work the way they should because their parts come from "a bunch of different places." It brings to mind the comforting thought that Apple builds all of its own components in sleek, super-clean and hip Apple factories all over the globe. Doesn't it? And of course they're loaded up with perfect Apple hard drives, processors, video cards and so on...
Truth is that Apple doesn't build any of those things. In fact, Apple takes many of its parts from the same pool as PC manufacturers. Sure, there are differences, and I don't mean to downplay that. Apple often specs out its components. It designs them and looks for bids from other manufacturers. But the newest Macs run processors built by Intel -- the same Intel that built the processor in the PC I'm typing on right now. And they've used hard drives from Western Digital and Seagate, among others. Clearly there's no Apple plastics plant that molds the boxes. And Apple doesn't assemble all these components either...remember the company explaining that outsourced labor was responsible for excess thermal grease in Macbook Pros that caused the machines to run hotter than they should?
No, I don't hate Macs. But I do find these Mac vs. PC commercials a bit over-the-top. It's as if the mighty Steve Jobs has forgotten that it was Microsoft -- and not Jobs himself -- who rescued Apple from the brink of death a mere 10 years ago, when Bill Gates appeared on screen during Jobs' keynote address at Macworld Expo to announce a $150 million investment in Apple. And it seems as if Jobs has forgotten his own words at that event:
"If we want to move forward and see Apple healthy and prospering again, we have to let go of a few things here. We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. We have to embrace a notion that for Apple to win, Apple has to do a really good job. And if others are going to help us that's great, because we need all the help we can get, and if we screw up and we don't do a good job, it's not somebody else's fault, it's our fault. So I think that is a very important perspective. If we want Microsoft Office on the Mac, we better treat the company that puts it out with a little bit of gratitude; we like their software.
So, the era of setting this up as a competition between Apple and Microsoft is over as far as I'm concerned. This is about getting Apple healthy, this is about Apple being able to make incredibly great contributions to the industry and to get healthy and prosper again."
Microsoft lived up to its end of that bargain, and Apple is prospering now. So why the attacks? And why the lies?
It's one thing to believe your product is better. It's another thing entirely to arrogantly belittle the competition -- especially when that competition came to your rescue when you needed it most.
Just saying.
