Full disclosure: This was written on a Windows PC.
I recently watched some of the US "Macs vs PCs" ads on YouTube (embedded below - probably worth watching before reading the rest of this post), and a few of them really annoyed me.
They are funny, and the concept behind the ads (PCs for work, Macs for the home) is a good angle for Apple to take. However, I don't understand how these ads are/should be legal, because from my viewpoint some of the points they make are either factually wrong or misleading.
My first bugbear is Apple's usage of the term "PC".
As I understand it, PC stands for Personal Computer, which Wikipedia defines as “...any computer whose original sales price, size, and capabilities make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end user, with no intervening computer operator.”
This definition, which most people in the IT industry would agree with, can apply to computers running Windows, Linux and of course Mac OS. In fact the Apple PC was one of the first mass market PC's and Apple are often credited with helping kick start the home PC revolution.
What Apple means by “PC” in their ads are computers which run Windows. They don't want to come out and say Windows, because, as I said earlier, some of their claims are either factually wrong or misleading. If they did say Windows, then Microsoft may be able to sue them for something. But by using a generic term like “PC” Apple seem to think they can claim anything they'd like and they'd get away with it (which to be fair they seem to have done).
If you skip to about 09:07 into the embedded video above, one of the ads start with the Mac claiming that he's into fun stuff like “movies, music and podcasts” and the PC claiming that he too can do fun stuff like “time sheets and spreadsheets and pie charts”.
The Mac then goes on to say that “it would be kinda difficult to capture a family vacation on a pie chart”. To me, this seems to be misleading, as the suggestion is that only the Mac can do things like “movies, music and podcasts” or handle holiday photos, which is a lie.
There are other misleading suggestions in the ads, such as Windows PC's are better suited for work environments and Macs are better for homes, that Macs handle creative tasks better than Window's PC's. This is misleading as there are very few third party applications on the Mac that aren't available for Windows, while there are hundreds of PC games released each year for Windows and very few for the Mac.
Apple, fan boys aside, make some really good products. iPods helped make portable MP3 players truly mainstream and the iPhone have shown other handset manufacturers how smart phones should be designed, so it baffles me that Apple would need to resort to such dirty handed and disgusting tactics – maybe it's Mac who's insecure about his capabilities and not “PC”.
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