Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

I’m aware of Microsoft’s new ad campaign, but I have not made the effort to see any of the new commercials. Considering that I am unfamiliar with the commercials’ content beyond what I have read on the web, I offer the following:

Microsoft has accepted the premise that the Mac is a serious competitor to Windows that needs to be dealt with. Microsoft is in a position where it feels the need to react, indicating weakness. Vista, if only from the perspective of perception, has been a disaster and Microsoft is trying to stop the bleeding.

Microsoft has either misinterpreted the content of Apple’s ads or has purposely decided to portray them disingenuously in order to supply a twist to their response. Microsoft’s ads feature users who declare they are a PC, and are the antithesis of John Hodgman’s PC character. Apple, on the other hand, portrays Hodgman and Long as personifications of the systems themselves, not the systems’ respective users. Microsoft has made their ad campaign personal, whereas Apple’s is personified.

Of course, Apple did have an ad campaign that was about users some years back, and those users were impugned in every imaginable way. If memory serves, the fact that more of those users leaned toward Hodgman rather than Long was the basis of many public personal insults, but I digress.