I love articles like this one:
Microsoft Hopes to Counter Apple's Abuse with $300M Campaign, 'Don't
Blame Vista' Tool by Jason Mick. for such a big and successful
company, Microsoft often appears to be run by idiots - but somewhere in
that company they have hired enough good people to keep the company
from falling apart.
I think complaints about Apple's 'Get a Mac' campaign are overblown.
This is marketing, so you don't have to be totally precise in
everything you say. Short statements that deliver a message are all you
have to do.
It helps that Apple is not trying to create the stereotype - that
would be less funny and harder to pass off. Because Apple is only
playing up the existing stereotype, it makes the whole thing work.
Microsoft could play this same game back. YouTube has several
parodies showing stereotypes of what is missing on the Mac, lack of
video games being high on the list. But this type of attack could just
show Microsoft to be the copycats that they are believed to be, so it
might work against them.
The second half of Mick's article discusses Microsoft blaming
hardware vendors for the failure to be ready for Vista, which is
another thing I hate about Microsoft. They call these vendors partners,
but as the monopoly OS vendor, and they treat everyone as servants.
It's just a little too high and mighty for my tastes - and people like
to say Apple users are elitists?
Then to ice the cake, Microsoft has created a software program to
point fingers at everyone else who made Vista run poorly on Joe Shmoe's
computer. Mick states: "The new tool assesses system problems and tries
to convince users that they are not Vista's fault. It assigns blame to
everything from user impatience to virus and spyware." (Doesn't blaming
malware undercut Microsoft's assertion that Vista is more secure than
other operating systems?)
I wish I could say good luck to Microsoft with its new marketing
campaign, but I can't. Instead, here's to all the suffering Windows
users, may you find a way to keep XP alive a little longer.
