What's with the ferret? Like kryptonite sucks the power out of Superman and ultimately kills him, the ferret joke pretty much does the same to any vestige of humour in "Siler's" response.

Meursault

So actors are less truthful than Microsoft employees? If he didn't say Vista rocks, Bill Gates would eat his beloved ferret.

Batbrody

@xFr3nLixPhYr3x: LOL! Priceless

bostero2

@Hamslicer:

Tell mac to stop copying linux.

xFr3nLixPhYr3x

"windows vista rocks"

yes it does. if you can't handle it, just switch to mac and feel ashamed that you couldn't tolerate the learning cuve, because people, it ain't that steep...

dedalus987

Hack.

I wish they would stop trying to copy Mac and stand on their own merits. As they were.

Hamslicer

Vista not pretty? Come on now... It may be a stumbling block and not nearly as awesome as XP was in it's day, but the interface is, I think, more pretty than the Mac interface. Aero is sweet and fresh, and frankly, the Mac OS X+ interface is starting to look a little stale.

Im a PC, and I can't print to my corp crappy dell printer wihtout crashing office. But I would never give the Jobs any of my hard earned cash for his overpriced fashion statements.

The_Bronze

@aktif8: Many of us put in hours a day on a computer. Our OS should be more than "not that bad."

jimothy

@Turing_Machine: People on Times Square? They should go to less savory parts of the city so they can get the real grit.

*staggering prostitute* "I'm a PC, cuz I'll do whatchoo want for cheap."

Kaiser-Machead on the Edge

I really don't understand the Vista-bashing. As long as you have a capable machine - yes, it's an admitted resource hog - and turn off the blight upon humanity that is UAC, it's a capable OS, and not really all that different, in terms of UI, from XP. I'm not in love with it, but it doesn't inspire any feelings of murderous hatred in me..more like apathy.

FWIW, I have and love my iphone, and think it's far superior to the clunky mess that is winmo, (general 3G network crapiness notwithstanding,) so I'm not a Windows fanboy.. Vista just isn't that bad. Why do people love to hate it?

aktif8

@Alfonzo: I used Vista on my own, and from my experience it really sucks... That was the drop of water that made the glass go over the edge... I switched and I'm not running Windows to play games, I play NFS Carbon, AOEII, AOEIII, Madden NFL, etc... on my Mac with no virtual PCs or anything like that, they run native...

"Listen to real users, not actors."

Is this Microsoft's excuse to not pay the ones who were in the Ad?

bostero2

Hi. I was PC user (well, I still am I guess. I use both). And Macs are better. Hands down. I think since I've had a mac, I've troubleshooted more of my PC friends computers and I have my own mac.

Macs > PC.

Not to say that PC's are useless. Microsoft just needs to care more about making a stable OS. And make things look pretty. Mac OS X is oh so pretty.

Blinklink11

Umm, I am a close approximation to a 'normal' PC user; and umm Mr Sean sir, I don't really understand your ferret loveing/brain-dissecting ways.

darthuv

If you want to be a part of this ad, come out to Times Square. they're pulling random people aside and filming their statements and showing it on the Nasdaq building screen (the curved whole building screen).

They're on the sidewalk with red tablets with integrated cameras. Pretty sweet.

Turing_Machine

God that is such a fucking lame and hacky shpeel. The whole Microsoft campaign reeks of douchery.
Ferrets? The "Swedish Bikini Team"??? What an irrelevant reference

[en.wikipedia.org]

JB

@bostero2: Hi. I'm a PC user. it kicks ass.

No one payed me to say that.

people, please, Mac's and PC's (pc here meaning pc running windows, which is not always the case) are good for different things. if you want 3rd party compatibility, go for pc, but beware the bugs. if you want user-friendly and smooth-running, go for mac. but you're gonna want to boot windows for more games and such.
It's true.

Alfonzo

@mikeysnipa: You spelled dick wrong.

PCLoadLetter

I like the commercial and the replay ot the email is good too.

gqcarrick

Lol, that's funny!

Tweak

it made me chuckle a bit

lilaliendog

pc = nerd if you're a nerd, get a pc

LostAtoll

@mikeysnipa: Someone's cruisin' for a bruisin'...BIGGITTY BANHAMMER STYLE!

jibbly

@Kaiser-Machead on the Edge: Exposure to pure awesomeness, as it were.

Kaiser-Machead on the Edge

@mikeysnipa: Seems more like this site needs new commenters.
Try: support.microsoft.com/

kahri

"Windows Vista rocks. Listen to real users, not actors."

Oh! So everything we've read was written by actors or paid by Apple? That explains it all...

I guess our own experience with Vista was with a Vista Mock-up designed by Apple and sent in every HP, Dell, Gateway, Acer, Lenovo, etc...

bostero2

@mikeysnipa: [www.douchebagalert.com]

Beware, you may be blinded by pure exposure to awesomeness.

Kaiser-Machead on the Edge

Zoophilia is a recognized psychopathology.

scarbrtj

@GDUB: ... Poor ferret.
...
...
Attempts to keep from laughing hysterically...
...
*Snicker

ViperBorg

@Kaiser-Machead on the Edge: It took me years of therapy to get the Gere/gerbil imagery out of my head. Now it's back, along with some other disturbing imagery. Thanks.

Harkonian

"Listen to real users."

Are you talking about all of the highly paid tech journalists who thought it was horrible... or the know-nothings who spend 15 minutes with Microsoft marketing gurus and gave the product an amazing "10!"? Which one is "real?"

fivepoint

I think they should have used Chuck Norris.

orphic1

Don't forget, kids, John Hodgman is a Mac user in real life.

clak

@mikeysnipa: I think AOL has some message boards that might work for ya.

(Zing!)

92BuickLeSabre

Well that email certainly sounded natural and unprocessed in an ad-man-working-with-regular-person-to-try-to-capture-some-of-john-hodgman's-voice-yet-still-trying-to-be-different-enough-to-sound-like-a-real-engineer sort of way.

92BuickLeSabre

i think this website is the biggest buncha mac users i have ever met.. i need to find a new tech site.. Any suggestions? preferably one that doesn't consistently suck macs dikc*... or fondle Steve's balls. Thank you for any suggestions.

mikeysnipa

This is making me want to get a mac even moreso. How sad.

adamgetsawesome

Siler? Does NOBODY watch Heroes? He will destroy us all!!!!

keronian

Imagine this guy swooping into those Mac ads and kicking skulls roundhouse style?

General Halfshaftery

"but in fact I'm probably just chained to a desk somewhere in the depths of Redmond pounding out product specifications."

Dismal! he would have more fun if he were pounding that ferret in his pants.

Not compelling.

GDUB

Ferret is to Siler, as gerbil is to Gere?

Kaiser-Machead on the Edge

I ran Vista on my desktop, and while it wasn't anything incredibly special, it was solid. I didn't have the greatest hardware, but it still ran at least at a decent level. Even when my girlfriend (now ex) pulled all the power supply connections from the components while it wasn running, killing a few parts, Vista was able to take it all in stride. I think a lot of people are hating it because it is easy to get people to agree with.

Null42

he's pretty funny..commercial didnt do him justice

snowbeach024

I've never used macs and never will, simply because I really have 0 reason to do so and they're 10x more expensive than what I can get for a non-mac.

Yea, macs might be easier to use, but for me they're too simple. If something breaks I have to pay to fix it instead of fixing it myself. Granted, they might not break as much, but trust me, Macs aren't immune to issues (as evidenced by my neighbors Mac Book Pro's keyboard not functioning correctly until the 4th time he took it into Apple to fix it).

Plus, if I switched, I'd have to re-learn the OS, which really doesn't hold any appeal to me as I've already learned one and it works fine for me (btw I do use XP, a large reason for that is that I'm poor and really have no good reason to upgrade.)

ilves

@fivepoint: I think he's referring to everyone else who didn't condemn it on it's launch phase out right. Hell most of tose tech writers have since backpeddled and admitted that vista a pretty solid operatinhg system in it's latest incarnation. I'm a real user and I've been running vista 64 HP and it's been no problem city for me.

logicalnoise

@Xavoc: "Supporting Microsoft is like supporting the Nazis, and Mac users are the persecuted Jews. The new "I'm a PC Guy" is the new spokesman for Hitler, er Ballmer."

So, using your analogy I guess Linux is France?

Jrsy is the dude, playing the dude, disguised as another dude

@mikeysnipa: Try MSN

BiZarRroBALlmeR

@J. Shirley: Except for the systems that Apple doesn't provide self-service documentation for. Good examples of this would be the Powerbook G4s, the Macbook Pros, and the Mac Mini.

My MBP requires some 23 screws (A combination of Tiny Philips and Torx #6 screws) to get to the hard drive and CD Rom drive. SO, if you want to compare laptops to laptops, most normal laptops require about 4 screws (max) to be removed to access the HD. Even Macbooks have better HD access than the MBP's.

I love my MBP, but I cringe at swapping out the hard drive/cdrom drive (The HD I voluntarily replaced for more storage, the DVD, er Superdrive died at 1.5 year mark.)

Also, Vistas have the ability to install a version of IIS as an option. While Apple comes w/ those dev packages installed, or on installation media, who wouldn't want to download the latest version to develop from unless you had a static architecture within which you had to develop for a specific code base (For example a specific Java JRE version)...

Which are all downloadable and installable on Vista.

Xavoc

@strider_mt2k: Macs suck! Just less than PCs running Vista! Hah!

Supporting Microsoft is like supporting the Nazis, and Mac users are the persecuted Jews. The new "I'm a PC Guy" is the new spokesman for Hitler, er Ballmer.

Oh, and Fords suck less than Microsoft products. Windows 98 blew up more than a newly rear-ended Pinto.

One last things. The cubs suck, and will never win the Stanley cup!

Xavoc

@ilves:

Your quite wrong, but perhaps in just how you define "simple".

If you said you used Linux you may have a point. In nearly any measurement, Windows is much more "simple" than any other OS. It doesn't come with developer tools, which are pretty much the most complex. Linux and Mac both ship with those tools (sometimes not installed, but available on included installation media).

To get the level of complexity Mac comes with out of the box you'd have to install a variety of apps (like Cygwin, Apache, various programming languages like Perl, Ruby, etc.) Using them would still be painful, unless you've had years of apathy training.

As far as your complaint about user-servicing, you're full off there. Macs are much easier to access, and upgrade. Take a look here: [manuals.info.apple.com]

Compare that with a Dell, which I couldn't even find from Google (Tried various "Inspiron hard drive upgrade" style searches). Oops.

And Vista sucks. I have it. Use it as infrequently as possible but still several times a week. I tell everybody to stay away from it, because it offers nothing over XP.

J. Shirley

Wilson,

Does this guy really warrant a post on a tech blog, or are you hoping this will be another 200-comment win/mac ford/chevy bullshit click-fest like the others have been?

Answered my own question, never mind.

Gawker on, McDuff.

strider_mt2k

@fivepoint: No, I'm sure they mean some douchebag on an internet message board that probably hasn't even tried Vista.

wjousts

Hell, I HAD to install DX9 on my Macbook Pro's copy of Vista (Just upgraded finally since I had to re-install XP after it ate itself.) because Warhammer Online doesn't even use DX10.

Xavoc

I take it back, I can think of 1 reason to install Vista... If you want to play a game requiring DX10. Like, uh, Halo 3, and uh... Shadowrun. Both MS titles.

Xavoc

@dedalus987: Right... I support Vista, XP, OSX 10.5, OSX10.4, Server 2008 R2, Server 2003 x64 R2, Server 2008 x64, VMWare, Xen, CentOS 5.1 x64, and a few other odds and ends.

Of the support people in my group, 2 out of 3 use and prefer Macs. ALL of us prefer XP over Vista when it comes to supporting users and keeping systems running.

It's not a learning curve issue, it's that the system from an evolutionary standpoint, really isn't better than XP in many ways. Certainly not enough to justify paying to upgrade. If you look at memory footprint, the SAME program uses more memory and CPU time to operate under Vista than XP. Why is this? It's the same damn program!

Vista has a couple of nice things about it, but mostly it's by far more annoying to support than any other OS I've ever dealt with. Hell, I'd rather support Linux Desktops (I don't care what build!) than Vista.

Xavoc

@Jrsy is the dude, playing the dude, disguised as another du...: Linux is like the French Underground, while the rest of the French threw their hands up and surrendered, they kept toiling.

Xavoc

@ilves: Hey, if you don't want to use a Mac, thats cool, if your PC does what you want it to, then there is no reason to switch. But please, PLEASE don't throw out the old "its SOOO expensive". I've done it repeatedly, configured equivalent Mac's and PC's, and the difference is negligible at best, many times the Mac comes out ahead, especially when you figure in things like iLife.

Thats not to say you can't get cheap PC's, or that there is a wider selection. Thats absolutely true. But when you buy a cheaper PC, you are getting just that, cheaper. Less features, slower proccessor, etc.

If you are going to argue for windows, make the right arguments (games, more hardware options, wider selection of peripherals, different vendors to choose from, etc). When you make arguments that are without a doubt wrong, well, you just undermine your credibilty. You don't want to sound like a fanboy do you?

krizoitz

I'm tired of all the Mac vs. PC debates. <3 opensource.

xzenkx

"No I'm not. But I play one on TV. I really am a Microsoft Program Manager. I work on IPv6, and other things that you haven't heard of."

Oh yeah, I've heard of IPv6, its been in Mac OS X for a year now!

gcreedle

@mikeysnipa: you obviously use an inferior os get a mac and still run an inferior os and keep everything important on the mac side
then you wont lose stuff when you have to format your brain (oops hard drive)because you got a virus on your beach of an os come play in our sandbox that has walls around it

crash1105

I use both Macs and Windows every day. I use Macs in my Visual Communications class, which is a digital design course, and they're great for that sort of thing. The big silver monitors are nice, too.

But at home I use a PC running Vista, and I love it. I have to admit, it was a pain in the ass to get running (Which was probably the disc's fault...), but once I got the necessary updates and drivers installed, it ran great. I prefer Windows, because it's cheaper than buying a Mac (I got Vista for free from a friend, in my case), I'm used to it, it's my only source for gaming (and Vista has DirectX 10), and I just built a shiny new computer that Vista runs great on. It's even faster than when I had XP.

Unless you're really into gaming or money is an issue, it's just personal preference. :\

20GB

Ummmm these ads were made on a MAC with Adobe suite. How sad is that.

vgart

I've used XP, Vista, and OSX. The ONLY reason I run windows on my computers is because they were cheaper than the mac equivalent. I would be typing this on a mac right now if Dell hadn't sent me a free computer when my last one fried it's fourth motherboard.

I like OSX far better. Simpler to use. Looks better. Far faster than windows (and my windows machines are certainly capable). Hell, the macs I've used at school, bogged down by crappy school software and pointless school-purchased antivirus booted up ten times faster than my fresh-from-the-box XP and Vista computers with nothing installed.

Hintzyboy

@Xavoc: Vive Le Résistance!

Jrsy is the dude, playing the dude, disguised as another dude

@J. Shirley: and why is Vista sucks if I can ask?

Playstation

@Desipride: I don't know about Gateway. I'd rather build my own stuff than purchasing from Gateway. Didn't they buy e-machines a while back?

Playstation

@bostero2: I guess he meant the commercial

Playstation

@krizoitz:
Are you serious? You shouldnt even be on this website if you donno this well-known fact:PCs are cheaper than macs. How can anyone take you seriously if you dont know that. I own a gateway M-1625 that I got for $500, new. Gateway is a respectable company and the quality was anything but cheap. The RAM is 2GBs and hard drive is 250 gbs, with a webcam, a burner, a microphone, lableflash, etc. The cheapest mac laptop is $1100 with 80 gigs and 1GB ram(or shoud I call it Macbook since it's more stylish). It can only burn CDs. Just go to bestbuy.com and compare specs of macs and PCs...and then kill yourself.

Mac ads are cool and all but you can't take em seriously if their arguement is "Well, we have webcams already installed on all our models". With prices like those, you should have three webcams on each or have the whole thing made out of gold.

Desipride

@crash1105:
Can you please decode: "come play in our sandbox that has walls around it"
Cuz right now I'm having a harder time understanding where your going with this, than the brain-dissecting ferretboy's auto-puke email.

darthuv

As a developer, I've always wondered where all this geeky 'love to hate' OS crap came from. Don't you realise ALL operating systems have their good and bad points? Most people don't use Windows because it's trendy to hate it, well, as trendy as WOW playing, basement dwelling geeks get. Ever had a kernal crash in OSX? Ever tried to work out bugs in compiling in Linux? Pick an operating system, stick with it and stop bashing others who choose something different. If you can't get a stable OS insall, maybe you're not as uber a geek as you thought.

shufflemoomin

here's a thought.. who gives a shit? I mean at the end of day if you actually took it upon yourself to email this guy I think that act alone speaks volumes regarding your serious need for a life....

BigViper

@clak: Let's not forget that he's a really neat, intelligent, and hilarious guy. Which makes the Mac ads seem really counter productive, considering Justin Long is a talentless tool.

justhesh

Are you really a dumb, mindless clone?

Urrrrrr, not sure I've been trained to answer that question....

I just design the paperclip HELP icon on MS Office.....

MINI Driver

@gcreedle: "Oh yeah, I've heard of IPv6, its been in Mac OS X for a year now!"

and its been in vista for over a year and a half, whats your point?

I'd bet my life that the majority of mac/pc users haven't heard of ipv6.

japroach

If the Mac guy did this it would be soooooo coooool.
But instead it's the PC guys auto response, so he's a douche bag.

TheBugMan

Why would you buy a pc , unless it's a vaio then you are excused. Buy a Mac, run windows, run linux , run osx.

ichi1

I have learned to love Linux, Im sick and tired of people that think that Windows/OSX are superior. Sure linux is the underdog and maybe isnt as user friendly or good, yet it can look better than OSX, perform better than Windows and you dont need powerful or expensive hardware to run it. Oh and you have a lot of flavors to choose from if you dont like one.

zerito87

Coherent, interesting, insightful. Great article.

ninjagin

I've heard of IPv6, but that's mainly because I have to deal with getting peoples networking issues ironed out on a daily basis. I wish I hadn't heard of it, honestly. Ignorance was a blissful time...

NightElfMohawk

@mikeysnipa: Engadget?

SirNirian

this latest PC campaign might mean a little more if they didn't use a MAC to create it, at least part of it.
[computerworld.com]

doh! someone forgot to erase the file info!

JennyDeMilo

I like these commercials a lot. I've always liked Macs, but I've come to _hate_ MAc guy and _love_ PC guy. PC guys loses in every commercial, and to people who lose on a regular basis, like me, I can empathize with PC guy... and like him so much more.

MichaelBrazell

@20GB: or if you like to steal software. Oh yea, it is pirate day...wait what is today?

BiZarRroBALlmeR

How does this campaign change that fact that Vista is on the nose because it stinks. It's Microsoft's Ford Edsel & New Coke put together, but are they trying to fix the problem? No, instead they spend millions on advertising to convince people as ignorant as they are to reality of their situation that there is none.

When the PC guy in "Get a Mac - Podium" says "ask not what vista can do for you, ask what you can buy for vista" it sums it up perfectly.

stickshaka