That’s all that needs to be said. Microsoft hates it when anyone else has success as they seem to believe they are entitled to it all. They do not play fair, and innovation is a completely foreign concept to them.

Microsoft’s ads are a feel-good message to the lowest common denominator with an anti-Apple bias or simply is unwilling to look at another product objectively rather than seeing it as a culture to which they are unwelcome or don’t understand. While it has its own culture, you don’t have to be part of it to actually use the produce.

Microsoft’s campaign is, at its core, a defensive move to stop the bloodletting that Apple’s been exacting upon it with its Mac ads for what, 2 years now?

The Microsoft ads are an attempt at repositioning Apple’s campaign as being both mean-spirited towards the squillions of PC users out there who have blithely allowed themselves to be treated this way, and simultaneously to reposition Microsoft as a more fun, whacky, irreverent kind of company.

On the first point, which is more or less your argument, I think they’ve done okay, a B-.

On the second point, however, they get an F. The ads are simply not true to their brand. It’s lipstick on a pig (sorry Sarah). If, in three years time, Microsoft has successfully rebranded itself as a fun, whacky, irreverent, non-corporate hairball of a company, I’ll gladly eat my words. But you know this is just the latest salvo in an attempt by MS to be seen as being in-touch with consumers and, you know, hip in a nerdy sorta way. Not buying it.

Which brings me to my last point. Yes, Apple is the marketing juggernaut and Microsoft is the engineering company. But say what you want about Apple flooding the airwaves and billboards with ads, their best marketing is saved for the products themselves. Better design. Better functionality. Better usability. Better integration of third-party apps (App Store anyone?)

If Microsoft really wants to gain ground on Apple, they’ll stop trying to beat them at their own game and spend some time figuring out what they actually can do better. Fixing Vista would be a good start.

Bill: LONG LIVE TIVO!!!

Apple has stepped up it’s ad campaign big time over the past few years but that’s because they’re trying to reach the laggards now. (Everyone else already has an iPod.)

By the way Glen, if an underdog company with better products is being mean by comparing itself favorably to it’s bigger but crappier competition then Redfin is a big mean bully, no?

That being said I think that your point is well made – by taking the high road in their commercial and pointing out the diversity of users and (potentially) uses of PCs , Apple is quietly pushed to a secondary position in a non-snarky fashion, as PC users are celebrated for all of the things they do (with or without their Cs)

BTW as a complete disclaimer I am both a PC & a Mac user – in my case a mixed marraige that is sort of fun