New Microsoft Spot/Sean Responds…Sorta
So here’s that new Microsoft spot I was blogging about earlier…
And though I didn’t receive a reply to my email earlier today, I resent it a few minutes ago and got this auto-response…
Hello! I’m a PC – and I can’t answer your email right now. I’d like to say that I’m out climbing Mt. Rainier or biking across Europe with the Swedish Beach Volleyball Team, but in fact I’m probably just chained to a desk somewhere in the depths of Redmond pounding out product specifications.
Now that I have been in a commercial, Microsoft has given me access to super-secret “BillyG” level of executive resources. That’s right – I have my own email auto-responder!
This, as you have probably surmised, is my pre-prepared auto-response (All natural, no filler. No animals were harmed in the making of this response. Except for a ferret.) I really would like to have answered you myself, but if I did, (a) I’d probably get no work done, and (b) then I’d get fired, and (c) then I’d have no chance of doing any more of those really awesome commercials.
So let me try to prognosticate a few of your questions and answer a few of them.
Why did they put you on TV?
I think it’s my devastating good-looks and animal magnetism. No, really – there’s a ferret stuck to my leg right now.But really – you aren’t even an actor!
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.How did you get selected?
I auditioned along with a couple of hundred others. I guess I looked very Engineery. And the ferret probably helped.Are you interested in more acting?
Oh no, I think that Engineering is MUCH more fun.What’s with Windows Vista?
You’ve been watching those commercials again, haven’t you? Windows Vista rocks. Listen to real users, not actors.-The Real PC, Sean Siler
Not a bad response, Sean. Not bad at all.
Apple has already fleshed out the “PC guy.” By offering a look-alike who claims coolness just adds to Apple’s definition.
Makes it seem like MS can’t get enough creative together without trying to hyjack Apple’s.
I see backfire!
Hi i’m not a PC
I was before but especially now i’m not.
My PC is at Best buy broken once again.
Not from what i loaded on to it.
but the updates that were put on my system by
automatic updates.
I’m tired of blue screen crashes.
i’m tired of lost information
I’m tired of wasting money.
Yet again i spend more for a PC that is so messed up
i want to throw it out the window.
Now i’m an APPLE.
i’m tired of wasting money on a system i paided too much for.
I was a PC
but now i’m an APPLE.
Toss aside “coolness” and you’ll find that the basic Apple vs. PC issue is that of short product life cycle vs. the fallout of complex integation.
Apple systems are fully integated hardware/software solutions. They sacrifice some hardware capability for software stability but require both to be upgraded to add major new functionality.
Windows goes with the philosophy that it will support virtually any hardware in the system. This allows for hardware flexibility/capability but sacrifices stability. This is especially true when major system upgrades are introduced.
Both Apple and Microsoft have made some monumental blunders in their product offerings, but Apple’s fumbling has come off as “cool” while Microsoft’s efforts are seen as “evil.” Automatic updates come with both systems and do far more good than harm, but must be supervised.
Frankly most applications written cross-platform work well on both (e.g. Adobe) and offer the same user experience. Most file formats and communication connections have now been standardized to run cross-platform.
The battles have been fought and won, or lost, in their respective market niches. These basic product philosophies rule their market share waiting for the NEW platform which seems incredibly elusive… palm, tablet, touch, phone, neural-net or whatever.
The ad wars are for BRAND, not platform… and if you are a serious techo then you better do both.
@Dad: The majority of folks out there just want a simple computer that works simply, one that doesn’t require active management in making sure they can surf the web, crank out a text document, send an email and watch hardcore pron. Anything more than that and you’ll find someone that’s willing to invest the time in nurturing a specialized system. Expressed in those terms, it becomes an Apple vs. PC question. Throw price into the equation, however, and it quickly becomes a PC vs. Apple question. You’re dead on when you say that Apple and Microsoft are trying to battle for the hearts and minds of the fat middle. The techies have either made up their mind already or are digitally amibidextrous.
@Angry: After spending nearly 6 hours trying to get Windows XP to successfully update to Service Pack 2 while running on Parallels on my MacBook, I’m ready to send out a hit squad on Bill Gates. Haven’t even gotten close enough to sniffing success that will make me ponder what Service Pack 3 will require in terms of time and hair pulling.
You have just demonstrated my point. Poor Bill is looking for snipers because his 5-6 year old system won’t load easily onto a modern Mac portable. The very fact that you will probably succeed speaks more to Windows software flexibility that to Apple’s bundle.
As for “simple computer,” stick with the OS that brung ‘ya. Microsoft should never have encouraged XP box users to buy and load VISTA… especially in it’s earliest releases.
And as for Mac users joining the Greek Chorus against VISTA… most have never run Windows and are merely getting in their “cool groove…”
the same time last year i had to take my pc to bestbuy
the same problem updates that crashed my system.
I have to switch i’m a cartoonist and losing time
on a piece of Windows xp crap is taking a toll on me.
I’m on my wife’s apple right now typing this message.
and right behind me sits the space taken up
by that piece of shit Bill Gates made.
why waste time on a blue screen dominated piece of crap.
@angry: given that you’re an artist, can I ask why you’ve worked on a PC up until recently? Preference? Other considerations? Just curious…
i was working on a pc because of Photoshop
and illuasrator. but these upgrades started to make my system go crazy
and ultimatly crash to blue
i’d love to punch gates square in the nose
or i’d love to tell Bill you owe me money for your piece of crap system
Wow. And to think that I came here from a Google hit.
Angry, I understand your frustration — it sucks when your PC won’t work for you. I’ve been known to punch my computer a couple of times when it didn’t behave. But, you have to understand and appreciate what Microsoft has to deal with.
Dad is absolutely correct — Macs are sold as fully integrated hardware/software solutions. Apple has had enough experience building Macs that they know all the hardware they’ve ever used in a Mac, inside and out, and they’re able to write an operating system (and accompanying software) that is hundreds of times more stable than their PC counterparts. However, this stability comes at a price — a cursory glance at the Apple store shows that you can’t really get a Mac for under $1100 — and even those machines have hardware that is far inferior to what you find in comperably priced PCs. However, aside from the price, Macs are fine machines.
Microsoft, on the other hand, never made computers — they only made software to work on what was already there. Apple never let anyone use their software on anything but their machines — but Microsoft wrote their software to work on a variety of machines. Fast forward to today, and Microsoft is still writing their software to work on a wide variety of machines made by many different manufacturers — including Macs. However, compared to the extremely limited amount of hardware that has ever been in a Mac, Microsoft is faced with writing a piece of software that works on billions, or possibly even trillions of possible combinations of PC hardware (you might as well say near-infinite combinations, but I don’t like the term; after all, the number 2 could technically be considered “near-infinite”). And, for the most part, they have been successful — after all, there’s a Microsoft product in almost every business and every household in America. What’s more, because there’s more than one company making PCs, prices have plummeted — you can buy PCs for $300 that have hardware equivelant to a $1500 iMac.
So why does everyone hate Microsoft? In my mind, there’s a few reasons.
First, Microsoft can’t account for every little quirk that happens in every different combination of PC hardware and software. Frankly, Microsoft doesn’t even try — they leave that to the manufacturers who made the hardware (or software) in the first place. This isn’t a new philosophy — manufacturers have always been responsible for supporting what they make. Microsoft instead focuses on writing the standard, and lets the manufacturers write their software to work with the standard, instead of writing the standard to work with the software.
Second, the vast majority of computer users are dumb when it comes to their computers. When something goes wrong, Microsoft is always the first to blame — when in fact, Microsoft did everything right, and someone else’s product is actually the cause. This is like blaming Ford for the fact that your after-market alternator that you put in your car caused it to stop working.
Third, humans aren’t perfect. Any product that is released onto the market has problems that cause it not to work as expected. Manufacturers have come to accept this is a fact of life, and manufacturing processes typically tend to allow a certain percentage of the produts to have defects. As an example, remember way back in the mid-1990s, when the first Pentium processors came out? Remember the bug that they found that caused it to sometimes give you the wrong answer when you divided two numbers? (By the way, “sometimes” here means 1 in 9 billion calculations.) Remember how much of an embarrassment it was to Intel because they had to replace all those processors? That problem was actually part of a list of about 83 bugs that Intel found. In fact, a look at one of Intel’s more recent Core 2 Duo processors reveals a list of about 128 bugs that Intel found. So why did the world pay so much attention to this one bug? Because someone at CNN made a stink about it. No one bothered to mention that the problem could be fixed through software — instead, consumers backed Intel into a corner to where they would accept nothing less than to have Intel replace their “defective” processors. Now, this doesn’t mean that Intel didn’t try to make a perfect processor, it just means that the design wasn’t perfect, because the humans that made it weren’t perfect. Software is the same way — software authors don’t TRY to write bad software, but inevitably, in almost every piece of software, there’s some eventuality that they just didn’t see coming.
Now, despite all the flack that’s been thrown their way, Microsoft has generally been a pretty good sport. Up until now, they didn’t even need to fight back against the Mac ads — frankly, Apple is small potatoes. However, the pressure on them has been growing. Part of the pressure has come from the Mac ads, but part of it has also come from the backlash from Windows Vista (and part of it has been backlash from Windows Vista because of the Mac ads).
Vista has been somewhat of a PR failure for Microsoft, not because it was a bad piece of software, but because the world got used to XP — the XP era saw a huge boom in the number of personal computers in use, as well as the amount of software available to it. On top of that, Microsoft made a huge effort to make sure that older software that was written to run on older versions of Windows would still work with XP. However, Microsoft had been warning software developers, for years in fact, that some of the procedures they were using in their programs were outdated and would be dropped from future versions of Windows. Despite Microsoft’s warnings, many software authors chose not to update their programs to even be truly XP-compatible — either because they were out of business or because they had moved on to newer and better projects (a common tactic in the software industry — stop supporting the old version so that you’ll buy the new version). When Vista came out, Microsoft made good on their promise, and suddenly a wide array of software was rendered useless. Was this Microsoft’s fault? I don’t see it that way — they made all the tools available to developers that they would need to make their programs XP and Vista compliant, they shouted all the warnings, yet the software developers failed to do anything. And again, instead of blaming the people responsible, PC users chose to blame Microsoft. Word of mouth spread that Vista was a “piece of crap”, and suddenly many users, who had never seen Vista, who had never seen what Vista could do for them, who didn’t truly even know what Vista was, were refusing to make the switch or upgrade to a computer that had Vista. Microsoft knows this is happening — if you don’t believe me, check out http://www.mojaveexperiment.com.
So, I, for one, am glad to see Microsoft fighting back so directly against the Mac ads. In my mind, it’s about time.
And angry, if you don’t believe anything I’ve thrown at you, you can blame your problems on cosmic rays.
Patchchord, thanks for letting me rant. I think I’ll copy this over to my MySpace page.
@Matt: Great comments. Thanks for stopping by!
I can see your point.
But i’m going to join the rest of my comrades and use
An apple.
As a Manga artist i’m expected to produce something
and everyday my system sits thier like an over priced paper weight MADE by Microsoft i lose even more
money.
So as my father uses his apple for Photography
I’m going to use something that won’t fail everytime i turn it on.
I only have Photoshop and illuastrator on my PC
so trying to figure out what the hell happened is getting too damn old for me.
like i said
Microsoft lost me
and they will never get me back
when you start to look at it as money
your losing alot with a blue screen crashing
over priced Microsoft won’t help you worth a damn
computer.
when your lively hood is on your computer
fancy words about how good microsoft is doesn’t work anymore.
now i’ve invested too much of my time to get my PC to work.
And it stops here…
Now i’m really angry.
I took my Pc to best buy to find out
Windows XP erased it self.
ERASED ITS SELF????
How screwed up is that.
I was lucky my music,Art and Business can be saved
but ERASED it self what a piece of Crap.
This ain’t worth it.
And i found out what i have to do to get my system fixed is even more screwed up
Geek squad is charging me 220$ FOR the repair.
540$ for Vista and 250$ for the update to windows vista and 2 weeks to get it back.
1010$ plus tax
This ain’t worth it.
So i transfered all my info to an external hard drive
the only thing i could salvage in this.
And threw out my over prices paper weight.
So all that fancy words about how better windows is to apple is just that FANCY FRICKEN WORDS!
So i am investing in a high end apple.
that is user friendly and will be able to handle
my work and designs for my job.
MICROSOFT OWES ME FOR THE AMMOUNT OF MONEY AND TIME SPENT ON THIER PIECE OF CRAP.