Hasta La Creative!

by Josh Fahey

The Mac ads from Apple are among the most iconic in the past decade, but they seem to be getting creatively stale, a little mean, and, dare I say, a bit desperate. The latest three spots are all aimed at the Windows 7 launch. The common hook Apple keeps hanging its hat on is being number one in satisfaction. Great. That’s a good thing and certainly worthy of talking about, but that PC guy can’t be all bad. Can he? Is Apple being fair?

I don’t want to debate a bunch of Mac diehards on the technical differences between the machines and operating systems. I don’t think Apple is being fair. These ads create the perception that PC’s are drastically inferior and riddled with problems. In creating this perception, they alternately imply that Macs are superior in every way and have no problems at all. Despite what people say, this simply isn’t true. There were many minor-to-severe problems, some are ongoing, when people upgraded to Apple’s new Snow Leopard operating system in September. You can read about them here,  here, here, and even here on their own discussion board.

I’m not saying Apple makes bad software; they don’t. In fact, it’s really good most of the time. However, Apple went through many of the same problems any developer will inevitably go through when changing or upgrading an operating system. I think a lot of people understand this, but I also think a lot of people who don’t know much about computers draw unfair conclusions about Macs and PCs from these ads.

Inevitably, if Apple continues down this path, they’ll lose favor with people. I believe they already have. You can see a lot of comments from Mac fans who don’t like the ads anymore. People don’t like being lied to or deceived. Ultimately, though, people grow tired of ads that attack another product instead of those that highlight their own attributes.