PCs and Macs. And smartphones.

Having had a go at Google, I suppose it's time to look at Apple. Odd as it may sound Microsoft people don't dislike Apple. iPod's market penetration among Microsoft employees is probably higher than the population as a whole. Ask many of us what hardware we'd choose to run Vista on and a lot would prefer Apple to Dell, HP, Toshiba and the rest. Apple's industrial design is some of the very best out there.

Apple punch above their weight, and nowhere more so than in their advertising. 23 years after it aired the "1984" commercial for the launch of the Mac is still seen as one of the great commercials. I've quoted a piece in the Guardian about the current "I'm a PC"/ "and I'm a Mac" ads - here in the UK they star David Mitchell (PC) and Robert Webb (Mac). A favourite bit reads

[Mitchell and Webb] are best known for the television series Peep Show... .. in which Mitchell plays a repressed, neurotic underdog, and Webb plays a selfish, self-regarding poseur. So when you see the ads, you think, "PCs are a bit rubbish yet ultimately lovable, whereas Macs are just smug, preening tossers." In other words, it is a devastatingly accurate campaign.

Dell have responded in kind;  and now so have PC pro (PC pro's Tim Danton has a good piece on the subject, too). Their "32 ways that PCs are better than Macs makes a good read"

A couple of times recently my new smartphone has come into its own. Last night, getting off the plane home I picked up a mail which said "was [this] meant to be in a blog post you made". It wasn't, and the web browser on the smartphone let me onto the blog site to make the correction before I got to front of the passport queue. A couple of times I've found myself using the camera as a way of grabbing a note of something - as distinct from taking a photograph. One example was PC-Pro on the Mac adverts... If you want to know what their 32 reasons are you'll have to get your own copy.

Technorati tags: Apple, Advertising