Finally someone gets it about the PC vs. Mac commercials

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Mac-v-PC-SouthPark_270x176I started writing this post to help drive awareness over some of my mild frustration with the Mac vs. PC commercials.  While during the process of writing this post about Time Machine and Shadow Copy, a friend of mine, thanks Dave, sent me this great article, which I think sums my thoughts up nicely at the end: "But if you're a PC user, these ads are more likely to irritate you than convert you.".   I think I fall squarely into that category.  Check out the full article here:

Mac Attack Apple's mean-spirited new ad campaign 

In general I think I most likely like everyone else when these commercials came out, I smiled and laughed.  Initially the campaign seemed to be yet another well executed and brilliant marketing effort from Apple.  However, recently the commercials seem to be not focusing on accurately conveying the technology.  I am sure that is probably the point but being a technologist, I felt compelled to write this post.  :-)  Specifically the ad that pushed me into writing was one of the recent ones, with the multiple copies of Justin Long.  The ad was focusing on a new feature called Time Machine.  I am not bashing or doubting the functionality of Time Machine.  Although my buddy Keith has a thing or two to say about time machine:

Time Machine crashed my Mac 

Rather I am writing this post to let you know about something that was left out from the PC side.  Windows Vista has built-in features called Shadow Copy, which and Complete PC, which in my opinion are very comparable to Time Machine.  What I find is even more fun about the technologies, is that the concept of Shadow Copy has been around for years, even though in early versions it was network based, very effective for shares.  As a matter of fact I did a quick screen cast on Windows Vista's shadow copy:

Windows Vista Product Guide screencast - Shadow Copy

Additionally Shadow Copy and the underlying technologies became their own product, Data Protection Manager (DPM), that is designed to help protect the enterprise.  I am sure my buddy Jason would love to talk to you about that.  DPM is such a great product to help protect data in the enterprise.  
As a matter of fact it just won an award (congrats Jason!):

DPM 2007 awarded "Product of the Year" for protecting Virtualized Environments 

Okay so now that is off my chest.  :-) 

Thanks for reading and I am very interested in what you think, please comment. 

Happy Friday.