Apple’s Get A Mac: “Hiding”

As much as I hate the Apple “Get a Mac” campaign for its obvious inaccuracies about Windows Vista’s features and Windows in general, I bow before the talented advertising professionals and writers who have developed an almost genre in advertising. The fun starts with an informal “hi”, ends with a picture of the product and everything in between is ingenuity.

The latest of these is “Hiding” which I first saw on Engadget. I suspect this was a made-for-web ad as it exploits the very nature that the user is online. Very clever use of the ‘pikaboo’ analogy.

21 insightful thoughts

  1. @Jono: You should see the size of those Apple trucks that dumped all that cash on my front door.

  2. I thought they had stopped making these, it’s the first new one I’ve seen in weeks.
    They are amusing, but at the same time irritating as hell for their inaccuracy.

  3. @Adrian: The content is, yes. But it’s creative advertising and that’s very hard these days.

  4. These ad’s are absolutely hilarious.
    Don’t try to say that a Mac isn’t better out of the box than a Windows XP or Windows Vista machine.
    If you compare the software that comes with XP, compared to what comes with OS X there is absolutely no comparison– OS X demolishes XP.
    Every commercial Apple makes like this, they get more customers.

    Even after everything I said…
    I am a Windows user.

  5. @Mitch: actually you’re quite wrong about the whole software with OS thing.

    if you buy OS X retail, it’s just as useless as XP is out of the box. Apple would like people to think that it’s better equipped that way, but in truth you get all that lovely iLife+Final Cut business because you bought a PC and the PC comes bundled with that software.

    that’s just one of the many inaccuracies that Apple propagates and hopes nobody pays attention to it.

  6. the only difference is I can buy a mac mini with with all that bundled software for as little as AU$949.00 … last I checked Vista Ultimate alone costs AU$750. Ok so you can buy a Dell box for with Vista Ultimate for a little more than AU$1100. The only problem is you shiny new Dell won’t actually run any of the fancy Ultimate applications… why? Not enough graphics grunt.

    Fact is, you can’t win the money argument. If you spec a bundled box from Dell vs. Apple component for component with Vista on the PC the Mac box is cheaper every time.

    Don’t get me wrong. Is Apple OSX better than Vista? Who knows. One thing is for sure though even my non computer literate parents can work a Mac… the same can’t be said for Vista.

    … ps: this was typed on a Wintel box.

  7. These are the market shares as of May 8th…
    Windows XP 82.65%
    Windows 2000 4.42%
    Mac OS 3.89%
    Windows Vista 3.02%

    This is being typed on a Mac at school, but only because it has a bigger monitor. At home, i got XP on a 22″ and Vista on a 47″. My point is, Mac sucks, the mouse is annoying, the computer doesn’t know how to handle the internet.

    The price point, totally false. You save up for 5 years and spend 300 dollars at the most on the Ultimate Upgrade edition, versus about 800-1000 dollars over the past five years for constant “major” upgrades, that are not major.

    Out of the box…. i like iPhoto, but i am a Picasa2 guy now, and the iLife is pretty. But, my 47″ LCD has a little camera on the top, and i talk through AIM, so no big deal. Who uses their PC out of the box as is?

    Good point on the non literate parents, i bet my mom would love a mac over a pc… too bad i wouldn’t, so she won’t see it… hehehehaha

  8. O i forgot to add, Long, why are you promoting Mac… even bad publicity is good publicity!

  9. @Chad: I’m not trying to promote the product, although I think the Mac is a well-built machine. I’m trying to promote the ad, which I hate for its lack of truthfulness, but I also admire for its creativity.

  10. @Long

    ty for this new spot. yes very creative, but they start to become boring.

    i admire the microsoft spots (you posted here some while ago) much more because they have creativity&quality. id love to see more of those.

  11. I think that the “I’m a Mac” ads came to light so strongly the past 2 years because of the Vista emergence. Apple Inc. saw MS getting ready to smash them and they had to convert as many people as possible.

    Looking at updated stats, it’s easy to see that Mac is holding their ground, but they haven’t been expanding, although popular media would like you to believe it.

    Look at Mac’s numbers for the past year as far as Market Share is concerned:

    Month Mac OS
    May, 2006 4.19%
    June, 2006 3.92%
    July, 2006 3.80%
    August, 2006 3.71%
    September, 2006 3.88%
    October, 2006 4.09%
    November, 2006 4.10%
    December, 2006 4.15%
    January, 2007 4.34%
    February, 2007 4.29%
    March, 2007 3.94%
    April, 2007 3.89%

    What do we see, an uneven line. It goes up and then down. When Vista hype was high, they went up, and now they are on their way down. Granted, the highest they were ever at was when Vista was launched… interesting.

  12. The only reason why I like these spots is the fact that the Mac guy is really uncongenial where the PC guy is such a friendly geek.

    My problem with Apple isn’t the quality of there products but that they really lie a lot in ads and keynotes. Dangerous.

  13. One of my co-workers love the one where the security guy is constantly asking PC does he accept whatever request is being asked from Mac.

    Then she tried to change the time and date on her iMac and run the Adobe Updater… and was promptly annoyed that she kept being asked for a password.

    (She was asked 4 times for her password!)

    She laughed at herself immediately.

    Also, I am right along with you. The ads are clever and cute. And the Mac is a well-built machine. (I have an iMac.) The ads have grown quite old on me, though. The best ones were the first batch.

    Of course, I’ve always thought the one that came off looking the best in these ads were PC. Mac seems smug and pompous. The ads aren’t as successful in UK and Japan. Perhaps those citizens like the PC character better, too.

  14. Chad… you need to check your sources according to both IDC and Gartner Apple market share sits around 5.8% to 6%. In comparison, Dell market share sits around 30%. The point here is that Apple is in the market of selling a full system… meaning you are not buying OSX or a Mac computer, you are buying and an integrated system (which can also run Windows by the way).

    I wouldn’t be surprised if the mac market share this will jump to 10 to 15 % by Christmas. Reason? Release of Adobe Creative CS3 for Intel Mac and release of Leopard OSX. Oh and did I mention that Macs also run Windows?

    Clearly Apple is primarily competing in the hardware market but are doing a good job in making people believe they are in the OS market.

    Bottom line regarding the adds is that they are simple. There is simple concept and a clear message. If this message is true or not is beside the point… this is advertising after all.

    Will Mac OSX (the OS, not the hardware) ever reach market penetration like Windows? Only if Apple decides to license the OS to other parties such as Dell. Hell will probably freeze over before this happens… but then again that’s what they said about Apple using Intel processors.

  15. Personally, I hate any ads that attack their competitors rather than just advertising themselves. I’m not into iPods, but at least their commercials are about iPods. Mac ads are just tacky and obnoxious. Any company that goes down this path starts to annoy me and I’m bound to become disinterested in their product. A few years ago, I was somewhat interested in Macs, but not anymore. Pepsi does this with Coke as well. Recently my opinion of Ubuntu linux has gone down with their lame anti-Windows posturing. Quit tying your products into platform activism. Just be a good OS and let that suffice. What does one of the most popular, free, linux distributions need to compete with Windows for? Millions will use it anyway. It’s not like they need the revenue. It’s just open source activism crap and if I have to deal with that to use and be knowledgable about the OS, you can count me out.

  16. That’s okay, RC, Apple doesn’t want 100% of the market anyway. They are happy to leave some with Windows.

  17. To the people that get excited about the Mac being able to run Windows – do you realise then that this means an additional sale for Microsoft as well as Apple?

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