So Hypocritical Apple!
October 30, 2008 by Rico Mossesgeld
Filed under Desktops, Press
So you come out with a new ad, in response to your competitor’s attempts to change perceptions over a much-maligned product. Do you concentrate on your strengths, re-highlight your competitor’s weaknesses, or simply go with a cleverly-worded lie?
Reportedly, Apple decided to go for the latter. In a recent ad, they implied that Microsoft spent more money on marketing their products, rather than improving them. According to WinGeek: “…since Apple brought it up, they spend only .7 cents less per sales $1 on Advertising than Microsoft and spend a fraction of what Microsoft spends on improving its products.” For every dollar Microsoft makes, it spends 13.9% on R&D, compared to Apple’s 3.3%.
The full dirt—as well as the sources of WinGeek’s research—are available here.
If Microsoft spends so much on Vista and Apple spends so little on Leopard, why the hell was Vista so bad and Leopard so good?
I use both daily, I know.
Rico,
You miss the point of the ad. It’s not about how much is spent, it’s about where it’s spent. Vista needs to be fixed..ergo the money needs to go into fixing it, not telling people to use it. After it’s fixed, then spend the money on advertising it.
Apple doesn’t have a similar problem. Their OSX seems to work pretty well and they just need to popularize their offering by spending the money on advertising it.
Wait - there are cleverly worded lies on TV?
Hah! The only problem with your “hypocritical” poke is that Apple’s OS X isn’t a piece of crap that needs fixing in the first place. Perhaps you’re unaware that the reason M$ started their ad campaign is because Vista is crap and OS X isn’t, and a ton of people are switching based on that alone. Thus, Apple doesn’t need to spend a mint, as M$ does, to “fix” their OS. It makes sense that they’d spend money touting the good work they’ve already done, and M$ hasn’t.
The point of Apple’s commercial is that Microsoft spent an incredible amount of money, $300,000,000 on it’s new “I’m a PC” advertising, rather than putting that money towards creating a less problematic operating system.
(Note: Microsoft doesn’t make PCs, it makes Vista, so why is it advertising PCs. Especially since Macs are PCs too.)
But you also bring up a good point. Look at how efficient Apple has been at creating successful hardware & software products, using just 3.3% of it’s operating budget (which is much smaller than Microsoft’s total operating budget). In comparison the 13.9% that Microsoft spends on R&D has produced less than successful products like Vista and Zune.
BURN!
The truth hurts… and is a little frightening, to be honest.
In the end, only the results matter, and Microsoft’s results are Vista.
Wow. Amazing. Apple spends so little, proportionally on R&D… and yet their products are *SO* much superior to Microsoft’s! Where is all that R&D money at Microsoft going? Propping up an aged and broken operating system, perhaps?
First of all, Vista is not broken, not bad, etc etc. Second, Microsoft can do whatever they want when they have 90% of the market share. Third, Apple is hypocritical and their ads are dumb, and cater to dumb people.
“(Note: Microsoft doesn’t make PCs, it makes Vista, so why is it advertising PCs. Especially since Macs are PCs too.)”
Umm…..well according to apple they do… “i’m a Mac,and I’m a PC” and then they imply that the PC is a windows item…..