“I put together a top ten list of things MacDailyNews readers and I think Apple should show the world in television commercials and print ads. These ten things rank high on the “wow factor” for Windows users who have little or no familiarity with today’s Macintosh. If Apple showed these things in advertising, and they can be shown rather quickly, easily within the constraints of a 30-second TV ad, I believe it would help sell more Macs to people who might not have even considered one,” SteveJack writes in his article, “Top Ten things Apple needs to show the world about Macintosh” in the MacDailyNews Opinion section.
Full article here.
Application capabilities are great. However, Apple should start showing the hardware specs in their ads too. 800Mhz to 1Ghz bus speed would impress the hell out of me if I never used a Mac before. Whenever I hear people wanting to buy a computer, all they concentrate on are the “hardware numbers”. Look at Dell, Gateway, Compaq, IBM, etc. They are flashing their specs every time. I’ve never seen any numbers on Apple ads.
Maybe its time for Apple to make a “switch”.
AVERAGE COMPUTER USER: “WHAT DA HELL IS A BUS SPEED? IT SOUNDS SLOWER THAN MY DELL 1.8 ghz COMPUTER.”
I think speed is negligible to the average user. Applications and ease of use is really the “wow” itself if it is SO FREAKIN’ simple that it’s just too cool compared to the other platform. Then the numbers should be narrated during the whole experience.
Showing all of that stuff is to technical for a quick commercial. Keep in mind sex sells. I’d have some very attractive woman sitting in her office, clearly annoyed as she waited for one of the company IT guys (some fat white guy under her desk with the classic butt crack showing) to try and get her on the network. At the same time she’s on the phone promising a client to get some information to him by some deadline. Then, when the IT guy thinks he’s solved it, have him hit a key and the blue screen of death pop up. Then let him start rattling off some technical mumbo jumbo about the damage some virus has done, she grabs her coat and jacket and heads home, where there’s a Mac and she continues to get her WORK done. Her digs should be totally modern and cool. She works a bit and you get a quick glance at OS X in action on the screen. You see her drag a file to an icon, she calls her client, fade to black, Apple logo, her voice in the background, “Hi Bill, the budget figures and write up are on your server now…. “
Oh, hell. Why not just have Ben Curtis the Dell dude smoking pot and go: “Get a Mac dood!” in a stoned & raspy voice.
Here’s my idea for a good commercial.
A middle-aged, attractive woman standing in front of an iMac at the Apple store with her husband. She says to her husband, “it sure is beautiful, but I heard that Macs don’t run most applications.”
A young, geek-handsome apple store employee overhears her and steps in saying, “Actually, Macs run over 300,000 applications including Quicken and Quickbooks Pro, Adobe Photoshop, The Print Shop, Norton Anti-Virus, Personal Firewall, and DiskDoctor, and of course Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.”
To which the lady says “You mean, I can work on Microsoft Word files on a Mac?”.
Apple store guy, “Sure can.”
At this point the wife looks at the husband. The husband looks back at her and says “That sounds pretty good to me.”
Also, at this point you could have a young 12-14 year old boy be with the couple, and butt in, “What about games?”
To which apple geek responds, “How’s Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 4, Tiger Wood’s Golf, Unreal Tournament 2003, and NeverWinter Nights sound?”
“Cool!” replies kid.
Our lady looks at once more at her husband, looks at the computer, looks at Apple geek and says “One iMac please!”
Show apple logo, or apple switch logo.
This could be part of a “real-people” “real-uses” campaign that showed stereotypical types of users in Apple Stores getting their fears about the potential shortcomings of Macs being assuaged by attractive, competent, Apple employees.
Interested to hear what people think about this.
I like TheloniusMac’s commercial idea too, but I dunno if I want to see that IT crack…
M$ users (professional or user) love the specs, PERIOD!!! Applications and ease of use mean nothing to the M$ crowd unless you have the numbers to back it up. Apple is failing to show the numbers in their ads. I have to work with the M$ freaks everyday. They are laughing at these ads saying that Apple aren’t serious enough. Part of me believe they do it out of ignorance and part of me believes they are are right. They are not serious enough to the M$ crowd. Apple’s adversting department must get serious with their ads. Think differnet, Apple…..think serious.
OhGreat has a really good point – from an IT/Hardcore user perspective. The commercial I made up was a aimed at average Joe user.
Here’s a couple of different takes on the how to win market share thing:
One take is that people use at home what they use at work, so if you want to really increase Mac market share, you have to get business using Macs. To do this, you have to keep coming up with faster, better hardware that uses the most cutting-edge tech. And you have to get big enterprise applications (so applications still probably count) running on the machines so that they can handle heavy duty, data-collection/mining, groupware, and intranet functions vital to most modern corporate entities.
Another take would be that MS is way too entrenched in the medium-sized and enterprise business worlds, so Apple should really focus on the home and small business user. They have the most to gain from Apple’s ease-of-use because they don’t have dedicated IT Staff/budgets. It’s also likely that these people aren’t going to be MHz, bus-speed, “does it have serial ATA?”, I need 8 HD bays type folks. But they are worried about being able to get e-mail from other people/businesses, share documents with other people/businesses, be able to balance the checkbook/books.
My hope is that Linux keeps winning bigger shares of the corporate environment, and that this will help all *nix OSs increase market-share through easily ported sources of big Linux apps making their way to OSs like OS X. As well as easier integration with Linux based VPNs, networks, etc..
[my deep-down, secret hope is that Mac OS X conquers everything and that Steve Jobs is crowned Emperor of the Known Universe. I am seeing a counselor regarding this]
Apple just needs to take ‘ole jeff goldbluther out back and pop a cap in him
Then show us some more cleavage. No one ever went wrong showing a pair of sweater-monkeys in their ads!
Bring on the breastage!!!
http://www.redlightrunner.com/lib/redlightrunner/crowdcontrol.mov
This is dated, but funny (and true)
MS Office. Get over the fact that MS Office runs on MacOS, and that it’s the same file format. People STILL tell me that they would buy a Mac if it opened Word files, and when I tell them it can, they always assume I mean that the Mac runs Windows. Explain further, and this “you’re telling me porkies” look comes into their eyes!! Even when I pull out my Book and show them, they still don’t quite believe it. However, if Apple were to tell them, and all I had to do was remind them that Apple said that, maybe it would finally sink in.