“In its ad blitz announcing the first ever Intel-based Macs, Apple skewers PCs — which happen to be Intel’s biggest customers,” Amanda Cantrell writes for CNNMoney. “While Apple is known for controversial ads, the newest spot puts Intel in a potentially uncomfortable spot. Clearly, Intel is happy that its newest customer — one that’s especially rich on cultural cachet at the moment — wants to celebrate the partnership, and gets some free advertising to boot. But the commercial also takes a swing at Intel-based PCs, which some analysts believe could alienate Intel’s other customers.”
“In the spot, an announcer intones that for years, Intel chips have been ‘trapped’ inside ‘dull little boxes, dutifully performing dull little tasks,’ and concludes with the announcement that Intel chips have finally been ‘set free, and get to live life inside a Mac,'” Cantrell writes. “But those ‘dull little boxes’ — PCs — are still Intel’s bread and butter. Intel’s number-one customer is Dell, which exclusively uses Intel chips and it does big business with other computer makers including Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Acer. As ‘The Critic,’ Jon Lovitz’s cranky and neurotic animated character, might have said – ‘How awkward!'”
“For its part, Dell shrugged off the ad,” Cantrell writes. “‘As far as their marketing goes, that’s marketing,’ said Dell spokesman Jess Blackburn. ‘We continue to have a very solid relationship with Intel and nothing has changed in that respect. We probably are their largest customer; we shipped 10 million systems in the fourth quarter. I don’t think any supplier is going to ignore a customer that is building that many systems and using that many of their parts in them.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The problem with Apple’s ad isn’t that it insults the likes of Dell, it’s that it insults the very people to whom Apple wants to sell Macs. Apple should show snippets of Mac OS X (a couple of seconds of Exposé here, a Dock ripple there, a Fast User Switching cube effect, a quick iWeb shot, etc.) to the world via their TV ads while they have a chance, before Microsoft covers the world with Windows Vista advertising. Instead, the only thing Apple does is tell people they made a stupid choice and show a blank Mac. Hopefully, the ad will drive people to their nearest Apple Retail Store, so that they can finally see Mac OS X, iLife ’06, etc.
Again, why iPods (and iTunes downloads) don’t come preloaded with THIS is beyond us. Such an omission is criminal. It’d be easily deleted, unobtrusive, and Windows-only users would be able to quickly see what they’re missing.
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Related MacDailyNews articles:
Corporate IT buyers fuming that Apple has Intel Core Duo Macs shipping while Dell and HP wait – January 12, 2006
Report: Intel didn’t know about Apple’s Intel ad calling PCs ‘dull’ until just before Jobs’ keynote – January 11, 2006