“Some things are just too good to be true and too honest not to be. A MacDailyNews reader turned up this quirk of the Microsoft Security page, which showed a happy Powerbook user identified with the label “Click. You’re Clean.” They’ve done a great job proving that it is, indeed, a Powerbook, as seen above,” Pete Mortensen reports for Wired’s “Cult of Mac.”
Mortensen reports, “It’s an unspoken rule that virtually every piece of creative work done for every company in the world, including Microsoft, many PC makers, is actually produced on Macs. It’s always funny when that slips through and says more than it’s supposed to… Keep trying, MS! Some day you’ll be able to find an attractive machine that runs Windows — may I recommend a MacBook?”
Full article here.
In his article, “Microsoft admits Macbooks are bug free: Web-page cock-up,” Nick Farrell reports for The Inquirer, “Software giant Microsoft has accidently implied that rival Apple’s Powerbook is safe from viruses and bugs.”
“It was all some terrible mistake based on the web page designer’s stock photo collection but it has created much amusement among the readers of MacDailyNews,” Farrell reports. “[Microsoft] has since made the matter worse by updating the page with a new image, which is still a 12-inch Powerbook with the logo blurred.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Oh, dear! Have we caused a snowballing story that reinforces the fact that Microsoft Windows is insecure (and the company that makes it is not very detail-oriented) combined with the facts that Apple Mac OS X is indeed secure (while implying that Microsoft knows it) and that Apple makes not only the best, but also the best-looking notebooks?
Oh well, we’ll just have to learn to live with it, we guess.
Related MacDailyNews article:
Microsoft Security website shows Apple Mac and says ‘you’re clean’ [UPDATED] – August 15, 2006
This just gets better and better.
lol, there should be a extra text written in the image:
Get rid of
malicious
software
Buy a mac.
or even better:
Buy a mac, stupid!
^_^
Get rid of Malicious software…
Buy a MacBook.
Thanks MS.
Well, someone has been fired over this and the image has been removed. Long live internet!
LOL! Please can someone post a link to the new photo?
They’ve taken the photo down and replaced it with a picture of an iBook! This time they did manage to completely obscure the logo. http://www.microsoft.com/security/default.mspx
Microsoft’s reacton shows how insecure they are.
“…and the truth shall set you free!”
Jim Carrey in “Liar Liar”
“They’ve taken the photo down and replaced it with a picture of an iBook! This time they did manage to completely obscure the logo.”
Here’s just the image itself-
– and obviously, MS is too damn lazy or cheap to hire a photographer to take a shot with someone using a wintel box…. Oh, right, like there are any photographers who know anyone who uses a wintel box. Sorry.
My apologies, moiety5, I didn’t believe you. But, it seems to be true … they took a picture showing two people gazing at a powered-down 14″ iBook, ‘shopped it to further obscure the logo, and posted it as an example of their own security. Someone else is getting the axe … at about 8AM Pacific.
With all the ‘shopped images going around, you’d think they’d have learned to avoid the obvious. That snow-white case is essentially “iconic” – anyone who has seen an iBook is likely to recognize it – as well as a lot of people who’ve only seen pictures of them. The original hardly needed to have the ports highlighted for us to recognize a 12″ iBook.
Maybe the next will show a 13″ MacBook?
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Reminds me of the Vegas act “Blue Man Group”.
They were featured in many Intel Pentium III ads. However, they use Macs extensively in the production of their shows.
(Before you go off on it, this was long before Apple went Intel.)
BTW, Microsoft’s replacement at their security page now features what looks like a 12″ PowerBook with the Apple logo Photoshop’d out. Though it is harder to confirm or deny.
Obviously they’ll never learn.
Years ago, Parade magazine had an advertisement for a company that was selling training software that made a claim about how their software could make learning MS-DOS and Windows a breeze. Oddly the ad featured a picture of a guy using a Mac SE/30! Kind of hard to even mistake that for a PC. It’s just kind of hard to escape the facts…
It’s hard to find a stock photo of a computer or laptop that isn’t a Mac. Stock places want the most ROI they can get, Apple laptops just go the distance and always look sleek. Not to mention they’re probably what they have on hand for the photo shoot.
Get a Mac!
Thanks for the advertising Microsoft, as you plainly show everyone else to get a Mac.
Just a thought. Maybe they purosely chose photos with Apple laptops as to not offend their customers ie Dell, HP, etc.
This has been going on for years, you’d think MS would have a spec sheet that lists what you can’t photograph. They at least tried to be sneaky this time by cropping the photo. Gateway has/had a laptop that resembled the 17 inch, I thought it was that the first time I saw the ad. Kinda sad, you know PC people don’t sit aound ID’ing computers in ads, movies, TV, coffee houses, etc…
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Buffalo, you have a point, you’d think with Photoshop they’d do a better job of hiding the “Macness”.
And I bet…that a PC user that created the page and selected the stock photo does not even know what a Mac looks like otherwise it would not have been used. Most PC users I know cannot tell the difference between a Mac laptop and a PC laptop.
…or perhaps Macs are much more prevalent and common than most people realize.
You see them constantly in movies and TV shows, as well as commercials. You’d think that producers would save on the budget and not buy one of those “expensive” Macs. But, they probably already know, after years of production experience, that using a Mac that “just works” is far cheaper than a finicky Windows machine that wastes thousands of dollars in production costs whenever it needs to be rebooted and adjusted. They also don’t need to pay for any IT techs to stand by and babysit the computer. Flip the Mac on, then start shooting… “Action!”
As funny as this is, only about 3% of people viewing this would even notice that, and only about 1% of those people would care.
Who freakin’ cares! Besides what’s wrong with showing Apple hardware (even if it’s pre-intel). Apple is now also a PC maker since windows runs on it. So if someone puts windblows on their Mac hardware now, they will still need to get rid of malicious software.
Besides, Bill Gates himself could appear in the “Get a Mac” Ad campaigns. He could stand there and say “My software sucks! You should ‘get a mac’ to make your life easier. Windblows is horrible. I love the Mac, that’s why I copied it! Please ‘get a mac’ PLEASE!” He could say all that and it still wouldn’t matter, because for some reason Microshaft has a demonic hold on most of the people who make the choices when it comes to computers. And people say that SJ has a reality distortion field. Who’s more distorted-consentual Winblows users or Mac users?
Wow!!! Great to know that a little tip to MDN can create such a stir for M$ and some good pub for Apple.
Bwahahahahah!!!!!
All of you that are saying that this is no big deal, you’re right. But you have to admit that it is damn funny!
I’m not sure even 1% would notice, and a large number of them, if they did, absolutely would NOT think it’s funny.
Most doze people simply wouldn’t get the joke; I suspect the large majority of regular doze users assume all OSs are the same, and all get viruses. Many people who are told the facts don’t believe it and simply assume anyone who states OS X is virus-free is an idiot who doesn’t know what they’re talking about, as in, “don’t all computers get viruses?”
Another thing… all of you who claim that this happened because most stock photos contain Macs, obviously haven’t seen the vast collection at fotosearch. Check it out. Most laptops pictured are NOT Macs. Just so happens that the best looking ones are.