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Tag Archives | Windows
Microsoft's "Apple Tax" White Paper–Let's Try That Again!
Last week, Microsoft sponsored a white paper that expanded upon the mantra in the company’s “Laptop Hunters” ads that Macs are overpriced computers that impose a price penalty based on an ethereal, needless “cool factor.” Said white paper featured charts involving Mac configurations that no longer exist, and calculations of the long-term cost of being a Mac user that seemed questionable at best and nonsensical at worst. I detailed some (but not all) of the issues in this post.
The white paper’s author, Endpoint Technologies’ Roger Kay, blamed some of the data problems on production gaffes by Microsoft. Microsoft has posted an updated version of the paper with updated specs and at least one clarification (it now makes clear that the $149 copy of MobileMe it’s talking about is the Family Pack version). Strangely, Microsoft hasn’t updated the inaccurate chart in the blog post that links to the white paper.
I said in my original post that I didn’t think Kay’s conclusions would be different if the white paper had gotten the specs correct, and I was right: They haven’t changed. And even though the tables now seem to have their specs right, there are multiple places where the math behind his calculation of the “Apple Tax” remains more partisan attack than honest attempt at analysis. Can anyone explain to me, for instance, why he he adds a hefty $750 to the Mac setup for five years’ worth of MobileMe for two computers when MobileMe, which is available for both OS X and Windows, is simply no more mandatory on the Mac than it is on Windows?
Oh, and the paper still has one relatively minor cost attached to the Mac setup–a $99 charge for the iLife Family Pack–which I think is simply indefensible no matter how partisan you might be. Kay doesn’t factor the cost of creativity software into the Windows PC setup in the first place–the theory is that the imaginary family in his scenario has already paid for it for an older computer–but he also doesn’t tack the cost of an upgrade on. Apparently the fact that he has his Mac-owning family upgrading their software after two years but not their Windows counterpart doing so constitutes part of the “Apple Tax.”
I can’t imagine that many people who actually reads the white paper (even in its new, more accurate form) who might consider buying a Mac instead of a Windows PC are going to take the case it makes very seriously. And those people who wouldn’t consider buying a Mac don’t need convincing in the first place.
Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt has theorized that Microsoft’s Mac attack constitutes a trap, and “the Apple press” (of which I don’t wanna be counted as a member) is taking the bait by responding and carping about it. Given that Microsoft is pouring so much money and resources into arguing that you can buy Windows PCs for a lot less than Macs–a point which is obvious to anyone who steps foot inside a computer store, and which helps to explain why Windows’ market share remains huge and the Mac’s continues to be quite small–I wonder whether it’s Microsoft that’s fallen into a trap. I mean, responding to the anti-Windows taunts in Apple ads in kind probably feels really good, but I’m still not sure just who Microsoft’s current round of Apple-bashing is meant to address.
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How Lisa and Jackson Really Spent Their $1500
The secret outtake Microsoft doesn’t want you to see from its new commercial…
(April Fools’ Day lasts for a month, right?)
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Microsoft's New "Apple Tax" Charts: Hey, They Look Familiar!
After I finished writing about the oddities and errors in the white paper Microsoft released today about the so-called “Apple Tax,” I read a post on the same topic by Joe Wilcox over at eWeek. He said the charts in the paper, which is credited to Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies, looked vaguely familiar. They did to me, too. So I dug through my e-mail to find the stuff Microsoft had sent me in the past about Windows PC and Mac pricing,
Here’s a chart that a Microsoft representative sent me back on October 24th, comparing the MacBooks against Windows laptops (sorry it’s so small):
And here’s the laptop comparison chart in the new white paper:
This is a chart on Mac and Windows desktops that Microsoft sent me on January 5th, when it and the world thought Apple might announce one or more cheap new Macs at Macworld Expo (it didn’t):
And here’s the desktop chart in the white paper:
Both charts have gotten updates–for instance, the new laptop one has the $999 MacBook with a DVD burner (which is right, even though it’s not the $999 MacBook configuration you’ll buy today) and some of the PCs are different.
I’m not saying there’s anything fishy going on here–maybe Microsoft hired Endpoint to create the charts and analysis it sent out earlier, but didn’t credit it that time. But it’s worth noting that the new charts aren’t really new–they’re updates (albeit insufficiently updated ones) to ones that Microsoft was distributing under its own name several months ago. And Kay’s argument that the cost of Apple-brand networking equipment and a Sony Blu-Ray player is a penalty Mac owners must pay is also repeated from another round of materials that a Microsoft representative sent me on October 13th.
Bottom line: The white paper is a rehash, not a revelation…
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Good Grief, Even More Laptop Hunters!
Microsoft has posted another commercial in its “Laptop Hunters” campaign, this one starring Lisa (mom) and Jackson (kid):
Same template as the earlier two ones: Show that Windows laptops come in all shapes and sizes, emphasize basic specs (and one cool feature in this case–Blu-Ray), pause to make the point that Macs lack substance, then show the happy shopper(s) with free laptop (a Sony this time–sorry, HP). And don’t even acknowledge the existence of Windows on the computers.
I’m tired of analyzing commercials, so I’ll just point towards my posts on the earlier ads: Lauren and Giampaolo. Most of my thoughts apply to this one too–but if you’re less tuckered than me, I’d love to hear yours.
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Microsoft Does the Math on the "Apple Tax." Badly.
As I said in my post last Sunday on Microsoft’s “Laptop Hunter” ads, it’s unrealistic to expect TV commercials to contribute to a thoughtful discussion of anything. An exercise in comparison shopping between Windows and PCs that takes place in a sixty-second Microsoft commercial just isn’t going to be fair and balanced, any more than an Apple commercial is going to explain that it’s possible to get respectable Windows laptops for a whole lot less than the cheapest Macs.
But Microsoft’s latest salvo in the Windows-vs.-Mac war isn’t a commercial–it’s a ten-page white paper by veteran analyst Roger Kay (a friendly acquaintance of mine, and, like me, a former IDG employee). Roger is independent and knows the personal computer market as well as anyone on the planet, but his paper was sponsored by Microsoft, which means that even if it’s a third-party take on things, it’s going to be one that the company is comfortable with. But the whole point of vendor-sponsored white papers is bring an independent expert’s analysis and data into a discussion in hopes that it’ll be taken more seriously than mere marketing materials.
Roger’s paper includes a bunch of tables that compare Windows PCs and Macs–sort of like what I’ve been doing, although in less excruciating detail–and an analysis of the cost of ownership of the two platforms that concludes that a family than buys two Macs instead of two Windows machines will pay a cumulative Apple tax of $3,367 over five years.
In his laptop section, Roger compares the white MacBook, new MacBook, and 15-inch MacBook Pro against various notebooks from Dell, HP, and Sony, and finds, unsurprisingly, that the Macs cost more. He shows, for instance, that the $999 MacBook comes with a skimpy 1GB of RAM, a bare-bones 120GB of hard disk space, and Intel’s uninspiring x3100 integrated graphics. For hundreds of dollars less, the chart proves, you can buy a Windows laptop with double the RAM, more than twice the disk space, and better graphics.
Pretty compelling. Except that the $999 MacBook doesn’t come with 1GB of RAM. (It has 2GB.) It doesn’t have a 120GB hard disk. (It’s 160GB.) And it doesn’t have X3100 graphics. (It has the considerably more potent NVIDIA GeForce 9400M.) Here, look for yourself. The analysis is based on the old MacBook configuration that Apple refreshed more than two months ago, but the white paper talks about it in the present tense.
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Ten Super-Duper Free Tools
I’ve been bingeing on free tools for the last week. Here are a bunch of the best I found.
Greased Lightning Finds
I want you to download and try the Everything search tool. It installs in a minute, and indexes your drive in another minute — and the speed of its finds will blow you away. No, really, this is the fastest thing I’ve ever seen.
My friend Darryl said, “Everything’s search engine only searches file names and folders — it doesn’t index file contents like Windows Desktop Search does. Instead, it indexes the entire hard drive by using the hard disk’s existing USN Change Journal. The result is a tiny program that uses very little resources, is deadly simple to use, and is astonishingly fast. You can find any file virtually instantly.” The question is why Microsoft didn’t use the USN functionality in the Search function built into XP and Vista. (Don’t you love these rhetorical questions for Microsoft?)
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5Words for April 8th, 2009
Lotsa news tidbits this Wednesday:
Windows 7 users: happy campers.
More BlackBerry Storm 2 rumors.
Nintendo DS: pocket video player.
Apple sued over touch screens.
200 million people use Facebook.
Acer unleashes tons of notebooks.
Better broadband? FCC’s getting going.
Word’s father returns to earth.
.
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Is Apple's 17-Inch MacBook Pro Expensive? Round 2: The Competition Goes Consumer
Last week, I tried to conduct an objective price comparison of 17-inch Apple’s MacBook Pro and similarly-equipped Windows laptops. After I did, my friend Steve Wildstrom of BusinessWeek pointed out one basic problem with such comparisons: They’re impossible. By which he meant that there’s no way to do one that’ll strike everybody as sensible and fair. No matter how hard you try, you can’t configure a Windows PC to precisely match a Mac’s hardware. No two people will ever agree on the relative worth of the multitude of features you examine. Hardware comparisons like the ones I do intentionally ignore the enormously important question of the relative quality of Windows and OS X. Some folks will even contend that any analysis of PCs-vs.-Macs is incomplete without discussion of resale value.
In last week’s story, I came to the conclusion that the MacBook Pro’s pricing wasn’t out of whack with its Windows-based rivals–if there was a “Mac Tax,” it was matched by some of the other machines I looked at. Judging from the almost 200 comments on my story to date, a lot of Windows users thought I was unfair to Windows, and a lot of Mac types thought I gave the Mac short shrift. I choose to take discontent from both camps as a sign that I did a decent job overall. But I wanted to come back and address one gripe that came up repeatedly–that I compared the MacBook Pro against high-end, workstation-class laptops.
I don’t think I made a mistake by doing that. The MacBook Pro is Apple’s highest-end notebook, with specs that were similar in most respects to the Windows systems I compared it to. (And when the Windows machines outclassed it–as some did with graphics, for instance–I noted so.) Several commenters contend that the MacBook Pro is a consumer notebook, but that’s not really right: It’s Apple’s only 17-inch notebook. If you’re a business customer and want a 17-inch Mac notebook, it’s the one you’ll buy.
But the fact remains that most other computer companies divide their product lines into business and consumer lines in a way that Apple doesn’t, and that the consumer systems tend to be cheaper than the top-of-the-line corporate models. So here I am comparing the 17-inch MacBook Pro again–this time against consumer-class models. This isn’t a replacement for my earlier comparison, but a complementary piece. I’m guessing I’ll fail to make everyone happy this time, too, but Lord knows I’m trying…
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How Would You Market Windows?
Over in the comments on my post about Microsoft’s new “Giampaolo ad,” blogger/Microsoft employee Bob Caswell asked me how I’d market Windows. I didn’t give a full-blown answer–hey, I’m grateful that it’s not my problem. I was, however, inspired to pose the same question to my pals over on Twitter (where I’m @harrymccracken and a feed of all Technologizer stories is available at @technologizer). After the jump, you can see what they (and a Facebook friend or three) had to say.
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