Shock! Lauren ad is .... AN AD!!!

The Mac blogging community has made a startling discovery. The advert featuring Lauren's attempts to find a cheap Mac is in fact ... make sure you're all sitting down now ...  AN AD!!

MS's shameful attempt to hoodwink people with blatant attempts at marketing has not gone unnoticed by the fair and impartial folk at AppleInsider.

AppleInsider said:

Bloggers forensically studied the advertisement in slow motion, pointing out that the shots of Lauren entering and leaving the store appear to have been shot all at once; the surrounding people walking past in both shots appear in the same place. This must mean, they conclude, that Lauren never entered the store looking for the $1000 17" notebook, and that the ad simply included a scene at "the Mac store" to offer Apple some additional free advertising.

Of course, it doesn't really matter if Lauren walked into the store and spent any length of time there. The entire ad was contrived by definition. Lauren wasn't given money to find the ideal computer for her needs, she was given a specific budget and told to find a specific hardware feature that Apple does not carry.

Apple only sells one 17" notebook with a high quality, full resolution screen. No PC maker ships anything comparable to the MacBook Pro for under $1000. As the ad points out however, there are plenty of low quality, low resolution 17" screens available from PC makers trying to dangle low prices in front of consumers in the overcrowded, low differentiation market for low end, generic PCs that ship with Windows Vista.

Why would Microsoft's production company waste its time following Lauren around the Apple Store with a camera, when they knew full well that the PC definition they'd cooked up wasn't one of the three simple notebook family members Apple offers? And why would Lauren, a member of the Screen Actor's Guild, waste her time acting out a role that she wasn't even making union wages on?

littleguru said:

Hahahaha! Your favorite line is mine... awesome!

I also watched all the various Apple ads in slow motion and found out that the background white is the exact same in all... now let's find a reason for that

It's so shocking...

'Getting what you wanted' means not paying for more than you want.

AppleInsider is referring to 1440x900 as 'low resolution', as if anybody needs 1920x1200. It isn't HP enticing users to have a low quality screen by dangling low prices, its not giving users more than they need in order to justify a premium.

That's what Apple does.

The added weight and lower battery life of the machine is due to the fact that HP expects computers that large to be used as desktop replacements, not on-the-go devices. For that HP has a few netbooks. The point is in the PC market, you can get what you want, not some deviced marked as 'quality' so they can charge premiums.

Funniest comment on that article: "Oh yeah? Well the guys in the Mac vs. PC commercials aren't actually computers, they're just people who CLAIM that they're computers! Totally misleading."

New one. Oh no! He looked at a Mac and didn't want it! BURN HIM!!!!

brian.shapiro said:

'Getting what you wanted' means not paying for more than you want.

AppleInsider is referring to 1440x900 as 'low resolution', as if anybody needs 1920x1200. It isn't HP enticing users to have a low quality screen by dangling low prices, its not giving users more than they need in order to justify a premium.

That's what Apple does.

The added weight and lower battery life of the machine is due to the fact that HP expects computers that large to be used as desktop replacements, not on-the-go devices. For that HP has a few netbooks. The point is in the PC market, you can get what you want, not some deviced marked as 'quality' so they can charge premiums.

Apple Insider said:

Back, and to the left... back, and to the left...
Ladies and gentlemen, that must have been one magic Apple store!"

The average Mac and PC user does not know or care that that thread on Apple Insider or this thread exists.  And they're better for it.

Dovella,

and here's Giampaolo

joechung said:

The average Mac and PC user does not know or care that that thread on Apple Insider or this thread exists.  And they're better for it.

brian.shapiro said:

'Getting what you wanted' means not paying for more than you want.

AppleInsider is referring to 1440x900 as 'low resolution', as if anybody needs 1920x1200. It isn't HP enticing users to have a low quality screen by dangling low prices, its not giving users more than they need in order to justify a premium.

That's what Apple does.

The added weight and lower battery life of the machine is due to the fact that HP expects computers that large to be used as desktop replacements, not on-the-go devices. For that HP has a few netbooks. The point is in the PC market, you can get what you want, not some deviced marked as 'quality' so they can charge premiums.

dotnetisv said:

littleguru said:

*snip*

I thinks its a poor example of Disruptive Marketing. And in disruptive technologies one can never really be sure who the intended audience really is. Is the intended message subliminal?

-James

www.dotnetisv.com

matthews said:

New one. Oh no! He looked at a Mac and didn't want it! BURN HIM!!!!

What an epic fail:
- He was looking for portability and got a 16'' inches laptop that weighs 3.3kg (with the standard 6 cell battery, the 12 cells adds 500 more grams).
- He was looking for battery life and he got a laptop that has unknown battery life (the usual battery life can vary depending on configuration disclaimer) where the 16'' non-LED backlit display, the power-hungry non-45nm chipsets, the slower and more power-hungry DDR2 ram and a very power-consuming videocard guarantee a very poor battery life, even with the more expensive 12 cell battery.
- He was looking for power and got the older/slower chipset and slower RAM that will eat a considerable part of the small 400mhz advantage over the macbook 2.0Ghz P7350 CPU (notice the 50, the 50 series is faster than the 00 series). The only real advantages are the videocard that is about 30% faster but just like any other slow laptop videocard will last only a few months before he'll be forced to buy another laptop to play more recent games on that huge 1920x1200 resolution (the #1 reason why gaming sucks on notebooks) and the 2gb more ram, of which at least 750mb will be wasted by Vista plenty of useless services and if he dares to use Vista x64 then another big part of memory will be wasted by all the dual x86/x64 subsystems, larger memory block sizes and other stuff.

And all this for JUST 50% more the Macbook price. Congrats Giampaulo, you're a really dumb PC.

Update #1: The HP website doesn't have a 2.4ghz CPU listed, so it may as well be one of the older T series that waste 10 more watts making the battery life shorter (I think that a laptop like that uses up to 70w of power, 10w more could mean 1/7th of the battery life wasted). PC manufacturers love to spend more on things they can write on specs papers like CPU GHzs and GBs of ram, rather than stuff that matters like the motherboards chipsets (newer chipsets are faster and can have higher bus speeds) and ram speed, that can make a noticeable difference on laptops.

Update #2: Notice that shops usually keep the cheapest laptop configurations with the smallest batteries, the larger batteries are usually available only on the expensive models that you have to order or buy online. 12-cells batteries usually make the notebook bigger and heavier: want to see how much bigger that laptop is with the 12-cell battery? click here and have a laugh, you'll need to buy a bigger laptop bag just because of that battery. Without that huge 12 cells battery that notebook lasts only 2.30-3.0h with the slower 2.26GHz P-series CPU (see the review here) while the macbook with the 6-cell battery easily lasts up to 5: all that huge battery for barely an hour of extra life (with the slower CPU, with the 2.4ghz CPU the battery life difference would be smaller)... and how much it's going to cost to replace that huge battery when it dies?  so much for portability and battery life...

Update #3: Notice how I didn't mention the fragile, plasticky chassis and the slow bloated OS that with its unreliable standby (hope it doesn't wake up and hang while it's closed or have a nice time explaining the manufacturer how did the display broke and how all the chassis plastic warped) , damn slow boot-up and shutdown times make mobile experiences very miserable. Those things matter when you chose a laptop but since the AD is all about "portability", "battery life" and "power" I only talked about that, so please avoid flames.

Are you really analyzing the adverts that much? you pathetic twát.

stevo_ said:

Are you really analyzing the adverts that much? you pathetic twát.

matthews said:

New one. Oh no! He looked at a Mac and didn't want it! BURN HIM!!!!