Really, people. The point of the article isn't whether Macs are better than PCs or vice versa (though you can kind of glean where the author's sympathies lie). The question is whether an advertising campaign based on "my product is cheaper than yours" is a viable long-term strategy.

I guess an analogy could be made with beers (or maybe I'm comparing apples and oranges). If Anheuser Busch felt threatened by, let's say, the New Belgium brewing company (which makes Fat Tire-the BEST BEER. Suck on that, bud light!), would it be good for them to roll out a campaign saying that they're cheaper by about a buck a bottle? And since we're playing hypothetical games about the real world, let's say that Bud has 90% of the market and New Belgium has less than 10% (real world figures would be more like 50% Bud, 0.00001% New Belgium). Would the 10% drinking Fat Tire feel the urge to drink Buds once the economy is rolling again and they've got money in their pockets? I think not. But then again, it is apples and oranges. You need a computer to do your job, but you don't need beer to do it. Unless you're a writer.

Which makes me wonder. I'm guessing most of the revenue for MS comes from corporate accounts. So why bother even advertising to the average consumer? That's being done by Dell and HP and whatnot anyway.

The issue here is the advertising campaign. Not the product. So have a beer people. And chill.

Well, MS revenue also comes from corporate accounts through other retail stores. They stopped producing XP and forced all the retailers to switch to vista. As a result, they are taking a hit on the home computing front (as evidenced by the gains made via apple in the past year). I'm guessing their advertising campaign is in part a response to apple's and in part a response to the drop in marketshare within households.

The article should have been about the campaign ads, but much of the body was spent demonstrating how PCs fail to be better bang for buck than macs, as evidenced by the confusion from the crowd(and myself). Either Farhad screwed up the title, got onto a tangent about comparing PCs to macs, or he intentionally muddled the story to preach the mac faith and convert us PC-using heathens :) I'll put my money on the one of the first two explanations, but in all three cases, that's bad writing from Farhad.

By the way, I do agree that Microsoft's marketing campaign makes no sense. I blame it, in part, on Gates having less to do with the company. Microsoft used to be the toyota of the computing industry, now its starting to adopt the Ford business model. Here are the priorities in order: marketing: first, asthetics: second, reliability: third, performance: fourth, compatability: who cares?

Of course, Apple has long been using those, and other unseemly tactics to pursue their agenda. That's why their marketshare fell from a dominant 60% to a mere 7% within two decades.

"The article should have been about the campaign ads, but much of the body was spent demonstrating how PCs fail to be better bang for buck than macs, as evidenced by the confusion from the crowd(and myself)"

This is nonsense. You don't quantify how "much of the article" was spent by polling the crowd; you count the paragraphs or the words. As I count it, two grafs -- paragraph #7 and #8 -- cover defenses of Mac people against charges that Apple machines are overpriced. The rest either describe or criticizing the marketing (which is the point of the article).

If you think the body of the article was spent on an actual price-comparison of Macs vs. PCs -- and not a discussion of whether marketing based on those comparisons is a wise idea -- then you read something else.

You wrote: If you think the body of the article was spent on an actual price-comparison of Macs vs. PCs -- and not a discussion of whether marketing based on those comparisons is a wise idea -- then you read something else.

And, uh, if you don't realize that the majority of your article not only discussed the advertising attitudes toward price but also firmly, regularly displayed the author's complete acceptance of those particular advertising attitudes as fact and complete fact, well, you didn't write what you thought you did. In almost every paragraph you seem to buy into the idea that the only thing that PCs have going for them is value, and present as the major problem with the advertising campaign the idea that value will not always be the driving motivator for purchasers. If you don't think that your entire article makes value comparisons and displays a pretty strong bias, well, you have bigger problems as a writer than thinking that "graf" is a cool way to write "paragraph" and not knowing how to format an m-dash.

But maybe I'm just annoyed because your article presents the same stereotype as every other piece about Macs--that people who want style go for Macs. As someone who has looked for style in every $2500+ laptop that I've purchased, I've avoided Macs as kind of clunky and ugly. Buying a Mac is like going to a really expensive restaurant that only has three menu options. Nobody's denying that there's good stuff there, and as long as that very limited, inflexible menu encompasses your desires, well, good for you. But don't imply that the only reason not to go to that restaurant is the price (and you do, in addition to discussing the advertising attitudes). Some of us just don't like French food.

Graf is silly editorial slang. Sorry it offends you so. The em-dash comment is ridiculous, though.

Farhad, my point is that the majority of people commenting in the fray seem to think that your article was not a commentary on the advertising campaign, but a cost comparison between macs and PCs. This may not have been what you intended to write, but it came across that way to a majority of readers, including myself.

The original poster is correct in that this was not the purpose of your article. However, if most people can't glean that from your writing, should we blame the readers or the writing? As I learned from every level of education I recieved, the writer has a responsibility to acknowledge his audience. If the majority of readers can't recognize your intended message, you need to change how you delivered the message. If you blame your readers, you will never improve as a writer.

If you want to blame us for misreading your article, go ahead. Just know that blaming us for our misinterpretation is highly unprofessional. The professional move would be to not respond in a blog post (where you risk getting flamed) . Instead go back to the drawing board, and think about how you can reach your audience better.