I didn’t buy an iPhone…

Well not quite. In the end I bought, in my opinion, the next best thing – the iPod Touch.

AND I CANT PUT THE THING DOWN!

Seriously, it’s glued to my hand and I can not stop surfing the net, looking at photos, reading ebooks (using the excellent application, Stanza, checking my email and last, but not least, posting on WordPress.

Most, if not all, Apple products are a joy to use, but this device is incredible.

I cannot understand what problem people have with the keyboard, as I’ve picked it up fine. I’m typing pretty quicky and making few mistakes, certainly no more than I would on a normal keyboard.

It’s not often that using a piece of technology actually makes you smile, and indeed, I actually laughed a couple of times because the GUI is so smooth, so refined, so perfect that you cannot believe that technology could be this good, this cool, this wonderful to use.

Surfing the net is a revelation. The clicking, zooming in, the speed is great. I’ve found myself not even using my main Mac for surfing or email, it’s just so simple to just pluck it out your pocket and quickly surf and go.

And I haven’t even played any games yet.

It has really surprised me what a game changer the touch platform is, and it is a platform, make no mistake.

The touch has become my platform of choice for surfing, email, viewing photos and reading, with my 30gb iPod being primarily for music and podcasts and my little shuffle for the gym.

I cannot wait to see what Apple do next with this, an iPod tablet device, an iPod camera with iPhoto touch, the possibilities are endless.

Are there any negatives? Not really, even copy and paste doesn’t seem necessary, but Steve’s onto a winner here.

Initial thoughts on the Microsoft retort…

In thinking about what my views are on Microsoft’s $300 million ad campaign, I’ve a few points that will hopefully give some structure to my thoughts over the next few posts:

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Firstly, why bother?

Apple has (at best) 5-7% worldwide market share. Microsoft and the PC brigade account for just about everything else. At the very, very best, if Apple continue with the proprietary hardware and (sort of) open OS model, they can hope for 10% tops, and I’m being optimistic.

Are Microsoft that desperate for total domination that they can’t stand a competitor to have a tenth of their market share? What difference will it make to there day to day business & profitability? Absolutely none.

So why? The only reason I can see is that this is not business – it’s personal.

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Secondly, why did they change direction completely after 2 ads?

I work in advertising, I’ve been present and had decision making input when agencies pitch for work. I can say that if the usual rules apply (and I don’t see any reason why they shouldn’t here), what we are seeing is ‘pitch 2′. 

When pitching it’s usual that three ideas are presented. The first idea is what the agency wants, the second is what the customer wants and the third is a combination of the first two. The agencies pitch will push for their choice, and it will be the one that has had the most work put into it.

The Seinfeld ads were the agencies choice, the ‘I’m a PC’ ads are what Microsoft wanted. The 3rd pitch we will never likely see (unless Microsoft pull the ads again!)

The Seinfeld ads are typical high-brow, high-concept crap that agencies love because it’ll get them mentioned in Creative Review and maybe win an award, whilst having f**k-all use for the customer.

The ‘I’m a PC’ ads are the one created grudgingly by the agency in case they couldn’t convince them to go with their choice.

The 3rd set of ads are never meant to be chosen, because the agency can use them to agree with the customer that it is something they don’t want, this makes it easier to convince the customer that they need to agree again with the agency and go with their choice.

The brief from Microsoft will be along these lines:

“See those Apple ads? They piss us off. They’re taking the piss out of us every single frickin’ time! That PC guy? That Bill Gates that is! They’re telling lies! – none of this crap is true! Well maybe some of it is, but we want revenge! We want you to create ads that answer those ads and blow them out of the water!”

And so they agency create 3 concepts, one for them, one for the client and another they can throw away. They did well to convince Microsoft of the Seinfeld ads – they deserve an award for just that!

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Thirdly, what the hell are the Seinfeld ads all about?

Their seems little point now in explaining because a) they’re cancelled, and b) the agency probably doesn’t have any clear idea either, but I will attempt a breakdown.

But not yet – I need to watch them just a few more times… Lucky me…

Reaction to Microsoft’s answer to ‘GetaMac’

I’ve not published for a while as I have been knee-deep in the negotiations to convert my company’s website from a standard informational website in to a fully-fledged ecommerce site.

So I’ve let pass the current effort by Microsoft to counter the resurgence of the Mac with their own set of advertising, costing $300 million no less.

Being very busy, I don’t have the time to look into the metaphorical reasoning behind the Seinfield ads, but I assure you I will sooner or later.

I’m a marketing guy and I deal with peddling bullshit to consumers on a daily basis, and at first glance these ads seem amateurish at best.

In addition, I’m too late – they’ve been pulled already.

Microsoft have continued the assault on Apple with the ‘I’m a PC’ ads. Again however, the ads seem poorly thought out and clumsy in their execution.

But I’m not going to go into detail, but one thing I’ve noticed is the reception that any advertising effort by Redmond seems to generate in the media. It seems that the press is resoundingly negative in their judgement.

Why is this? Surely something can be said of these adverts that would give Microsoft some hope? Even myself at my most impartial, could, if pushed, muster some sort of positive morsel.

It seems to me that the tables have been turned.

Back in the 80’s & 90’s, the main motivating factor, the thing, above all that would sway someone’s opinion on whether to choose an IBM PC or a Macintosh, was their friendly (or not so friendly) neighbourhood geek.

The spotty nerd at work, the weirdo that fixed the computers, the clumsy nobby-no-mates that bored you senseless with talk of RAM, memory, DOS & hard disks.

And his recommendation was (you guessed it), the DOS (and Windows) PC. He scoffed at the Mac, calling it a toy, lacking in software, no powerful and something that nobody used.

And his recommendation stuck. For years. And years. We’ve been at the brunt-end of that decision ever since. The entire IT industry is geared towards pushing us to Windows and the PC.

Fast forward to the last few years. After years of crashes, viruses, trojans, malware and ever cheap computers, that seem to last little more than 18 months, the consumer who relied of their geeky friends recommendation just doesn’t believe them anymore.

So who do they believe? Well who’s left?

Their not going to listen to a Mac user either, because we get lumped together with those geeky weirdoes.

The only thing left is the media. They are listening to the media, the ad-men, all those artists who use Macs in all the creative departments up and down the land, all those PR agencies and marketing people who use predominantly the Mac.

The Mac’s time has come – for years the IT geeks recommended the PC to anybody who would listen, well those days are gone. Now that the consumer’s ear is turning towards the media, we will recommend nothing but the Mac.

Poetic justice for all the years of misery they’ve put us all through.