Iâ€™m just not cool enough to be a Mac person.

Last week, Microsoft put out an ad about a lady who wanted to buy a 17″ laptop for under $1,000. Not finding a Mac for that price, she quipped “Iâ€™m just not cool enough to be a Mac person“. That line hit a major nerve among Mac fans for reasons I don’t really understand.

Obviously, the only Apple laptop that’s under $1,000 is the 13″ Macbook. Lauren, the girl on the commercial, ended up getting a 17″ HP Pavillion for $699.

The “I’m a Mac and I’m a PC” ads were started by Apple, depicting PC users as boring fat, bald guys in their 40s. Those were a series of ads hitting the PC population but we haven’t heard of any uproar similar to this one.

Microsoft fought back with their own “I’m a PC” ad later on and even had that one by Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld.

What’s most surprising about this ad is that it’s true — the price range for Macs ($999 to $2,799) are just beyond the reach of a lot of people who wanted laptops for simple tasks like word processing and surfing. That’s why netbooks, mostly under $500, are very hot in the market today.

The real winner here is Intel — buy a Mac or buy a PC, they both have Intel inside.

Abe Olandres

Abe is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of YugaTech with over 20 years of experience in the technology industry. He is one of the pioneers of blogging in the country and considered by many as the Father of Tech Blogging in the Philippines. He is also a technology consultant, a tech columnist with several national publications, resource speaker and mentor/advisor to several start-up companies.

https://www.yugatech.com

48 Comments

Hamilton Chua says:

16 years ago

How can anyone find insult in a comment like “Iâ€™m just not cool enough to be a Mac person” ?

I would probably say Lauren has an inferiority complex but there’s no reason Mac users should find that offensive. I should hit the interwebs to find out what the “Mac persons” are saying.

If found the ad genuine and like Yuga says, the ad is true, well, that is until Apple decides to make their products more affordable than PC’s (yeah and pigs fly) :-)
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mike says:

16 years ago

Well mac products in general are expensive, like a keyboards or mouse which will set you back around $50 already.

I think the comment “Iâ€™m just not cool enough to be a Mac personâ€œ spurred from the fact that mac’s ad are aimed at the novelty of their products. Most of the people I know who have macs mainly got it for that reason. I mean come on, you’ll buy a $2000 laptop just for word processing and surfing the net?
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BrianB says:

16 years ago

Toshiba’s a really cheap, too. Unfortunately, no Dell center in the RP just yet. I’m looking at a Dell Latitude with up to 16 (that’s SIXTEEN hours!) of battery life with 3 year warranty and very competitive specs for under 40k php.
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techme says:

16 years ago

watch out! the apple fanboys are coming! haha

hurry hide! MS fanboys!
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techme says:

16 years ago

watch out! the apple fanboys are coming! haha

hurry hide! MS fanboys! bwahaha
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no_label_noise says:

16 years ago

ha! i just wish her luck on her new “laptop”. it has AMD and 1GB RAM on a Vista system. lol…i hope microsoft will show a “3 months after” part about Laurens experience…it would be great…
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John Ray Cabrera says:

16 years ago

@BrianB: what exact Dell Latitude model is that. 16hours of battery life? wow, i could spend two days in a coffee shop for that.
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Gadget Boy says:

16 years ago

I thought that this ad is bad when i first read about it at engadget, i didn’t even check the video. turned out to be awesome!

hey please visit my blog about mobile phone prices in the Philippines.

http://pinoygadgetprice.blogspot.com/

thanks abe! :D
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Olyverdigg says:

16 years ago

am about to buy a macbook in days… this ad and the recession thing makes me think twice….
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Ton says:

16 years ago

Note however that it is almost impossible to get a same specd model here for $699 (around PHP35k)

What really bites my buns is why the US-RP price diff for laptops so damn big.

Consider this comparison from my own Lenovo look-around. SAME models, mind you, just differently specd here and there.

1. C2D 2.0, 250gb ram, 2gb DDR2 = 55,000 PH price
2. C2D 2.5, 320gb ram, 4gb DDR3 = 32,500 US PRICE

I mean, shipping cost, I’d understand. But there is something over the frikkin pacific that just blasts these things to cost more.

Thats why here, the price diff of a similarly specd laptop (read: Vaio/Lenovo/HP) from say a macbook, just isn’t as substantial as this here ad would present. My 2 cents worth.
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