If you head over to the brilliant TheOnion.com you’ll be able to see a new Apple ad highlighting the PC to Mac switcher rate following the launch of Microsoft’s Windows 7. Justin Long and John Hodgman, the Mac and PC characters, stand below a bank of CCTV monitors across the top of the page watching PC users entering a series of Apple Retail Stores. After bemoaning Apple’s success in customer satisfaction surveys and the continued movement of PC users to Mac, Hodgman dashes off to accost the hapless switchers.

While certainly entertaining, the ad continues to promote Apple’s successful retail model with the added bonus that switchers don’t yet appear to be lured by the charms of Windows 7 to remain as PC users. The only drawback we can see, as with previous Get A Mac ads, is that Hodgman is still far too likeable a character while Long’s aloof, bordering on smug persona could begin to grate even the more hardened Mac enthusiast. That said, no amount of advertising is likely to sway a Mac user toward a PC but it may be enough to put off those sitting on the fence.

The ad features on The Onion’s home page and can be seen, while live, here

It’s easy to share your Pages documents with others, even if they happen to be using Microsoft Windows or Word.

Regardless of where you stand on the Mac-versus-PC debate, you’re unlikely to put an end to the discussion. We have to face facts: some people will always use Macs and the rest will use PCs. This age-old squabble doesn’t have to get in the way of sharing, however, with more and more cross-platform applications available and increasingly friendly methods of communication on both systems. When it comes to page layout and word processing, however, there have always been some serious issues. Of course, plain text documents read as well on any computer, but when it comes to the smooth designs found in Pages templates or even beautiful formatting in its written documents, things sometimes go awry. In this tutorial we will show you how to not only save a Pages document in a Word-friendly format, but also explain how you can speed up the process by dropping your file into an email ready to impress your PC-using friends with your bi-partisan methods.

Step 1: Prepare Your Project
Start by launching Pages and load the project you wish to share in Word format. Once it is loaded head to the File menu at the top of the screen and select the Save Copy As option.

Step 2: Make A Copy
Rename your document as something memorable and then check the box labelled ‘Save copy as’. Make sure you select Word Document from the drop-down menu to save your file in the location specified.

Step 3: Prepare To Share
Your file will now be stored in the location you chose as a native Pages document and an exact replica will be stored with it in Word format. You are now able to open this document in Word.

Step 4: Speedier Sharing
For an even faster way to share a document compatible with Word you can email it directly. Simply select Send Via Mail from the Share menu and choose Word. This will automatically add a Word format file to a new email.

While we apologise for banging on about the Apple & Microsoft ad war, there has been another entertaining twist we felt compelled to gloat tell you about.

It appears that Microsoft COO Kevin Turner laughed a little too soon over the effect the “Laptop Hunter” ads were having and may well have exaggerated details of the call he received from Apple’s legal department.

As we reported previously (link), Mr Turner had this story to tell developers at a Microsoft show:

“And you know why I know they’re working? Because two weeks ago we got a call from the Apple legal department saying, hey — this is a true story — saying, “Hey, you need to stop running those ads, we lowered our prices.” They took like $100 off or something. It was the greatest single phone call in the history that I’ve ever taken in business.”

It now appears that the grammatically challenged Turner has actually had to listen to Apple’s request to change their current advert.

Advertising Age reports that Microsoft has quietly adjusted its latest advert to remove mention of the exact price of an Apple MacBook, since Apple adjusted its laptop pricing. The videos have been tweaked on Microsoft’s site as well as popular services like YouTube.

While the comparison between Macs and PCs  is still made it does, at least make Kevin Turner’s comments a little premature and, frankly, a bit stupid.

Advertising Age also reports the following quote from a Microsoft spokeswoman:
“We slightly adjusted the ads to reflect the updated pricing of the Mac laptop shown in the TV advertisement. This does not change the focus of the campaign, which is to showcase the value and choice of the PC.”

We look forward to the next installment in this highly amusing tit for tat battle.

You may remember our comments regarding Microsoft’s “Laptop Hunter” ad campaign (link) when they first launched, featuring “Lauren” dashing around trying to buy an enormous PC laptop for under $1000.

Of course, after an unanswered run of PC-bashing adverts from Apple, Microsoft deserved a chance to hit back and duly did as the red-haired laptop shopper dismissed the Apple store in a matter of seconds claiming she wasn’t “cool enough” to be a Mac person and also couldn’t afford Apple’s 17-inch laptop.

The series of Microsoft ads have continued featuring Matt & Olivia, Sheila, Lisa and Jackson, another Lauren and her mum… the list goes on.

Apple finally responded with a new Get A Mac ad featuring the Mac and PC characters which spun Microsoft’s “find your perfect model” theme. The ad ends with the shopper featured picking a Mac after none of the PC models can meet her criteria -”no crashes, viruses or headaches”. A clever take on the the same Mac Vs PC formula but the Microsoft ads still continue.

By retaliating, Apple has acknowledged the adverts of its rival and appeared almost rattled, especially if the following is true. Microsoft COO, Kevin Turner relayed the following information at the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference (excuse the grammar, it’s him not us):

“And so we’ve been running these PC value ads… Those are completely unscripted commercials. And you know why I know they’re working? Because two weeks ago we got a call from the Apple legal department saying, hey — this is a true story — saying, “Hey, you need to stop running those ads, we lowered our prices.” They took like $100 off or something. It was the greatest single phone call in the history that I’ve ever taken in business.

I did cartwheels down the hallway. At first I said, “Is this a joke? Who are you?” Not understanding what an opportunity. And so we’re just going to keep running them and running them and running them.”

How much of this story is true, we don’t know. What we do know, however, is the fierce back and forth banter on YouTube regarding a little parody of the Lauren laptop hunter ad we posted (embeded below).

It was a bit of fun and our own little response to Microsoft’s campaign but we’ve been stunned by the comments left. Of over 11,000 views, 89 people have commented so far.

There’s been some nice feedback, like Pitbullninja’s “LOL this is freakin funny”, and there’s been some negative feedback like musicfreak190′s “macs are garbage… learn how to use a real computer”. It seems the Mac haters, as you would expect, dominate the comments but, strangely enough, the video has received an average 4/5 rating.

There are also a fair few comments we didn’t feel comfortable posting here, so be warned if you want to check out the video yourself.

So, while we know that there’ll always be a healthy rivalry between Mac and PC users, we now know that the adverts created by both companies are protected as vociferously by their faithful as the products they produce.

Needless to say, we’ll be putting together another parody pretty soon to spark some more debate!

Click here to view the embedded video.

By now you’ve probably seen one of the new Microsoft adverts. You know the ones, Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld bantering in a seemingly nonsensical manner and at no point mentioning quite what they’re talking about or, at least, attempting to advertise.

Then there’s the other lot of ads from Bill and Co. The Gatesmeister doesn’t feature and Seinfeld has allegedly been canned, but the Redmond boys take aim at Apple’s I’m a Mac/I’m a PC campaign by, well… repeating the “I’m a PC” line. A wide range of people from all walks of life repeat the simple phrase “I’m a PC and I…” filling in the blank with everything from charity work to graffiti (yeah, PC users break the law too guys). This culminates with one chap proudly proclaiming “I’m a PC and I sell fish”. What the hell is going on!?

Online, people are wondering about hidden meanings in the Seinfeld ads, is the old woman Steve Jobs? Are scallop potatoes meant to be Macs? Was it really Bill Gates behind the Grassy Knoll? That’s stage one of the – wait for it – $300 million advertising campaign complete. People are talking about the ads.
Whether the consumers get it or not, they’re talking about Microsoft rather than just blindly using its software.

Then there’s the second batch of ads, the Seinfeld-less “I’m a PC” ones. Am I the only one to think this was a bad move? Even if I didn’t have a clue what Shoe Circus was meant to represent as Bill and Jerry tried on loafers, at least I was intrigued. Joe Public and a sprinkling of cash-hungry celebrities yelling “I’m a PC” in between my regular TV programming tells me two things; one – PCs are used the world over for a wide variety of tasks, both creative and dull. Tell me something I didn’t know. Two – Microsoft is aware of, possibly even worried/annoyed by, Apple’s “I’m a Mac” campaign.

The Bill & Jerry’s ads completely overlooked Apple’s ads. They ignored them as a company with such an enormous market share should. Microsoft is the Ford of the technology world, and you don’t see the Fiesta trying to rival a Ferrari when it comes to marketing.

So what are we left with? A petty playground squabble that will end up costing Microsoft about as much as it would cost to fix its currently flawed operating system. Don’t worry about Apple, boys. Take a look at yourselves! You’re re-branding a dead horse, that’s for sure, but people are still buying PCs and they’re still buying Windows. Just because the Zune didn’t take off doesn’t mean you’re failing.

Ultimately my problem comes down to the Microsoft fan boys (yes, I said “fan boys”). For years, us Mac users have been elitist and we’ve said that our platform is better than yours. There’s no getting around that. Now it actually IS better, and we’re still saying it. That hasn’t stopped Microsoft ruling the roost in the market share stakes. Nobody stopped buying PCs. But now, a set of overpriced and over hyped ads have appeared and the Windows users have crawled out of the woodwork to laugh and point and jeer and boast about their ads as if they’ve won some kind of battle. It’s a sad truth, but the Microsoft crowd are acting like the underdogs and that’s what entertains me the most. You don’t like our ads, nobody understands yours.

However you look at it, in terms of PR or user satisfaction, I’ll tell you one thing. I’m still glad “I’m a Mac and I don’t sell fish”.

If anyone cares about the plight of the piece of scrap metal I bought from Microsoft (XBox 360 for those who didn’t read my earlier post). I made it work again. 

How did I do this? Did I fold under the pressure, void the warranty and open the case to fix it? No. I did what any self respecting Apple fan would do when confronted with a piece of hardware from Redmond – I gave the thing an almighty punch. 


I’m not kidding, I hit the thing so hard it made my knuckles red and suddenly the whirring noises stopped and it could read discs again. It’s true, Microsoft hardware hasn’t progressed much further than the typewriter when it comes to crucial updates and quick fixes. As far as an entertainment platform goes, my XBox 360 is the jukebox at Arnold’s and I’m the Fonze (Check out some old Happy Days episodes if you don’t catch my drift).  


Talking of Microsoft incompetence, what’s this I see? A “Critical” update to Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac? Surely not.


Not only was Microsoft the last of the major players to release an Intel-native version of its software for Mac (probably due to the giant delay-fest that was the disappointing Windows Vista) when it finally does deliver the product, it needs to bash out an update to prevent applications from quitting unexpectedly or stopping responding.






Once again, hats off to Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates and the rest, you’ve brought us yet another half-baked, unfinished product. What would we do without you? 
 
 

I admit it. I bought an XBox 360.

Well come on, until Apple really goes for it and launches a games console (not the Pippin!) I didn’t have much choice. I had a Wii for a while (because it seemed the most Apple-esque choice) but it didn’t quite cut it against the next-gen breed. 

So…I’ve had this Microsoft product in my home for a fortnight now. All has been good and, I hate to say it, I’ve enjoyed using it. I bought the top of the line Elite model and a bunch of games and, despite it looking like a VCR or some kind of high tech shoebox, things have been fine.Today I come home looking to settle down for a quick game of Call of Duty and what happens… the disc drive is emitting some kind of buzzing sound and no game can be read. I knew the last 14 days had been too good to be true.

Online I hop and, lo and behold, literally hundreds of people have had this problem if not thousands. Apparently it’s my fault. I should have made sure my XBox was kept cool and rested on its side!

What the @$%&!? 

There are some things I don’t need to be warned about. I know the coffee in my cup is hot and I know that smoking kills.What I didn’t know was that if you position an XBox in one of the ways it’s built to sit/stand it will break. I also didn’t know that if you allow an XBox to heat up to anything close to room temperature, it’ll break.

So Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is sitting out in Vegas at the moment complaining that the MacBook Air is too heavy, he’s moaning about the iPhone price, always dissing Apple. Ok Steve, at least when Apple brings a product to market, “It just works”. The bastard child of Sloth from The Goonies and an albatross can blindly tout Vista as a revolution and Windows Mobile as groundbreaking but can he honestly say that any of his products really face up to actual use and tests of functionality?

I’ve had a MacBook for two years. No faults. An iMac which I’ve had fixed once in 5 years of ownership and an iPhone thats been dropped, knocked and had a cigarette put out on its screen and it still works, still looks great. All of the above run Mac OS X by the way. Any problems with that? No. Even after upgrading to the latest OS which (unlike Microsoft’s effort is better than the previous version).

I’ve had an XBox less than half a month and its stopped working.

Another admission: I’ve owned an XBox before. The original model. What happened to it? The drive broke. Then the HD. Then some kind of video fault developed. All within one year.

I’m the idiot here. I naively thought that, as much as its operating system is a pile of the proverbial, Microsoft had its games devision nailed and would certainly have been committed to more stable hardware after many issues with the original XBox model. Man was I wrong.Knock it together, fire it out to the masses, pay the price when a huge percentage of the products fail.

The guy who sold me my XBox tried to push me onto a PS3, citing the “hundreds” of returns he’d been plagued with since he began stocking the XBox 360. I wish I’d listened to him. I wish I’d taken his advice, given my money to another company that cares about the end user, cares about products standing the test of time and cares about quality.As we well know, Microsoft is not a company on that list. 

I’m the sucker for thinking things couldn’t possibly get any worse.

So, to Evil Steve (Ballmer): Screw you, your stupid dancing antics, your sweating and your mangled vocal chords.

To Good Steve (Jobs): It’s time to bring out yet another device to shame the morons at Microsoft.

   
Not content with having us wander around seemingly jabbering to ourselves when making a phone call on the iPhone headset, Apple has yet another confused look-provoking feature to share. 

Games are coming to the iPhone in June thanks to the recently released SDK (Software Developers Kit). Not just point and click stuff, not just Tetris, games that require shaking, rotating, twisting and flipping. The accelerometer in the iPhone is incredible when you’re looking at pictures or websites and need to quickly rotate the screen and now this impressive technology is being harnessed to make the device the “Wii of handheld gaming”. The iPhone is not a toy, stop it, stop it, stop it! 
 
Picture the scene: 

9.45: Hop on the bus, plug in iPhone headphones and listen to the latest iCreate podcast. A couple of suppressed giggles garner some strange looks from other public transport users but nothing to worry about.   

9.50: Podcast is getting going but I’m interrupted  by a phone call. Click the button on iPhone headphones to receive call. “Hello?” I say, apparently into thin air. Most assume I’m singing along to Lionel Richie.  


10.00: Finish chatting away while appearing to still listen to iPod with no discernible telephone anywhere nearby. It was a friend informing me that the new iPhone App store is available with games and really cool third-party apps. I fire up Safari. 


10.20: Successfully download Super Monkey Ball for iPhone. It’s a primate in a ball that must be rolled, Marble Madness-style, to the end of the level. The controls? You guessed it – accelerometer.


11.30: Level one completed. Successfully navigated the ape in a ball by tilting the iPhone. Imagine how stupid you look playing tennis on a Nintendo Wii and multiply it by ten. Then imagine doing it in public. 


10.35: Game’s getting harder, motions more frantic. Concerned onlookers fear some kind of fit from the guy talking to himself a few minutes before. I bought this iPhone to look cool! 


10.40: Bus arrives outside office. Police & Ambulance are waiting. Apparently someone with a “regular” telephone tipped them off.   


So what’s next? Default ABBA ringtones? A voice-activated unlock feature that requires you to sing the first four bars of Build Me Up Buttercup? Apple, this is the coolest piece of technology ever to be produced, please don’t reduce it to a plaything. Perhaps that’s why they announced the Microsoft Exchange support for iPhone at the same time, to balance the lightweight, consumer extras with heavy business power tools. Then again, that’s Microsoft technology and when have those guys ever been cool? 

Let’s just hope that beyond the games studios, some truly brilliant third-party apps for iPhone are in the works that don’t make us look like morons when using them. Either that or the popularity of the phone will grow by such a degree that swinging your arms and legs about and talking to yourself in public will become the norm.