gilest @ flickr

Apple ads have been mopping the floor with the anemic Windows ads for a long time. Who hasn't seen the Mac & PC switcher ads, right? Now that Windows has come back with something interesting, the "Laptop Hunters" campaign, Apple gets huffy? Something doesn't compute. For one thing, Apple dropped the price of the skimpiest Macbook to $999 so the premise of finding a laptop for less than 1K is no longer the issue. With what does that leave the Laptop Hunters? Really cheap laptops for the sake of being cheap? Not the greatest marketing platform ever. You'd think Apple would just come back and beat them some more.

To that end, I wish for Apple's rejoinder to be a Laptop Value Hunters ad. Take these cheap nerds who need to score the sub $1000 laptop and let them pick out a real cherry Windows machine. Supply a typical Mac user (or Ellen Feiss if she's available) with the cheap Macbook and check back with those people periodically. Watch the Windows people trying to get rid of that bloatware the OEM adds to subsidize the price of the machine, the ensuing dll hell, the crashes, the anti-virus ordeals, all of Windows life versus the (usually) more straightforward Mac experience. Or not, but don't bitch, Apple. Don't give Redmond the satisfaction.