New Apple Ads Target Microsoft's $350M Pro 'PC' Ad Campaign

ByABC News
October 20, 2008, 9:23 AM

— -- Apple reacted this weekend to Microsoft's $350 million advertising campaign with two new "Get a Mac" spots mocking the company's exuberance when it comes to Vista's advertising budget. They are as funny as ever. You can watch the ads in full below or watch them in higher quality directly from Apple.

The first ad is titled the "V Word". The spot introduces PC with a big red button buzzer, trying to censor Mac every time he says the name Vista. "V Word" mocks Microsoft's decision not to market the name Vista so much in its new campaign, but use the more generic term "Windows."

The second ad in the set is called the "Bean Counter" and presents PC sitting at an accountant's desk. Here he divides a cash budget for Vista into two piles. One huge pile is for advertising Vista and a tiny pile is for "fixing" Vista. Mac is intrigued as to why PC is spending so little on "actually fixing" Vista. PC pauses to think and then decides that that there isn't any point in actually spending money on fixing Vista and finally throws all the cash in the advertising pile.

Both new ads counter Microsoft's latest advertising campaign for Windows Vista, dubbed as a disaster by many critics. The campaign featured Jerry Seinfeld in the first two spots (1 and 2), who was reportedly paid $10 million for this job. The third ad in Microsoft's campaign features a series of people, ranging from scientists to fashion designers and artists such as Pharell Williams and actress Eva Longoria (of Desperate Housewives), proudly claiming they are a PC.