New ‘Stuffed’ Commercial
Is it just me, or is the latest ad from Apple – Stuffed – a little hypocritical? I mean, if I’m not mistaken my MacBook came with a demo of Office and 1 or 2 other things that I don’t remember now, since removing them the moment I got the machine home. Granted, this is no where near the volume of junk found on a Windows PC, but still, a low blow by Apple?
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Yeah, but Macs don’t come with a bunch of crap that is running in the background, bogging down your processor. That’s the difference.
My friend bought his wife a $500 Vista-equipped laptop. True, $500 will get you a crappy machine, but that thing had so many craplets loaded on it that it takes nearly five minutes for all of the background processes to stop running once you boot up.
Mine only came with an iWork demo…
Mine had an iWork demo, but it came with an iWord CD.
There needs to be a Quicktime Player that is not an ad for Quicktime Pro (and has fullscreen without me having to bind an Applescript to Cmd-F in Quicksilver).
Mine came with a few demos stashed away in the Apps folder. They took up little space, they didn’t run by themselves, and I only found them when I went looking.
Contrast that with a typical Windows PC which has a dozen or so FREE TRIAL! offers on the desktop, in the start menu, in the tray, when you start programs, and when you attempt to do anything something hook up a camera, print a page, or go online.
The only thing I’ve found Apple to “push” is .Mac. I’d still label the way they do that “tasteful,” though. I’m guessing most people’s perception of the Office and Quicken demos on their Macs – should they even encounter them – is that they are suggestions; on Windows, they are a nuisance.
I posted this on my blog a few months ago, I don’t feel the ad is low at all, it’s accurate!
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Every time we buy a new Dell PC for the business or the house I spend at least two or more hours not configuring it, but unconfiguring the darn thing. With each passing month it seems Dell loads more and more bloated crap onto these machines that takes hours to pull off..
Countless media players, Symantec’s bloated “security” software that often does more harm than good, AOL, Earthlink installers, trial software, Yahoo’s music player, Google’s toolbar and desktop, and even something calling itself “Otto.” Please..
Now of course all this junk I don’t want subsidizes the cost of the computer. Great. But the time it takes to remove this stuff (or reinstall Windows from scratch) is time (and money) wasted.
Maybe I’ve just become a Mac snob.
Nick – I thought the same thing. I’ve been a mac guy for 20 years so I guess I never realized windows came with stuff like the other users posted, and not knowing that, I thought it was a low blow. My last mac came with demo versions of Office, Quickbooks, iWork, Omni (several little apps), and several little shareware apps.
The demos on most new Macs are nowhere near as bad as the trialware and nagware on most new PCs. Can you imagine if Apple shipped all of their Macs to open .zip archivers with StuffIt, set to nag you to register it all the time? Or if instead of Preview, image files opened up in a crippled version of Photoshop Elements?
And did you read Mossberg’s WSJ article on how he found a Sony VAIO PC’s hard drive filled with movies he couldn’t watch unless he paid Sony? The closest thing to that was when Apple shipped copies of “A Bug’s Life” with their G3 iMacs – and that was the full DVD version.
Being a converted Mac user, when I was a PC user and bought a PC (Sony, Dell, Hp and a few others) it was terrible how much crap they threw on it! Most of it was media packages that seemed to intertwine themselves with windows itself so that when I would uninstall them and reboot, i would get random error messages that were related with that removed software. These messages would come up whether I used Add/Remove or the software’s uninstaller. So then I would have to troubleshoot the messages and spend all my built up excitement of getting the computer on cleaning and fixing it!
I actually have friends and relatives who still ask me to come and uninstall “all the stuff that annoys them”.
Haven’t experienced this at all with my Macs.
As others have already mentioned, the primary difference is in the degree of intrusiveness. True, Macs come with trial versions of iWork, Office, and such, but apart from taking up hard drive space, you wouldn’t even notice without looking for them. Windows PCs, on the other hand, come loaded with tray icons that consume resources, shortcut icons littered all over the desktop and start menu, in-your-face popup nags, and so on.
go buy a dell or a fujitsu and you will understand.
it’s not “demo software”, it’s REAL CRAP ALREADY INSTALLED AND MERGED with the Registry
Merged, Combined and all in the whole windows stuff, menu, panel and in unfathomable place.. ho my dear…
I’ve rarely found any of the “Get a Mac” ads either acurate or funny (the rare exception being “security” thats a classic)
I saw the light about 3 years ago when I bought a refurbed eMac as a toy. My initial reasoning was that as I freelance tech support to small business might one day come across a business with a Mac. I Played with the big ugly white beast for a while and then realised I’d never received a call from a business with an Apple.
Six months later the big fat ugly eMac was my primary pc.
I find the Apple Ads patronising crap. Personally they put me off the company. The “Computer Cart” ad about cryptic error messages? huh … what the fuck does -11064 mean? thats an Apple error message, just as stupid and nonsensicle as a Windows error message.
I bought a new macbook pro and nothing that was installed was unwanted or unreasonable. A preview of iWork adds functionality.
The only thing that totally sucks balls is the flash player that doesn’t do full screen. Apple can’t be serious about being a media distribution company when fullsreen doesn’t come with a 2,300 dollar laptop.
Also, I have helped people install new PC’s and there is no even trace of hypocrisy.
Well, the difference between a Mac and a PC on this point is that on a Mac, if you dont like the trial software, throw it in the trash can and it’s gone. On a PC (a Windows one anyways) the applications leave traces that eventually will bog down your system.
And the applications boundled with PC’s (that I don’t like anyways) are the stupid things like an ISP would add. Branded browsers and so on… An MS Office demo on the other hand is much more practical; it might be something you would install anyways.
All the trial software that has come with my recent pc purchases has been hidden from the add remove programs list. And its all really horrible crap like:
RecordNow
Photo Impact (takes over all image files)
power cinema (took 30 minutes to stop loading when a cd/dvd was inserted, had to change the setting in 8 places)
mydvd
video tool box 2.0 SE
video studio 8 SE
newdj 2004 SE (But its 2006 now?)
Omnipass (Some extra logo n security crap, no idea how ill ever get rid of it, takes over the login screen)
ATIs display panel shortcut appears in EVERY explorer context menu, at the top of them. christ !
seriously booted one of these machines up first time, 4 dialogues popped up demanding i register or install things. UTTER HELL! Never again
Yeah but the stuff that comes on the mac is not bad and on OS X, removing it takes less than 3 seconds. Some of the demos on Mac are things I might actually be interested in. I was just working on a PC the other day and was absolutely appalled at the amount of stuff that was clogging it up and slowing it down. The stuff also takes forever to get rid of and you never know if its actually gone. Its not hypocritical, its a valid fact. Yet another reason to be a mac user.
Regarding being nagged by QuickTime: This is so old that I’d almost forgotten it.
If it bothers you by asking “Why not upgrade to QuickTime Pro,” then turn off any iCal alarms and then set your system date to, say, five years in the future. Then open QuickTime and when you’re nagged, say not now thanks. Then set your date back to today.
You won’t be bothered for another five years.
The trial version of iWork is rather valuable I think. It’s a fully usable version, as opposed to the MS Office that won’t let you print, and I like the fact that it’s there for you to try because it’s not something is advertised much. If you haven’t already I would recommend trying it out. Having access to the other media from the app is rather nice.
I don’t think a demo of Office is comparable to the metric buttload of crap software that ships on various PCs.
While my MacBookPro had MS Office pre-loaded, all it took to remove it was to drag it to the trash. Doing that on a Windows machine would have required a number of steps of uninstalling, with the great likelihood that some components would remain behind, and other apps would be damaged, or have their capabilities reduced along the way.
Point: Mac.
For comparisson my TiBook didn’t come with any trial software, instead it came with full versions of excellent programs like omni graffle, omni outliner, snaps pro.
Dunno what they come with these days because its still running silky after 4/5 years :) so hasn’t been replaced yet
my laptop’s (pc) installation discs cannot be used without installing a 2 year old version of Nortons Anti-Virus. even selecting quite during the install process does not actually work, you have to un-install once windows is actually installed. thankfully Asus don’t include anything more than that. Sony i believe are one of the worst offenders, not only with anti-virus software and the like but also pre-installing ALL of their own music, video and image software – and anybody who’s familiar with Sony software will know it’s the most godawful crap known to man.
If you ever have to buy a PC, you’re better off just erasing the hard drive, and doing a clean OS only install from the CD/DVD. Of course this doesn’t work if they didn’t give you any clean ‘OS only’ media…
i think the difference for me too is that apple bundles a trial of useful apps as opposed to totally useless apps that typically come pre-installed with a windows machine.
also, i’ve found that apple is responsible in telling you that the quickbooks, office, iWork trials end in 30 days.
i’ve supported dozens of clients who are shocked that they purchased a system with the impression it came with anti-virus software. but then 90 days later they have to shell out $30/year to be protected. then they have trials of software in order to burn a CD? the average windows user is not going to use Nero or Roxio to burn a music CD, and what’s wrong with the windows built-in disc burning software?
which brings me to my main frustration, apple tends to not degrade their built-in applications with ‘giving’ you software that does essentially the same thing.
just my opinion.
OM
A Pc has so much more bloatware, garbage than a Mac.
Enough said, now on too bigger and better things, Like CS3 that ROCKS