I’m a Mac… and I’m a PC company trying to fight back.

Information Week has posted an interesting story about Microsoft admitting to Windows Vista mistakes, and about a new ad campaign to target a “pretty noisy competitor”.  In case you’ve been living under a rock (or have the 30 second skip enabled on your TiVo) that competitor would be Apple.

The details come from Brad Brooks, VP of Windows Vista consumer marketing, and he had quite a bit to say at a recent Microsoft Partner Conference.  In his statements, he admits to Microsoft breaking a lot of things, and causing a lot of pain.  He goes on to say that Microsoft will be starting a huge advertising campaign in the coming weeks to months.  The best part was the following quote from Brad Brooks,

“We’ve got a pretty noisy competitor out there,” Brooks said of Apple whose “I’m a Mac… and I’m a PC,” commercials criticize Windows Vista. “You know it. I know it. It’s caused some impact. We’re going to start countering it. They tell us it’s the iWay or the highway. We think that’s a sad message. Software out there is made to be compatible with your whole life.”

So Mr. Brooks, you interpret “it’s the iWay or the highway” as what Apple is doing with it’s iLife applications as a bad thing?  What part of creating user friendly, intuitive applications that work and are seamlessly integrated into the entire Mac experience is a bad thing for consumers?  Has Microsoft been able to accomplish this yet with the likes of Windows Photo Gallery or Windows Movie Maker…I think not.

As for those Mac vs. PC ads, many of us within the die-hard Mac community are hoping that Apple changes gears and focus with the ads.  While we do continue to enjoy the Mac vs. PC commercials, we would like to have Apple start to change the tone of the commercials away from just bashing Vista, and instead to touting the superior features of OS X Leopard.  We have seen Apple take this approach with some of these type ads such as the Time Machine ad (link opens to a Quicktime movie), showing off the new automatic backup feature built directly into Leopard, and the Apple Genius Bar ad (link opens to a Quicktime movie), showing the benefits of the tech support you receive at your local Apple retail store.

Apple is clearly riding this ad campaign and the Vista bashing as long as possible, and why not, so far it seems to be working as the overall Mac market share continues to rise.  I’m actually hoping that Microsoft can come out with some interesting ads, to keep Apple on their toes so that they have to create new innovative ads to counter what Microsoft might show (however let’s hope it’s not the same marketing team that came up with the classic Microsoft internal Vista music video….yeah, sure it was a spoof, but man was it bad.)

Truth be told, in a lot of cases, Vista isn’t as bad as most ads and tech talk make it out to be.  I know people who are happily using Vista today with little problem (not many people, but a few).  However, from a pure user experience, after dealing with and using both Vista and Leopard, there is no doubt in my mind that Apple comes out ahead, far ahead.  And with Apple turning it’s focus to Snow Leopard, I think they have a head start on Microsoft and the Windows 7 team.  If both Snow Leopard and Windows 7 are to be fine tuned versions of their predecessors, Apple has a much better product in Leopard to start with than what Microsoft has in Vista.

Good luck Microsoft, I think they’ll need it, both in their operating systems and their marketing campaigns.