Microsoft has launched a series of ads focusing on login via face recognition, Cortana (Windows equivalent of Siri), and touchscreens, three features on modern Windows machines that are not found on the Mac.
The ads are simple, get straight to the point, and are comedy-free reminders of Apple’s Get a Mac campaign (I’m a Mac. And I’m a PC) that ran from 2006 through 2009.
The touch screen and facial login are fine features, but not groundbreaking. But one feature I truly do miss is Siri on my Mac. Last week, 9to5mac wrote that Siri was reportedly coming to the Mac this fall. Interesting timing, that rumor coming out just before this campaign hit. I wonder if Apple knew this was coming, got the word out to blunt Microsoft’s campaign.
Either way, I suspect getting a proactive version of Siri running on two different platforms (Mac and iOS) is no easy feat. After all, though the objects that make up the iOS and Mac developer soup are similar, they are different enough that they might require one more operating system rev to get them close enough to share Siri properly. Just a thought.
Not much better than the pathetic Samsung anti-iOS ads running during the Oscars last night. Comparing a piano with 88 different strings with one that has 88 of the same? The stupidity of that is fragmentation of Android would mean most of the strings are out of tune on the Samsung side (can’t be tuned since six months after installation), or possibly the pianist would have no idea what sound would come from which key.
Like how people have pointed out the humour in relating actual bugs to an ad for Windows.
I’d really, really love Macs (portables, especially) with touchscreens.
It’s a lot more compelling that I’d thought it would be, on a Windows laptop – if Apple released a MacBook with a touch screen, I’d buy one tomorrow.
I wouldn’t. I can’t stand fingerprints on my screen. But I certainly don’t oppose the introduction of an option for you to buy one. 🙂
That piano ad was a Google android ad, not Samsung. I think they are well done, especially compared to the Samsung ads; though even those have gotten much better over the years (I thought the one about water was in good taste for once).
Well put!
So they present 3 features:
1. Facial recognition login – a potential security hazard as other similar systems have been bypassed with as little as a printed picture
2. Touchscreens – an intentional pass on Apple’s part because of horrible UX
3. Cortana – Siri is probably coming to Macs this fall, if not sooner
Microsoft seems desperate.
Steve Jobs tinkered with this idea years ago and found it to be a terrible user experience. Touch input, Steve realized, is best on a flat surface or something you can hold, not a vertical surface you have to reach toward. I for one am very thankful that Apple has kept the two separate, as touch would significantly degrade the Mac experience as Windows 8 and 10 can attest.
Actually, a touchscreen on a workstation-class PC is groundbreaking. You can’t say, well, Apple already had that on mobile 9 years ago if Apple has yet to ship it on their workstations.
The first decade of this century is called a “lost decade” for Microsoft. The second decade is a lost decade for the Mac. This ad campaign comes 10 years after Apple’s — right on cue.
You have to recognize that Apple thought that iPad would sell exponentially more units, leading to Mac apps bring ported over en masse. But that didn’t happen, and Apple has not adjusted by modernizing the Mac.
You can see the problem just by looking at Panic, the definitive indie Mac developer. They released their flagship Mac app Coda for iOS in 2011 or 2012, with only a subset of features. In 2016, the whole app is not ported over yet, even though iPad now has Mac-class CPU in some cases. And Panic recently detailed in a blog post that they have not made any money on the iPad version because the people who are willing to pay for Coda are all on the Mac.
If Panic can’t get Coda — a text editor, basically — over to iOS within 4–5 years, when can I expect to run Ableton Live on an iPad? Ableton Live is a monstrous music production suite that pleads for a touchscreen. We carry around all kinds of giant gear with our tiny Mac notebooks to workaround the lack of a touchscreen. Will it run on iPad in 2025? Right now, all signs point to no. But in 2012 there were already touch systems for Ableton Live from Microsoft.
Will I be buying another computer without a touchscreen? All signs point to no. So I’ll be using an iPhone, 2 iPads, and a Windows workstation that I will hate, but I will be more productive with it.
About 75% of Macs today are a MacBook Air with 128 GB or less of storage and no Retina and no touch. So easy to compete with today. Microsoft CEO should stop by Cupertino and kiss every Apple executive on the lips for giving him time to recover from Ballmeritis.
Yeah, but at least Windows is a) getting less buggy, and b) evolving. The Mac is getting more buggy and has not improved in any significant way for the last 10 years other than Mac App Store. You might also say Retina, but the majority of Macs sold today do not even have Retina.
You don’t see fingerprints on an iPad screen when it is lit up, so why would you see them on a touch Mac? Apple touch screens have an oil-resistant coating that Macs don’t yet have.
You just said iPad Pro with its keyboard stand is a terrible experience. Apple today begs to differ.
Steve Jobs said Macs did not need touch because at that time, Apple was planning for iPad to be much more successful and all the Mac apps would get ported over and people could choose touch or mouse no matter what their needs. But that didn’t happen. iPad has baby versions of some Mac apps as well as many of its own great apps, and the users of Mac apps are still all on the Mac, and many of us are stuck with the mouse. We didn’t choose the mouse. We wanted the Retina MacBook Pro to be a tablet. Almost all of us also have iPads. We can’t just switch. We have 1–5 apps that we run all day every day and they only exist on Mac (and in many cases Windows) and there are no iOS replacements. Also, many of us need a 28-inch display.
Apps like Adobe Creative Suite, Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Logic, Final Cut, and others barely use the keyboard. We carry Wacom Tablets and audio mixer control surfaces with our MacBook Pros to get around the lack of touch. A tablet is much better for our purposes, as Apple is showing with iPad Pro.
So many Mac users are looking at iPad Pro with envy. We just want one with 4x the display and 10x the compute power. iPad Pro is like an El Camino — part car, part pickup truck. So great if that suits you. But for those of us who drive a big rig, we are looking at using a mouse cursor in 2020 on a a Mac we buy today. It is scandalous.
When Apple did Mac OS X and Intel, they had a transition, but the success of iPhone made them overconfident. They thought a transition from Mac to iPad was not needed, but it turned out that it was needed. So all of their devices that are 11-inch or bigger are a mess right now. iPad Pro is a modern form factor with too little software and its larger versions are missing. The Macs have the best creative software in the world but the hardware is hand-cranked antique. Most of the Macs sold today won’t even have Retina.
As for the experience of touch on a Mac, I have been using a Wacom Tablet for years and I am literally 10x faster than the guy next to me who is using a mouse. And I setup an iMac for a friend recently, and at first the keyboard and mouse were on another desk, so I just pulled the iMac close to me, tilted it back a bit — thought wow, I have to get one of these! because the giant screen was laid out before me like an audio mixer waiting to be touched and I felt immersed in Mac OS — and I touched the screen to get started pulling data from her Windows box. I touched 3 or 4 times before I realized duh, there is no touch on this giant Retina Display. I went looking for the keyboard and mouse — both recently redesigned in a gigantic waste of somebody’s time — pushed the screen away from me, and the experience of dragging the mouse around and having to pick it up to get to the other side of the display was the worst computing experience of my life. That giant Retina screen pleads to be touched. The mouse is absurd. Even the current iMac stand works great for touch, but it comes off and can be replaced. Not hard to imagine a slightly different stand that might be even better for touch.
The thing is, all of the targets on that iMac were bigger than the targets on my iPad mini. There is no way you can say that an iMac with a touch layer would require any new software. Sure, developers could refine their apps for touch, but from day one the user would already be better off.
With MacBook Pro, like I said, most creative apps barely use the keyboard. A MacBook Pro with no keyboard and with Apple Pencil would be amazing. But it looks like many of us are going to have to buy the Microsoft version.
Except that’s not what he said at all.
“We’ve done tons of user testing on this, and it turns out it doesn’t work. Touch surfaces don’t want to be vertical.
It gives great demo but after a short period of time, you start to fatigue and after an extended period of time, your arm wants to fall off. it doesn’t work, it’s ergonomically terrible.
Touch surfaces want to be horizontal, hence pads.”
That’s not Steve saying it doesn’t work “for now” or the touch targets need to be changed or we’ll see how the iPad works and then re-evaluate later, that’s Steve saying vertical touch screens provide a bad experience.
http://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-touch-screen-mac-2010-10
Siri has been around for over four years and Dictation on the Mac for over three.
It’s well overdue to come to the Mac properly and honestly Microsoft is right to point it out.
Maybe you don’t. I have no problems seeing them.