Get An iPod Ad -- Take One!

iPod: Hi. I'm an 30G iPod . . .








Zune: . . . and I'm a 30G Zune.



iPod: So, how are your brothers and sisters?

Zune: Me? I'm an only child.

iPod: Really? I didn't know. I have a lot of brothers and sisters. The baby of the family is the 1G Shuffle, then we have the 2G, 4G, and 8G Nanos, and I have a big brother 80G Video iPod.

Zune: Christmas must be fun for you guys.

iPod: For us it's more about giving . . . And, oh yeah, we also have family all around the world and we can hook up with Macs and PCs.

Zune: Yeah. We're only in the U.S. and only associate with PCs. Dad doesn't get along too well with others.

iPod: Bummer. You, ah . . . you look like you're putting on a little weight. We're both 30G but you look like you're about 40% larger to grip and about 17% heavier.

Zune: No, I've always been this size. I just have a big frame.

iPod: I hear you're available in black, white and brown.

Zune: Actually, it's pearl white.

iPod: Yeah, that's great. We aren't available in brown or that pearl thingy. But we do come in black and white . . . and silver . . . and pink . . . and green . . . and blue . . . and orange.

Zune: O.K. I get it!

iPod: . . . and red!

Zune: (no comment -- just a stare)

iPod: Have I shown you the custom engraving on my back? I get it for free.

Zune: That's nice. We don't have anything like that.

iPod: What's that you have in your chest? It looks sort of like my scroll wheel.

Zune: They are four directional menu buttons.

iPod: Really? Because my users can scroll at variable speeds just by running their thumb around my single wheel. Oh . . . AND I have your four directional menu buttons built in, as well.

Zune: Well . . . My screen is bigger!

iPod: I noticed -- it kind of fits your big body. How's your screen resolution? And can it be viewed without a backlight?

Zune: (no comment -- just a stare)

iPod: I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. Hey! I hear we can both customize our main menu items!

Zune: No. That's just you.

iPod: So . . . let's try to find some common ground. I support MP3, AIFF, WAV and audiobook files.

Zune: I do MP3 and WMA ( That's proprietary -- it's something just Dad can read).

iPod: Good luck with that. I support a lossless music format. You wouldn't happen to, would you?

Zune: No.

iPod: Gapless playback? Volume normalization? Audio bookmarking? Adjustable speed settings for audiobooks? Repeat single songs? Shuffle by album?

Zune: No, no, no, no, no, and no.

iPod: What about EQ settings? I have 24.

Zune: I have 7.

iPod: I have 11 transition modes for photo slideshows.

Zune: I have 1. It's called "fade".

iPod: Have you visited the iTunes store?

Zune: No, I'm not allowed to. I do all my shopping at Zune Marketplace.

iPod: Well, I'm sure they are very similar. iTunes sells individual songs for .99.

Zune: Zune Marketplace has a $5 minimum purchase.

iPod: Ouch! Do they sell video content or audiobooks?

Zune: No . . . and no.

iPod: I don't want to pile on, Dude, but I hear iTunes has one million more songs than your place and that our album art is at 20 times the resolution.

Zune: It's O.K., I'm used to it.

iPod: O.K., let's see . . . Can you connect to a digital camera? Act as an external hard drive? Do you have pre-loaded games? Or include a personal information manager?

Zune: No, no, no, and no.

iPod: You know, I ought to get going. Do you know what time it is?

Zune: No. I don't have any clock or timer functions.

iPod: Well, it's been interesting talking to you. I'd say I'll see you around . . . but I'm not so sure about that.

Zune: (no comment -- just a stare)

iPod: O.K., then. 'Bye.

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Bill Gates Rants; Apple Rocks

It seems like Bill Gates had something to get off of his puny, nerdy chest the other day. He attacked Mac's OS X's security system, Apple's "Get a Mac" ad campaign, and the idea that many of Vista's features are already available in Mac OS X.

For an interview designed to promote Microsoft's new Vista OS and Office 2007, he spent a lot of time talking about the competition. One of the cardinal rules from my old sales days was never bring up the competition unless the customer does, never vilify the competition, promote your own product and services. Apparently, Bill chose to play offence.

Mr. Gates started off the interview by touting security features in Vista. Providing a robust security foundation was even offered as a reason for having left out many of the features originally planned for Vista.

Translation: It could have been a lot cooler but we were thinking of you (the consumer) That's funny -- Mac is able to provide rock solid security without having to give up the "cool" stuff.

"We made it way harder for guys to do exploits," said Mr. Gates. "The number [of exploits] will be way less because we've done some dramatic things [to improve security] in the code base. Apple hasn't done any of those things."

Translation: No, Apple hasn't done any of those things because they haven't needed to.

Further Translation: Microsoft needed to because their security was like a leaking sieve.

In another portion of the interview, he added, "Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine."

Translation: Gates is referring to a nasty hacker's contest called "Month of Apple Bugs" where they supposedly found a way to hack through Mac's security each day of the month of January. Many of the hacks were through third party software and every one of them were addressed and fixed by the next day. Despite this competition, there are no Mac viruses in the wild.

Further Translation: "I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine." Pretty big talk for a company that has an entire industry built around maintaining Microsoft's security. And this includes the new Vista. Otherwise what are McAfee, Norton, etc. doing out there?

Bill Gates seemed to have the most pent up anger when it comes to the "Get a Mac" ads that shows PC as needing to undergo major surgery in order to upgrade to Vista.

Mr. Gates said, "I don't think the over 90 percent of the [population] who use Windows PCs think of themselves as dullards, or the kind of klutzes that somebody is trying to say they are."

That "somebody" would be Apple, of course.

He added, "And I don't know why [Apple is] acting like it's superior. I don't even get it. What are they trying to say? Does honesty matter in these things, or if you're really cool, that means you get to be a lying person whenever you feel like it? There's not even the slightest shred of truth to [the ideas about Vista upgrades presented in the Apple commercial he said he had not seen]."

Translation: Calm down Bill! You are absolutely right -- you don't get it.

Mr. Gates took exception to the idea that many of Vista's new features came first in the Mac.

"You can go through and look at who showed any of these things first, if you care about the facts," said Mr. Gates. "If you just want to say, 'Steve Jobs invented the world, and then the rest of us came along,' that's fine. If you're interested, [Vista development chief] Jim Allchin will be glad to educate you feature by feature what the truth is. I mean, it's fascinating, maybe we shouldn't have showed so publicly the stuff we were doing, because we knew how long the new security base was going to take us to get done."

Translation: Let's see. Mac OS X has been out for over five years. So you're saying that you [Microsoft] pre-announced these features, worked for years and years to get them to the market, but Apple was able to implement them over five years ago based upon your too public blatherings . . . back then?

Further Translation: If Apple can take a concept and get it to the public immediately while Microsoft's "rocket scientists" fiddle over it for the better part of a decade, why should anyone wait around for Microsoft?

And after all of the huppola, at the end of the day, Vista is still a pale wannabe compared to Mac OS X.

But the thing I really don't understand is if Microsoft has over 90% of the operating system market and Mac is down around 7%, Why is Bill Gates so worked up?

It's sort of like God being mad at the Governor of New Jersey.

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