Apple Plays Hardball With Microsoft

New Microsoft ad campaign gets under Apple’s skin

At Microsoft’s recent Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans, COO Kevin Turner said he had received calls from Apple’s lawyers about a set of ads that appear to dis the Mac manufacturer.

“It was the single greatest phone call in history that I’ve ever taken in business,” Turner said.
What has upset Apple is a claim in one of the ads that you cannot buy an Apple laptop for under $1,000.

A character named Lauren goes looking for a laptop with her budget set at $1,000. She walks into an Apple store, but comes out complaining that she would have “had to double my budget” in order to purchase a Mac.

This annoyed the Apple team, but there is one thing that was not mentioned by Turner – the the ads are now out of date since Apple changed its pricing on the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro in the US. Now, the laptops are still not under $1,000 but some of the ancillary information is, such as MacBooks under $2,000 only have 2GB or RAM. Apparently you can get a unit for $1,499 with 4GB of RAM, thus Apple’s cause for concern.

That aside, these two companies never give each other an inch, and with Windows 7 coming out in three months, expect Apple to try and find fault with the operating system, much like they did with Vista.