Fighting Words: Apple insults Dell
Apple shows very little restraint when it comes to dishing it out with the competition.
Actually, Apple isn’t dishing it out with Dell but rather dishing on Dell. Dell doesn’t really dish on anybody. In fact Dell has even shown some admiration for Apple. Michael Dell would even go as far as to incorporate the Apple’s operating system, OS X, into his company’s computers if Apple would allow it, issuing this statement in 2005:
“If Apple decides to open the Mac OS to others, we would be happy to offer it to our customers”
Regardless, Apple’s ruthless, underdog tactics attempt to display Apple’s superiority over the competition. (We’re talking about technical superiority, not superiority in terms of maturity.) So if you head on over to Apple’s iMac web site, with a little bit searching and some elbow grease, you’ll find the picture displayed below:
Note: Because it’s so wide, the picture may get cut off by the sides of the site, so try to full screen your browser if you can’t see it all.
I laughed a very nice inside chuckle when I saw this. The clutter on Dell’s side is overly and unnecessarily exaggerated, and I think there might be a cable or two in there that doesn’t belong.
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August 8th, 2007
Actually… I think that’s about right.
Think about it. Video, monitor power, keyboard, mouse, webcam, CPU power, audio out, audio in, speaker power, and bluetooth/wireless adapter.
All those wires on the Dell, while the Apple has power and keyboard (mouse plugs into the keyboard). Of course they could have cut it to just power to the CPU and run the wireless keyboard/mouse combo as well.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure they intentionally made the cables look like a rat’s nest. However, it is a drastic difference that can be easily seen even if hte cables are managed well.
August 8th, 2007
I don’t know, underneath my desk looks even worse than that, and I have a Dell.
August 8th, 2007
Any knowledgeable computer user knows that you have to sacrifice something to fit a full computer into that small of a package. By not allowing for upgrades you can drastically shrink a computer down, smaller power supply, no add-on slots, no room for an extra hard drive (I have 4 hard drives and over 1 TB of HD space), no extra optical drives…it’s basically laptop components. No thanks! The new iMac is definitely pretty and clean but I don’t want to outgrow my computer in a year.
August 9th, 2007
This was also innovative. I don’t think I’d want to use one now.
http://oldcomputers.net/osborne.html
August 9th, 2007
It’s this kind of attitude which breeds hatred in other people’s hearts. Come to think of it, Apple is just as expensive as bloated and now this shows that it is also as arrogant as Microsoft. When will do these people learn that things they do, even to people who are not their customer or fans, will still affect them?
September 2nd, 2007
Funny how people will see things skewed according to what their belief system is. I don;t see this as arrogant behaviour. Instead, I see it for what it is: a simple way to market the idea of why someone might buy an iMac instead of a comparable PC.
This illustration works wonderfully while being economical. Don’t want “a computer that you’ll outgrow in a year”? Buy the Dell. The ad is not forcing people to buy what they don’t want. At least not from where I’m sitting.
October 26th, 2007
I agree with Roberto. This is just good marketing. Certainly, I have on older G4 Mac, and the cables coming out of the back of that resemble the Dell in the photo. Most desktop towers do. Part of the design genius of the iMac is the elimination of that “rat’s nest” – and if that’s important to you (not to mention it’s tiny desktop footprint), it becomes an important selling feature. I’d upgrade to one myself, if I weren’t going even more portable, and waiting for the Leopard Macbook Pro to be released.
:0)
June 4th, 2008
“Dell doesn’t really dish on anybody. In fact Dell has even shown some admiration for Apple.”
That is a joke. Remember not too long ago Michael Dell was asked by a news reporter what would do about apple back in 1997? His words were “I would close it down and return all the money to the stock holders” Funny, what goes around comes around now that Apple is worth I think 3 times more than Dell is. Bye Bye Dell and Microcrap.