Most of us have probably seen the previously ubiquitous all-white background commercial regarding how a trendy, young, and known actor who represents an Apple computer is so different from the stodgy, suit & tie, middle aged lesser known actor portraying a PC. At first I treated this series of commercials with the same level of regard as I would water coming out of the faucet. But in the past couple of years as I’ve been interested in the computer market and trying to design a desktop computer for myself, the ad campaign has haunted my thoughts.
This commercial had returned to me as I began to consider whether or not people actually cared about this supposed ongoing argument between Macs and PCs. The acronym PC is after all just personal computer, and are not Macs computers for personal use? Truly this is just a commercial that was meant to create opposition and conflict between different computer users, rather an “us versus them” attitude, all for the sake of crafting brand loyalty. In the market for computers, competition for consumers should be won and lost based on the performance and price of their products. There should not be any hesitance to switch computer brands just because you had previously purchased from “x” brand. It is similar to not being resistant to buying honey wheat bread if you bought nine grain wheat bread before.