In the never-ending advertising war between Microsoft and Apple, seemingly designed only to see who has the biggest… wit, it’s Apple’s turn to parry and thrust, as they make a delicious display of self-irony by accusing Microsoft of the very things they’re doing in the selfsame ads. How so? Let’s take a look…

The first of the new Mac ads, titled “Bean Counter”, presents our hip young ‘Mac’ character expressing his baffled state at PC, who is “doing a little budgeting”, and putting a large amount of money into advertising and very little into “fix vista”, the subtle, easy-to-miss gist here being that Microsoft are trying to cover up Vista’s shortcomings via an expensive advertising program, instead of using the money on actually fixing Vista. Yet lo and behold, Apple is delivering this scathing, righteous satire through an expensive ad campaign of its own, funny that.

The second ad, called “V word,” is accusing Microsoft of dodging the Vista reliability issue again, by just removing the word “Vista” from Windows, instead of addressing the reasons why the name has become a badge of shame. Now I’m not the one to shirk a healthy dose of hypocrisy in advertising, it’s the American way after all, but one can’t help but let out a giggle considering Vista’s bad name in the eyes of the public is in no small part due to Apple’s ads directly attacking the brand. Microsoft practically has no choice but to dump the brand name and move on to “Windows 7.” Vista’s flaws are quite real, but Microsoft’s Mojave Experiment proved just how much of a stigma the name alone can be.

Finally, the underlying tone of Apple’s recent ads is that Microsoft is paying little attention to their actual products in their latest adverts. They’re right, but there’s scarcely a mention of Macs anywhere in these new ads, especially considering the major MacBook line refresh they launched last week.

I’m not saying Microsoft is any better though, they tried to be funny by using Seinfeld and Bill Gates to glorify the nerds that Apple are making out PC users to be, but they’ve miserably failed, instead delivering one of the most bizarre advertising experiences of the 21^st century.

In the end, the little go-between Apple and Microsoft have had going for a while may be (mildly) amusing in the short run, but in the long run it’s leading nowhere fast. Neither of them are informing the public about their own products qualities, and aren’t very far away from a disgraceful catfight. This sort of ‘competitive’ advertising has a long tradition in the United States, but hey, at least Coca Cola and Pepsi did it with more style!