David Flynn23 October 2009, 7:54 PM (29 days ago.)
Boot Camp update to deliver full Windows 7 compatibility, while new TV ads target Windows XP users as potential switchers.
Apple’s carefully-calibrated response to the Windows 7 marketing onslaught sees the company putting a dollar each way.
On the one hand, an update to Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard to officially support Window 7 under Boot Camp has been announced to arrive “before the end of the year”.
This will be restricted to Intel-based Macs from 2007 and later, however, with Apple listing nine iMac, MacBook Pro and Mac Pro models which “will not be supported for use with Windows 7 using Boot Camp”.
Alternatives to using Boot Camp’s dual-boot scenario are Parallels Desktop 4.0 and VMware Fusion 3, both of which also support Windows 7.
At the same time, Apple’s latest TV advertisements attempt to snare potential upgraders to Windows 7 before they upgrade, encouraging them to switch to the Mac platform instead.
Two new commercials highlight the complexity of Windows XP users having to move all their “stuff” across to Windows 7 because the new OS doesn’t support smooth in-place upgrades from XP.
If you’ve got to go to the trouble of transferring all your documents, data and applications, Apple suggests, why not make the move to a Mac?
A third TV spot, titled ‘Broken Priomises’, takes a swipe at Microsoft’s claims over Windows 7. Rather than critising the OS itself, however, Apple cleverly suggests that we’ve heard the same promises made for each previous version of Windows, from Vista to XP and well before, so why trust Microsoft this time around?
You can see the advertisements at Apple’s
Get a Mac ad gallery.