UPDATED 04:55 EDT / MARCH 10 2016

NEWS

Surface Book vs. Mac: A war of words with a musical twist

Following an advertising campaign in which Microsoft lists the wonders of Windows 10 for PC and why it’s so much better than anything Apple Inc. can put together, Redmond is now bashing its competitor once more in a series of ads that tell us Microsoft’s Surface Book is way better than the Mac.

The ads feature wildlife photographer Tim Flach, a man who loves “to take pictures that engage people.” Impressed with the resolution and computing power of his Surface Book, along with his handy stylus, Flach goes on to say, “Being able to use a pen like this on a screen directly with the image just gives me a different relationship to it…and I can’t do that on my Mac.” Ouch.

Microsoft doesn’t stop there. In a second ad Flach tells us he’s using the Surface Book for the first time. Yet again he informs us, “I just can’t do that on my Mac” after saying, “Being able to use a pen like this on the screen directly with the image takes me back to my time as a painter.”

Apple CEO, Tim Cook, last year made his case clear about what he thinks about the Surface Book. “It’s a product that tries too hard to do too much,” said Cook, adding, “It’s trying to be a tablet and a notebook and it really succeeds at being neither. It’s sort of diluted.”

It’s amusing to see Microsoft take a stab at Apple, but what’s perhaps a little strange about the ad campaign is that Microsoft is using the same music, or a variant of the same song, in its ad as Apple did for its Retina MacBook Pro commercial back in 2012.

The music is by Kid Street and the song is called ‘Song’. The only difference between the two ads is that Apple used the ‘Reimagined’ version, while Microsoft went for the ‘String’ version. Was this a deliberate choice by Microsoft? If so, what does it mean? We’ll leave that for you to decide.

Photo credit: Ged Carroll via Flickr

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