Apple steps up its ad campaign against Microsoft, rehashing viruses, stability and additional costs

Apple is not sitting idle, while Microsoft hammers away at the price differential (Apple tax); they have released 4 new ads. In 3 of its 4 ads called Biohazard Suit, Legal Copy, and Time Traveler, Apple tries to rehash the same old story about viruses, additional costs, and stability. I don't have a problem with viruses or stability on my Lenovo X60 with Vista Ultimate. On the cost side I would also contend that one would be foolish not to purchase an anti virus/spyware/maintenance suite on a Mac. All it takes is one virus and the Mac is not immune (read the last monthly CERT report), although clearly OS X is not as big a target as Windows. In June Microsoft will be providing virus protection for free and as I posted before there are already free antivirus programs available from companies like AVG. With the Windows Vista PR fiasco, these types of ads have worked before and will probably keep working, although in this economy price may be a bigger is consumer's purchase decision.

The Stacks ad demonstrates the face recognition technology that comes standard in the included iLife application. This a good point, although Adobe Photo Elements 7.0 has the same feature, albeit at an additional cost.

The new ads can be found at the Apple web site.