Criticizing Microsoft and attacking Android: Apple's 40-year advertising feud

At the recent MWC 2018, the Android camp launched a series of blockbuster models, kicking off this year's smartphone melee.

Apple, watching the situation from the other side of the river, took the opportunity to release four "Why switch" ads to guide Android users to "switch" to iPhone. This series has been updated to 12 ads since last year.

Perhaps you will be surprised that the "aloof" Apple also has such a dark side, but in fact, such dark advertisements have a long history at Apple.

The prototype of "Why switch" can be traced back to the "Switch" series of advertisements in 2002, which called on PC users to switch from the Wintel camp to Mac. Apple's advertisements with the theme of attacking competitors began to appear more than 30 years ago.

Over the past 40 years, these advertisements have made a significant contribution to the sales of Apple products. Apple has also successfully brought down some of the giants ridiculed in the advertisements and developed from a small copycat workshop in a garage to the company with the highest market value in the world.

Looking back at Apple’s advertisements over the past 40 years, you’ll find that this is not just a competition of advertising creativity. What these advertisements reflect is the competition among technology companies for market voice and industry changes in the consumer electronics market.

Apple’s 40 years of advertising grievances is actually a unique history of Apple’s business.

1976: It all started with a crude little flyer

One afternoon in the spring of 1976, Wozniak tinkered with a new circuit board in Jobs' garage, which integrated a microprocessor, 8Kb of memory, and a program version of the BISIC language he wrote. This was Apple's first product, the Apple I, and Jobs began to think about how to sell this product.

Soon Jobs launched Apple's first advertisement - a leaflet that introduced the Apple I in detail. Printed in black and white with dense lead type, it was not as annoying as the small advertisements under the Tianqiao Bridge today. Fortunately, the Apple I sold well, and Apple basically achieved profitability within a month of its launch.

So the following year, Apple II was born, and Apple held its first "big press conference" in history at the first West Coast Computer Show in San Francisco.

Apple also produced two new ads for the Apple II. One was a print ad similar to the Apple I, but it was printed in color and had more pictures. The bold headline predicted Apple's product style for decades to come:

• The simple design makes it easier to use.
• Sophisticated design makes it simple.

The ad defines the Apple II like this:

• The Apple II will change the way you look at computers.
• Apple II will change the way you think about computers.

Another TV commercial released in June 1977 showed different countries and industries using Apple II. The commercial began with a Chinese man in a Tang suit introducing his Apple computer in Chinese.

This is also Apple's first video advertisement. The combination with life scenes was also adopted in many subsequent Apple advertisements. The most impressive one recently is the "Three Minutes" micro-film shot by Chen Kexin with iPhone X.

Apple soon proved that these advertisements were not self-promotion. The Apple II was a huge success, with sales soaring from $2.7 million to $200 million between 1977 and 1980. By 1981, Apple had captured 23% of the global PC market.

In 1978, Apple launched an ad with the theme of "Bestselling". The ad started with an introduction to how popular the Apple II was:

Since we introduced the Apple II in April 1997, we've become the choice of more customers than all other brands of personal computers combined.

What is more significant than sales figures is that Apple II once became synonymous with personal computers and triggered a personal computer revolution in the 1970s. Even Bill Gates, the head of Microsoft, Apple's arch-rival, praised it:

• I am just the second Steve Jobs. Before me, I was deeply impressed by the rapid development of Apple computers.

The Apple II, which was launched in 1977, sold nearly 6 million units in the following 16 years. The 17-year product cycle is rare among Apple products, and even the iPhone may not be able to surpass it.

At this point, Apple had completed its war reserve in the PC field. After IBM's first personal computer and Microsoft's MS-DOS entered the personal computer market in 1981, Apple faced unprecedented challenges, and its advertising style was no longer so gentle.

1984: Challenging Big Brother IBM

In 1984, IBM's computer sales reached 4 billion US dollars, accounting for more than 50% of the personal computer market. In the second year, the market share will reach 80%, making it the veritable "Big Brother" in the PC industry.

This year was also an important year for Apple. Apple released the first computer with a graphical user interface, Macintosh, attempting to challenge the IBM PC which used the DOS command line pure text user interface at the time, and once again launched a personal computer revolution.

Before the release of Macintosh, Apple produced a 60-second advertisement specifically for this product, directly targeting IBM. This advertisement is "1984", which is famous in the history of advertising.

Jobs invited Ridley Scott, the director who had just become famous for "Blade Runner", to shoot this advertisement. This advertisement was adapted from George Orwell's famous dystopian novel "1984", which perfectly fits the dystopian atmosphere of "Blade Runner".

In Apple's "1984" ad, a big head with a dull expression on the screen tirelessly "brainwashes" the people sitting in the audience. When Big Brother announces on the screen "We will win!", a woman in a white vest and red shorts suddenly breaks in and throws a big hammer at the big screen. The screen explodes, and then a subtitle appears:

On January 24, Apple Computer will introduce the Macintosh. You will understand why 1984 will not become "1984".

In this ad, IBM is compared to "Big Brother" with outdated ideas and manipulating people's lives, while Apple is a rebel who dares to challenge authority and will save humanity from "Big Brother".

After the ad aired during the Super Bowl that year, the three major U.S. television networks and 50 local TV stations all broadcast news about the ad. It was also played in movie theaters as a pre-movie ad for several weeks, sparking discussions in hundreds of newspapers and magazines. In today's terms, it went viral.

The ad was later named the greatest commercial of all time by TV Guide and Advertising Age.

However, this classic advertisement did not have any impact on the PC market. Although Macintosh sales reached $100,000 within half a year, by the end of 1984, Macintosh sales had dropped sharply due to insufficient memory and slow operation.

While the market share of "Big Brother" IBM continued to expand, another strong competitor in the PC field, Dell, also emerged shortly after the release of Macintosh.

At that time, Microsoft was still Apple's follower, and its main source of income was producing software for the latter. In 1984, Apple's annual sales reached 1.5 billion US dollars, while Microsoft's was only 100 million US dollars.

However, Microsoft, which was still a smaller company at the time, also released its own graphical interface operating system Windows 1.0 in the fall of 1985, installed it on IBM's personal computers, and quickly captured the market.

Jobs was very angry about this and thought that Microsoft had copied the Macintosh's graphical interface. Many years later, when talking about this matter, he still thought that "Gates had no shame."

But Gates believed that Apple's graphical interface was also developed based on Xerox PARC, and Microsoft had every right to do the same as Apple. Gates once confronted Jobs about this in the Apple conference room. Facing Jobs's questioning, he gave a classic rebuttal:

I think the situation now is closer to this - we both have a rich neighbor named Xerox, and when I break into their house to steal the TV, I find that you have already stolen it.

1985: Failed advertising, Apple and Jobs' Waterloo

1985 was a bad year for both Apple and Jobs.

This year, Apple shot a new advertisement called "Lemmings" modeled after "1984". The content was about business managers wearing dark suits and blindfolded walking towards the cliff one by one and committing collective suicide, trying to once again arouse people's disgust against IBM.

However, the ad was criticized by many critics. In the same year, Jobs was forced to resign from Apple because he lost in the company's political struggle.

Subsequently, Apple began to go downhill under the leadership of then CEO John Sculley. Almost all of the most failed products in Apple's history were released during this period, and no matter how creative the advertising was, it could not save them.

For example, the Newton, which cost about $100 million to develop, had many functions but could not find a position in the market.

The advertisement introduced Newton through various vivid metaphors, such as writing on Newton was like a piece of paper, and Newton could replace newspapers for reading news.

And you’ve probably never heard of Apple’s first consumer digital camera, the Apple Quick Take.

The ad "Before After" highlights the changes that Apple Quick Take 100 will bring to your life by comparing a color photo with a black-and-white booklet.

By 1996, Apple was in a precarious situation. Its market share had dropped from a peak of 16% in the late 1980s to 4%. In the 11 years since Jobs left, Apple missed the great opportunity of IBM's decline, while Microsoft seized the opportunity and launched Windows 95, one of the most successful operating systems in history, in 1995.

Apple's then-CEO Michael Spixidler had hired bankruptcy advisers and was considering filing for bankruptcy and selling the company to Sun Microsystems, IBM and HP.

Steve Jobs Returns: Think Different

In 1997, after Jobs returned to Apple, he carried out drastic reforms. First, he cut 70% of the business and focused on a few products. IBM, the old rival, was once again targeted by Jobs.

Jobs soon produced a classic series of advertisements against IBM, "Think Different", which fired the first shot after his return to Apple. IBM had recently proposed the slogan "Think", and Apple's advertisement called "Think Different" was obviously intentional.

This 60-second ad, written and voiced by Jobs himself, pays tribute to those unique geniuses in human history and begins to convey Jobs' ideal of "changing the world":

Only those who are crazy enough to think they can change the world... can actually change the world.

In addition to the TV ads, Apple also produced a series of print ads with the theme of "Think Different". Celebrities such as Albert Einstein, John Lennon, Charlie Chaplin and Martin Luther King were placed together with the Apple logo, with no text other than "Think Different".

Apple hoped that these ads would allow users to associate the images of these legendary figures with Apple, and it was indeed a huge success.

The year after this ad was launched, Apple continued to launch the "Un-PC" ad against IBM, aiming to illustrate its differences from IBM.

However, Apple will soon know that IBM will no longer be its biggest rival in the future, but the "Un-PC" promotional strategy of criticizing its rivals and highlighting itself has continued.

Millennium: Black Microsoft "Get a Mac"

Entering the 21st century, the giant in the personal computer market has been replaced by the Wintel alliance composed of Microsoft and Intel. This alliance intended to and successfully replaced IBM's dominant position in the personal computer market, and at one time occupied more than 90% of the personal computer market share.

Apple also improved slightly after Jobs returned, and launched iMac, iBook and Power Mac, etc. However, it was still no match for Wintel, and in 2001 Microsoft released the popular Windows XP system.

So in 2002, Apple launched the "Switch" series of advertisements targeting Microsoft. This advertisement allowed different users to tell their stories of switching from PC to Mac, calling on PC users to switch to the Mac camp in a joking way.

Jobs said that after the "Switch" series of ads were released, the number of PC users who bought Macs increased significantly. In 2006, Apple spent $300 million to produce an upgraded version of the "Switch" ad, the "Get a Mac" series of ads that "blackened" Windows computers completely.

Each episode of this series of commercials follows a similar format, with the young and fashionable Hollywood star Justin Long playing the role of Mac, while the talk show host John Kellogg Hodgman, dressed in a suit and tie, represents the PC.

The advertisement takes the form of a conversation between two people about the pros and cons of macOS computers and Windows computers in various aspects. Mac attacks PC from a series of problems such as easy freezing, complicated installation, virus infection, slow networking, etc.

The "Get a Mac" series launched a total of 66 advertisements from May 2006 to October 2009. Although it was criticized for mocking competitors in this way as "too stingy", this did not affect the popularity of this advertising series, and the series also won many advertising creativity awards.

Because this advertisement was so popular, Microsoft finally couldn't tolerate it anymore and shot a series of advertisements called "I'm a PC" in 2008 to respond to Apple and refute the stereotype of PC created by Apple in "Get a Mac".

Apple relied on this offensive to increase macOS's market share from 2.1% to 5% despite Wintel's near monopoly on the market.

The Wintel Alliance still seemed to be sitting back and relaxing, but market changes were already brewing. In those years, Apple's classic ads included the "Get a Mac" series and the "Put 1,000 songs in your pocket" iPod ad.

Soon after its launch, the iPod began to become Apple's main revenue generator. By 2007, it even contributed nearly half of Apple's revenue, completely dominating the music player market.

More importantly, the iPod laid an important foreshadowing for the iPhone, which later launched the smartphone revolution. As Tony Fadell, the "Father of the iPod", later said:

Without iPod, there would be no iPhone.

The era of smartphones has arrived, but ads mocking rivals won’t change

Since the iPhone was launched in 2007, the smartphone revolution has been sweeping the world.

While Microsoft's Surface is still imitating Apple's "Get a Mac" series and mocking Apple's Mac, iPad and Siri, Apple has already achieved rocket-like growth relying on the iPhone. To date, global sales of iPhone have exceeded 1.3 billion units.

Since the birth of the iPhone, perhaps because Apple has quickly grown into a giant in the mobile phone industry, for a long time after the release of the iPhone, we no longer see those explosive ads. Instead, we see simple product introductions or warm micro-movies.

Apple has finally become the "Big Brother" in the eyes of others, and Samsung has become the Apple that challenged IBM in the past, mocking the iPhone in its advertisements without any scruples. The Galaxy S series has always been the main force of Samsung's criticism of the iPhone.

Galaxy S3 makes iPhone 5 a "senior citizen's phone", complaining about those Apple fans who queue up all night.

The Galaxy S4 tells you that the iPhone isn't smart enough.

The Galaxy S5 complained about the battery life of the iPhone and mocked iPhone users as "Wall Huggers".

The Galaxy S6 highlights its advantages over the iPhone 6 in terms of screen size and wireless charging.

After the release of iPhone X last year, Samsung Galaxy series, which has always hated Apple, released a new advertisement. In just one minute, the advertisement criticized the first generation iPhone to the latest iPhone X, which can be said to have fully displayed the years of resentment and entanglement with the iPhone.

With the overall decline of the global smartphone market last year and the rise of a number of Chinese smartphone brands, Apple once again started the "scolding" mode in its advertisements last year, this time targeting the entire Android camp.

Last May, Apple released eight ads with the theme of "Why Switch" on YouTube. Each ad was 15 seconds long and highlighted the advantages of iPhone in terms of running speed, music, photos, security and other aspects in a humorous style. It called on Android users to switch to iOS and updated the "Switch to iPhone" page on its official website to provide guidance.

Shortly before the release of iPhone X, Samsung also imitated Apple's ads and released two new Galaxy S8 ads to tease the iPhone.

At MWC 2018 some time ago, Apple once again updated its "Why Switch" series of advertisements, attracting users to choose iPhone through "service support", "system security" and "environmental protection" and other aspects.

If you have read the above introduction, you must have discovered that these advertisements are actually old wine in new bottles of Apple’s advertisements in the PC era. Whenever these advertisements attacking competitors appear, it is often when Apple encounters crises and challenges, and it may even be a key turning point in Apple’s development.

From PC desktops to mobile smartphones, from television and newspapers to online videos, Apple's aggressive advertisements have left classic cases in advertising history, but in the eyes of many people, the "eating appearance" of such advertisements is too ugly.

Would those ads still work today? If the smartphone cycle is already in its late stages, what kind of ads will Apple come up with for the next generation of products? That could be more interesting than the annual release of a new iPhone.

Some pictures are from: Medium