Escape

Posted on 17 Nov 2008 at 14:39

 

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Poor old Microsoft just keeps looking like a reactive schoolboy when stacked against Steve Jobs' Californian cool.

Poor Steve jobs can't so much as sneeze these days without someone posting an obituary or measuring him for a shroud. Last month's heart attack rumour, posted by a bored teenager on CNN's iReport blog site, sent Apple shares plummeting and journalists scrambling for images of Stevie looking all frail and gaunt on the Expo stage. You know, the way he has always looked, since the beginning of time. While it's acknowledged by everyone, including Jobs, that his health has suffered in recent years, from the discovery of his pancreatic tumour to his not-nearly-as-fun-as-it-sounds Whipple procedure, you can't help but feel that the ghoulish speculation over his impending-or-otherwise death can't be helping him much. Even the most cheerful and rosy-cheeked of us are unsettled by a colleague noting our peaky eyes or white-spotted fingernails. If I were Jobs, I'm sure that I'd find it difficult not to overcompensate, thinking, 'I'll show this bastard,' before throwing an unassuming Linux coder over my shoulder or delivering a swift roundhouse kick to the goolies. But then perhaps that's why I'm not the CEO of a global technological powerhouse.

It seems weird that the mainstream media are so increasingly interested in Steve Jobs as a celebrity-type figure. He's in the spotlight, of course, as an ambassador for his company and its products, striving to envelop journalists and Joe Public alike in his notorious Reality Distortion Field, all everyman jeans and 'awesome' hyperbole, but his attentions are reciprocated warmly by the international press, eager to ally themselves with Steve's brand of California cool. How many other business potentates can you even name, discounting Richard Branson and, of course, cake overlord Mr Kipling? There's Bill Gates, of course, but then he doesn't even work for Microsoft any more.

If you've been under a rock for the past few weeks, you may have missed Microsoft's recent attempt to cast ol' Buffalo Bill in more of a groovy, down-to-earth light. First there came those bizarre and much-maligned Jerry Seinfeld adverts, in which Bill 'n' Jerry ambled around the suburbs, troubling shop assistants and eating fancy mustard. I'm going to come out of the geek-chic closet here and admit that I loved these ads. Bill was fun to watch and Jerry delivered a baffling script with earnest aplomb. The supporting cast pretended to know what was going on, and everything was perfectly and corporately charming. Sadly, the ads were mocked as try-too-hard quirkiness for quirkiness' sake, and they were abandoned in favour of the new 'I'm a PC' campaign.

In an awkward move by Microsoft, Apple's long-running 'I'm a Mac/I'm a PC' skits have been reimagined into funky, hip-hop, jump-shot shorts of multi-ethnic celebrities and civilians proclaiming themselves to be PCs while undertaking worthy causes or extreme sports. One of the 'I'm a PC' adverts even ends with a frightening wrestler shouting 'You got a problem with that?' Um, no. Rather than subvert the PC's corporate drone image, these adverts simply place Apple's original campaign in the forefront of the viewer's mind. They say 'Yeah, Macs are cool, but SO ARE WE, MUM! LOOK! LOOK AT OUR MAD SHARKDIVING SKILLZ!' It's a strangely defensive tack that's guaranteed to have the most mild-mannered Mac user reach for his soapbox and dust down his Microsoft-can't-do-anything-original, Windows-is-just-a-bad-copy-of-the-Mac-OS routine. I don't care how many celebs you cram into one 30-second ad, Microsoft, this reavailable, schoolboy nonsense just makes you look like the tediously wacky boss who shows up at the Christmas party with a half-bottle of Babycham and a flashing Rudolph tie. You had Jerry-fecking-Seinfeld on board, you morons; you should have persevered with the four-minute oddball buddy movies. They'll become cult classics, mark my words.