ANTenna Blog -- Hardware & Software

Microsoft is finally admitting that those "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" ads have had some impact on Vista's reputation and performance in the market. The software giant is planning to respond with a huge advertising campaign of its own -- which will not involve admitting that Vista is a bad OS.

At Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference, Brad Brooks, corporate VP of Windows Consumer Products is quoted as saying: "There are a lot of myths around Windows Vista. We know the story is very different than what our competitors would like us to think."

He added that Microsoft is "preparing to retaliate against "noisy competitors" with a major new multi-million dollar advertising campaign" and further said, "You thought the sleeping giant was still sleeping. We've woken up and it's time to take this message forward. This is the true story of Vista."

Just what is the true story of Vista?

Is it compatibility and usability issues? Is it the increased costs that users have to shell out to "maintain existing capabilities"? Is it the trouble businesses have supporting their old applications when they switched to Vista?

Brooks seems to be more angry at Apple than at his own developers. More quotes from his keynote speech at the conference: "We've got a pretty noisy competitor out there. You know it. I know it. It's caused some impact. We're going to start countering it. They tell us it's the iWay or the highway. We think that's a sad message."

"Not nearly as sad," muses John Paczkowski on AllThingsD, "as proposing to fix technology problems with advertising."