I had thought, or hoped that the whole Apple/Microsoft war was deflating. Sadly it looks like Microsoft just fired the next salvo at Apple. It’s parking “I’m a PC” recording booths outside of Apple stores. The one pictured is in Birmingham, England. The booth is staffed with three Microsoft peeps who will no doubt preach at you about the awesomeness of all things Vista.

The whole deal has to be like wandering into a Jehovah’s Witness den. You know you should run, but you’re too stunned at the fact that you ran into THEM for once, instead of them coming to your house. (Or appearing on your TV) They’re swell guys and gals. They’ll preach the word and even invite you to make a short video explaining why you are a PC. The bottom line here is that we can now look forward to more ultra creepy videos of mankind proclaiming that they are PC’s, when really they’re just people we need to have a restraining order on.

I’m A PC — Crowdsourced from AlleyInsider on Vimeo.
Alright, so the Seinfeld-Gates ads were interesting. Then came the “I’m a PC” ads that were different, but not really all that cool. That’s when Apple’s latest ads began to get lamer as well. So now we’re on to the latest round of “I’m a PC” ads and this one is appropriately creepy for Halloween. It features a bunch of Youtube types saying “I’m a PC”. Problem is that I found them all to be pretty creepy.

It has me seriously thinking about a Mac. I’ll break it down for you. A few could easily be serial killers, specially the first dude who is so in love with his shirt, one chases zebras and obviously is on serious medication, an old lady who wrangles lamas looks like she has to have about a million cats and I’m sure must throw them at people, a bling lover and more. Yeah, this one is just wrong.

If you’re going to promote your own platform while dissing the other guy’s, it’s probably a good idea to not use the other guy’s to create your commercial. Turns out that phase two of the “I’m a PC” advertising against Apple was created on a Mac. Ironic. What are the chances that Apple is going to run with this and make fun of them for it? Probably pretty good. Metadata found in the images of the PC user featured on the “I’m a PC” web site tells the tale.

The data showed that the images were produced using Macs that were running Adobe Creative Suite 3. Microsoft responded by saying that “as is common in almost all campaign workflow, agencies and production houses use a wide variety of software and hardware to create, edit and distribute content, including both Macs and PCs.” After that the metadata was gone.

Here’s Phase 2 of Microsoft’s Windows ad campaign that debuted earlier tonight during The Office. Obviously it’s not the same vibe as the Gates/Seinfeld ads. This one is straight to the point. That being: Not all PC users look like John Hodgman, the fat guy from the Mac commercials. Some have beards, some are sexy, some are geeky, some are geniuses etc. Some celebrities that can be seen are Deepak Chopra, Bill Gates, Tony Parker and Eva Longoria and more. They got the message out and got straight to the point. I think it counters the Mac ads pretty effectively already. It will be interesting to see how they build on this.