PCWorld.com Year-End Stats: IE7, Firefox, Vista, Mac

As is my wont, I'm going to do another of my periodic updates on the usage of Firefox by PCWorld.com visitors, as shown in our Web analytics numbers. And since 2007 is practically over, I'll expand my report to look at some other notable numbers, too.

First, let's look at browsers...

2007 has seen the first full year of competition between Internet Explorer 7--Microsoft's first sorta-modern browser--and the upstart known as Firefox. IE7 has steadily grown in usage over the year, going from around 24 percent usage to 37 percent today. But despite some predictions that it would strike a mighty Microsoftian blow against Firefox, it hasn't. Firefox started the year with 25 percent usage and ended it with 36 percent; it's still growing, and as IE6 users have moved on, they've apparently been nearly as likely to jump to Firefox as they have to opt for Microsoft's latest browser.

Here's a chart of IE7 and Firefox's growth in usage on PCWorld.com, with IE in red and Firefox in green:

OK, how about operating systems? On January 30th, Microsoft released Windows Vista to consumers, who have been adopting it in ever-growing numbers. But those numbers have been creeping along rather than rocketing: As of now, Vista (the red line in the chart) is used by 14 percent of visitors, while 71 percent use Windows XP (the green line):

How much of an accomplishment is it for a new version of Windows to get to 14 percent usage in 11 months? The logical benchmark is to compare it to the first eleven months of Windows XP, back in 2001 and 2002. In that period, that operating system went from nothing to 36 percent usage on PCWorld.com--more than 250 percent of the usage that Vista has mustered so far. In fact, it only took eleven months for XP (the green line in this cart) to surpass Windows 98 (the red one) and become the most-used version of Windows among users of the site:

(So how come Vista's being adopted so much more slowly than XP was back in the day? It might relate in part to deficiencies in Vista. But I also bet it stems in part from the fact that XP with SP2 is...well, far from perfect, but all that many people need. Back in 2001, the Windows world was more fractured, and XP was a much more modern OS than either the aging Windows 98 or the botched job that was Windows ME.)

One last startling chart: Here's the a graph of the percentage of PCWorld.com visitors who use a Mac to access our site, covering the past five years:

It was as low as one percent at some points, and was around four percent when 2007 began. Now it's seven percent. That's still teensy compared to the 90 percent-plus who use various versions of Windows, but it's almost certainly the highest in the history of this site. (The inflection point on the chart above, incidentally, coincides with the release of the first Intel-based Macs. A lotta folks predicted that the CPU switch would spell trouble for Apple; you sure couldn't prove that by our site stats.)

That's the news as of now. If I don't provide an update within the next few months, nudge me and I'll check in again with new stats...

Apple and Fox: Rentals and DVD-to-iPod Transfers On Their Way?

Like almost every Apple news that hasn't actually happened yet, it's rumor, not established fact. But the Financial Times is reporting that Apple has struck a deal with Fox that will result in new Fox movies being available for rent through the iTunes Store, and their DVD versions including FairPlay copy protection in a manner that lets you legally move a movie from disc to PC and iPod. The first aspect of the deal, at least, will supposedly be announced at Macworld Expo next month.

If this all comes true, it's major news on multiple fronts--the first time that Apple has done rentals (rather than flat-out sale of digital content); the first time that a studio other than Disney has put new releases on iTunes; and the first time you could easily move a DVD movie to iPod without anyone telling you you were breaking the law.

Digital movie rentals have, of course, been around for eons via sites like Movielink and CinemaNow, without ever truly catching on. But if Apple were to go from dissing the rental model to embracing it, it would have the advantage of the massively-deployed, mature distribution platform that's made up of iTunes, the iPod, the iPhone, and Apple TV. And if any company can make digital rentals more appealing than they've been until now, it's probably Apple, which might be more aggressive on price and less so on copy protection than other companies have been.

Still, a deal that was limited to Fox titles wouldn't make much sense; who wants to have to figure out which studio released a movie in order to tell whether it's available or not? You gotta think that Steve Jobs, who's both a Disney board member and massive shareholder, will be able to get the Mouse House to be a charter member of any iTunes rental and/or DVD-to-iPod program, too. But you'd want Warner Bros. and Paramount and Columbia and Universal (the last of which apparently wants to go its own way rather than pal around with Apple) to join in, too.

More details when we have 'em--which may not be until Steve Jobs himself tells the world what's going on, at Macworld Expo or elsewhere...

Techlog's Greatest Hits of 2007

One of the most addictive things about being a Web journalist is the ability to see exactly what readers are clicking on--that day, that month, or that year. Just out of curiosity--not that you're required to care--I checked out which posts in this very blog got read most in 2007. And here are the top ten, ordered by number of page views:

1. I Went Undercover With Dateline, Too: When a Dateline NBC reporter was outed at the DEF CON hackers' conference, I weighed in and remembered when I did some hidden-camera work with the TV show.

2. Google Apps vs. Microsoft Office: I mused about Google's online office suite and its pros and cons in comparison to a competitive product from a software company in Redmond.

3. I Have a New Favorite Web Browser: Flock: I surprise myself by discovering that Firefox is no longer my browser of choice.

4. Google Gets Silly For April Fools' Day: I dash off a quick post on Google's rather elaborate prank.

5. iGoogle It Is!: I note that Google is renaming its personalized page, and almost 5000 people take my silly little poll on whether "iGoogle" is a cool name or not.

6. Google Knows Where You Live: I attend a Google press event and explain that the company is trying to use knowledge about where you live to fine-tune your search results.

7. Hands on With Apple's New MacBook...With Windows!: I wrote this post about running Windows on a cheap Mac notebook in May, 2006; a year later, it was still getting enough traffic to make it one of my most-read items of 2007.

8. A Brief History of Computers, As Seen in Old TV Ads: Here's another 2006 item--with lotsa embedded YouTube videos--that apparently will never die.

9. Yahoo Mail Goes Infinite: A post about Yahoo Mail's new storage limit...or rather the lack thereof.

10. A Table. From Microsoft. Seriously.: Thoughts on Microsoft's touch-sensitive piece of furniture, plus some video and a poll (a plurality of people think it's intriguing, at least).

Happy new year!

Another Kindle Complaint: Cancellation Hassles

I've owned Amazon's Kindle e-book reader for over a month now, and have come to two key conclusions about it: It's an incredibly clunky and poorly-designed gadget...and I love it. Those two takes (which I expand upon in this piece) aren't as contradictory as they seem. For all of Kindle's flaws, it's the first e-book device that's good enough to hint at the potential of the idea.

So I've been traveling with Kindle and a bunch of e-books--I don't even like to take one hardcover book aboard a plane--and every time I run across a dead-tree book I might want in a bookstore, my first question to myself is "Is this available on Kindle?"

But I'm also still discovering things to be disgruntled with. And here's a biggie...

Back when I bought the Kindle, I subscribed to the New York Times and a bunch of blogs, all with a trial period before I had to begin forking over money to Amazon. This weekend, I decided to cancel everything except for the Times. So I cheerfully pulled out the Kindle and began to navigate around the menus, looking for the option to do so. Buying stuff on Kindle is so amazingly easy that I figured canceling it couldn't be too hard.

I looked. And looked. And looked some more, in every area of the device's user interface that seemed reasonable, and a few that didn't. And I couldn't find any hint of a cancellation feature.

Eventually, in the manual, I found mention of how you do it: at Amazon's Web site. As far as I can tell, there's no way to cancel stuff on the Kindle itself. (In theory, you might be able to do so in its rudimentary Web browser, but www.amazon.com/manageyourkindle seems to be one of many sites that isn't really usable on the Kindle.

So I canceled my blog subscriptions on my PC, where it was simple enough. But the whole experience left me irritated about Amazon's claim that Kindle's system requirements are "None, because it doesn't require a computer." That would seem to be true only if you treat every subscription you buy on it as a lifetime one.

I've ranted before about companies that make buying stuff nearly effortless, and which don't seem to have put a nickel's worth of effort into helping you cancel. I'm sorry to see that Kindle, which has one of the slickest buying experiences I've ever seen anywhere, is another example.

(Side note: If you buy a book on Kindle and then instantly realize you didn't mean to, it's a one-click cakewalk to cancel the transaction. But Amazon more or less had to implement such a feature, since there's no checkout feature at all in the Kindle store--once you click to buy, you've bought.)

No OLPC Laptop for Me For Christmas

I feel guilty even bringing this up, but I've received word from the OLPC folks that shipment of the XO $100 $200 laptop I'm entitled because I paid for one for a child in a developing nation has been delayed. When I took advantage of "Give One Get One" back on November 12th, I was told that my XO machine was scheduled to ship between December 14th and 24th; now, it's supposed to go out by January 15th. (The e-mail that gave me word on the delay also included a link to a PDF "gift card" informing the child you're giving the XO to that it'll be on its way before long, but in this case, the child in question is me.)

I'm not that anxious to get it--and I'm on the road until January 1st anyhow. And I understand that the idea here is to be at least as interested in the system that goes to the deserving child. But OLPC's e-mails have spoken of me getting preferential shipping because I was one of the folks who signed up on the first day of the program...and my friend Bill Pytlovany (author of PCW fave rave utility WinPatrol) made his donation later...and has had his XO for awhile. So jumping on board instantly turned out not to be a guarantee that you'd be one of the first folks to get an XO.

Bill is doing some interesting blogging about his experiences at XOActivity.com--the good, the bad, and the unexpected--and his notes are just whetting my appetite even more for trying out my own XO. When it shows up...

Knol: Google Ennui Sets In, at Least for Me

Another day, another announcement of a Google service that competes with something (or somethings) already out there, with a twist. This time, it's Google Knol, a place for experts to write authoritative articles on topics of all sorts, complete with photos, subsections, and footnotes.

At first blush, Knol sounds a lot like Wikipedia, and this screenshot looks an awful lot like it, too. But it has one significant difference: While Wikipedia is the creation of armies of creators working in anonymity or obscurity, Knol--the name means "unit of knowledge" will spotlight individual authors, let them retain ownership of their content, and divvy up any advertising revenue with them.

It sounds kind of neat, but it's impossible to render any sort of verdict on it, because it's in closed tests at the moment--and this good post by Search Engine Land's Danny Sullivan says it's possible that Knol might never launch.

And that's why my initial reaction to Knol is one that surprises me: I find it tedious. I use multiple Google services every single day--so far today, I've used the search engine on both my PC and phone, GMail on both PC and phone, and Google Maps on a different PC--and usually, my ears perk up at news of new ones, since the company's batting average, while less than perfect, is pretty darn good. Even its least inspired efforts are worth checking out.

Knol comes close on the heels of the OpenSocial social application platform and Android cell-phone operating system, both of which (like Knol) aren't yet available in forms a consumer can try out. (In the past, news of new Google stuff usually meant that the results were available for immediate inspection on the Web.) Between those initiatives and umpteen other ones, the company seems to be hopping on every imaginable bandwagon. In other words, it feels like a tinge of Microsoftian me-tooism is creeping into the company's efforts. (Both OpenSocial and Android are hardly clones of something that already exists, but their uniqueness stems mostly from the fact that they're open-source projects in areas that have been extremely proprietary until now.)

And Google is better at getting things started than finishing them. Services like Google Base and Google Page Creator remain rough drafts at best, eons after they debuted. Even a company with resources as vast as Google can't do everything and do everything well.

Don't get me wrong--I remain a Google fan, and am a fan of Udi Manber, who heads up Knol and was the guy behind Amazon's A9, the most interesting search engine that never took off. So I'm willing to accept the possibility that Knol will turn out to be dynamite, assuming that it's ever released to the public at all.

But for now, my reaction to the news that Knol is in the works is an odd combination of exhaustion at trying to keep up with Google news, worry that the company is overextending itself, confusion over it drumming up publicity for something it may or may not release, and irritation that it's not more strikingly original. (It bears even more resemblance to Seth Godin's Squidoo than to Wikipedia.)

Okay, that's a more complex emotion than mere ennui. But it sure isn't the rush of excitement that news of a new Google service used to bring on...

Jack and Woz: Together Again For the First Time

Back in May, there was much geekly excitement over the onstage reunion of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs at the Wall Street Journal's D conference. Only a particular type of nerd--such as, oh, me--will be equally excited about an event I attented tonight at Silicon Valley's Computer History Museum: a panel on the 25th anniversary of the Commodore 64 that included (among others) Commodore founder Jack Tramiel and Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak.

The fact that Tramiel was there at all was noteworthy--the man has been out of the limelight since his version of Atari faded away in the early 1990s, and I can't remember the last time I saw him quoted anywhere, let alone making a public appearance. But there he was, looking exactly like the balding, portly guy I remember from the days of the PET 2001, Vic-20 and Commodore 64, and speaking amusingly and nostalgically about the 64, which remains one of the best-selling PCs of all time.

Woz, by contrast, has never been out of the news for long--actually, he's one of the most prominent citizens we have here in Northern California. And--like IBM PC father Bill Lowe and Amiga technologist Adam Chowaniec, who were also on tonight's panel--he had nothing to do with the launch of the 64. (Chowaniec did join the 64 team a year after the machine's debut.)

But Woz told a story tonight that I'd forgotten about, and which I always thought might be apocryphal: More than thirty years ago, Steves Jobs and Wozniak showed the Apple I to Commodore executives and entered discussions to sell their fledgling computer company to Jack Tramiel. The deal didn't happen, and it's just as well--I can't imagine that even the Apple II would have emerged as the breakthrough machine it was, let alone that the Mac could have ever been built at Commodore. (I'm not even going to ask myself whether there could have been a Commodore iPod--it make my head hurt just to think about it.)

The version of the Apple-Commodore talks I've heard has Steve Jobs declining to sell out, but Woz said that Commodore decided to pass in favor of building the PET 2001: "We got turned down?Commodore decided to build a simpler, black and white machine without a lot of the pizzazz of the Apple II." Woz also said that he didn't meet with Tramiel at the time; in fact, this CNET blog post says that the two gents never met until tonight, despite the merger discussion and the fact that the Apple II used the 6502 microprocessor, a chip manufactured by a division of Commodore.

Anyhow, that's them in the photo above, which I took as they chatted before the event began. Tramiel told the panel's moderator, the New York Times' John Markoff, about his hardscrabble origins: He was a holocaust survivor who repaired typewriters in the army, then continued to do so at Commodore in its earliest form in the 1950s. (He told us that the company's name came about because he wanted something with military associations, and there were too many companies with "General" in their names, and "Admiral" was also taken.)

Back in the day, Tramiel was most famous for driving down the price of home computers, and he continues to revel in that reputation: I asked him what he was most proud of in his career, and he told me that it was the fact that the Commodore 64 eventually sold for just $199.

He seemed to get along famously with Woz onstage, but they both genially tweaked each other during the panel. "You built computers for the classes--I built them for the masses," he told Woz, echoing a famous Commodore slogan. Woz, meanwhile, noted that the Apple II was cheaper to build than the PET 2001 and sold for three times the price. "We wanted to build a company that would be around for awhile," he told Tramiel, who's associated with both the defunct Commodore and Atari, whose name is now used by a games company that's not related to the computer company it was when Tramiel controlled it.

We're only a little more than thirty years into the personal computing revolution, which means that a sizable majority of the most important people associated with it are still alive and well. It was a joy to see Tramiel and Woz tease each other and enjoy each other's company--two utterly different men, brought together only by the gigantic impact they had on the industry...

(Misstatement in first paragraph now fixed, thanks)

MacBook Pro vs. Eurocom: Who's fastest?

There's some banter on the Net today about the recent Apple ad that discusses PCW and our WorldBench tests that showed the MacBook Pro to be the fastest Windows Vista laptop we'd ever tested. Said banter involves the fact that we've tested a Eurocom notebook that outperformed the MacBook Pro in WorldBench.

So what's the deal? As I pointed out to Ryan Block of Engadget when he asked, the MacBook Pro was indeed the fastest Vista machine we'd seen when we reviewed for our August print issue...and remained so until we evaluated the Eurocom for the December issue.

So when we published our Notable Notebooks slideshow in September, we spoke about the MacBook Pro as the fastest Vista laptop, which it was; that's the factoid that Apple picked up on for their commercial. Just to clarify things a bit, we've updated the slide on the MacBook Pro to mention that the statement on its speed was current only through October.

So to recap: The MacBook Pro did indeed achieve the distinction of being the fastest Vista notebook we've ever seen; the Eurocom has since surpassed it.

(Side note: The Eurocom is a quad-core machine with significantly more CPU muscle than the dual-core MacBook Pro.)

This is CNN...on the Commodore 64

The Commodore 64 is 25 years old...and while I'm interested in that fact, I wouldn't have guessed that CNN would find it noteworthy enough to make it the lead item on their home page:

(Side note: I'm quoted in CNN's story...)

A Flash-Based MacBook? Don't Bet On It

It's dumb, dumb, dumb to predict what Apple's going to do, since even the craftiest of pundits are so often so very wrong. I've promised myself in the past I'd stop doing it, but I can't resist: I think the current scuttlebutt about a super-thin MacBook with a flash hard drive debuting at next month's Macworld Expo is unlikely to become reality.

Flash drives are still really expensive and really limited in capacity compared to their platter-based brethren: Samsung's 64GB model goes for about a thousand dollars, while a 250GB traditional drive goes for maybe $150 or so.

That price differential would make it tough for Apple to sell an ultralight flash MacBook for the $1500 that's currently being rumored. But cost wouldn't be the big gotcha: A 64GB Mac notebook would simply be cripplingly underpowered for today's applications, such as storing music and movies or running Windows courtesy of Boot Camp or Parallels. Who wants a MacBook with a drive that's tinier than that in an iPod Classic? Maybe some folks, but probably not me.

What's more, Apple wouldn't have to use flash to build a really cool, really sleek MacBook. If Toshiba can build a 2.4-pound machine with both a traditional hard drive and an optical drive, so can Apple. That's the Mac portable I'd like to buy, and I think there's a good chance that something like it will arrive shortly.

Like I say, predictions about Apple tend to be wrong, especially when they're based on preconceived notions about what's possible and/or sensible from a technology standpoint. The company's been known to ship surprisingly cheap, surprisingly capacious flash-based products before, as it did with the original iPod Nano. Once it can put a 128GB flash drive in a Mac notebook and sell it for $1500, such a laptop would make perfect sense. And who knows--it's possible that it's struck a deal with someone like Samsung to make that doable.

But I'm guessing not, or at least not for Macworld Expo...which I'm looking forward to attending and blogging about right here.

End of the Vista Kill Switch: A Good Start--But Not Enough

I'm used to any news involving Microsoft's Windows Genuine Advantage anti-piracy system involving headaches for innocent Windows users who are simply trying to use the software they paid for. But here's a positive development: Microsoft has announced that Windows Vista SP1, shipping early next year, will end the kill-switch measure that cripples every aspect of Windows Vista except limited Web browsing if it believes you to have a pirated copy of the operating system. (Over at ZDNet, Ed Bott has a good summary of this and other WGA changes.)

I say "believes" because WGA has had a nasty tendency to become confused and accuse paying customers of stealing their software. When it did this to thousands of users back in August, I gnashed my teeth and wrote a column telling Microsoft that it needed to either make fundamental changes to WGA or simply end it altogether.

Killing the kill switch is a good start, since it'll reduce the chances that Vista will mistakenly prevent deny functionality to paying customers. But it doesn't represent fundamental change to WGA. In fact, in this interview over at Microsoft's own site, Microsoft VP Mike Sievert says that "It?s worth re-emphasizing that our fundamental strategy has not changed. All copies of Windows Vista still require activation and the system will continue to validate from time to time to verify that systems are activated properly."

Which is another way of saying that WGA will continue to be an affront to Microsoft customers. The initial activation process you go through with a new copy of Windows isn't too onerous. But every time Microsoft makes customer re-validate their copies of the operating system, it's inconveniencing them and effectively accusing them of possibly being thieves--and all because WGA doesn't work well enough to determine once and for all whether a particular copy of Vista is legitimate or not.

And I have no confidence at all that we've seen the last instance of WGA misbehaving and declaring that paid-for copies of Vista are fakes. Should that happen again, Vista SP1 won't deny access to any features. But according to Ed Bott's post, it'll still annoy them with messages accusing them of piracy. It'll change their wallpaper. And it'll give them a dialog box that makes them wait until they can postpone activation.

OK, it's possible that SP1's WGA has eliminated the possibility of customers being treated like crooks. But if so, Sievert doesn't say so in his interview. In fact, he doesn't say a thing addressed at Microsoft customers who must jump through hoops to help the company protect its profits. In a just world, it would be a very long time before any Microsoft representative was allowed to discuss WGA in public without issuing apologies to all the customers it's inconvenienced; I heard from dozens of them after I wrote my column on the topic.

(Actually, in a just world, Microsoft would be forced to remove the word "Advantage" from the name of this technology, given that there's nothing advantageous about it...)

For years, the Microsoft monopoly made it very hard for anyone to opt out of using Windows. Thanks to the resurgent Mac OS X and ever-improving Linux--neither of which are burdened with copy protection--that's no longer true. WGA remains a significant argument against choosing Windows, and will be one until it gets far more seamless or simply goes away.

Pleo the Dinosaur Arrives...Finally!

It's been 21 months since I first wrote about Pleo, the robotic dinosaur brainchild of a startup called UGOBE. Pleo was supposed to show up in time for last Christmas, for $200. But he's beginning to ship only now--available direct from UGOBE as well as online from Amazon, Best Buy, The Sharper Image, and Target--and the price has gone up to $349.

We got to play with Pleo today at PC World, and despite the delay, he remains kind of amazing. There have been other toy robot dinosaurs, but Pleo is nothing like them--or like any other robotic toy, period. Aside from the decidedly mechanical noises he makes as he does his thing, he's the least robotic robotic toy I've ever seen.

UGOBE calls him a "life form," and he is indeed remarkably lifelike for a robot. Rather than being cast in a hard plastic shell, he's got scaly skin, not to mention eyes with eyelids. He ambles around, with a surprisingly loose-limbed gait. He likes to play tug-of-war with things you put in his mouth. He appears to notice activities around him, but when he gets tuckered out, he sleeps and snores. He likes to be petted and hates being picked up by his tail. Most of all, he appears to think--and UGOBE says that he learns from his experiences and gets smarter over time.

In short, UGOBE has created something akin to a three-dimensional cartoon character you can interact with--or a Disneyland Audio-Animatronic figure you can take home. They did it by packing Pleo full of technology: He's got two 32-bit CPUs; 14 motors (which you can hear whirring), 100 gears; a camera and infrared-based vision system in his snout; microphones where his ears would be; sensors all over so he has a sense of touch and speakers at both ends. There's a mini-USB port for PC connectivity and an SD slot for software upgrades. Everything's powered by a NiMH battery--which, unfortunately, gets only an hour on a charge.

As we hung out with Pleo this afternoon, he got a variety of responses. One coworker (who shall remain nameless) who isn't normally a pet person kept coming back to visit him, and cuddled him close. Almost everybody found him endearing, or at least entertaining. But not everyone: One person thought his skin, which feels like a rubbery Halloween mask, felt gross, and declared him "yucky." And another declared "Pleo, you won't be under my Christmas tree this year," noting that his son has a Roboraptor which he doesn't bother to turn on--he just uses it as an inanimate action figure.

And that's the big question with Pleo: He's a remarkable piece of engineering, and a hoot to play with out of the box, but is he going to provide $349 worth of entertainment? (To be fair, he's a bargain compared to Sony's late, lamented AIBO, a far less sophisticated robotic companion who went for $2000). Or will the novelty wear off far more quickly than with other playthings you might buy in the same price range, such as a Wii or an xBox 360?

We've only spent an afternoon with Pleo so far, so I can't give definitive word on how much fun owners are likely to get out of him, and for how long. But it feels like the stiff pricetag that Pleo ended up with will make him less of a toy for actual children and more of one for gadget-loving grownups--the kind who do their toy shopping at The Sharper Image, one of the first places you can buy a Pleo. Which might be just as well--I'd worry about his thin plastic skin and intricate innards withstanding the attentions of real kids, who might be just as happy with a $7.99 dinosaur pet over the long haul.

But whether Pleo turns out to be a success or not, I think he stands a good chance of being remembered. In some respects, he's unquestionably the most ambitious robotic device ever marketed to consumers, and if we all end up with mechanical companions around the house someday, we might look back at Pleo as an early landmark product.

Meanwhile, I'm still getting a kick out of our Pleo...and I recorded a quick-and-dirty video of the little guy at play, since seeing him is the best way of understanding him.

New Apple Ads: PC, Meet PC World

A couple of new Apple "Get a Mac" ads premiered tonight, and I can't can't claim to be an entirely dispassionate bystander this time around: They have Mac and PC discussing the fact that PC World's tests of a MacBook Pro running Windows Vista, using our WorldBench 5 benchmark, showed a Mac to be the fasted Vista notebook we'd ever seen.

Here's a link to one of the ads on Apple's site in QuickTime form; the other isn't there, and we understand that tonight may be the only time it airs on TV.

It's fun to see PCW pop up in an ad campaign that's a cultural touchstone of the moment, although I think my favorite PCW reference will always be the time we got mentioned on The Simpsons. And I do have to agree with Michael Rose of The Unofficial Apple Weblog that it's a tad jarring to see Apple promoting Macs as Vista machines when it's also running ads bashing Vista as being basically undesirable. You almost expect to see the Mac turn his nose up at running a Microsoft operating system at all...

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