Apple Thoughts: UK Advertising Regulators OK With Get a Mac Ads

"Britain's strict ad-standards regulators offered a Christmas gift to Apple yesterday: it ruled that ads claiming Windows is less stable than OSX--and more vulnerable to infection-- were truthful. Despite a history of correcting Apple's hyperbolic marketing, it did not uphold a round of complaints filed against the "I'm a Mac" campaign. 'We considered that people would understand [the ad] to mean viruses that infected Windows based PCs would not infect Macs and that Macs were less likely to be infected by viruses than those PCs; not that Macs would never be infected by viruses and did not require virus protection. ... We concluded therefore that the ad was not irresponsible or likely to mislead.'"

Most people using their God-given common sense understand the distinction, and thankfully so do the regulators in the UK. The key in their ruling is that the ads do not give the impression that viruses never would infect a Mac. Most Mac users know that it's only a matter of time before we have to deal with viruses just like our Windows brethren, but that time isn't now and may not be for a long time. It could also be tomorrow. It just isn't today.

I think it's time we stopped arguing the truth of ads, lest I haul out the utter stupidity of the "Mojave Experiment" where users were advised to watch an expert use Vista instead of using it themselves and then show how they formulated the conclusion that it was "easy to use." I mean, if you want to go deceptive, isn't it a bit deceptive to have someone say something is easy to use when they never laid their hands on it?

Just sayin'.

For more insight, hit up the link above. The ad standards folks had a thing or two to say about those ads and their voracity.