"Attack" marketing

[Vlad!]

I was in the break room eating a bagel (as one does), and I saw on the teevee a commercial from DirecTV talking about how dish network's DVR has less storage space. I've been noticing more and more TV commercials directly attacking competitors. DirecTV vs dish. Verizon vs AT&T. Apple vs PC.

I really hate these ads, even more than I hate normal ads. Have we as a society lost any sense of class or propriety?

I've also noticed that most of these attack ads are at least a little disingenuous. I don't know much about DVRs since I've never owned or needed one and I don't know much about 3g data plans and coverage because I've never had a phone fancy enough to have a 3g radio, but I do know at least a little bit about Macs and PCs, and while there may be plenty of good reasons to buy a Mac, the adverts generally play to misunderstandings and fears rather than reality. "You only think you don't know how to use computers because PCs are so stodgy and slow. It's not your fault, it's the PC's fault. If you got a Mac, nobody would make you feel stupid by asking you questions you don't know the answer to or talking about things you don't understand".

Is this a new thing, or has it been going on the whole time and I'm now just barely clueful enough to be noticing it?

[bloop]

My brother's article on several Apple ads.  A little old, but it applies.

http://stevencwatts.newsvine.com/_news/2009/11/05/3466437-apples-rolling-in-fud-the-problem-with-the-latest-get-a-mac-ads

[Vlad!]

I haven't seen a lot of the ads, but your brother's assessment of most of them ("but I've found even the toughest ones to be addressing one of two things: legitimate advantages of the Mac, or legitimate disadvantages of the PC") is pretty far off from what I've observed. Only a few of them actually "address" actual real advantages or disadvantages. In fact, I'd say FUD characterizes most of these ads: suggesting that the PC is going to destroy your data or get a virus or some other horrible thing. The rest of them are pretty much making fun of Vista, but not in a "here are some legitimate problems" sort of way so much as a "hoh hoh hoh, that Vista is wack, yo" sort of way.

It also sort of irks me that the ads are characterized as Mac vs. PC. It's really MacOS vs. Windows, since the criticisms are all leveled at the Windows OS. In fact, for the past several years the computers that Apple sells are what were a long time ago called PC-compatible (now all 'PC's are PC-compatible, since PC was an IBM brand and IBM doesn't make consumer systems anymore). In fact, most Apple computers can boot Windows or Linux with no problem (and some computers from other manufacturers can boot MacOS, though it's fairly rare; if you are interested see http://www.hackintosh.com/).