I was watching a cooking show on TV with my mother a few evenings ago, when they cut to a promotional commercial. It was one of those commercials where they advertise a food item/cooking product, and then give you tips on how to include it in your cooking and meal plans. These types of commercials always end with the statement: "For more cooking tips, go to (insert website here)
Though I'm sure my memory is a bit cloudy (because I generally tend to zone out during commercials), I can't seem to recall any instance where the OS and Browser being employed in a commercial WASN'T Apple's OS-X/Safari. This perplexed me, because OS-X based computers and their Safari web browser aren't nearly as prolific as Steve Jobs and Apple Computer would like you to believe...
As it stands right now, 88.14% of the Operating System market is dominated by the various versions of Microsoft Windows. Mac Operating Systems only account for 9.77%, with the remaining 2.09% being taken up by the various distributions of Linux, BSD, Unix, and other platform-specific operating systems. (Source: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=8)
The web browser market scale also leans heavily in the direction of Microsoft. As of this writing, 66.82% of the browser market is occupied by Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Here, Apple's Safari doesn't even take second place, with Mozilla's fanatically-supported Firefox browser accounting for the next 22.05%. Safari limps in at a distant third, controlling a paltry 8.23%, with the remainder of the pie being divided up among Google's Chrome, Opera, Netscape Navigator, and several other lesser-known browsers. (Source: http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0)
One could suppose, without much doubt, that Apple Computer is paying to have their OS and browser placed in these commercials, and that's fine. However, the tactic just doesn't seem to be working for them. Windows and Internet Explorer, as maligned and hated as they are among the shadowy fanboy communities of the internet, are still as ubiquitous today as they've always been, DESPITE a concerted advertising effort and anti-Microsoft smear campaign by Apple.
With that being said, let me tell you that I am NOT a fanboy for Microsoft. While I very much like Windows XP, it is beginning to show its age, and it's still being hacked apart by internet malcontents with viruses, malware, and exploits. It's supposed replacement, Windows Vista, is a bloated and buggy OS with widespread and well-documented issues supporting hardware and software that run without trouble on XP. Even today, many people still opt to downgrade to Windows XP when they buy a Vista-equipped computer. Its hardware requirements are also incredible compared to other modern operating systems (including OS-X), and overall, it just isn't a suitable replacement for XP. It reminds me very much of the resulting shit-storm that erupted when Microsoft foisted Windows ME on PC users to try and keep them occupied until Windows 2000 could be completed. ME is one of the most criticized and hated operating systems to ever be released, and Microsoft certainly caught hell from thousands of angry users complaining of stability issues, unexplainable crashes, and poor driver support for existing hardware.
I guess it just seems unrealistic to me that OS-X and Safari would be portrayed as being so common on television, when in reality, its user base doesn't even account for 10% of the total market share in either category. It's also worth pointing out that nobody outside the techie community is going to recognize the software being displayed as Apple's. What does Apple hope to accomplish with this? Product placement is key, but it's a wasted and futile effort if the general couch-potato audience that's watching doesn't even recognize the software being placed. To them, it's just a mouse pointer clicking on a link, and nothing more.
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