With the utter failure of Microsoft's recent "day in the life" ads starring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld, Microsoft has launched phase 2 of their campaign to combat Apple's "Hello, I'm a Mac" ad campaign.

As with the previous Seinfeld ads, this latest round is well done as far as cinematography goes, but once again there doesn't appear to be a point. Ok, so I "get" that they're trying to say that everyday people use a PC. But who doesn't already know that? And more importantly, who cares? What does that say about Microsoft and its products? The fact that some goofball who steam-cleans my shirts for a living uses a PC doesn't exactly make me want to run out and buy Windows, nor would it make me feel better about MS if I already did use Windows.

So how are the new ads? Judge for yourself. In my opinion, I could only come up with one word to describe the campaign: FAIL!

The Graphic Mac: For all your design and OSX tips, tricks, and discussion.

Generally I must say that all Mac OS X based browsers including Safari and the Intel optimized Firefox version are relatively slow. This is especially apparent when you run Windows XP under OS X in emulation using VMWare and try any browser, be it IE, FF or the brand spanking new Google browser Google Chrome. Windows based browsers are snappy and fast compared to a just acceptable performance on OS X.

I hope with time things will improve and I won't have to envy the Windows browser responsiveness anymore. Just maybe Google Chrome will come out for OS X soon and it will be as light as fast as it seem on my Windows emulation. But the Google Mac team is not committing itself to any deadline. Push Google to make it happen, sign up for their list to be notified when Google Chrome for OS X comes out.

Drovak speculates:
Adobe could port its Creative Suite...to Linux as a shot across Redmond's bow. Then the company should embrace Linux in-house and develop a complete, optimized Linux OS designed to run a high-performance version of its Creative Suite on Linux optimized for Adobe products, to be sold as a bootable bundle for multicore-workstation hardware.

The idea is to produce a near-dedicated Adobe computer designed to use all the power of the newest chips to run the Adobe software under Linux. Having complete control of a high-powered OS would make all of the performance-demanding Adobe software run rings around any other implementation, if engineered correctly. It would become the viable desktop alternative to both the PC and the Mac.

This is a similar strategy that Apple did to create a good Unix based platform (OS X) to run the Apple iLife and the pro-apps. So, it's a tried and working concept. I think Adobe should certainly go for it. I would even go a step further and suggest they should drop Windows support eventually and concentrate on their Unix based Adobe apps only to streamline their operations.

America Is F*cked.......(Graphically at least) from Jess Gibson on Vimeo.

And this applies to most parts of Europe and the Middle East and Asia as far as I can tell. What can we do!?

It's rare that I would argue against someone's opinion. After all everybody is entitled to their own. But when somebody is so uninformed as Preston Gralla, he deserves to be confronted. Read his infamous blog post about Five reasons why Vista beats Mac OSX. Now, if this post would've appeared on randomperson.blogspot.com I would not bother to comment and categorize him as a deluded but entertaining person, but he is a contributing editor for Computerworld, and the author of more than 35 books, yadda yadda. So, his opinion sort of counts, right?

Before reading the article, I was hoping to find out about some cool hidden features of Vista that I haven't heard of before. They probably exist, but the author didn't bother to look them up. He brought up some really tired arguments that were maybe somewhat true in the distant past (in technology and internet time), but certainly don't stand true today.

Now, let's look at his 5 points!

When I look at a lot of Web sites these days, two things jumps out at me. First, many sites look absolutely stunning. Beautiful mastheads, delicious AJAX everywhere, blinky, swooshing Flash and Web 2.0-style graphics adorn tons of Web sites. Competing with these gorgeous Web sites requires not only great graphic design skills, but you’ve got to be a coding genius as well.

The second thing that I notice right away is that many of these sites contain little if any useful, informative content.

In my article Don't design a dead-end Web site – it's all about the content, I discuss why I think you need to make your design skills take a back seat to the content.

Sites such as CreativeBits, Ads of the World, and Google are perfect examples of "the right idea." Please give it a read and feel free to leave your comments - I'm very interested to hear YOUR opinion on the subject.

I was so glad to get rid of the last Microsoft product a year or so ago from my machine. I would never dream of giving an MS product a second though ever again.

Don't get me wrong, I'm grateful for Office, Outlook, Explorer and a couple of other applications to be there for us when there was nothing better to replace them, but they were the biggest resource hogs on my Mac. They were heavy in size and in their CPU and memory usage. They were relatively slow and unreliable too.

Now, we have iWork, Mail.app, Safari and a tons of lean, cool and fast apps to replace them. And, in this time and age, MS decided to release MS Office:Mac 2008. This is a bitch to sell.

And, here comes McCann San Francisco to the rescue with their campaign that talks to the Mac user and subconsciously promises a light, quick and user friendly package for your office needs. It's lighthearted, well written and short. Great use of white space and highlight colors. Congrats to the team. Click for bigger images!

This is official ladies and gentleman. I'm not joking. It's from the CIA's website. Let's dissect it, shall we?

Who are the terrorists anyway? Let's try to describe them and find a fitting visual representation for them.

Terrorists are premeditated, politically motivated violent people who perpetrate against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents. In other words overly happy yetis covered in Middle Eastern crude oil armed with Russian made AK47 weapons.

Great, we've got the subject covered. Now how do we express the notion of busting? Busting... buster... ghost busters! Who's afraid of ghosts? Who's afraid of terrorists? Hey, we are talking to TV heads, aren't we? Let's borrow from pop culture, so they understand! Let's use the Ghostbusters logo and transform it into the Terrorist Buster logo.

If you think this is too simple, dare to say even primitive, think again. It's not about talking to the lowest common denominator. There is a hidden message encoded here. The CIA is trying to tell us something that they publicly can't. They are trying to suggest that terrorists are like ghosts. Everyone if afraid of them, but nobody has proof they even exist.

They are trying to tell you subliminally: People of the world — wake up, stop being afraid of ghosts!

I'm sick of anti-virus companies reporting on supposed OS X viruses and trojans.

The latest anti-virus company expressing its greed was Intego, who reported about an OS X trojan that is supposedly out in the wild redirecting unsuspecting browsers to fake sites stealing their credit card info. Woo-hoo!

This trojan is an 8 year old kid dressed in a witch costume. So fitting to Halloween!

Let's see how you can get infected:

1. You have to visit an eerie link to a no-name porn site.
2. You have to believe that the video content on this site is so unique it requires a special codec.
3. You have to be convinced that this codec is so damn special it can not be downloaded from Apple or any other trusted location, but only from this shady site.
4. You have to conclude that the only way to get laid tonight is to download the dmg of the codec and install it on your machine.
5. You are confident enough to give your admin password to have the installer run.
6. Despite the fact that your DNS settings have now been changed and your browser takes you to random sites, you keep surfing and shopping giving your passwords and credit card details anywhere.

Right. Very likely and truly dangerous scenario. If somebody is stupid enough to do all this, he won't even realize he's in trouble, would he?

It's the equivalent of going to a dark bar in the worst part of your town. Paying a random person for a certain white powder. Being surprised you got bubbles coming out of your nostrils. Realizing you're not even hallucinating.

Now, I'm not saying that AV companies are useless or that OS X is infallible. But I do think it's dangerous to report on false stories, because it destroys the AV company's reputation. And, it is destructive to the Mac community, because people become immune to the announcements and won't take them seriously when the real shit hits the fan.

I like this campaign done by Redifussion DY&R, India for its simplicity and clarity on selling the main benefit of the iPod: You can take your music with you. It is not as stylish as the international campaign running from Apple, but I guess for an emerging market where you need to sell rationally first before going for the emotions it will work well.