Mastered for iTunes means these albums have been specially tuned for higher fidelity sound on your computer, stereo, and all Apple devices. Browse a range of music across all genres below, and keep checking back as we add more music that is mastered specifically for iTunes.

What this means is anyone’s guess, at least until people prod Apple for details and if Apple deigns to respond. Most likely they’re just compressing the tracks to make them sound louder and punchier. This would make them sound worse rather than better, especially on an iMac or a pair of pack-in iPod earbuds, but that does seem to be where modern tastes have landed us. I don’t suppose I will ever know, as I’m not going to re-buy any of my (relative few) iTunes purchases to compare old and new versions.

What caught my eye was the categories of music available in this new format. You have your Jazz, your Classical and whatnot. And then you have this:

Tastes come and go, but any format meant to appeal to serious audiophiles has to have the Floyd catalog. One day, music players may be able to stream music directly into our brains, leveraging the mind’s extraordinary sensory powers to make you feel as though you are within and surrounded by the music, inhabiting it in every fiber of your being, every nerve ending ablaze with it. And no one will buy it until you can play Dark Side of the Moon in it.

Edited the title to improve the Floyd reference. I can’t believe I got that wrong.

This is not to say he is leaving Apple. He is continuing on as Chairman of the Board, so it seems reasonable to assume he will still exert considerable direct influence on Apple’s products and overall direction. That face-saving news probably helped insulate Apple’s stock from the bad news. As of this writing, it has taken a five-percent hit, much less than the cataclysm many predicted would befall Apple should Jobs have died, quit or otherwise left the company abruptly.

Apart from sadness and a vague sense of unease or disquiet, I have these thoughts on hearing this news.

Whatever health issues Jobs has been dealing with, he has not been able to overcome them. Jobs must have reached a point where he and his doctors realized his recovery would make no more significant progress. It is possible (and I certainly hope) that Jobs has many years ahead of him in which to contribute to Apple and to enjoy life with his family and friends. However, it is just as possible — and knowing Jobs’ concern for his privacy, not at all unlikely — that there may be more bad news about Steve Jobs ahead, and that it will come sooner than anyone wants to accept. I take no pleasure in thinking that. But I do think it.

In a sense, we are about to see the ultimate test of Jobs as a businessman and leader. How well has he inculcated his values and expectations into Apple’s culture? How well, in other words, has he enabled it to continue as though he were still there? The answer to this question will not be apparent for some time; Jobs will, as noted, continue to be involved with Apple, and it will take months or even years for the efforts he has overseen to come to fruition. That will not, alas, stop the tech pundits from clucking over Apple’s “loss of vision” at the first post-Jobs bump in the road to come along. For example, if the iPhone 4′s “Antenna-gate” issue had happened at a post-Jobs Apple, no one would skip a beat before denouncing the scandal as the inevitable result of Apple adrift in the leadership vacuum left by its departed visionary: “This would never have happened if Steve had been there.” There’s going to be a lot of bullshit like this in the months ahead, I’m afraid.

But it is true that, at some distant point, people will look at Apple and have to decide, as well as they can, whether the company they see is truly living up to its founder’s standards, or whether it shows the first signs of an inevitable decline. Apple could easily remain unassailable with no input at all from Jobs for at least three years, and probably closer to five. By then, the tech landscape may have shifted sufficiently to allow a smaller, faster competitor to undermine Apple’s dominance or to establish a new computing paradigm ahead of it. This is going to happen eventually; it’s just a matter of when. The only real question is: will it happen sufficiently far in the future that no one can reasonably blame it on Jobs’ absence? Indeed, could Apple remain dominant for so long that Jobs himself one day becomes a hazily remembered, almost mythic figure like Henry Ford, with no direct associations with any of Apple’s then-current products?

I think it could happen. If it does, that will be the true confirmation of Steve Jobs’ genius. He would not have merely started Apple. He would not have merely rebuilt it from a teetering computer company into the world’s most valuable technology company, capable of redefining entire markets at a stroke. He would have given it a soul, and not just a soul but his soul — the one thing even some of his greatest admirers were convinced he could not do. He would have achieved a kind of immortality: a cluster of dedicated people who absorbed his ways of thinking and distilled them into an essence that can be taught and passed on after he was gone. If he succeeds in this, then there is no telling how long Apple could remain in its present dominant position. Jobs came back to Apple 15 years ago. What could Apple be in another 15 years? It could come back down to earth, become just another successful purveyor of computers, gadgets and lifestyle accessories. Or it could be something that no one today can see, an integral part of industries we haven’t yet imagined. We might even one day call it the most powerful and innovative company that has ever been — greater than U.S. Steel, greater than Ford, greater than AT&T or Microsoft — a company so ingrained in our lives that it literally has no precedent.

Knowing what little I do about Steve Jobs, I am guessing that is the legacy he strives for. Will he succeed? I wouldn’t bet against him. How amazing it is to think that for all Jobs has accomplished, today really only marks a new beginning.

But the fact that OS X 10.7 is being released to the public for the measly price of $29.99 (side note: what’s with the double-decimal pricing?) is a huge deal, and not merely because it will likely be the most successful — that is, the most immediately widespread — OS release Apple has ever had. It symbolically closes an era that began 16 years ago with Windows 95: the era of the retail software event. Back then, the country went crazy for Windows 95 in a way that hasn’t been seen since, well, the iPhone came out. People lined up for it, bought it in droves, gossiped and kibitzed and complained about it. A lot of people liked it, a lot didn’t (at least at first), but everybody had an opinion. Windows 95 was more than the tech story of the year: it was the heart of the tech universe, a symbol of how much more than mere technology computer software was becoming. And it was Microsoft’s baby.

I’ve written before about Microsoft’s nostalgia for that era. Each Windows release since then has tried to capture some of that ol’ time OS religion, to steadily diminishing returns. Apple is finally and definitively saying goodbye to all that — and revealing these twentieth-century theatrics for the relic they are. Oh, they’ll make a big deal out of OS X Lion; there will be marketing, commercials, gargantuan enlargements in the windows of Apple retail stores. But there will be no more lines snaking out of those stores, no more giveaway t-shirts and bottles of water handed out to the waiting faithful. Lion is simply a conspicuous stage in an ongoing, iterative process, an inflection point in the otherwise smooth and steady evolution of the Macintosh computing experience. The software itself is a big deal, but acquiring it will not be — in fact, even the time-honored process of installing from physical media seems now a distasteful relic of an earlier age, like handcranking your car to start it.

So what does this mean for the future of the Mac OS? I don’t mean to be one of those discontented types always looking ahead to the next upgrade. I frankly can’t imagine how the operating system will evolve from here. But I do wonder about OS X’s future as both technology and product. When Mac OS X came out ten tumultuous years ago, Apple touted it as the platform that would grow with the Mac for the next decade or more. That decade is up. Could Mac OS X become obsolete? Short of a revolution in computing that obviated the microchip itself, I’m hard pressed to imagine a scenario in which OS X is not the foundation for every platform Apple ships. I’m no developer, but I think the technological underpinnings are sufficiently abstracted that even a kernel rewrite could be brought off relatively smoothly.

So assume that OS X will be with us, in form if not precisely in name, for the foreseeable future. What of Mac OS X the product? When Windows ruled the computing landscape, operating system upgrades were infrequent, ponderous events, accompanied with massive fanfare, scores of helpful books and magazine articles — an entire ecosystem of media and symbiotic technology. Apple changed that model by releasing OS X upgrades, for a time, every year. Eventually Microsoft got the message: you can’t spend seven years fiddling with your software anymore. Now that Apple has ended the era of the retail software release, what else might it dispense with? Does Mac OS X even need milestone updates? I feel quite certain that Steve Jobs finds it distasteful to even bother his users with something so esoteric as software upgrades. Why should you have to know, or care about, the version of the system software you are running? With an electronic app store, it is a simple matter to tag a potential purchase: “The application you have chosen will not run on your computer as it is presently configured. Click here to upgrade your system software and return to this purchase.”

Apple’s WWDC keynote represented a bold step into a new era of computing: one more decoupled, constantly in flux, yet potentially more liberating than anything we’ve yet seen. It’s impossible to say yet what it all means. But the rules have changed, and the future will become ever trickier to predict.

Not that it will stop any of us from trying.

I bought this iPod, my third, shortly after the “classic” designation was first introduced. I was thrilled: this was the first iPod large enough to hold the entirety of my music collection, freeing me from the burden of curating playlists and trying to second-guess what my tastes would be on a given day. (I have largely re-assumed this burden with my 32 GB iPhone, but that is another matter.) It did not trouble me at the time that, merely by calling its former flagship product a “classic,” Apple was signaling that the iPod’s glory days as a music device were behind it. A classic is something beyond the need for evolution or change, something that provides the same pleasures over and over, something — if I may get momentarily pretentious — more associated with memories than hopes.

So, back to my ailing iPod classic. I had some extra money and, what’s more, an impeccable justification for replacing my current model. Except I dragged my feet. I looked at the refurbished models on the Apple website and noted with approval that I could save quite a bit of money buying used. Gradually it dawned on me that I didn’t want to buy a new iPod. Not because of sentimental attachment to the current one — though I love Apple technology, the devices themselves are completely fungible to me, and I have no hesitation in dumping my current object of affection for something new and improved. The problem is that the current iPod classic really isn’t improved from the model I bought in 2008. Today’s classic supports Genius playlists and … I’m not really sure what else. There is certainly no difference of any substance. I can’t think of another Apple product so little improved over so long a time. But then, why improve a “classic”?

I see the logic. Apple is about iOS devices: the iPad, the iPhone and its bastard offspring, the iPod touch. The iOS platform is Apple’s chance to directly influence the evolution of an entire new computing paradigm, in a way they didn’t quite do with the Macintosh. They’d be crazy not to put all of their eggs in that basket. And let’s face it: mp3 players are so five years ago.

Let that sink in for a moment. In 2004, the iPod was so wondrous and improbable that Newsweek put a shot of an iPod-bedecked Steve Jobs on its cover. The implications of a device that allowed listeners to carry their entire music collections (or at least listeners without 25,000-song libraries) on their person at all times had still barely begun to percolate. Pundits debated the ethics of walking around in a constant, private aural fog; newspapers told lurid stories of people mugged, and in one ghastly instance murdered, for their iPods; and some folks seriously believed the iPod’s shuffle function was secretly rigged to play the same songs over and over, proving definitively that most people don’t really understand what “random” means. The Walkman changed the way people listened to music; the iPod, by allowing people access to essentially everything they might want at any given time, changed how they thought about music, and how it could more meaningfully accompany your life.

And then all of a sudden, a few scant years later, none of that was really a big deal anymore. For one thing, people bought iPods so rapidly and in such quantities that they quickly became ubiquitous. During the 2003 Christmas holiday, Apple was pleased to sell three quarters of a million iPods; four years later, that figure had grown to more than 22 million. Today they move at a rate of about nine million a quarter — still pretty good for a product category now regarded as a technological afterthought. Which brings us to the second reason why the iPod lost its luster: in January 2007, Apple revealed the iPhone. The iPod had been a curiosity when it made its 2001 debut (“It costs how much? It only works with Macs?”); the iPhone was recognized from day one as a game-changer, and everything else looked dull by comparison to it. Especially mp3 players. “You mean it only plays music?”

Once the iPhone came to market, it quickly grew into Apple’s flagship product, pulling the bulk of Apple’s resources in its wake. The iPod’s signature dancing silhouettes disappeared from TV, replaced by simple, point-and-tap demonstrations of the iPhone’s incredible capabilities. The iPod, which had already settled into a comfortable pre-Christmas upgrade cycle, became something like a relative who appears at rare but predictable intervals at family functions, always with some new affectation to gossip about, like a blonde dye-job or a conspicuously young new girlfriend. A peculiar randomness came to dominate the iPod nano, the flagship of the iPod line. The year the iPhone debuted, the nano was remade into something like a miniature console TV, the better, it was thought, to allow people to watch iTunes video content on it. A year later, that design was scrapped entirely in favor of a return to the previous slender, vertical design; no one at Apple now seemed to mind if you had to turn it on its side to watch video on it. A placeholder update the following year added a shiny aluminum finish and new colors, while the most recent iteration seemed to test the definition of the word “update”: an almost perversely small device with no on-board controls, no video camera (added several generations prior) and a clip borrowed from the iPod shuffle. It is hard to discern a vision behind these lurches from one form factor to another. I wrote a few years ago that Apple should simply ditch the nano and start over with a new, re-conceived mass-market iPod, and this last iteration in particular confirms for me that I was right.

A Note on the iPod Touch

You will have noticed I am not including the iPod touch in the bloviating above. That is because I am considering devices whose primary purpose is to store and play music. Being simply an iPhone with the telephony hardware removed and a little extra storage in its place, the iPod touch is not a dedicated music player, more of a handheld, general-purpose computer. (Apple distinguishes it in the market by positioning it as a gaming device.) What makes something a dedicated music player? In my view, you need two things:

1. A display large enough to show many album tracks in a single view
2. Hardware controls that allow you to operate the unit without looking at it or with the display asleep

This already disqualifies every non-classic iPod Apple makes. (Apple tries to satisfy the second requirement by bundling headphones built with simple click-remotes to enable users to pause, play and skip. Needless to say, this is not what I’m looking for. Apple’s pack-in buds are uncomfortable and don’t sound very good, meaning that I never use them. Besides, unless you’re jogging, which I never do, it’s easier and more natural to simply click a button on the player itself than to thread the cord with your fingers looking for the button. I’m not even going to dignify Voice Over. A talking mp3 player is something Bill Gates would think up.)

I would add to the above a third requirement:

3. Enough storage to fit a library of tens of thousands of songs.

So the iPod classic is the only Apple mp3 player that suits my need as a more-dedicated-than-average music listener. But I am reluctant to reinvest in a device that has evolved so little in the years since it was released. Assuming Apple were inclined to invest the time and resources to make the iPod fresh and exciting again, what would a new iPod classic look like?

Well, before we even get to that, that name has to go.

Introducing the iPod Macro

As we discussed above, a “classic” is something that no longer evolves, something whose primary appeal is nostalgic. That should end. There is room for the iPod to advance, and its name should reflect that. I propose the iPod macro as the music device I want Apple to sell to me. The name communicates its primary appeal: this is for people with a lot of music, and it’s designed from start to finish with their needs in mind.

How could the iPod macro be designed for hardcore music lovers? The basic form factor would carry over from the touch: for navigating long libraries of songs, touch-scrolling beats the click wheel any day of the week. It would have two volume buttons on the left edge, just like the touch does. It would have an additional rocker switch on the right: a play/pause control in the center and forward and back buttons on either side. (I am sparing you my primitive Photoshop skills here. You’re welcome.) And leave the headphone jack on the bottom — it’s one of the best design decisions Apple ever made with the iPod line.

So is making a worthwhile new iPod simply a matter of putting another set of buttons on the side? Not quite, though I wouldn’t say no to it. There are other capabilities Apple should build into an iPod macro, such as:

• A SoundHound/Shazam-like audio recognition service, built into the OS and tied into iTunes
• The ability to make smart playlists directly on the device
• Intelligent shuffle options, similar to what you find in the Groove app. You can rather inelegantly replicate this functionality with smart playlists, but it’s much more simple and Apple-like to simply be able to tap something like, “Play three songs each by my favorite artists” or “Play five-star songs I haven’t heard in the last month.”
• A refined album track display that lets me see song ratings along with song titles. Seriously, doesn’t this bother anyone else?
• Advanced search functionality — basically like the current search but with more granularity for searching by year, title, etc.
• Local music sharing. Not the “squirting” that the Zune was originally supposed to do — christ, I threw up in my mouth a little just writing that clause — but a simple Bluetooth bridge for sending an iPod-toting friend nearby an iTunes link to a song from your library.
• And the biggie: storage. I’m thinking this sucker would debut in two capacities, 160 and 250 GB. I really don’t care if it’s flash-based storage or not. I just want the room.

Would this iPod macro, you ask, have the same capabilities as the iPod touch? On the one hand, there is no reason it couldn’t; on the other, releasing two so similar products might be confusing to the marketplace. Would I buy a touchscreen iPod that was artificially blocked from installing apps? Probably — after all, it’s not like my current iPod can run apps — but I am likely in the minority here. Instead, I am thinking that an iPod macro really wouldn’t be as confusing as all that. If Apple can help people choose between otherwise-identical WiFi and 3G-enabled iPads, I think that few people would buy iPod macros who didn’t really, really want the extra storage and the convenience of the on-board controls; the storage premium alone would ensure that only hardcore music listeners would spring for them.

So this, more than an iPad 3 or an iPhone 5, is my current dream product from Apple. If there is little likelihood Apple would actually build it, there is even less that a competitor would; other music player vendors seem to have got the message that innovation is now for smart phones. As it happens, my current classic somehow recovered from its bought of battery flu and is behaving reliably again. I’m grateful. Until something genuinely exciting and new comes my way, from Apple or anywhere else, I’m in no hurry to buy my next mp3 player.

Anyway, whether you remember this or not, Microsoft certainly does. Every succeeding version of Windows has launched with an enormous fanfare, an attempt to demonstrate by sheer willpower that Windows is still very much a Big Deal. It’s kind of absurd when you think about it: retail sales of Windows represent only a trickle of the software’s vast currents of revenue. Most Windows installations are licensed to businesses or to computer manufacturers, and most consumers encounter a new Windows version either at work or when they bring home a new machine. It seems silly to expend so much time and money and hope — for these extravaganzas reek of a desire to impress, to delight, to awe — in order to market something that most people are simply going to buy, or otherwise acquire, anyway.

I tend to shy away from comparing Microsoft to the Borg or whatever other evil totalitarian entity strikes your fancy. But it’s hard not to look at a Windows product launch as one would look at, say, the annual pageant given on the birthday of some dictator in a banana republic. It is not enough for Microsoft to dominate, to be the single greatest presence in most people’s computing lives. They want you to love them, too. In Microsoft’s case, the desire is exacerbated by the fact that, for a time, people really did love them — back in 1995, when everyone lined up to buy what is still remembered as the most important consumer software upgrade ever.

Images of khaki-clad guys firing up the Weber must still be playing in Microsoft’s collective head, lo these many years later. How else to explain the company’s strategy for launching Windows 7? Its idea is to encourage people to host software parties, like Tupperware parties except that, presumably, the attendees will include men. Take a look at this, if you can get through it:

I frankly couldn’t. Blandness on that scale is almost beyond parody. I can’t watch that without thinking about those poor actors, hard-working folks no doubt, grateful for a shot at any high-profile gig, reading the script the night before, wondering how in god’s name to inject any kind of humanity or genuine feeling into something so anodyne. Their hearts must have sank anew on arriving at the set and seeing what appears to be a wall-mounted oven straight out of the Brady house. The only thing missing from the scene is Beaver, trotting in to grab a cookie and talk about how he can’t wait to install Windows 7 so he can use it to sync his Zune. It’s a shame Buñuel isn’t alive to see this.

Microsoft’s advertising has always been unusually revealing of the company’s culture, that peculiar brand of left-brainedness that is determined to be hip if only it could find the right algorithm for it. (People thought Jobs was being a snob when he said Microsoft had “absolutely no taste.” As usual, he was more right than most people realized.) There is something autumnal about this piece: it represents Microsoft wistfully and unashamedly reaching back into the past, trying to conjure up some lingering shred of that sunny autumn when the sun never set on Windows 95. Maybe they should look into licensing “Time Is On My Side.”

… you don’t have any need for windows.

Christ, doesn’t ANYONE at Microsoft think about this crap?

Microsoft is canning its Jerry Seinfeld campaign after airing only two spots. In its place, we are told, is a direct riff on Apple’s “Get a Mac” campaign, in which the “PC” character is recast in a positive light.

Wow. Where to start?

First of all, Microsoft’s protestations to the contrary, there is no way this is part of some preconceived strategy. You don’t invest the kind of money Microsoft did, or hire a spokesperson of Seinfeld’s calibre, to run only two lengthy, opaque spots that never built to any resolution. The only explanation is that Microsoft flinched. The ads got some good notices, but they were far from home runs, and Microsoft’s management must have realized — or believed — that what they had in the can wasn’t going to make things any better.

What’s perhaps most amazing is Microsoft’s counter-assertion, that the whole truncated campaign was a carefully worked out, perfectly executed effort to get people talking and generate buzz, a strategy which has achieved its aim and so may now be ended. If that were really the case — and I don’t believe even Microsoft’s marketers are that stupid — then their shareholders should demand immediate resignations of the company’s chief marketing personnel. To piss away tens of millions of dollars on an idea that turned out to be a dud is, perhaps, an honest mistake; to blow it on a campaign that was designed to be no more than a damp fart from the get-go is criminal. If my shareholder value was being wasted in so cavalier a fashion, I’d want an explanation, and I’d want a few heads on spikes along with it. No one at Microsoft even seems to get this — that the explanation they’re offering actually makes them look worse.

However bad the rest of the spots were — and, assuming they were as good as the ones that did run, they must have at least been watchable — Microsoft should have ran them. The whole campaign had a whiff of desparation about it anyway, but knifing it in the cradle shows the company to be genuinely adrift, feverishly moving from message to message in the hope that something, sooner or later, will stick. At worst, people would complain that the ads were stupid; now, they get to point out that Microsoft actually agrees they were stupid.

That news was quickly followed by the report that the next batch of Microsoft ads would appropriate Apple’s “I’m a PC” meme to rehabilitate the Windows PC. I was willing to give the Seinfeld ads the benefit of the doubt, but I have no hesitation in predicting that these new spots will fail utterly. I’ve said this before, so I’ll confine myself to the short version: you cannot tell people that Windows PCs are great, because people already know they’re not. A lot of people spend the majority of their day in front of one; a lot more have at least one catastrophic story about how Windows or Office made their life hell. Going on TV and pleading, ex-boyfriend-like, for people to remember all the good times they had together isn’t going to get Microsoft anywhere. To confine myself to the even-shorter version: it’s the products, stupid. Microsoft cannot revive its brand by touting products that suck, no matter how clever the spots are.

One day, the Apple/Microsoft Ad War will end up as a case exercise in marketing and advertising texts as an instance of perfect binary opposites: a company that executed almost flawlessly against a preeminent rival too slow and witless to respond. Can’t wait to see what happens next.

Addendum: the new spot has begun airing. A couple of flashes of humor/cleverness, but otherwise, mostly empty air. Reminds me of that staple gimmick they use in commercials for prescription drugs or financial service companies, where a succession of actors recites the same inane catchphrase (“I’m Claritin-clear!” “I’m Claritin-clear!” “I’m Claritin-clear!”). Before it’s halfway done, you’re just waiting for it to be over.

Thanks to Daring Fireball for the original links.

Assuming this is all true, the move seems oddly retrograde to me. Apple, more than most other companies, prefers — perhaps even needs — to present each new product as an evolution from what came before. A new iMac design isn’t just different: it’s thinner, or lighter, or more ecologically friendly, in addition to the usual speed and storage improvements. Most iPod iterations so far have followed this pattern. The second nano featured a more durable metal enclosure, its successor a horizontal layout that allowed for a wider, video-friendly screen. Other iPod updates have added a non-mechanical scroll wheel, color screen, and so on.

The fourth iPod nano appears to be moving backwards, returning to the visual style of the second model. It may be this year’s models will boast new functionality not apparent in the spy photos, and that such functionality may make aesthetic considerations irrelevant. But it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the fat nano simply didn’t work, and that Apple was retracing its steps to a more successful and well-received design. (I won’t entertain the notion that the form factor was inspired by the Zune.)

The nano would appear to have come to the end of its road, at least in regards to its design. It’s time for something new.

It’s time for Apple to kill the nano.

From a normal business perspective, this would be foolish — the nano still sells well, most likely remaining the best-selling iPod model, as it has been since its release. The retro model to be unveiled this week will undoubtedly sell well and give Apple another successful holiday quarter.

But how different from the Apple of 2005, which was in the exact same position with the nano’s predecessor, the iPod mini. Ever fearful of being leapfrogged by a competitor, Apple saw the mini as vulnerable, and decided that if anyone was going to kill their top-selling product, it was going to be them. The mini was terminated and the first-generation nano appeared in its place. The audacity of the move was nearly as stunning as the player itself: with the 2005 holiday shopping season about to begin, Apple chose an inopportune time to roll out a completely new product, and many observers felt that the nano’s early supply issues would have been avoided (and Apple’s holiday sales better) if they had waited until the following year to carry out the switch. Besides, who in their right mind kills a market-leading product? It’s like some action-movie badass who carves his own chest before going into battle; Apple’s competition must have been both baffled and scared shitless.

Today the iPod touch is arguably Apple’s “flagship” media player, its sleekest, most forward-looking and probably most desirable. But for the majority of buyers, those with small music collections and a need for a small and unobtrusive (but still usable) player, the nano is the best choice. Apple needs to reclaim the functional and aesthetic leadership in this space, and show its competition it’s not afraid to throw the dice on something new, bold and innovative.

The reaction, at least among the Mac web, has been predictable. “Terrible.” “No point at all.” “God awful.”

The ad could certainly have been better. But first, let’s talk about what it does right.

1. Jerry Seinfeld

Many people are claiming Seinfeld is too washed up and out of touch to be the centerpiece of a high-profile ad campaign.Twenty years ago, perhaps they would have a point. But Seinfeld has barely faded from the cultural scene in the ten years since it went off the air. Commercials mine it for material, DVDs still swell the shelves at Best Buy, and it plays in syndication in probably every market in America. The latter point is the most crucial. With hundreds of channels at our disposal, TV shows simply don’t disappear the way they used to, and Seinfeld’s ubiquity demonstrates that it is still quite relevant to the culture at large. It’s no stretch to imagine that it continues to draw new viewers today. Point is, Jerry is still a big deal, and his presence gives the ads an automatic “look-at-this” factor. And if you like what Jerry does — which a lot of people still seem to do — you’re probably going to enjoy the spots.

What’s that you say? Jerry’s apartment on Seinfeld had a Mac? Guess what: nobody gives a shit. If Jerry started shilling for Spider-Man over Superman, then yes, I’d have to call his integrity into question. But the Macs on Jerry’s show were props; he never used them or spoke about them, and no one but computer nerds care.

2. Bill Gates

A while ago, I scoffed at the idea of using Bill Gates in a marketing campaign, despite the fact that he is the most well-known person in the computer industry. My reason was that Gates is a notably poor public speaker, and that next to John Hodgman’s lovable PC character, Gates is a stiff whose awkwardness inspires a mix of pity and mild revulsion, at least in me. The ad gets around this problem in a very simple way: it limits Gates’ utterances to short (like, three or four words short) declarative statements, leaving the heavy lifting to Seinfeld. (Ironic, when one remembers the criticism Jerry took for his poor acting on the show.) Gates comes off looking like a good sport, and able to at least sort of hold his own with one of America’s premiere comic talents. Not bad.

3. A few good laughs

The spot wasn’t a screamer — it wasn’t supposed to be — but some of the funny moments worked, and they tended to favor Gates. His “Platinum Shoe Circus Clown Club” card, with its dweeby teenage photo, is the ad’s funniest moment. I also liked his throwaway line about “Big Top Points,” and the fact that he and Jerry are munching churros on the way out of the mall, a subtle return to their first exchange.

4. A taste of things to come

THE FUTURE, a card reads at the spot’s conclusion. This is the first volley of a long campaign, and if nothing else, the spot leaves you wondering what they’re going to do next.

Now for the bad parts.

1. Seinfeld

To my view, much of the humor of the ad falls flat, and it seems to be mostly the material intended to be “Seinfeldesque.” The whole routine of Jerry breaking in the shoes, fitting Gates etc. feels forced, and Gates’ nonplussed expression doesn’t help to sell the bit. The smash cut of Jerry showering in the shoes was a blatant steal (“homage,” if you prefer) of Kramer washing his dishes and tossing salad while showering. The business with the onlooking crowd was annoying; yeah yeah, they’re talking about the “Conquistador” instead of Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. Predictable, and not funny. Perhaps worst of all, the capper to all this — the point when Jerry actually asks Bill about Microsoft, the point to which the whole ad was presumably building up — completely whiffs it. Cake-like edible computers aren’t desirable, funny or even very interesting; they’re just strange, and following the notion with a shot of Gates shimmying his doughy ass is the lug nut atop the sundae. As I said, I don’t think the spot aspired to be a laugh riot, but for a 90-second ad, too much of the funny missed the mark, including the one part that really needed to work.

2. Payoff

The ad clearly is intended to be the cornerstone of a long campaign, but that doesn’t relieve it of the responsibility of delivering some kind of takeaway in the here and now. The ad risks coming off as twee, self-satisfied, indulgent, because the whimsy isn’t serving any apparent purpose. Microsoft is a brand many people associate with frustration, with their time being needlessly taken up by nuisances and distractions, and I can see many people looking at the ad as more of the same. (As, indeed, many already have.)

3. Microsoft

This is more of a conceptual critique, and one I’ve raised before. One can’t watch this ad, or contemplate the many yet to come, without wondering what Microsoft is hoping to achieve with all this effort and money. Microsoft’s fundamental problem is its products, not its image; the latter merely is a symptom of the former. The driver headaches, slowness and incompatibility issues faced by untold Vista users are real; the failure of Plays For Sure and the struggle of the Zune to gain traction are real; the millions of burned-out X-Box 360s are real. Microsoft today comes across as simply too big to effectively compete, whether the goal is a satisfactory PC user experience, a viable online search strategy or a reliable game console. Any chuckle that the Gatesfeld ads manage to wring might be immediately soured by a dead X-Box, a Windows XP feature inscrutably and inexplicably relocated in Vista, or a Zune user wondering why he can’t buy music with actual money like the rest of the free world. The funny-weird ads might well make people feel a little better about Microsoft, but imagine how much better people might feel if the spots demonstrated a commitment to better products. Perhaps they will, but if so, they aren’t off to a very good start.

All negativity aside, the ad was at least a partial success, engaging viewers’ interest and effectively paving the way for more to come. Even if what follows doesn’t gain the ubiquity or effectiveness of “Get a Mac,” it could lead to at least a little goodwill headed Microsoft’s way, and at this point, I’m sure the company will take all it can get, even if it doesn’t come cheap.

I’ve always found it somewhat peculiar that the mobile version of OS X was named after the iPhone (in developer communications it was originally “iPhone OS”) when it also runs on the iPod touch and, presumably, other unnamed touch-based devices to come. I originally thought they should submit to the obvious and call it OS X Mobile, but then realized three things:

1. That would be obvious, and rather boring.
2. OS X is already “mobile,” given that it runs on laptops. (Duh.)
3. “Mobile” in the technology world has basically become synonymous with “crippled.”

Still, OS X iPhone sounds bizarre, flying in the face of the very change Apple is making with the “original” OS X in that it appears to tie it to a specific device. I thought OS X Touch would be a better choice, encapsulating its chief point of differentiation from its progenitor. But that prompts yet another question: might Apple be planning to evolve the iPhone OS beyond strictly touch-based UIs?

Sure, he’s been saying that for a long time now. Ten years at least. I think Bill is taking the broken clock approach on this: say something often enough, long enough, and the laws of probability declare that you will eventually be right. You may laugh at me for predicting snow tomorrow … but give it six months. Then who’s the wise guy, huh?

Enough already. The gulf between Gates’ financial/business success and the acuity of his technological vision is stunning; there is probably no comparable figure in any industry who has been so wrong in the field of his supposed expertise. His obsession with voice-driven UIs — which probably stems from nothing more than too many Star Trek reruns back in the dorm at Harvard — is just one example of his propensity for mistaking his own geeky fetishes for technological inevitabilities.

No one wants voice computing, except for David Pogue, and he’s a Mac user. The din of an entire office running speech-driven computers boggles the mind. Not to mention that voice interaction is much slower than customary manual interaction. This technology has been around for years now, and if people wanted it, it would have taken off already. You know two-way video phones have existed since the early eighties? Probably you did. No one wants those either.

At this point I am tempted to draw a parallel between Gates’ obsession with vocal interfaces and the unhinged swearing that many a Windows user has directed against his or her recalcitrant machine. But I’m taking the high road.

In the meantime, will some tech journalist kindly grow a pair (pardon the metaphor, female readers) and ask Gates to either let the subject die or offer a plainspoken explanation as to why this decade-old prediction stubbornly refuses to come true?

Certainly those guys have their work cut out for them. Microsoft is much more a part of people’s daily lives than perhaps any other brand that agency has worked on — we may occasionally get a Whopper or pop some of Orville Redenbacher’s popcorn, but a lot of people spend a significant portion of their day staring into one or more Microsoft products. There are relatively few people whose minds aren’t already made up about Microsoft, who don’t have at least one horror story about how Windows or Office briefly made their lives miserable. If that weren’t bad enough, Apple is mocking Microsoft’s signature product in what is probably the most recognizable ad campaign running today. How do you turn a brand around in the face of all that?

Hoffman’s suggestions in brief:

1. Get Bill Gates involved in the ads.
2. I’m not actually sure what his second suggestion is; you’d best read it yourself. I think it’s something about innovating from the bottom up, then publicizing it.
3. Respond to Apple.
4. Ditch the Microsoft logo.
5. Bring Gates back to save the company by making “smart” the new “cool.”

Suggestion 1 is obviously wrong. The only way to make Gates appealing would be to poke fun at his dorkishness, and he’s too uptight for that. Gates isn’t a lovable dweeb like John Hodgman’s PC character; he’s stiff and unfunny and rather painful to listen to. Likewise, suggestion 5 draws an incorrect analogy to Jobs’ role at Apple. Jobs returned to a company that lost its way without him; Microsoft is still operating in Gates’ mold: its culture is built around competition, not innovation, and its software products are designed to appeal to developers and IT managers more than end users. And there may be some people who vaguely believe Gates invented personal computing, but it can’t have escaped the public’s attention that the latest technical innovations to catch on with the public — the iPod, MySpace, YouTube, Digg, even that Kindle thing — came from companies other than Microsoft.

I don’t see what dumping the Microsoft logo achieves. In fact, I’m not even sure what it looks like. Does Microsoft even have a corporate logo, as opposed to the Windows or Office logos?

Suggestion 2 I have no idea about. Giving the lower-rank employees license to pursue innovative ideas is a great idea, but it has nothing to do with an ad campaign.

That leaves idea 3. In a way, it makes sense: Apple has been making Windows its bitch for two years now, and Microsoft has done nothing to counter it. But there’s a difference between David picking on Goliath and Goliath picking on David. Responding to Apple validates Apple as competition and lets them set the terms of the debate. Microsoft could try to turn the tables by pointing out the Mac’s shortcomings — fewer available games, smaller hardware choice, some killer app or other not available for Mac — but it still makes Microsoft look derivative. Apple would probably even turn such an effort back on them: first they copy our software, then our music player, and now even our advertising.

As you can tell, I don’t think CP+B will have much effect on Microsoft’s brand. Microsoft’s marketing mostly sucks, but marketing is really the symptom, not the problem.

People forget the time — not too long ago — when Apple’s advertising was much less effective than it was today. Apart from the iMac, Apple had nothing compelling to offer the public in the late 90s-early ’00s. I remember staring stupefied at a commerial showing Apple’s then-new Pro Mouse zooming across the screen, accompanied by (I think) a Jimi Hendrix song … and that was it. A prime-time television commercial devoted to a mouse. Nothing whatsoever about the Macintosh, or why one might possibly prefer to use it. Nothing, for that matter, on what made the Pro Mouse itself worth buying. I remember a lot of empty, stylish ads coming out of Apple in this period, and they had no impact on the company’s sales or market share. Apple looked like it was talking to itself, and offering no one else a reason to listen.

What helped Apple’s marketing turn the corner was Apple’s products. First OS X matured to the point that it could begin to be offered as a viable competitor to Windows, prompting the “Switch” campaign: Apple’s first culture-changing ad series. People made fun of the spots, refuted them, bitched about them — but they remembered them. Then, of course, the iPod came along, a genuine breakout product innovative enough to revive the entire Apple brand. The ads were perfectly executed, but the product they portrayed was good enough that the spots couldn’t be dismissed as empty exercises in style. While Microsoft frittered on the long-delayed successor to Windows XP, an invigorated Apple squared off directly against the Windows juggernaut, confident that OS X more than stood up to the comparison.

From a consumer standpoint, Microsoft simply has nothing around which to build a truly substantive campaign: Vista is a boondoggle, the Zune at best an acceptable me-too product, Office something that most people get when they buy a new computer. Their only somewhat successful consumer product, XBox, has been deliberately marketed with as few ties to the Microsoft brand as possible. So where’s the story? What are CP+B going to build on?

This is a creative agency, and I’m sure the spots they produce are going to raise eyebrows. I’m equally sure they won’t make a lot of difference. Vista will continue its slow trickling adoption rate; Apple will continue to be at least a year ahead in digital media players; Google will maintain its lead in online services. Microsoft and CP+B will part ways in a year or so, giving Microsoft yet another opportunity to realize the solutions to its brand problems need to begin in-house, with new leadership and a new focus on building forward-thinking, consumer-focused products.

Microhoo! might sound like a good idea to Yahoo’s shareholders and once seemed like a pretty good idea to Steve Ballmer, but none of the grunt workers (the people responsible for actually creating and selling product) wanted this merger to happen. Icahn would be trading a short-term spike in shareholder value for years of paralysis, brain drain and slow, painful assimilation of two contrary corporate cultures. Meanwhile Google would continue to widen its lead in search, search-based advertising, online services, and whatever the hell else Microsoft is hoping to catch up with them for.

I admit it would be kind of fun to watch if the merger actually did take place. The spectacle of Microsoft slowly suffocating under its own weight has been amusing as it is; adding Yahoo’s ponderous bulk to the mix would elevate it to the level of Shakespearean tragedy.