Microsoft really has it in for the iPad just at the moment – both iPads, to be precise.
A couple of months back it rolled out an ad singing the praises of Windows 8 on the Asus VivoTab Smart tablet. To show us just how wonderfully the OS and tablet work together, the ad puts an iPad alongside the Asus slate and proceeds to show it struggling with tasks that Windows 8 and the VivoTab Smart breeze through.
To really put the boot in, it’s narrated by a voice that sounds remarkably similar to that of Siri, a voice which complains all the way through the ad that it can’t do this and can’t do that. At the end, it suggests doing something it can do – play Chopsticks using a piano app (a reference to Apple’s iPad Mini ad from last year).
And then on Wednesday Microsoft let us know why its Surface RT tablet is better than the iPad.
The latest offering from the Redmond-based company, posted to YouTube on Thursday, attempts to pour some poison on the iPad Mini with a brief demonstration of Windows 8 on Acer’s Iconia W3 tablet. ‘Siri’ once again narrates the piece, and sounds highly impressed with what Windows 8 and a small slate can do together, like play Halo and use Outlook and Office.
“Wow, you are a real PC,” Siri says with great delight.
The iPad Mini is shown throughout the 30-second ad with just a piece of text on its screen. Really, anyone coming to tablets for the first time would, after watching this, be left with the impression that the iPad Mini is little more than an e-reader, an obviously ridiculous assertion. We already know you can play Chopsticks on it.
Good luck to Microsoft in its bid to give its OS and tablet a much-needed sales boost through its iPad comparison ads, but Acer’s Iconia W3, billed as the smallest slate to run Windows 8, hasn’t even received particularly good reviews. Perhaps the computer giant would be better off saving its marketing dollars till it brings out its next round of Surface tablets featuring a set of improved specs that might give the iPad pair a real run for their money.