Windows

Hey kids, remember the late 1990s? Bill Clinton was President. The economy was humming along. Gas prices were low. Seinfeld was the number one TV show. And Microsoft ruled the tech world. You might not have liked it, but it was true.

At the time, it seemed like there was nothing that Microsoft couldn’t do: they had so much power that they were able to start the Browser Wars and win them without getting bogged down in a quagmire. Hell, even Windows 98 was a decent operating system.

For Microsoft, good times. And they’d like to remind you of those times, with an upcoming ad campaign starring another 1990s icon: Jerry Seinfeld.

An ad campaign where the co-star is another 1990s icon: Bill Gates. What? Bill Clinton wasn’t also available? While I understand that things aren’t going quite as swimmingly for Microsoft in 2008 as they were in 1998, I don’t think this will help.

I avoided writing about Apple’s new Boot Camp program last week because it just didn’t seem all that important. What’s so impressive about a program that lets you install and run Windows XP on an Intel based Mac? Since the Intel Macs are based on the very same technology that runs millions of PC’s it would be news if Apple had found a way to prevent users from running Windows.

It’s been almost a week since the release of Boot Camp and I’m still waiting to be struck by the epiphany that seems to have hit everyone from ars technica to the New York Times (not to mention Wall Street, which bid up the price of Apple more than 15% in the wake of the product announcement).

Microsoft & Seinfeld: A Match Made in the 1990s

Apple Does Windows – Big Deal (maybe)