Microsoft Goes for the MacBook Jugular, But Time is Running Out

Microsoft is no stranger to playfully—and not so playfully—poking the competition. But it seems like the firm is escalating things with a series of ads pitting its Surface products against Apple’s MacBook family. This is smart timing, I think. But the window is closing.

The ads are obvious enough, and anyone who is familiar with the different approaches that Microsoft and Apple both take could easily list the areas in which a Surface is superior: A detachable keyboard that turns the device into a tablet, pen and multi-touch support, a high resolution screen (not available on MacBook Air only), and performance (most of Apple’s devices are a few processor generations behind). Or as Microsoft’s marketing notes, “Surface does more. Just like you.”

So the marketing is clear. But it’s also obvious and even timeworn. Why push these differences so hard right now?

I observed recently on Windows Weekly that we’re at about the half-way point between the last major Surface releases—Surface Book and Surface Pro 4, October 2015—and the next, which are due in early 2017. This schedule represents an interesting strategy change for Microsoft, which had previously released four generations of Surface products in just three years.

Highly-placed sources at Microsoft told me why the schedule had changed: As it turns out, March(ish) is the right time to announce new consumer electronics products, and it’s the reason why virtually the entire industry (save Apple, which follows its own unicorn-powered internal compass) does so. Witness the spring release of new Samsung Galaxy models each year.

But when you push a schedule out by at about six months, you also have to deal with the downtime. Microsoft tried to minimize this impact by slowly rolling out Surface Pro 4, and especially Surface Book, to new markets over the intervening time. But the Surfacegate issues that undermined customer trust make the new schedule a bit unbearable: You have to think that Microsoft is quite eager to move on to the next generation and get past the Skylake-driven problems that plagued (and still do plague, for some), the current generation products.

When you’re at that terrible lull between product releases, all you can do is fall back on momentum. Have some sales, do anything you can to trigger a bit of interest. But with the advertising, we also happen to be at the crossroads of two other schedules: The back to school season, which is quickly drawing to a close, and the fact that most of Apple’s Mac products haven’t been updated since the Nixon administration.

Well, at least it feels like it. Whatever the actual schedule—the MacBook Air design dates back to 2010, literally six long years ago—Apple’s Macs are more than a bit long in the tooth. (Again, by comparison, Microsoft has shipped four major Surface generations in just half that time.)

So pushing against the Mac aggressively right now makes tons of sense. After all, Microsoft’s next-generation Surface products—save anything new, such as rumored All-in-One and phone designs—will simply be evolutionary updates. But Apple’s, given the time frames, could be major updates. Some rumors suggest, for example, that the next MacBook Pro could include a programmable touch strip instead of a row of function keys, and a trackpad that doubles as a Touch ID sensor.

The time to strike is now.

Whether the current ads are in any way effective is unclear. The latest, called Surface Pro 4 is the one for me, includes the incredible line “this Mac doesn’t have any of that, it’s less useful like a hat for your cat.” But many recent Surface ads make the same points in a more straightforward way. In many of them, Microsoft introduces Surface products to millennials who appear to be learning about the devices for the first time.

Which is of course the problem.

These ads remind me of the Mohave Project from 2008, when Microsoft tried to fool the world into loving Windows Vista. It worked, in the sense that people who finally saw the product liked it quite a bit. But in the broader sense, all these ads really did was highlight the fact that no one was particularly interested in what Microsoft was doing. And the current Surface ads have the same vibe.

Yes, Microsoft’s Surface products are technically “superior” to anything Apple makes, but that assumes that Apple’s brand isn’t in fact whatever really matters to people. So in the same way that a Kia automobile is probably better in some ways than, say, a BMW, the latter luxury brand comes with built-in allure. The newcomer is going to have to work harder—a lot harder—to attract that clientele.

Pushing your advantages is of course always smart. And doing so now, in particular, is very smart. But Apple will eventually update its MacBook products. And when it does, the conversation is simply going to change. And the whole world—not just the tech industry, but the millennials Microsoft is desperate to court—will simply move on with attention deficit disorder predictability. And what will Microsoft do then?

I don’t know. But hitting them now? I say, go for it. You can’t hit ’em hard enough.