Apple's advertising battle with Microsoft has gotten into the silly stage with the latest claiming that Macs are better than PCs because they are easier to maintain.

If that was what the advert said, then perhaps it would be a little easier to stomach. However what it does is post instructions on how to do things on a PC in the form of legal disclaimers. While this is all very amusing, as the people at MacJournals point out you would be hard pressed to use a Mac in any different way and some of the statements are completely false.

For example the 'PC' character says that to use a PC at its best you will have to download drivers for peripherals and it lists them for comedic effect. However since most drivers come installed in Windows it is hard to see where this idea comes from, particularly since you are just as likely to need to install Apple drivers as you are PC ones.

The PC bloke says that first time users should remove all unneeded bloatware and all operational components. It then goes through the process of removing the bloatware which is also long and written in legalese to bewilder. Then there is a list of instructions which you should do to keep your PC safe. This is long and includes things like virus checks and emptying the recycle bin and backing up your files, defragmenting your hard drive and run registry repair programs. 

Yep the instructions are common sense to anyone who owns any brand of computer, Apple, Linux or PC. To make it look worse, Apple have even repeated the instructions.

If Apple thinks it is such a bad thing to need to back up files once a year, why does it sell products that do just that? In short Apple's marketing teams are now getting desperate now that Microsoft has started fighting back on issues like price and functionality. Based on this advert it seems that Apple's only answer is to start making stuff up.

You can read the transcript of the advert here.