Microsoft, on their front page, are offering "5 Steps to Improve Your Online Security", decorated with a photo of a woman typing on a laptop.
In the stock photograph from which Microsoft's designers ever-so-carefully cropped the image, we learn the real advice Microsoft is subliminally offering its customers. Want to be secure online?
Get a Mac.
(From macpro.se via the Livejournal MacOSX community)
Update: Microsoft have since updated their homepage, so for posterity (and so you know I'm not just making this up), here's a screen grab I took of the incriminating photo in context.
[Note for the mentally infirm: This is ironic humour. Flames will be redirected to /dev/null. If you want my serious opinion on the security of the Macintosh platform, you can find it here.]
Ah... but you don't explain whether is it ironic humour on your part or Microsoft's.
Yeah i dont get this ? Dont MS make software to Machintosh ?
What? "Flames will be redirected to /dev/null." What did I do?
Cameron: Hey, I had to send them somewhere, and I figure you can take the heat. :)
Kakaman, they do make software for Mac's, but improving online security starts with the OS, which Microsoft clearly doesn't make for Mac.
It is just funny that Microsoft would take an Apple laptop to promote online security for their OS... Don't think too much about it, you'll make it less funny.
Much appreciated :)
Way to go!
Guys it's a stock photo. It's not like the photographers didn't already brush and retouch the model's face, brighten the colors, enhance the image overall. It's been adapted for this particular use, no big deal. Just like they remove zits from the faces of people in some pics, it would just undermine the message that the image is supposed to endorse.
Ah, as a designer at Microsoft I have consciously avoided this exact kind of mistake - using any photo that features an Apple Mac to illustrate something about the Windows OS, such as security.
Lots of people in this world have too much time on their hands and will do the research to find the images source. Designers have too little experience and time on their hands and pull from a common source of images.
The real issue at MS is still the white guy culture which still dominates there. This image is exceptional only that it is a white FEMALE.
In my work there I go out of my way to lease photos which feature people of color, and in a wide range of age and gender.
The only way I know about how cruel the culture is (and has been) is from direct experience. I want Microsoft to be successful. I want everyone to be successful.
still doing it - look at the homepage today (31 March 2005) that are a mac on the anti spyware ad
Dudes its plain and simple when it comes to security. Mac rules Wondows drool. The End. No more replies from here on in. Period.
hmmm!!! why all the fuss on a photo, lets accept microsoft is known for it goof ups, its the Windows OS of Microsoft that is scarry. With so many Vulnerabilities to Windows Systems whether it be Web Servers & Services, Mail Client, Workstation Service or Web Browsers that many countries like China are developing a better OS based LINUX an open source technology.In next three years Linux will be the preferred OS for embedded devices with 54.8 percent of the China market. Can the world have a chance for a different OS other than the WINDOW. Does the world have the option. OPTION TO CHOOSE A DIFFERENT OS. WHAT SAYS YOU GEEKS OF THE WORLD IS THERE A WORLD OTHER THAN MICROSOFT???????