Microsoft aims thinly veiled jab at Apple – says MacBooks aren’t a patch on Surface Pro

Versatility of the Surface wins the day, according to Microsoft’s dubious advert

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Microsofthas made a short advert to promote itsSurface Pro2-in-1s in which it compares the hybrid to a ‘BackBook’, which is clearly aMacBook Pro, of course.

This rather odd bit of promotional activity was highlighted by Microsoft India on Twitter, as you can see below, and has quickly gained in excess of 600,000 views.

The 2-in-1 range of Surface devices come with laptop-to-tablet versatility, enabling you work from anywhere, anytime. Sign up for a demo. pic.twitter.com/p9vTM3wMAuMarch 24, 2021

The advert consists of theSurface Proshown being detached and used as a tablet, and then reattached to the keyboard, as well as showing off the kickstand, and overall the versatility of Microsoft’s device.

The ‘BackBook’ is challenged to do this, too, and of course it can’t, which is the message here.

Although it’s a rather confusing message, seeing as a traditional clamshell laptop is simply a different category of device compared to a 2-in-1. It’s plainly obvious that a hybrid machine is more flexible – that’s what they’re expressly designed to be.

Mac attacks

This isn’t the first time that Microsoft has made this kind of comparison in an advert. Back in January, another ad compared theSurface Pro 7to the MacBook Pro directly this time (with no unsubtle name changes), concluding that the former was superior due to its touchscreen, ability to run ‘all your apps’ and again its hybrid nature as a detachable.

Not only are these kind of comparisons not apples-to-apples, so to speak, but callingApple’s machine the ‘BackBook’ as if the device is somehow at the back of the pack in terms of innovation (presumably, or at least that seems to be what’s hinted at) also seems pretty unfair. Certainly when you consider that MacBooks just made a huge step forward with theM1 processorin some models, which works some considerable magicas we’ve seen.

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Of course, the world of marketing doesn’t often turn out to be a fair place…

ViaWindows Central

Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel - ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ - was published by Hachette UK in 2013).

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