Fruit themed toy maker Apple seems to be deeply threatened by Microsoft all of a sudden. Apple’s latest batch of advertising shows Microsoft prepared to spend more money on advertising than “fixing Vista.”

While Apple's ads have long lampooned the PC for being uncool, this time Apple's target isn't the PC, but Microsoft's marketing strategy. The advertising shows PC, played by John Hodgman, allocating stacks of dollar bills toward either "advertising" or "fix Vista," with the bulk of the money going to advertising.

The irony of using expensive advertising to complain about someone else’s advertising seems to have shot straight over the head of Apple. It also indicates that Apple has lost the plot because only marketing people care about another company’s marketing strategy. Customers only care if the product is any good or not.

The question of ‘fixing Vista’ is ironic when Apple keeps having to release security fixes for its spotty Leopard software at a rate that even Microsoft has not been able to match for years.  Its claims to be more secure than any other operating system are quite obviously a joke.

But Apple’s mud slinging seems to have worked. Most people see Vista as a contaminated operating system even if most of the bugs that blighted its launch have been fixed. Recently Microsoft rounded up people who had negative views of Vista and showed them a "new" operating system, codenamed Mojave. More than 90 per cent of respondents gave positive feedback on Mojave, which was actually just standard Windows Vista.

Quite why Apple needs to waste money dissing Vista is unknown. Perhaps Jobs Mob has a genuine fear that Microsoft might convince punters that its operating system really is not the three-legged horse that most people see it as being.

They have also failed to understand that the Apple/PC ads reinforce the perception that their customers are smug gits who should be first against the wall when the revolution comes. (I'm sure they'll save you a good spot in the firing squad, don't forget your FMJs. sub.ed.)