The German city of Hamburg will soon be getting one of the biggest Apple Stores in the world. Construction isn’t complete yet, and a group of people calling themselves the ‘.WAV Collective’ decided it was time for a practical joke. Posing as construction workers, they planted an interesting logo on the store’s facade. In broad daylight. And they videotaped it.
People can be stupid…
I’m no Apple fan, but this is just stupid.
Maybe they are Microsoft workers in disguise.
@strim
@sigzero
I shouldn’t encourage the mentality from “that site” but here it goes:
U MAD?
The video would probably have been a bit funnier had thad used this song in the background:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Z4m4lnjxkY
I didn’t knew, that the biggest Apple Store in the World is coming to Hamburg .
Finally, it is good being german..
Oh … no.. its not xD
About this event: What is this all about??? I do not unterstand it. Maybe, they want to say, that with Win 8 Microsofts OS is getting cooler than Mac OS X?
I am not sure, but I would believe it to be a joke…
I would even guess they don’t care about OS vs. OS politics, a Windows logo would just be the most ironic sign to have on a black Apple facade.
Looooooooooooooooooooong cat is looooooooooooooooooooooooong cat.
They wanted demons to come get `em, that`s why they did it.
Surely you meant daemons.
“We Germans must still learn to hate.”
That’s not fun and is pointless. They needed to put something like “Abandon DRM!” or the like.
That’s what I thought at first (“should’ve be a penguin”), but then it would an act of activism. Now it’s all about making a joke. Two thumbs up.
More like MS activism anyway. So if already doing that – at least do something more useful
LOL! I have to see an MS activist 😀 They are like a fabled kin. Mysterious, hiding in the shadows and covertly installing Windows on your machines!
The other Steve, the Apple 2 genius, the Woz loves pranks like this!
Fun, though the fanboys have no sense of humor
and I think this is brilliant…
The world needs more pranks like this, harmless but makes a point…
Would have been great to see a penguin as well 🙂
Curiously, what point does it make?
Apple is the new Microsoft. You could replace one with the other, and the end result is the same.
In the same sense that a ferrari could be replaced by a canoe.
You could. Ferrari’s don’t float very well, and the canoe won’t catch fire and be cheaper to maintain. Besides, Ferrari’s are overrated. They’re bought by insecure geriatrics who have a desperate need for external validation. Koenigsegg cars are much cooler.
Since you missed the point, I’ll restate it. Corporations are interchangeable; they are only separated by the logos the use. One corporation is not better then the other; they only pretend they are.
Still not 100% sure what you’re saying, but I think its something like: all corporations have the same ethical standards and ethical behaviour. That is one point of comparison that one could make between corporations. Another, perhaps more obvious one, would be to compare the products of a corporation.
In any case, that’s not at all obvious to me as the intended point of the pranksters.
Made me laugh.
To those saying it should’ve been a penguin… Maybe. But I think the Windows logo is far more recognizable among the common folk.
To those seeing it as “stupid” or similar… Lighten up. Laughing is healthy.
The ones that think that it’s stupid exhibit the same brain patterns as people towards religion. So no wonder they think it’s “Stoopid!”
Apparently, Windows users stay awake later than Mac users…
Seriously, this is the first time I have questioned why something is Page 1 worthy. In my mind, it is scarcely Page 2 worthy.
I admit to being a die-hard Windows user (when FreeBSD isn’t involved), but I do my best to defend this site against accusations of anti-Apple bias, but it is posts like this that make it exceedingly difficult.
Thom, maybe you should have posted this on Facebook for your friends to share your own personal amusement, rather than post it here?
I will have some fun on this site whenever I damn well want to. Nobody is forcing you to read this.
Also, lighten up.
Windows ported to the Apple platform by a group of German volunteers. [triple pun intended]
How, how is that not worthy of OS News?
They ported Windows to the PC? Fantastic!
You can tell it’s absolutely hilarious from the fact that on one pays any attention to it or even react in any way.
These guys fail at humor.
If you watch closely there is a girl who realizes whats going on and takes a picture as she walks by.
I believe thats what he said. Only one payed any attention.
I thought he meant to say that no one pays any attention. I wasn’t really sure since he said on.
I mean no one and one person out of all the passers by is pretty much no one.
Anybody remember when DoubleTwist got an ad right next to an Apple-store. That was actually funny.
http://techcrunch.com/2009/06/05/apple-gets-pwned-sf-store-is-now-a…
Indeed, with the Apple-like ad, this is hilariously perfect. This windows logo joke would have benefited from more sophistication (like, you know, pasting the “life without walls” slogan underneath).
EDIT : In the comments, there are some less computer-centric example of ads done right… http://www.bmwblog.com/wp-content/uploads/3427670079_fa8f403233_b.j… and http://www.thetalentjungle.com/hospitality_blog/index.php/archive/1…
Edited 2011-06-05 10:16 UTC
If that’s Apple getting “pwned”, then the goalposts now comprise the entire field.
I think everyone must be quite annoyed with Apple’s image to be so amused by meaningless pranks or the tiniest hints of the loosest definition of irony at their expense. This just isn’t that interesting.
As far as I am concerned, I find such ad-based pranks very funny when done with cars too (see above in the thread). It just happens that computers take a much bigger place in my life and personal interests than cars.
And besides, there’s some delicious irony in seeing a company which takes as much care polishing its product marketing and brand image as Apple being turned in derision through careful ad-based pranks. When you consider that products should compete through merit and not through ads, seeing one of the most marketing-centric companies of the tech world getting burned by its own tactics becomes very fun to watch.
Just my opinion, however.
Edited 2011-06-06 08:37 UTC
“wav.mov” The irony, a quicktime movie, an apple file format.
And the name of a Microsoft format in the name too
Sounds appropriate to me.
Samsung commercial for the SGII in Scandinavia:
http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&l…
(äppelmos = crushed apples, apples sauce or whatever)
If you have really much better product, you can troll competition as you wish, but this is not the case.
Motorola did remake of 1984. Turned out their “revolutionary xoom tablet” is a piece of crap, that did not even capable of advertised features.
Like? [citation needed]
The original Apple advert contained nothing about the product, at least the Motorola one did. Thats already a better advert..
SDCards are unsupported and hardware supported via USB is limited – that doesn’t include the fact that Android vendors have a habit of dropping all support in 6 months by failing to provide updates (both feature and security) for devices older than 6months. The best example of this was a leaked memo between Samsung and a US carrier where Samsung stated that they were not going to provide software updates in favour of forcing hardware updates on end users. Yes, when you buy an Android, those are the kinds of assholes you’re to have to deal with – shell out money for a device only to be left high and dry a few months later. Congratulations, you’ve just purchased a light weight door stop with the security of swiss cheese thanks to zero updates being provided.
Edited 2011-06-05 15:21 UTC
SD, Flash, and 4G. I believe Flash has since been added, but I haven’t heard anything about the SD slot being activated or the 4G surgery being rolled out.
Sure enough, this has its own section: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Xoom#Features_announced_but_n…
But the text “4G” or “LTE” doesn’t even appear anywhere in that article. That’s the kind of pass Android devices get all the time. iPhone screen cracks if you throw it at a wall – Scandal! Xoom doesn’t do what the manufacturer says it does – whatever.
Proof of the absurd hardware upgrade promise:
http://phones.verizonwireless.com/xoom/upgrade/
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/02/farcical-xoom-4g-upgrade-pla…
check out the other stuff of those guys. http://vimeo.com/17268975
i laugh tears
That was awesome
.
this has nothing to do with some sort of pro ms activism. its a slap in the face for the “i am so damn cool with my ipad and my macbook hanging around in a trendy cafe an doing something with media stuff while wearing my stylo nerd glasses blabla”-culture, wich is very common in hamburg and berlin nowadays (ok, as everywhere else where the “cool” people live)
Wow, thanks for the explanation. Otherwise I would have thought this was an add for a company that actually sold double isolated windows, given the cold winters Hamburg experiences…
Mac users don’t feel offended at all, we’re laughing at the group who put the sign up since they organized the colors incorrectly.
Real smart group there!
And their shoes don’t even match their handbags! How tacky!
You sound bitter.
It’s a harmless practical joke, not social warfare. It’s something to laugh at; something funny and not loaded down with trendy iconoclasm and social baggage.
10 seconds later the wall crashed…
LOL – now that’s funny.
The video is what? Two fools putting a Windows logo of sorts on the side of a construction shroud. Obviously hilarious. :S
If you know it’s an Apple store being built it’s then two Windows fanboys putting a Windows logo of sorts on the side of an Apple Store construction shroud. Again, incredibly hilarious. Not.
If it was two jerks putting an Apple logo on the side of a Windows or Google convention the same people who think this is funny would probably be screaming Apple Fanboy idiots!
I suppose it depends on your sense of humor. A friend of mine cracks up laughing every time there’s a story about malware found in Google’s Android Marketplace Apps because he’s been saying for ages it would happen over and over. He’s been laughing a lot over the past couple of weeks. But at least he’s balanced, he also laughs about the new Mac Malware for the same reason. I personally don’t find either funny, just sad. Like this video.
This has nothing to do with fanboys. Where do you get that from? Why is everything so black and white?
These are just a bunch of guys pulling a prank. Not everything has to have a ZOMG APPLE VS M$ LULZZ11!1-basis.
Apple fanboys don’t need to resort to that kind of silliness, Apple already does it for them (see also: the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ad campaign).
This is just Apple getting the tiniest taste of their own medicine, not to mention proof-positive that Apple’s fanboys can dish out but they can’t take it.
I guess if the two “construction workers” were wearing Guy Fawkes masks, this would be a different story….:)
Now that Apple have replaced Microsoft as the Evil Empire. The softies are reverting to rebel tactics :-p
Well if you can’t compete on technical ground ..
Excuse me?
Apple are competing on technical grounds? With what? Mac OS X is technically a better operating system? What exactly do you base that on? The big lock in the Mach kernel? The GNU userland? The FreeBSD base? Or are we talking about the wonderful lack of an MDI? Or perhaps the merits of treating users as idiots? The YellowBox + Carbon travesty? The choice of Objective-C — a language that should have been relegated to “past experiences” a decade ago?
Or is it that you can (could?) get your iPod in 7 different colors? Or that its A/D-converters were no better than a cheap China stick? Oh wait, it was (is) a cheap China stick…
Or is it that they put the “i” in “isolation”?
Perhaps you’re talking about the joke of an “open source” initiative called “Darwin”? Or is it the Geenie effect on an OpenGL basis that gets you hot?
Technical merit…let’s see:
Microsoft had an original VAX engineer generate the NT kernel. Apple uses the Mach kernel created at Carnegie Mellon.
Microsoft had a Dane create the C# language. Apple uses Objective-C created at StepStone.
Microsoft created the .NET VM. Apple…doesn’t have one, but at least you don’t get to choose your language…
Microsoft has maintained backward compatibility on their operating systems better than anyone in the closed-source world. Apple…left behind 15 million PowerPC users with the flick of Job’s wrist, after having lied for a decade about the superiority of the PowerPC performance, because they liked the Intel logo, whining about how IBM wouldn’t clock up the PPC so they could keep doing the “more gigahertz” game, development they didn’t have the money to do. Yeah…Apple was once a very small player…
Apple is a repeat of the 60s:
Encase in plastic, brand, color, and you can sell any trivial idea as an invention.
…that’s “D/A-converters”, of course.
I suggest that IBM has done the best job, not Microsoft; given that IBM still provides backward compatibility for IBM 360 applications (circa 1964) on their current hardware.
Geez…I stand corrected. 🙂
Wasn’t thinking of corporate backroom mainframes but desktop systems, since the topic was Apple, which recently has downsized their OS portfolio to provide end-user solutions only.
You’re right, of course. Does not counter the fact that Microsoft has a better compatibility track record than Apple.
Big LOL from me. Sweet…
To the ones who think it’s stupid / not funny, why don’t you just admit the truth? A shrine to your god, Steve Jobs was desecrated with something that is not an Apple logo. O noez! The blasphemy! The sacrilege! The heresy! Lord Steve will rain down his vengeance!
Now bow your heads and say the Apple zealot’s prayer so that Steve Jobs may forgive your sins:
“Oh Lord Steve Jobs. We are so sorry that we were not there to protect your shrine. Forgive us and have mercy on our souls.”
Seriously, Apple zealots… Lighten up… It was a funny prank in good humor.
Edited 2011-06-06 19:27 UTC
That does not sound very humorous, either ..
Maybe it was meant like that but it’s IMHO not very inspired or funny. Haven’t we all seen the Macs with the Win Stickers, the Apple Logo on a Win Box, the Penguin on a Solaris Workstation or ‘PlaysForSure’ on an iPod? Was it funny the second time? Where you laughing?
Fine if those guys have fun doing that (and I’m sure for them, it was fun). But does everybody – zealot or not – have to laugh now?
*Yawn*
Using something like the ‘hello kitty’ logo or a well known petrol company’s logo would have made a refreshing difference (independent if on an Apple or a Microsoft store) ..
MysterMask:
If you were so unamused (and not in fanboy rage) you wouldn’t have bothered posting. Case closed.
Edited 2011-06-06 23:26 UTC
…and it would have been entirely irrelevant: Apple is neither selling kitties nor petroleum.
Now what would have been truly epic (and above the head of 99% of the people) would have been to put up a picture of Beastie poking Ballmer in the ass with his pitch fork!
Because of all the trouble Microsoft had moving Hotmail off of FreeBSD you mean? Or because many of their internal servers still run it apparently?
No, no, if they had pasted a poster with a Microsoft official, they could have done something much better.
Two words : Monkey boy.
Imagine combining a picture like this… http://cdn2.spong.com/news/m/i/microsofts268007/_-Microsofts-Ballme…
…with a comic-like bubble on the right side stating “I love this company !”.
That would have been ultimate real-life meme epicness.
Edited 2011-06-07 09:52 UTC
…Apple is the biggest (in terms of revenue) tech company in the world, the largest mobile device vendor, and the most keen to keep a monopoly on anything that passes through their hands.
Steve Jobs stole his ideas from Xerox PARC when visiting around 1980, the same kind of practice you’ve seen from Microsoft: being called innovative, when in fact you’re mainly a copycat.
Actually, they should have subtitled it “Microsoft 2.0”, since Apple is worse than Microsoft, even more Redmond than Redmond: no open source initiatives, a slew of cease-and-desist notifications, patent trolling, “we invented this” (no you didn’t), hypocrisy, and a general arrogance, seemingly forgetting that Apple would have been bankrupt by now, had it not been for the 1 billion dollar investment in the company in the late 90s by…Microsoft.
Apple IS the new Microsoft, and as someone pointed out, it doesn’t matter what the name of a company is: once it — through predatory behavior — attains the status of “king of the hill”, it engages in the same practices as the king it replaces.
Except, in Apple’s case, it owns the hardware too…
Globally I’d say that there’s some hard truth within this post, but there’s one thing which tickles me in your arguments.
No. Just no. Things like LLVM/Clang and Webkit are definitely bigger contributions to open-source projects than everything Microsoft has ever done. Even though Apple tend to spoil these with their terrible community management (e.g. : “Let’s withold the GPLd Webkit source code just to piss off developers !”)
Edited 2011-06-07 09:54 UTC
Sure, if these had originated and been developed as in-house Apple initiatives, but they had/were not.
LLVM is another university project, whereas the Clang frontend is *sponsored* by Apple because Apple — like most companies — don’t like the GPL. Red Hat also hosts a number of Linux kernel developers, but you’d be hard pressed to call Linux a “Red Hat Open-Source Project”, wouldn’t you?
Webkit isn’t Apple’s either. Ever heard of KDE? Of course you have.
Ever heard of Haskell? The main developer is paid by Microsoft, full time, no questions asked and no demands.
C# and the Common Language Runtime are ECMA standards, submitted by the big bad Redmond wolf for your pleasure, as witnessed in the Mono implementation, blown-up (unsubstantiated) controversy or not.
When you think of contributions to OSS, you probably want to think of the SUN, not the Apple.
I’d definitely call Red Hat a significant open source contributor.
Yup, and I also have used KHTML in KDE 3.5, before it was turned into Webkit. Frankly, since Apple has added fundings and developers, the project has gone a very long way. Sure, Apple owes a lot to KHTML developers, but they also have brought some serious contribution on the table.
I don’t know much about Haskell. I know that it’s a language with an unusual syntax (for someone coming from the imperative world) that is pretty good for implementing recursion-based algorithms, but I don’t know how much traction it actually has, as an example.
While I agree that standardization is good for the language, I have no knowledge of Microsoft really putting a lot of weight behind the Mono project. To me, it was rather like Wine or ReactOS : the NT API is publicly known, but the projects both remain hackish reimplementations that would be patent-trolled to death by MS from the moment where they’d start to go harm their business.
See Java and the JVM : they’re all quite standard, yet Oracle has gone amok against Dalvik…
I definitely think that Sun has done much more for the open-source world than Apple and Microsoft combined.
Edited 2011-06-07 15:19 UTC
Yes, but, as mentioned, you probably wouldn’t call the Linux kernel a “Red Hat Project” just because they contribute with funding and developers. 😉
Not contending that at all, but that does not make Webkit an “Apple Project” in the same way the Linux kernel is no single organization’s, however large a contribution it may have made to the kernel’s development.
The traction isn’t really as much a point (though it is gaining in real-world use lately), as the language is mainly a research language. Haskell has a huge influence on other languages nowadays. What I was aiming at was the fact that Microsoft lets a university professor do research with full-time funding with no obligations, and to publish his work under a no-frills license (BSD). This is clearly Microsoft paying for the development of OSS.
And I certainly didn’t mean to suggest they were (they aren’t), but that their registering their efforts with the ECMA allows for others to build the Mono platform. Again, a standard developed at Microsoft, free to copy (yes, I know…conspiracy about a possible lock-in abounds — legal basis, please, anyone?).
Most likely not, because there’s no money to be made from suing — who would you sue? 3 guys working in their spare time? Cedega? For, what, $3000 a head?
Yup — my point entirely, since Google is a somewhat bigger target than the Wine and ReactOS developers. Patent trolling is a financial game — the tech world’s version of derivatives. 😉
They have indeed, which leaves them…gone. Business is evolution by natural selection without the stemming factors of tribalism and selective altruism. Innovation is largely irrelevant — “products” (plastic) rule our world.
My Amiga 500 still boots from a floppy, the same floppy I used to boot it in 1987, and my Amiga 1200 boots in 2 seconds from a PCMCIA card. My latest laptop, which cpu is roughly 500 times faster, boots in about 30 seconds because I know how to tune my kernel.
I type at rougly the same speed today as I did in 1987.
That’s progress for you.
If you think 30 seconds for a Linux kernel is fast, I’d actually argue that you don’t know how to tune your kernel. Sub 20 second boot times with a custom built kernel are pretty achievable.
Uh…you might ask from when I start the clock before you assume I am trying to appear special: cold boot, from before my BIOS posts. Also, you might like to ask which init script I’m running and from what I/O device.
But I digress…
The point was (obviously) a different one than the 30 (or 20) second boot time, but that a computer with an order or two faster cpu and ditto I/O (and specifically 8000 times as much RAM) because of design still doesn’t appear faster.
This is what an end user sees, technical jerk-off attitudes of OSNews readers aside, and no amount of fine tuning (except perhaps a 24-channel SSD raid) will bring my Linux box to boot as fast as my Amiga 1200, period.
“Hey everyone, look at me and how totally not upset I am about this! Now let me whine endlessly about how I don’t find it funny, because that’s how people usually react to things that don’t upset them.”
There you go, I’ve just summarized all of the Apple fanboy comments on this topic. You’re welcome.
I liked it
Apple takes itself way to seriously.