Apple 2.0’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt asks the question today, “Is the Apple press falling into Microsoft’s trap?” The thought is that Microsoft is doing exactly what it needs to do in riling up Mac fans with its new odd commercials that don’t even mention Microsoft product, but instead point out how you can get PCs cheaper than Macs.

Perhaps that’s the case, but remember, the Seinfeld/Gates ads also riled everyone up. It’s a great marketing tactic to rile everyone up and get them talking about your brand. But it’s still a tactic. One that ultimately means nothing if you can’t deliver on the product side.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it now and I’ll say it again: At the end of the day, all that matters is the product.

Microsoft is attempting to use the poor economy to convince buyers that they’re better off spending less money on a product. That’s certainly a compelling argument to a lot of people right now. But it never addresses that the competing product may be better. And that a lot of people are willing to pay for what they see is a better product.

And that speaks to the larger problem Microsoft continues to have going forward. Economies go up and down, but if you keep the focus on making a great product, that’s a winning proposition. The fact of the matter is that in general terms, Macs have always been more expensive than PCs, but that hasn’t stopped a lot of people from switching. And while a poor economy may slow that, eventually the economy will improve, and the trend will continue.

Microsoft needs to focus on making a better product — a product that sells itself. It should not have to rely on convincing people that they should buy their product simply because it’s cheaper. Microsoft doesn’t even have anything to do with that cheapness. And while I haven’t used the machine in question, it looks as if the machine Microsoft is so proud of Giampaolo for buying, is actually kind of a junky one.

Giampaolo said battery life was important to him, yet he chose a computer that seems to have a real-life use time of less than 2 hours. That’s awful. It’s also 7.3 pounds. Again, awful. And, while he complained that Macs were all about aesthetics, a MacBook actually has a peak transfer rate that’s twice as fast as the HP he ended up picking, as AppleInsider points out — among several other poor performance decisions made with that machine. Of course, Giampaolo wanted a system with good performance. But did he really get one? The saying, “you get what you pay for,” exists for a reason.

But I’m getting off topic — what really matters in terms of Microsoft and Apple in all of this is the operating system. Something which, again, Microsoft does not address at all in these commercials. I use Apple computers partially because they are solid machines (especially the new unibody MacBooks), but overwhelmingly it’s due to OS X.

When I bought my first Mac five years ago, Macs from a hardware perspective, kind of sucked. I had an iBook G4, which was much slower than my top-of-the-line Dell laptop. But despite the Dell’s speed, something funny started happening — I started using the iBook more and more, until eventually I wasn’t using the faster machine at all. This was all due to OS X being leaps and bounds better than Windows XP.

Apple has since corrected its hardware issues, switching to Intel chips and greatly improving performance across the board. And that, mixed with OS X, is a no-brainer. Microsoft, meanwhile, made an operating system (Vista), that is generally considered to be worse than its previous one (one that is now 8 years old).

I’ve been using Windows 7 for a couple months to test it out, and it is much better than Vista. But it still is not as good as OS X. And that’s a problem for Microsoft. It may be good enough to stop some people from jumping the Windows ship right now, but “good enough” is not a winning long term proposition.

I suspect that Microsoft will release it sometime this summer, a lot of people will praise it as being much better than Vista (like I just did), but then the hype will subside, the economy will improve, and people will continue switching to Macs.

The next version of OS X, Snow Leopard, is due shortly as well, and the emphasis there is said to be on performance. While Microsoft was busy building a piece of software to better compete with OS X Leopard, I bet that Apple was doing its own thing, and will release a product that will start to pull away from Windows machines in terms of performance.

And then Apple will come out with some sort of netbook/tablet, running Snow Leopard, and it will suck any remaining hype right out of Windows 7 (at least on the consumer side — which is exactly who Microsoft is targeting with these new ads).

The point of all this is that Microsoft may have succeeded in the goal of setting a “trap” for Mac fans to fall into. But ultimately, that doesn’t really mean anything. And it may succeed short-term in betting on a shitty economy to help push a product that uses its product. But that’s not a winning strategy long-term.

Tactics come and go. In the end, all that matters is the product. All that matters is the product. All that matters is the product. Create a better one, not a diversion.