So the Mac people's take on the first ad from the newly formed Microsoft-Seinfeld alliance is not good, saying: Microsoft’s first “Seinfeld ad” a bigger disaster than the Hindenburg.
Me, I'm not in the same mindset. If MS had fired back with a "mac vs pc" type ad they'd be playing in apple's playground, which would look even worse. That Apple ad campaign is fairly brilliant, and nothing short of something with the dial up to 11 would have looked like anything less than a cheap (or rather, expensive) knockoff, and the Mac community would have laughed even harder.
However, what MS is good at is the quirky, funny, internal type ads that they do for their conventions and developer conferences (or at least that's what I keep on hearing on Windows Weekly from Paul Thurrott :) .
This new ad definitely is taking this to heart, and has that same feel. It's also obviously not the end of the $30m or whatever huge amount was paid to get the not-all-that-relevant ex-sitcom comedian.
That said, I'd almost say they were trying too hard to be quicky, and seeing this on TV I'd probably ignore it after the first few seconds, and the only mention of anything MS oriented (other than Gates himself) is about half a second at the very last few frames. There isn't even a clear connection between the whole shoe thing and Windows, or software at all. Unless they're saying that if you accept things that you don't want and people can't properly sell you and that take a lot of work to eventually enjoy are worth it. And honestly I'm not even sure if that isn't a huge stretch. Of course, this is probably more of a "hey, look at us, we've got an ad campaign!" message. I think.