Microsoft tweaks ad after Apple complaint

The ad war continues.

Remember last week we told you about Microsoft's COO tooting his horn that he'd fielded a call from Apple's lawyers over his company's "Laptop Hunters" ads?

“We’re just going to keep running them and running them and running them,” Kevin Turner told an audience of Microsoft partners. Well, that's correct, but only partially.

Today a revised Laptop Hunter spot hit the Net, and Microsoft has significantly de-fanged it. As Mashable's Andrew Ostrow points out and Ad Age verifies, instead of saying "This Mac is $2,000, and that's before adding anything. Why would you pay twice the price? I wouldn't," the Apple-bashing tops out at "It seems like you’re paying a lot for the brand." The old ad has been removed from YouTube, replaced by the one below.

It's a change that Apple had asked for, reflecting price reductions across its line of Macbook laptops, but one that a Microsoft statement says "does not change the focus of the campaign, which is to showcase the value and choice of the PC."

Longtime spectators of this ongoing feud will remember Apple's initial response to the Laptop Hunter ads: A spot in which John Hodgman's "PC" trots out a lineup of PCs, only to have them all eliminated by a prospective buyer's requirements.

The latest, softened, Laptop Hunters spot, below:

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