Apple’s knucklehead businesspeople, The Underdogs, are back in another lengthy and riotous look at computing in the business world, this time with a recollection of one of Windows’ darkest moments: CrowdStrike and the collapse of 8.5 million Windows PCs around the world.
The commercial, titled ‘BSOD’ and viewable today (October 7, 2025) on YouTube, is equal parts clever and cringy. It recounts the day The Underdog team attended Container Con and how most of the Windows PCs failed, ostensibly on July 19, 2024, with Blue Screens of Death bringing the entire tradeshow to a halt… with the exception of Team Underdogs, who were running Macs.
Apple never explicitly mentions cybersecurity company CrowdStrike and how a bit of bad code uploaded by the company to its flagship security product, Falcon, made its way to endpoints, or Windows PCs, around the globe. It was a real, albeit temporary disaster: shipments were stalled, stock markets closed, banks became inaccessible, and even some healthcare providers could not serve patients (and maybe one non-existent tradeshow all but collapsed). The incident revealed a hidden vulnerability across untold numbers of Windows PCs.
Not the Windows we know
It is a subject ripe for criticism and parody, and I think Apple could be forgiven for making BSOD the title and core focus of the video. After all, that did happen on that day. But is it representative of the Windows world that one billion people face every day? Not really.
By most measures, incidences of Blue Screens of Death (BSOD) have fallen significantly in recent years. Windows 10, which I used for almost a decade and still dip into on a couple of home computers, is robust and remarkably stable. My wife uses it every day for her real estate business. She also uses me as her in-house IT support. I haven’t seen a BSOD on either of her systems in ages.
Based on this commercial, I’m not sure Apple is aware that Microsoft is in the process of changing the Blue Screen of Death to the Black Screen of Death, an action that I think is intended to signal how rare it really is. In reality, the hue adjustment is all but meaningless – it doesn’t even change the first letter of the initialism.
I’m not arguing that Apple’s best Macs are not inherently more stable and, perhaps, secure than Windows. In all the decades I’ve used Macs, there was no equivalent for the BSOD. Plus, there is the fact that Apple’s platform was virtually impervious to viruses. If you owned a Mac, you didn’t really run antivirus software. If you owned a Windows PC, you were in a mad scramble to get security software installed before connecting to the internet. I still remember attacks like the ILOVEYOU bug and others infiltrating the system as soon as you connected to the World Wide Web.
Modern Windows, though, is infinitely more secure. Even without security software, it has its own Defender system, which, if you keep it up to date, is extremely effective.
Some better targets
If, though, Apple had wanted to more effectively attack Microsoft and Windows, there are softer targets than the BSOD.
Let’s start with the most obvious. Microsoft is in the process of enforcing Windows 10 End of Life (EOL), mostly so it can get everyone to install Windows 11. The problem – and this is something I have not seen Apple do with the majority of its macOS updates – is that Windows 11 is not universally supported by some Windows 10 systems that, while perhaps almost a decade old, are completely functional. The primary reason: they weren’t built with TPM 2.0 support, a Windows 11 security requirement.
Now, Microsoft is forcing the issue, with the EOL date fast-approaching this month. For some people, that means if they want to stay secure and ensure third-party hardware still works with their computer, they’ll likely need to buy a new system that supports Windows 11.
It’s a bad look for Microsoft, but Apple didn’t go after it for that. Instead, it’s made a comedy about one day in tech history and, in some ways, inadvertently confirmed the popularity of Windows in the workplace. After all, 99% of the systems at Container Con (and even the billboards along the way in a blink-and-you-missed-it BSOD moment) all run Windows.
Apple could’ve gone after Microsoft for its efforts to push Copilot, or even Edge, on Windows users. Or its occasional insistence on finding places to insert ads into the system, or for its habit of taking years to fix some niggling bugs.
These are all fair criticisms.
So yeah, I laughed a little and maybe enjoyed the music, but Apple mostly misses the mark with this latest ad.
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