10 Windows 10 Slogans That Didn't Make The Cut

Windows 10: 8 Things Microsoft Got Right

This week, Microsoft debuted the newest Windows 10 ad ahead of the new operating system's July 29 launch. Harmless is the best word to describe it.

It is what we've come to expect from technology ads these days. It tries to convince us that we will live an exciting life of beauty and wonder because we bought this technology. We will spend days drawing with our fingers and making the most amazing creations. We will go on wild travel adventures to foreign lands we could never afford to visit. Somehow Windows will take us there. Life. Will. Change. Forever.

Microsoft added a little subtext here. The ad mostly only shows babies. That's because, secretly, the company wants us to believe Windows is for young people, but it couldn't find any teens who could do the ad with a straight face. We know the babies don't know what they're doing, so it is OK if they laugh.

Before I ruin it any more, check it out:

As I said, it is a perfectly fine ad. This is the paradigm of technology ads these days. Google shows a guy parachuting from space. Apple gets Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon to talk about working out. It is what you do.

What I really don't like about the ad is the slogan -- "Windows 10: A more human way to do."

That's really the best the that Microsoft's executives could come up with? To do what? More human than what? And isn't it humane, not human?

Sure, I get what the company is going after. Windows 10 is more intuitive (so easy a baby can do it!), less intrusive, more integrated into your lifestyle, blah, blah, blah. It doesn't do it for me. It makes me wonder what the company rejected before settling on this.

Here are some other options that may have been on the marketing whiteboard:

10 Slogans Microsoft Rejected for Windows 10

1. We hope you can't count.

[ What happened to 9, anyway? Read 10 Real Reasons Microsoft Skipped Windows 9. ]

2. Look ma, touchscreens!

3. Windows 10 ... a vista on your world.

4. Microsoft -- We get it right every other time. This is the good one.

5. Windows 10: An intuitive interface for doing things humans do with technology, like social media and videos and all the other cool things the kids today enjoy.

6. The start button is back, baby.

7. Windows 10: Not your father's OS.

8. Windows 10: Babies are cute! Look at our babies!

9. You are forced to use us at work. You might as well use us at home. We're Windows.

10. You know that friend you used to really love from high school, and then you both went off to college and you kind of drifted apart but you feel obligated to keep hanging out with every holiday? That's Windows. We've known you a long time. Keep using us out of a sense of obligation.

I don't know why some of these were rejected. They're spot on. What do you think?

I'm looking forward to Windows 10, despite the slogan. Are you? What slogan would you have used? Tell us in the comments section below.