Behold, the online help for one of the functions in Microsoft Excel.

Bwaaaa!

Other times, despite their best (giggle) efforts, they fail passively, due to Israel’s continued economic success.

Apple will open a development center in Israel focusing on semiconductors, according to a report in Globes. The development center would be the company’s first to be opened outside of Apple’s California headquarters.

According to the report, Apple has hired Aharon Aharon, currently Chairman of the Board of Camero – the company he founded and which develops Radio Frequency (RF) based imaging systems.

Should Apple open a center in Israel, it would join the likes of Google, IBM, Oracle, Motorola, Microsoft and Intel, that all have R&D centers here already.

The latest reports come on in the wake of news that Apple is in advanced talks to acquire Israel’s flash storage solutions provider, Anobit.

Apple’s corporate vice president of research and development, Ed Frank, is currently visiting Israel, according to Globes. And the Calcalist business newspaper reported that Frank is meeting with several Israeli high-tech companies.

Aharon is to spend several months at Apple headquarters in Cupertino before returning to Israel to begin activities at the Apple Israel development center, reports say.

So yeah…keep trying, fellas. Good luck with the whole continuing-to-fail-miserably thing. In fact, failing at BDS is the one thing at which you’re succeeding. So you’ve got that going for you, which is nice.

I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’, but you may want to just go ahead and rebrand yourselves. Oh, I don’t know. Maybe something like…

• Old & Busted: BDS (Full of FAIL)
  
• New Hotness: BDSFail (Full of WIN!)
  

One thing to keep in mind as you work on your new failbranding. At some point in the not-too-distant future, you’ll have to stop working on Apple products (I assume you’re already boycotting Google, IBM, Oracle, Motorola, Microsoft and Intel, right?), as they are likely to have been developed (at least in part) in Israel. So good luck with that.

I was just wondering if you’d like to buy some excellent AMD Processor computers? We have very good value refurbished machines and In light of your ban on Israeli grown or produced products I suspect that you’ll have to replace any computers you have with Intel processors as nearly all such chips were developed here in Israel. It’s actually one of the reasons I find it difficult to sell the AMD ones here.

My company in Israel works extensively with a number of Arab companies in Ramallah and other parts of Judea and Samaria and one of those Palestinian companies would be delighted to get an export order for AMD computers.

Obviously you won’t want to use any of the Microsoft operating systems and we can supply the machines without OS or with a Unix based system via our Palestinian partners, of course, so you don’t have to buy from my predominately Jewish company.

Head over to Facebook, perhaps, and tell them how you think. BTW all of the above is true. It is hard to sell AMD based computers in Israel, they’re really not so bad but for some reason people here (including the Arabs in Judea Samaria) only want the Intel machines!

Aussie Dave adds: Or you could do as I suggested here, and contact the councillors (phone calls the preferred method for those who can).

More on the offending ad here.

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld will star in a $US300 million marketing campaign for Microsoft aimed at burnishing the image of its computer operating system, a person familiar with the effort said.

The centerpiece of that campaign, to debut next month, is a series of television advertisements in which Seinfeld, 54, best known for his eponymous sitcom, will appear with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, the person told Reuters.

The Wall Street Journal, which first reported details of the marketing effort, said Seinfeld will receive about $US10 million for his work.

Seinfeld’s representatives were not immediately available for comment and Redmond, Washington-based computer software giant Microsoft declined to discuss the matter.

But the source who knew of the ad campaign said an immediate goal of the commercials is to counter public perceptions that Windows Vista, Microsoft’s latest PC operating system, is clunky and hard to use compared with rival products from Apple.

I can just imagine the campaign now – Windows: Not that there’s anything wrong with it.