by , 3:35 PM EDT, July 8th, 2008

Brad Brooks, Microsoft's VP of Vista consumer marketing, in a keynote address to to the annual Partner conference, admitted that the Apple "Get a Mac" TV ads have had an impact, and Microsoft is going to start countering.

In his discussion of the Vista launch, Mr. Brooks was frank and acknowledged that his company screwed up, according to Information Week's J. Nicholas Hoover.

"We broke a lot of things. We know that, and we know it caused you a lot of pain. It got customers thinking, hey, is Windows Vista a generation we want to get invested in?" Mr. Brooks said.

"You thought the sleeping giant was still sleeping, well we woke it up and it's time to take our message forward," Brooks added. To that end, Microsoft will launch a huge advertising campaign, said to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Mr. Brooks eventually addressed the Apple "Get a Mac" ads. "We've got a pretty noisy competitor out there. You know it. I know it. It's caused some impact. We're going to start countering it. They tell us it's the iWay or the highway. We think that's a sad message," he said.

The Apple message may be sad, but perhaps not in the way that Mr. Brooks believes.