In the Microsoft ad, you're supposed to be able to project yourself to be the person doing these things. You're supposed to feel that 'you' are opening an e-mail and looking at photos or "you" are searching for Marilyn Monroe, etc. etc.
That is similar to the Apple ads, but the Apple ads do two things differently. 1) they are at a slower pace and with less frantic movement and music, so it is easier to understand 2) apple ads will often have a voice over explaining what is happening.
I don't like the Microsoft ad, but the ad does focus on an end user doing things. Everything in that ad is a user doing things. I think they need to refine their approach though, and make it about things people care about doing.
I mean, Win3.1 was quite usable, then OS/2 (joke), 95, then XP (some flavor of NT w/ a service pack wasn't horrible). It takes some iterations, sometimes, to get it right.
There are things I don't particularly care for in Win8, but compared to Win7, it is much snappier on older hardware and that I appreciate (stuffing it in a VM). I also appreciate the faster release iterations.
The video was clearly not targeted at me - lots of jumping around the product and distracting. It just seems sad versus the Apple approach of focussing on end users doing things.