Like a politician with high approval ratings, Apple (AAPL) has responded to Microsoft's (MSFT) attack ads by ignoring them.

After a four-month hiatus with no new "Get a Mac" spots, Apple released four in a row Sunday (available at Apple's website and pasted below the fold).

None of them deal with the charge Microsoft has been hammering home in a series of 60-second TV ads and a quasi-independent "white paper": that spec-for-spec, price-conscious consumers get a lot more bang for their buck with Windows PCs.

Instead, Apple's new ads stay relentlessly — and entertainingly — on message, sticking with the "Hello, I'm a Mac …" conceit and focusing on the one thing Microsoft's campaign never mentions: the difference in terms of the user's experience between Windows and Mac OS X.

The joke may be getting a little tired after three years and more than 50 variations on a theme, but humor is always more appealing than hard sell.

And unlike Lauren De Long — whose career as a paid actor undermined the credibility of her decision to choose an HP (HPQ) Pavilion on camera over a Mac — John Hodgman and Justin Long aren't pretending to be real people.

The game could change if Windows 7 turns out to be as good as beta testers say it is, and Microsoft can start to challenge Apple on its home turf.

See also:

• How Microsoft put Apple users on the defensive
• All about Microsoft's 'Lauren'
• Behind Microsoft's 'Apple tax' gambit
• Is the Apple press falling into Microsoft's trap?

Below the fold: the You Tube versions of Legal Copy, Biohazard Suit, Time Traveler and Stacks.

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We're not the first to spot this — credit goes to Brian X. Chen at Wired's Gadget Lab — but a site that endeavors to present news from outside Steve Jobs' reality distortion field couldn't let Apple's unusual legal argument in Gillis, et al. v. Apple, Inc. et al. pass without comment.

The case was originally filed last August in a California Superior Court by William Gillis, a 70-year-old San Diego resident who claims that Apple (AAPL) and AT&T (T) "misrepresented to the public the speed, strength and performance of the 3G network when using either of Apple's 3G iPhones."

At the time, Apple was running TV and print ads that described the iPhone 3G as "Twice as fast. Half the price." (The tag line now includes a footnote that reads, in part, "Actual speeds vary by site conditions.")

Gillis, who had purchased a black iPhone 3G, claims that the phone did not deliver the speeds promised in Apple's ads. He says that he – and a whole class of fellow iPhone users – were regularly bounced from fast 3G networks to the slower EDGE networks because the infrastructure of AT&T's 3G network was "insufficient" to handle the crush of users – something he claims Apple and AT&T failed to disclose. In fact, Apple continued to promote its 3G iPhones as "twice as fast" even though, Gillis claims, they often weren't.

Apple, in a response filed on Sept. 5, denied each and every allegation made by "Plaintiff" (i.e. Gillis) and then went on to mount 32 affirmative defenses, some stronger than others. The ones that caught our eye were the fifth and sixteenth:

Fifth Affirmative Defense

5. Any statements made by Apple were truthful and accurate and were not misleading or deceptive or likely to mislead or deceive Plaintiff or the purported class, and could not have been reasonably understood by Plaintiff or any member of the purported class in a manner that was misleading or deceptive or likely to mislead or deceive.

Sixteenth Affirmative Defense

16. Plaintiff's claims, and those of the purported class, are barred by the fact that the alleged deceptive statements were such that no reasonable person in Plaintiff's position could have reasonably relied on or misunderstood Apple's statements as claims of fact.

Or, as Chen puts it, "our ads don't lie, and you're a fool if you believe them." (link)

Apple's sixteenth defense, explains Barry Adler, professor of law at New York University, is based on the legal concept of "puffing," a defense well established in case law by the famous Leonard v. Pepsi precedent.

In general, Adler explains, ads can be excused from precise accuracy if what they say can be considered "in jest."

In the Pepsi case, a Seattle man named John Leonard took literally an offer in a Pepsi TV ad offering a T-shirt for 75 "Pepsi Points," a leather jacket for 1,450 and (drumroll) a Harrier Jet for 7,000,000. When Mr. Leonard tried to buy the jet for 15 Pepsi Points and a check for $700,008.50 to cover the rest, Pepsi refused to sell him a jet. Leonard sued. The judge in the case ruled that no reasonable person would think that the offer to sell a $23 million aircraft for Pepsi Points was anything but a joke.

So was "Twice as fast" a jest?

"In the eye of this beholder, no," says Adler. "It's not particularly funny, and it seems to me there's no other reason to say it except to make a product claim."

An American jury might disagree.

But not the British Advertising Standards Agency. The ASA has already made clear – by banning two different iPhone ads – that it takes a dim view of puffing, huffing and hyperbole in Apple's advertising copy. See This iPhone ad was banned in Britain.

Gillis v. Apple has been moved to a U.S. District Court in the Southern District of California. No trial date has been set.

The court documents are available as a pdf here.

The British Advertising Standards Authority is nothing if not literal-minded — which may be why Apple ads that hew closely to Steve Jobs' standards of truth in advertising keep running into trouble in the United Kingdom.

Last summer the Authority banned an Apple TV ad with a voiceover that said "all the parts of the Internet are on the iPhone." Objection: there are many parts of the Internet requiring Flash and Java that you can't get to with an iPhone. (see here)

On Wednesday, the ASA banned a second iPhone ad.

According to the BBC, 17 viewers complained that this particular "advert" showed an iPhone 3G downloading files and Web pages "really fast" — in less than a second — something you can apparently do in an editing room but not with an iPhone in the wild.

Judge for yourself. Although the ad can no longer be aired in Britain, we can show it here, via paidcontent.org:

You can read the ASA's ruling, including Apple's (AAPL) three paragraph defense, here.