The price tag is the best part

Somehow, OnLive Desktop is free. It doesn’t cost a dime to download the app from the App Store, and there’s no subscription service to sign up for. The app also doesn’t require you to own a copy of Windows, as do Mac virtualization apps like Parallels and VMware. Windows 7 is already set up and running on OnLive’s remote servers. All you have to do is sign up for a free OnLive account (or use an existing one if you already signed up for OnLive’s gaming service) and connect.

Better than remote desktop apps, local virtualization software

Despite OnLive Desktop is working over an Internet connection talking to servers miles away (likely hundreds of miles in my case), it performs better than any remote desktop apps I’ve used on my own local Wi-Fi network. There’s very little lag; apps open and close speedily; and documents, spreadsheets and presentations are already setup by default to save to a synced folder, which auto-syncs at regular, frequent intervals.

In terms of setup time and ease of use, OnLive Desktop beats out both remote desktop apps and virtualization software running locally on Macs, in my opinion. This is especially true if your intended use is light editing of documents you need to access right away when away from home, since you can download from and upload to a web interface at files.onlive.com for your specific synced OnLive Documents folder.
 

Limited in scope, but should hit the right notes for most

OnLive Desktop has some limitations your own local installations of Windows won’t, however. Any changes you make to app or system settings won’t be there the next time you log in, for instance; OnLive does this to ensure speedy connections and easy jump-in, jump-out functionality for all users.

You also can’t install new programs or access anything beyond what OnLive provides, so this definitely isn’t a solution for Windows-based gaming. Still, those pre-installed apps include Word, Excel and PowerPoint 2010, as well as Windows Media Player and some basic utilities. You can’t access Internet Explorer, which would be a nice touch for people working remotely who have to access IE-only enterprise dashboards, for instance.

Finally, there’s the issue of not being able to use the iPad’s own software keyboard. Instead, you’ll get the Windows 7 on-screen keyboard. It pales in comparison to the Apple version, but it’s usable nonetheless. Also, know that if you exit the app mid-edit, you won’t be able to save your document when you jump back in, even if it resumes with the document open.

Despite those limitations, OnLive probably provides what the vast majority of its target audience requires: a quick and easy way to edit Office docs on the go. The extremely high-quality Windows Media Player streaming playback and other perks like the ability to use the touch-optimized Microsoft Surface Collage app, are just are icing on the cake.

Microsoft’s Office iPad apps are here

With Bluetooth keyboard support and the ability to connect over 3G (OnLive disconnects you after 10 minutes when connected this way, but that’s plenty of time to accomplish minor edits on the fly), I see little reason to go elsewhere for Office-compatible document editing. Plus, if this app eventually gets an upgrade to the tablet-optimized Windows 8, it should be even more touch-friendly.

Rumors occasionally crop up that Microsoft is working on dedicated Office apps for the iPad. With OnLive Desktop, I find myself happy to wait for Microsoft to take as long as it wants to get its act together.

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I tested these three games using my 2011 15-inch MacBook Pro under OS X: Lord of the Rings Online, EverQuest 2, and Age of Conan. Of the three, Lord of the Rings Online ran the best, Age of Conan ran the worst, and EverQuest 2 ran “just ok.” Parallels 7 still does just Direct X 9, so games like Lord of the Rings that take advantage of Direct X 11 won’t run perfectly.

For benchmarks, I used my current Windows-on-a-Mac gaming setup, which involves both Apple’s own Boot Camp utility (which lets you run Windows natively) and CrossOver (which lets you run Windows apps in OS X without actually installing the Windows OS itself).

The good

The last time I looked at Windows gaming on the Mac, Parallels’s performance noticeably lagged behind the frame rates I got in CrossOver. With Parallels 7, frame rates in both were much closer, getting around 50 FPS in LotRO and 35-40 in EverQuest 2. And since you’re running games in basically a native environment, unlike in CrossOver, you can get games up and running with a minimum of fuss. CrossOver often requires extra configuration and patience to get games running. Also, if you’re close to filling up your Parallels drive, it’s easy to resize it.

I didn’t notice any obvious performance differences between Parallels accessing a Boot Camp partition or Parallels running off its own .pvm file (Parallels’ own native Windows installation container). Both seemed to give me the same frame rates and load times. Even when I put Parallels into a position for it not to succeed, like playing a game while using Handbrake to convert a video file, my MacBook didn’t come to a girding halt. While it was slower, I could still play the game.

The bad

I noticed one consistent issue in playing all the games: right-clicking with the trackpad to look around was uncontrollable. If I plugged in an external mouse, its right button worked just fine. I could get around this problem by adjusting my keybindings in-game to something funky like pressing alt-contol-arrow button, but that’s really a pain to get used to.

Also, you’re going to take a performance hit running in a virtual environment. Running the games in anything other than Full Screen mode (you can still alt-tab or Mission Control back to your OS X apps) in Parallels seemed to cause problems. I had numerous issues loading games past their login screen in Coherence mode; the same problems didn’t crop up nearly as often in Full Screen.

If you play any game or in any situation where reflexes or timing really matter, like a multiplayer shooter or during a raid in an MMO, I can’t recommend a virtualized solution at all. In those cases, you’ll need to be running the game in Boot Camp (or, OS X if you’re lucky and that’s an option).

The ugly

The bane of my computing existence is Windows’ activation process. Given the nature of my freelance work, I’m often blowing my activation limit and need to call Microsoft to get it reset. If you use Boot Camp and create a Parallels virtual from that, you’ll use up two activations.

Also, of all the games I looked at, Age of Conan ran horribly on Parallels, averaging out to about 8 FPS. I was getting 25 in Boot Camp, so it’s not like it’s a stellar performer anyway. I also noticed the avatars in Conan weren’t smooth, as I could see the polygons that made up their shapes under the skinning when running the game in Parallels.

Final thoughts

I’m pretty happy with Parallels 7 for gaming. Having current hardware has a lot to do with it, but Parallels seems to at least come close to the performance I’m used to from CrossOver, without the hassles. After a week or so of testing, I’m going to delete my CrossOver game installs and instead use Parallels for Windows gaming, and Boot Camp when I need to get really serious.

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To use the new Facebook integration, you simply click the “Link to Facebook” button from the Skype Home screen and sign in with your Facebook credentials. Once signed in, the Skype Home tab displays recent activity from your Skype contacts, your Facebook friends or both through a hybrid view. You can also update your status using an input bar at the top of the home screen. Each update presents you with options for Liking and commenting, and you can also call contacts directly using a phone icon located next to their name. If their number is listed on Facebook or they’re on Skype already, you can call instantly; if it’s not, you’ll be prompted to enter it manually. Both options require that you have a paid Skype subscription or Skype credit to work.

It’s a pretty solid implementation of Facebook integration; the news feed works well in Skype’s app window, and the ability to quickly call friends based on news they post to the social network is a very smart thing to include. If my friend announces an engagement, for instance, I could call her directly instead of just posting a “Congrats!” or tapping the Like button. Your Facebook contacts also now show up in your general contacts list when you’re signed in, and you can IM them directly as you would your usual Skype friends.

Note that despite the introduction of Skype-powered video chat to Facebook’s website in July, there is no way to directly video call your online Facebook contacts in this beta. You can initiate a Skype call if your Facebook friends have Skype contact info listed on their profile and then opt to turn it into a video call should they pick up, but that’s as far as video-calling integration goes. I’d hope that Skype has designs on making it easy to video chat directly between the two platforms in the future.

All the new Facebook features are welcome and smartly designed, but there are a few bugs I noticed in this beta, like the fact that initiating calls from the contacts list with Facebook friends to their mobile numbers doesn’t seem to actually connect. There’s also a drawback for nonsubscribers and people who don’t have any Skype credit: ads. Skype is now putting display ads in front of users who only access the free aspects of its service. So if you aren’t terribly fond of the idea of Facebook integration and you’re happy with Skype’s free service, you may want to hold off on this update.

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Fusion 4 ships with Lion-specific features, and the ability to officially run a virtualized OS X machine for the first time, something which was introduced to virtualization rival Parallels with that software’s latest release. You can run either a Lion, Lion Server, Snow Leopard or Snow Leopard server virtualized machine using Fusion 4, which could be very useful if you’ve upgraded to Lion but want to use Snow Leopard to access software or features that you miss from the older version of OS X.

Of course, you can still also install Windows on a Mac using Fusion 4, and VMware has added a bunch of features that make using Windows right inside your OS X desktop even more seamless. For instance, you can add Windows apps to Launchpad, managed them as separate application windows in Mission Control, and also use them in full-screen mode and with OS X gestures.

Other advantages new to the latest version of Fusion include significant performance improvements, with VMware claiming 2.5x faster 3-D graphics on contemporary multicore Macs, as well as general improvements to how virtualized apps perform running side-by-side with native ones. You can check out the full list of changes in VMware Fusion 4 via the official site.

Some people prefer Parellels, and some VMware Fusion, but Fusion 4 offers a significant advantage for existing fans and switchers alike; a much cheaper price tag. Right now, Fusion 4 is available at a promotional price of $49.99, which compares very favorably to the $79.99 that Parallels is charging. Fusion customers who bought version 3 on or after July 20, 2011 are also eligible for a free upgrade.

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The reason Apple devices and those using Google’s mobile OS will be able to stay dominant is because both have a significant platform advantage: the availability of software and content from development and publishing partners. It’s an advantage that In-Stat thinks will be insurmountable for competitors, and the recent cautionary tale of HP’s TouchPad seem to back that assumption up.

The TouchPad's multitasking was one of its strengths but ultimately couldn't save it.

While many were impressed with webOS, the mobile operating system powering the TouchPad, and not offended by the hardware itself (which did have more in common with the original iPad than the current model, despite competing for consumers’ dollars with the newer Apple device), third-party developer support was severely lacking when compared to the iOS and Android ecosystems.

In-Stat also predicts that the overall tablet market will grow to 250 million shipments by 2017, up from around 17 million in 2010. New devices from Apple, Motorola, LG and HTC will help spur that growth, according to the report, as well as new devices from BlackBerry. It’s that last one I’m not so sure about. RIM’s PlayBook isn’t doing so hot so far, and we’ve heard that carrier support is eroding for the device, at least in the U.S. In-Stat even acknowledges that “wireless operator business models could have a tremendous impact on future tablet demand,” and I agree; subsidies will help non-Apple devices catch up. If RIM is already being locked out in that regard for poor performance, it seems unlikely that new tablet designs from the BlackBerry maker could turn the tide.

The PlayBook is a 7-inch device, a form factor outnumbered among tablets by larger screens.

One final highlight from the In-Stat report: The company predicts 9- to 11-inch devices to rule the roost, with 56 percent of the tablet market. I agree that larger screens will continue to beat out smaller devices, but I question whether it will even be that close of a race. As of yet, 7-inch devices haven’t really proved their viability: Samsung’s Galaxy Tab is the best-selling example, and it still doesn’t seem to have come close to the iPad’s numbers, even if you count shipments instead of sales.

I fully agree with In-Stat that the tablet market will expand by leaps and bounds in the next few years, and I also agree that iOS and Android will lead that expansion. But I’m not sure that Android will make up as much of that expansion as In-Stat suggests. Google is beset on all sides by patent claims that call in to question Android’s future, and it has yet to release a solid version of its mobile OS that really stands up well on tablet hardware. One thing’s for sure: Apple has a seat at the head of the tablet table, and that’s a very good place to be, if recent trends are any indication.

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• The rise of tablets in the enterprise

Lion is a significant change for OS X, both from a development back-end perspective, and for end-users, too. In fact, it may represent the most significant update of any point release since the introduction of Mac OS 10.0. And as the saying goes, you can’t make an omelet without cracking a few eggs.

In this case, the eggs in question might be some technologies that users aren’t quite ready to let go. Lion is demanding, especially with all the visual flourishes, like transitional animations, enabled. Apple has already said that older Intel Macs (those that don’t use the Intel Core 2 Duo processor or higher, or that have less than 2 GB of RAM installed) won’t be able to come to the party, and even those that aren’t so old (two years or more) might not be able to handle the demands without some customizations or after-market upgrades. Users won’t be able to jump right from Leopard to Lion, either, as they’ll need to have Snow Leopard and the Mac App Store (which arrived with a later Snow Leopard update) installed in order to even run the Lion upgrade software, which will be available only through digital distribution.

Don’t get me wrong, Lion should technically work for Macs that are just starting to show their age, so long as they meet the minimum requirements, but they probably won’t shine, and they won’t be as good at playing nice with the features that make Lion so desirable.

Let me say it plainly: Lion seems very much designed for use with modern processors, lots of RAM, and, most importantly, computers with SSD storage, and the presence of each of these components definitely improves the experience. The whole point of feature additions like Resume, Auto Save and Versions is that the Mac become, like the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, a machine that can be turned on and off as desired, without undue waiting, loading or having to worry about traditional startup / shutdown procedures.

It also obviously couldn’t care less about your Mac’s optical disc drive, turning that hardware feature from a must-have to a quaint convenience thanks to the Mac App Store. The reality of solid state, disc drive-less personal computing became more tangible with the arrival of the new MacBook Air. But it’s still not the dominant model, and Lion is clearly designed for a future where it is. Luckily, you can take a shortcut to the future by replacing your existing MacBook’s optical drive with an SSD, which should help greatly improve instant-on startup times when you upgrade to Lion.

I’m glad Apple is taking a bold step forward with Lion, since hopefully it means big changes are in store for how we approach personal computing, even if it means some of my Macs won’t be able to come along for the ride. But if you’re planning to upgrade, keep in mind that more than any update since perhaps the introduction of Intel processors to Mac computers, Lion bring with it a significant adjustment period, for developers and uses alike.

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The infographic takes users who responded to the question “Are You a Mac Person or a PC Person?” and cross-references those responses with the answers from other questions taken from the question pool the site uses to inform its intelligent recommendations engine. Some key highlights:

• Mac users are more likely to be young liberals who live in cities
• Mac users are bigger partiers than PC users
• Mac users are more likely to see themselves as unique, but also to see others as alike
• PC users watch a lot of Leno, while Mac users like critical hits like Friday Night Lights

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On Microsoft Windows, the application is the window, and you can use either alt-tab, win-tab, or the task bar to switch between windows. On the Mac, there are three main ways to manage windows, here’s a rundown of each, and how to use them to play up the strengths of OS X.

The Dock

The first way most new users to the Mac try to manage windows is the Dock. Clicking on a running applications icon in the Dock will bring that application’s windows to the front, which works great for apps that are only using a single window.

If, however, you have multiple windows open at once, like several TextEdit windows for example, clicking on the TextEdit icon will bring all of the windows to the front, which may not be exactly what you want.

The trick to using the Dock to manage windows is by clicking and holding on an icon. This will trigger Exposé in “Application Windows” mode, hiding all other applications and thumbnailing all of the open windows for that application. Then you can just click on the window you want to come to the front.

Exposé

Now that you’ve seen one part of Exposé in action, it’s time to see how the rest of it works. Open up System Preferences and click on “Exposé and Spaces”. You can think of this part of the preferences as the command center for managing windows.

At the top is “Active Screen Corners”, followed by keyboard shortcuts. Make note of the function key set for “All windows;” on mine it’s F3 to match my Apple Bluetooth keyboard. Open up a few different applications (it helps if one is a movie), and press F3. In one smooth animation, all of the open windows will shrink into thumbnails, with open windows at the top, and minimized windows at the bottom. From here you can click on any window you like to bring it to the front. If there are still too many windows open, you can press the tab key to cycle between the windows of running applications.

Having a function key is great, but too often I find that I need to look down at my keyboard to find the right key. That’s where the Active Screen Corners come in. Each corner of the screen can activate a function of window management. I always assign the bottom left corner of my screen to activating Exposé for All Windows, and the bottom right to Desktop. Then I put my Dashboard in the top right corner, and leave the top left blank. This gives me super quick access to all of my windows, widgets, and files I’m working with on my desktop.

You can also drag files into Exposé. For example, here’s a common workflow I run into all the time. To get a file from my desktop into a window open in the background, I’ll flick my mouse pointer to the bottom right corner to show the desktop. Then, I’ll drag the file to the bottom right hand corner to activate Exposé. Finally, while still dragging the file, I’ll select the window I want to bring it to the front, and then drop the file onto the window. Super easy, and super useful, once you get used to it.

Spaces

If, however, you still find yourself drowning in windows, or you just like to keep things clean and organized, you can enable Spaces. Spaces gives you extra desktops to work with. The default number of spaces is four, but you can assign up to sixteen. Personally, I’m normally happy with just two. I’m a developer, so I work in Xcode all the time. Some development tools, like Interface Builder, open up several windows, and can clutter up the screen quickly. So it’s nice to keep Xcode and Interface Builder in separate spaces. I always assign the CMD+Arrow Keys to switch between the spaces, and F8 to activate the spaces overview.

Once in the spaces overview, you can activate Exposé to see all of your windows, in all of your spaces.

Exposé, Spaces, and the Dock are the three main elements for window management. You can also use CMD-tab to switch between applications, or optionally, check out a third-party application like Witch that can give your keyboard even more control. If you’re new to the Mac, I hope this article helped, if you are experienced and think I missed something, feel free to mention it in the comments.

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While the feature tease is minimal, the video shows off Sparklines, in-cell mini-graphs of visual data straight from Excel 2010 for Windows, as well as new PivotTable report designs and layouts. Office-wide, users will now have the ability to do “basic photo editing,” with options like color correction, as well as more advanced ones like background removal, but that’s the small stuff.

The big deal is Mac Office 2011 touts a level of compatibility with Office for Windows “that’s never been achieved before,” from the user-interface Ribbon of Office for Windows to the nuts and bolts of cross-platform document and data sharing. In Word, that means requiring pages printed in Word for the Mac and Windows be identical on paper. In Excel, arguably the biggest compatibility effort was the restoration of Visual Basic, version 6.5, same as the Windows version. Entourage has been replaced with Outlook and full support for Exchange. PowerPoint, well, with the exception of better cross-platform document compatibility, PowerPoint still looks to suck compared to the ease-of-use and pretty slides of Keynote.

Unfortunately, that hardly makes up for the rest of iWork for the Mac. Numbers, Pages, and Keynote are far less compatible when exporting in Microsoft Office formats, and none are as feature-replete. Worse, Pages, and especially Numbers, struggle with large documents. The problem with iWork is that it badly needs updating, but there is no guarantee of that happening this year, unlike Mac Office.

While it’s true iWork for the iPad was released this year, it, like OS X, is languishing in favor of iOS. iWork for the Mac is quickly approaching years between updates. While it’s fair to say that having the iWork team pivot to produce an iPad version is responsible for the dearth of updates, what’s the excuse for iWork.com?

Back in January 2009, when iWork ’09 debuted, a lot was made of the iWork.com beta, which let people view and share, but not edit documents. Eighteen months later, it’s still a beta, and you still can’t edit documents. Even worse, Apple has thus far failed to leverage iWork.com as the logical way to seamlessly synchronize documents between the iPad and Mac. Even the rumored iWork update is out of date, the most recent being “iWork ’10 for Dummies” placeholders being seen in at sites like Amazon France with three months left in the year.

Without an update to compete against Mac Office 2011, that leaves price as iWorks ’09′s best feature, $79 retail, $49 with the purchase of a new Mac. However, even on price Mac Office is competing better than ever before at $119 for the Student Edition, which includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and $199 for the Home and Office Edition that adds Outlook.

There’s a reason Mac Business Unit PR types can brag that Mac Office is on about 70 percent of Macs (a phenomenal adoption rate) and one that would only be beat by Office for the iPad. Please.

Related GigaOM Pro Research: Web Worker Survey 2010 (subscription req’d)

The iPad has been a pretty big success so far, especially for a category-busting product. But investors and Apple users aren’t the only ones to have taken note of the product’s success. The iPad is now being used as scam bait to sucker in people who might not be that familiar with the warning signs of internet scams, which, not coincidentally, is just who the iPad seems directed at as a device.

So far, the scam only works on Windows PCs, but even if you’re a Mac-using iPad owner, make sure any friends and relatives using the other platform are aware of the ruse. Basically, you get an email telling you that iTunes needs to be updated in order to update your iPad device, and provides a link to the software in question.

Of course, instead of taking you to some kind of iTunes download, the link instead opens up a direct line to their sensitive information, if accessed via a PC. Specifically, the malware in question is Backdoor.Bifrose.AADY, which uses Internet Explorer to open a back door on your system and look around for software serial numbers and login data, including usernames and passwords for various sites.

People on Macs or other Apple platforms, like the iPad and iPhone, won’t be affected at all by following the link, but obviously it’s never a good idea to open suspicious links in emails in case that changes in future versions of the scam.

At least for now, the iPad itself hasn’t been a target for hackers and/or malicious code. Apple’s securely locked down content distribution system in the form of the App Store really helps things there, but it’s only a matter of time before it becomes a target in a big way, and this attack is the first sign of why that’s a dangerous prospect. You’ve no doubt seen the articles about people picking up the iPad as their first ever computer. That category of user is the ideal candidate for malicious software, since they’ve yet to experience the nasty side of the Internet and don’t have any built-in defenses against these types of scams.

The iPad is raising Apple’s profile, and that means trouble for those uneducated about Internet security risks. It could also mean problems for all Mac users in the long run, as the iPad draws more people to OS X in the same way the iPod and iPhone did before it. But for now, it’s still the most secure platform around, so enjoy it while it lasts.

Of all the companies competing in the cellphone industry, it is perhaps more than just a little poetic that Microsoft should be the first to offer a truly compelling product to rival Apple’s iPhone.

I never thought I’d write that sentence.

Yesterday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Steve Ballmer unveiled Microsoft’s newest phone platform, awkwardly-titled Windows Phone 7 Series.

Quick rundown; it’s based on Windows CE kernel 6.0 (the latest WinMo is 5.2) is finger-friendly everywhere with swiping, pinching and multitouch, sports a virtual keyboard and offers music and video playback via the awesome Zune UI. Oh, and, there’s not a stylus in sight.

And here’s the thing; Windows Phone 7 Series actually looks good. I mean, it looks really good, even though it’s clearly unfinished.

As such, the UI is a bit slow, finger touches are sometimes ignored, and it’s clear that the fancy animations and transitions are something of a drag on the processor. Microsoft engineer Joe Belfiore said of the new OS;

“What we’re doing is building and delivering a different kind of phone […] a smart design that puts the user at the center of their experience. We’re moving beyond the phone as a PC-like item that moves beyond separate applications and brings together the key things that are important to people […] like pictures, and music and video, and productivity.

Users have one simple place to go and access their web services, access the functionality in their applications, and access the data on their phone. Those are the fundamental ideas behind this new user experience.”

On the matter of its fresh new UI, Windows maven Paul Thurrott wrote in his (even more awkwardly titled) Windows Phone 7 Series Preview Part I;

This is an important difference between the iPhone and Windows Phone. When you use an iPhone, you go into an app, which takes over the device. If you want to do something else, you must leave the first app, navigate around the home screens, find the new app, and launch that. Rinse, repeat. (And the iPhone’s lack of a Back button let alone sophisticated multitasking is, of course, still a huge issue.)

After years of heavy daily iPhone use, I can’t honestly say the lack of a back button or “sophisticated multitasking” have ever been a “huge issue.” I had those things in Windows Mobile phones years ago but never used those devices anywhere near as much as I use my iPhone. Maybe Thurrott is right – though personally, I just don’t think it’s the issue he has long made it out to be.

Credit Where Credit is Due

But this shouldn’t be about taking cheap shots at the competition. Microsoft deserves credit. The new Windows Phone 7 Series is a compelling glimpse at – maybe – a bright future for a platform everyone thought was dead. The UI is stylish and looks really fun to use. It even makes the iPhone’s OS look more 30 years old than three.

We’re just not accustomed to Microsoft doing bold, exciting and compelling work. Maybe that’s the result of having the wind knocked out of its sails by the EU Commission, or because it tends to focus more on business solutions than it does personal consumer-facing solutions. Whatever the reason, it hasn’t done anything this exciting and new in a long time.

There’s still opportunity for it to mess-up. If Microsoft has any sense at all, and wants to claw-back some of the marketshare it has lost since 2007, it’ll need to exercise far greater control over OEM’s (enforcing strict minimum specifications on Windows Phone handsets) and Carriers, too (insisting end users be free to install software updates – traditionally, Carriers required users buy a whole new handset should they want to upgrade).

Apple’s iPhone success owes much to its closed ecosystem; Apple designs and builds its own hardware which is coupled with custom-software. Updates are available for everyone everywhere and carriers have no say in the matter. Even third-party apps are vetted by Apple in order to ensure they don’t tarnish the universal iPhone ‘experience’.

Microsoft has never demonstrated it cared about user experience in Windows Mobile. Now, it seems obvious it’s adopting a new attitude.

So here’s the big picture; Microsoft has produced a powerful new mobile OS in Windows Phone 7 Series. It offers all the same basic functionality as the iPhone. There’s an app store. The Zune media platform. System-wide social network integration. It will likely be cheaper than an iPhone and Carrier-agnostic from day one. It won’t need iTunes or the iTunes Store, either (though I’m not suggesting the Windows Marketplace or Zune Social is any better).

Windows Phone 7 Series Marketplace (Image by Engadget)

I look at today’s current best-competitor for the iPhone and it’s clearly an Android-based handset such as the Nexus One. But let’s be brutally honest – Android is a mobile OS for Geeks. Android’s huge gain in market share probably owes more to the fact that it’s free than to any other consideration.

Meanwhile, the iPhone’s remarkable success proves that consumers are willing – even during a recession – to pay real money for a great product if everything is done right.

Microsoft might have finally figured this out. And ain’t it fun to imagine that, a year or so from now, the most credible competition to the iPhone may come not from Android or RIM, but from the company we all stopped caring about years ago. Somehow, that’s just perfect. And I can’t wait to see how Apple responds.

We usually love our Apple products. They work well, are easy to understand and when we have a problem, Apple works quickly to resolve it. Most of the time. What happens when Apple simply won’t play ball? Read on and find out how to work Apple’s system.

Step 1: AASP and Geniuses

For many people, their first interaction is with the Apple store, however some will go to an Apple Authorized Service provider (AASP). AASP determinations can be overridden by an Apple store, so going to the Apple store would be your first escalation if you are not satisfied by the AASP. Typically a Genius determines you have a problem, but alas, you may be out of warranty. Maybe they are claiming the item was abused or tampered with and you disagree. Often you are just barely out of warranty or fall right outside a Repair Extension. Be sure to keep careful notes of the dates and times of your conversations and with whom you’ve spoken. All is not lost.

Step 2: The CS Code

Your next step can be to call the general number for Apple technical support (800-275-2273).  Explain your situation and ask for an accommodation; usually you want a repair at no charge to you. Your ultimate goal is to get a “CS code.” A CS code acts like a coupon. Give the CS code to the AASP and the cost of the repair will be discounted by the amount the CS Code authorizes. Apple tech support is based in North America, so you’ll unlikely have the communication barriers you face with other brands. Again, keep careful notes.

Step 3: Customer Relations

What if tech support won’t play ball? Your next step is to call technical support, or pretty much any Apple number, and ask for “Customer Relations.” That’s the magic phrasing that gets you talking with people who can override the decisions of any AASP. They’ll usually be the one to issue a CS code.

When talking with Customer Relations, always be polite, fair and accommodating. These are human beings who will often rise or fall to the level of politeness and aggressiveness they receive. Having learned from others’ success with Customer Relations, it’s best to focus on the fact that you are a loyal Mac user. Briefly tell them about your love of all things Apple. Be enthusiastic and authentic.

Next, tell them about your problem and your frustration that Apple didn’t cover it but you think they should. It may be that your Mac or iPod is just barely out of warranty, or maybe it’s been in for similar problems before and Apple didn’t fix it right the first time. Often it’s related to a known defect that Apple hasn’t quite admitted yet. Mention places you’ve read about others having the same problem you have.

In a previous article, I talked about reading Apple’s Annual Report to determine what issues Apple could be facing lawsuits about. Focus on the fact that you want to be an Apple supporter, but its actions in this particular matter that have shaken your confidence. You might playfully mention some of the ads you’ve seen and how much you are a believer.

Ask the Apple representative for something reasonable and fair — usually the repair of the item under warranty. Frequently Apple will meet you half-way by agreeing to cover the parts, but not the labor. Consider that a win. If you don’t get the answer you want the first time, don’t be afraid to call back and speak with another rep. Don’t get into an argument. Thank them for their time and try again.

Step 4: Bring in The Steve

What if even Customer Relations isn’t appearing to be fair with you? Now it’s time to bring in Steve. No, not the Woz, but rather Mr. Steve Jobs. Write him at steve@apple.com or sjobs@apple.com. Your email will be read by a member of his staff (and even Steve himself on occasion). Make the same case you made to Customer Relations in the same fair, accommodating and professional way. They’ll often find you a solution. Maybe it’s not a CS code, but usually a fair deal that protects Apple’s financial interest, yet goes the extra mile to keep you as a Mac user.

Alternatively, and in addition to contacting Steve, if you are an Apple investor, contact investor relations (408-974-3123). You can mention all the things you mentioned to Customer Relations, but add the fact that this experience has tainted not just your technology buying experience but your confidence in Apple as an investor. If you’ve posted your woes on Twitter, stock boards, or on your blog, you can mention that. Be honest and direct. These people will get you in contact with people in the “Exec” team, who are usually the same people who handle the steve@apple.com email.

Still no dice? Well, I think you are out of luck. Sometimes it just happens. At least now you know the escalation methods and at least have a fighting chance with Apple.

Do you have a successful Apple war story?

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But only for Mac users, since unlike the Mighty Mouse before it, the Magic Mouse didn’t ship with any Windows support, so brand traitors were simply out of luck. Now, a Windows driver for the Magic Mouse has surfaced, so the PC faithful can see what all the buzz is about.

The software release isn’t an official one, so proceed at your own risk. What happened was that someone, via a nice little bit of technical conjuring, freed a 32-bit and 64-bit version of the Magic Mouse driver from Apple’s recent Boot Camp update using an unrar tool. So it’s software, just not officially released software.

The source of the drivers hopefully indicates that Apple is planning on officially releasing support for the the Magic Mouse’s multitouch features somewhere in the near future, so if you’re at all wary about trying these hacked versions out, you may not have long to wait. After all, Windows still accounts for 96 percent of the computing market share, so Apple is foregoing a lot of potential revenue in not offering PC support.

You can grab the drivers from Uneasy Silence, but the link for the 64-bit version is broken as of this writing. The 32-bit version downloads fine, though, as a Windows executable. I haven’t yet had a chance to try this out with my Magic Mouse, but if you have, let us know how it worked out in the comments.

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VMware Fusion 3 for Mac is now available. That’s right, new virtualization software for your Mac, conveniently timed for the release of Windows 7. Actually, it’s very likely the release of VMware’s latest iteration of its OS virtualization software, Fusion 3, got its release date precisely because of Microsoft’s street date for its latest operating system, because Fusion 3 is specially designed to support Windows 7.

Fusion 3 comes just over a year after VMware released Fusion 2, in September 2008. A year is a long time in the life cycle of a piece of software, and in the case of Fusion, the lapsed time between versions shows in the numerous improvements made to the program that allows you to run another OS on a virtualized machine inside of OS X.

As mentioned above, Fusion 3 goes out of its way to make sure your Windows 7 virtualization experience is as seamless as possible. That includes things like support for Windows Aero, Flip 3D and Windows Aero Peek visualization effects, and the ability to run OpenGL 2.1 and DirectX 9.0c, which should help with some of your gaming needs, especially if you’re into older MMOs that don’t have a native Mac client.

VMware’s sales tactics for Fusion 3 also focus on recent switchers who are having trouble adjusting to their new and unfamiliar environment on a Mac. For example, the improved Migration Assistant helps you copy your entire PC onto a virtual machine on your new Mac hardware quickly and easily using an Ethernet connection. VMware goes as far as to say it works “just like” Apple’s own Migration Assistant for setting up or restoring a Mac-based computer.

There’s also a lot of improvements under the hood, including a new 64-bit native core engine for Macs that can handle it. That means that Snow Leopard users will be getting the most bang for their buck with the latest version. Memory usage on all Vista and Windows 7 machines is also greatly reduced, so in general, you should experience much snappier performance.

Finally, a lot of improvements have been made to VMware Fusion’s Mac Unity mode, which makes the virtualization experience much more integrated than it is in its default, windowed configuration. The list of new features is long, but some highlights include the ability to search for Windows apps like Mac ones, assigning the new always-on Applications menu to a hotkey of your choosing, accessing recently opened documents using Windows apps, full Exposé and Dock Exposé support for all Windows apps, and 3D gaming/1080p video playback while in Unity mode.

Fusion 3 retails for $79.99, but if you’re upgrading from Fusion 1 or 2, you qualify for a special price of $39.99, or $59.99 with a subscription that includes major version upgrades for the next 12 months. Judging by the last upgrade schedule which saw Fusion 3′s release falling one month outside that bubble, that subscription option isn’t looking all that appealing. If you’re picking it up, let us know how you find it.

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Burke leans heavily on the initial purchase price angle, noting that an Apple Mac Pro desktop he cites as an example is nearly four times the price of an HP Pavilion, asking rhetorically whether anyone really believes the Mac is four times better than the HP Pavilion? I think some of us would argue that the value is there under the right circumstances, but it would’ve been more relevant to compare a mainstream Mac model such as the iMac or MacBook to their still admittedly cheaper, but not so dramatically so, Windows competition.

Apple Ignoring “Economic Reality?”

Burke accuses Apple and company CEO Steve Jobs of not considering “economic reality,” and having no interest in producing mass-market PCs, which is fair comment I suppose. However I’m constrained to observe that as Forbes’ Brian Caulfield pointed out last weekend, over the past year, banks have collapsed, PC sales have plummeted, unemployment has soared, and Steve Jobs went on mysterious medical leave for a liver transplant, but meanwhile Apple has thrived through all this with sales and earnings down less than everyone else in the industry and actually up year-over-year — on Monday reporting the company’s best quarter ever and a net quarterly profit of $1.67 billion on revenues of $9.87 billion. Consequently the question is begged as to who is and is not considering economic reality.

Netbook Sales Soar But Profitability Fizzles

NPD Group’s DisplaySearch Q2 ’09 PC shipment data released last week estimated that netbook sales soared a whopping 264 percent year-over-year in the quarter, accounting for 22.2 percent of overall PC sales, but woefully for PC manufacturers and for Microsoft — only 11.7 percent of revenues. Overall PC laptop sales (excluding netbooks) declined 14 percent and PC laptop average selling prices dropped to $688 in Q2 2009 from $704 in Q1 2009 and from $849 in Q2 2008.

Apple, on the other hand, eased prices somewhat on entry level MacBook Pro models in all three sizes while holding the $999 price point for its price leader white MacBook, and is still enjoying healthy sales and profits on its laptops. Even the most substantial MacBook Pro price cut — $400 on the base 15″ model — was partly compensated by substituting an SD Card slot for the preceding model’s ExpressCard slot, and leaving out the discrete NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT graphics processor unit with its 256MB of dedicated VRAM in the new price-leader model, so I doubt that Apple has taken a major profitability hit. It’s more about marketing refocus.

Burke says Jobs wants to build “Rolls Royces,” not “Fords” and for him it was never about putting a PC on every desktop, while Microsoft has always had more of a Henry Ford style mass production bent. Again, partially true I suppose, although it doesn’t hold up particularly well in the iPod and iPhone context, and I don’t think Mr. Jobs has anything against growing market share provided he can do it without compromising quality standards or profitability, as his “there are some markets Apple doesn’t choose to serve” comment a year ago attests.

Simplistic Fixation On Initial Purchase Cost

I don’t gainsay that Windows Vista was a gift to Apple that just kept on giving, or that Windows 7 will prove much stiffer competition for OS X, but I think Burke is overstating his case in contending that Apple’s market share gains over the past several years are now destined to evaporate. To borrow his own analogy, it’s the whole car, not just the engine, and many of us perceive the Mac as being not only a smoother, better-handling ride, but also a better value in a whole raft of contexts that transcend simplistic fixation on initial purchase cost. CNET’s Dong Ngo reports that Snow Leopard consistently beats Windows 7 in many general performance areas including boot up time and battery charge life in laptops, for example.

Burke says PCs running Windows 7 are for “the masses” while Macs running OS X are for “the rich.” I’m not rich by the wildest stretch and neither are most of the other Mac-users I know. I do like to think that I appreciate value, a superior user experience, lower total cost of ownership, and elegance of form and execution, and that while Windows 7 will narrow the gap somewhat, it will fall well short of closing it.

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Now, as anyone who reads the tech-press will confirm, Ed is a Windows man through-and-through, and, although he occasionally appears to pay lip-service to Apple’s Mac OS X, he’s never slow to criticise the boys and girls in Cupertino.

So it should come as no surprise when I tell you that Ed happily spent about 700 words complaining bitterly and, at the end, throwing in a (somewhat unrelated) note of dissatisfaction with the size of the iTunes 9 installer.

Before I continue, and, at the risk of disappointing the more fervent Apple Fanbois among us, I’m not demonizing Ed. He’s an accomplished and fair writer. He’s just as quick to criticise Microsoft when they deserve it. This is not an Ed Bott Bashing article, m’kay?

Here’s what happened. Over the weekend, Apple released an update to its “Apple Software Update” utility on Windows. As well as QuickTime and iTunes updates (which were automatically selected), the Updater listed Safari (not pre-selected) and, at the top of the list, “iPhone Configuration Utility” (pre-selected).

Any Windows users accustomed to simply hitting “Install” would have downloaded software they will, in all likelihood, never need.

According to Greg Keizer at Computerworld, Apple removed the software from the update utility later that day.

It’s sad to see Ed Bott so readily waving virtual fists in the air, though it’s entirely understandable. In 2008, Apple used the same Software Update method to push its Safari browser out to PC users who had likely never even heard of it before. Those actions caused Mozilla CEO John Lily to accuse Apple of “bad practice” and behavior that “…ultimately undermines the safety of the Internet.” But, all those amateur-dramatics aside, it’s probably safe to say that most of those PC users who mindlessly clicked “Install” at that time have still, to this day, never even booted Safari. Not once.

I suspect the inclusion of the iPhone Configuration Utility was a simple mistake. After all, Apple has nothing to gain by installing the iPhone Configuration Utility software on ordinary end-user’s PCs. At first blush it seems Apple has much more to gain getting Windows users to move over to Safari, but last year’s aggressive Safari push hasn’t made too much of a dent in browser-share over on Microsoft’s dominant Windows platform.

With this in mind, it’s not so clever insisting Apple is being intentionally ‘sneaky’ or ‘tricky.’ A touch careless, perhaps, but none of this cloak-and-dagger stuff, please. In this case, I don’t think Apple is doing anything even approaching interesting.

To his credit, Ed updated his article with a short sentence reflecting Apple’s quick actions changing the Updater contents, though he still took a swipe at the pre-selected iTunes and QuickTime items. There’s just no pleasing some people.

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