It’s pretty obvious that Microsoft hasn’t exactly felt the love these days. Windows 8 is an unmitigated disaster, Windows Phone is an afterthought, and the Surface tablet has gone nowhere. Even worse, OEMs who are building PC note-books with touchscreens have reported less-than-stellar sales.

Worldwide, PC sales are falling, and Microsoft doesn’t seem to have a workable scheme that will convince customers to buy new PCs, or just upgrade existing gear. It may indeed be the post-PC era, but Microsoft seems to be doing well enough with the Xbox gaming console after years of suffering multibillion dollar losses.

With a new CEO, Microsoft has a golden opportunity to alter the playing field, and perhaps do something to help the company regain its luster, or at least the aura of invincibility. But it’s still hard to listen to the company’s corporate-speak and believe anything.

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As most of you know, Microsoft is not nearly as flexible or successful as Apple in keeping secrets. Sure, news about an upcoming Apple gadget will usually leak from the supply chain, but software releases tend to get a higher level of protection from the teeming masses of tech journalists and financial analysts.

Of course, secrets encourage the media to just make things up, using their perceptions about Apple as a basis for guessing what they’re working on.

With Microsoft, rumors about a forthcoming Office for iPad release have come and gone and come again. Some of the stories suggest the software has been ready for several years, awaiting approval from the executive team for release. But former CEO Steve Ballmer reportedly opposed the move.

In addition, there was a huge detour: With the arrival of the Surface tablet, Microsoft touted the presence of Office on both the ARM-based RT and Intel based Pro versions as an advantage over other tablets. This supposed advance, such as it was, wasn’t quite what it seemed to be. You see, there is still no version of Office that’s compliant with the Modern or Metro UI. It’s basically just the same old Office 2013 release for desktop PCs that’s running from the desktop layer.

Regardless, people aren’t buying. The Surface tablet has been one huge failure for Microsoft, and the Office advantage was no advantage at all. Some estimates claim that Microsoft is losing out on billions of dollars in potential revenue by not delivering an iPad version.

Well, it appears Microsoft’s new CEO, Satya Nadella, has provided a dose of sanity. In a special media event in San Francisco, Microsoft announced Office for the iPad. Indeed,  Windows 8, considered a disaster for the company, wasn’t even on the agenda, and that clearly sends a strong message about the company’s future direction.

The iPad app suite is available in a sort of freemium arrangement. You can download a copy the iPad versions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint free from the App Store and open and view documents. If you want to actually create and edit documents, you need to subscribe to Office 365. Pricing depends on the package that best meets your needs, but the Home version is $9.99 a month, and includes support for up to five Macs and PCs and a single tablet.

Of course, if you already have an Office 365 license, the unlocked iPad version is free. Whether Microsoft earns more revenue from this product largely depends on how many additional signups the iPad version generates. Unlike Adobe, you can still buy retail copies of Microsoft’s traditional Mac and PC apps. You aren’t forced to subscribe to the cloud-based account.

Certainly the decision to release Office for the iPad couldn’t come at a better time. PC sales are down and Microsoft’s efforts to go mobile have been largely stillborn. Even the purchase of the failed handset division of Nokia isn’t expected to change the situation. Consider what happened when Google bought another failing handset company, Motorola Mobility, and you’ll see what I mean.

Meantime, Office for the iPad is already garnering favorable reviews. The ZDNet division of CNET says the suite “sets the gold standard for tablet productivity.”

That’s high praise, because there are already a number of office-style app suites on iOS and Android. The standard bearer is Apple’s iWork, which offers essentially the same feature set on the Mac, iOS and cloud-based versions. What this means is that, if you have an iCloud account and use a Windows PC, you can still use iWork and share your documents with users on the other platforms. It’s also free with a new Apple gadget, which may be the most compelling sales pitch of all.

So why should anyone who isn’t already an Office 365 subscriber take the plunge just to be able to take advantage of the full feature set of Office for the iPad? Is it really that good?

Here Microsoft may have miscalculated by assuming that iPad users already have a Mac or a PC, and thus the iPad represents just another device. But more and more people rely on an iPad as their primary personal computer, and they are going to be decidedly reluctant to pay $100 a year forever to get a fully-enabled copy of Office. Remember, iWork is free. Does Office’s enhanced feature set and superior compatibility with the Mac and Windows versions deserve a higher standalone price? Time will tell.

As most of you know, Microsoft has had a mixed reputation with Mac apps. While paying lip service to Mac interface conventions, even such features as Auto Save and Versions have yet to be supported. When you work in an Office app, you sometimes think you’re really using something actually meant for Windows, but clumsily ported to the Mac platform. The document windows may seem Mac-like, but the features carry the awkwardness of Windows.

But when it comes to tablets, Microsoft is in a new world. There is no Windows equivalent, and thus Microsoft had to rely on Apple’s development tools to build the product. For the most part, it seems successful at first blush.

So Microsoft claims that Office for the iPad was built from the ground up. From the look and the feel, it does seem a clever adaptation of Office conventions slimmed down and styled for tablet use. Most of the reviews talk of a fast and fluid user experience, though some of the more obscure features found even in Office for the Mac won’t be supported, though that probably doesn’t matter. What’s more, there appears to be decent cloud integration, meaning you can pick up where you left off on an Office document from another platform and continue your work on your iPad.

Microsoft’s target audience is no doubt the business world, which has embraced the iPad with a passion. This is where Microsoft is apt to gain a number of users, but if these companies already have Office 365 licenses, it won’t matter. If they haven’t embraced the cloud yet, there could be a sizable rate of customer conquests. I’m sure Microsoft’s marketing people have been busy crunching the numbers and considering the possibilities.

What’s important for Microsoft is the user license. Surface has done nothing for them, and if Apple can deliver substantial new revenues to its sometimes rival, that works to the advantage of both. Meanwhile, the Office for iPad apps quickly rose to the top of the charts at the App Store. Let’s see how it stands once the early adopters have their copies, and how that impacts the Office 365 signup rate.

If Office for the iPad does well, will that speed up development of Office 2014 for the Mac? I suppose we’ll know soon.

So most of you know that the 30th anniversary of the Mac was observed on January 24 of this year. Unlike in previous years, Apple actually paid attention to the event, and had some videos and other information honoring the anniversary on their site. Certainly those of us who were interested in such things in 1984 no doubt have enjoyed a little reminiscing.

To be sure, the two major Mac magazines, Macworld and Mac|Life, published stories on the subject. The February 2014 issue of the latter ran a piece entitled “30 Years of Mac,” in which they had capsule reports on 30 key developments in the history of the platform.

So far so good.

Now I didn’t read the article right away. I lived this history and thus gave it a lower priority than other stories in that issue. But when I did finally look it over the other day, I was shocked to find so many errors. Some were careless, some no doubt the result of trying to save space, but others simply made no sense.

Was there no fact-checker?

I know when I was writing articles for major tech publications, I always received feedback from editors about this, that, or the other thing. While perfection is impossible, these publications at least made a strong effort to be as factually accurate as possible.

It would take too much space to cover all the errors, so I’ll just focus on a few highlights.

So in item number four, which focuses on the Macintosh Portable, it states that its successor was the PowerBook 170. But item number 6, “By the Book,” reports that “the entry-level PowerBook 100 had mostly the same specs as the behemoth it replaced,” and I’m sure you can see the mistake.

Item number 8, “Powering Up,” invents a non-existent PowerPC upgrade card that was supposedly available before Apple released the first Macintosh sporting the processor in 1994. I suppose they confused the fact that the first chip containing the processor, the PowerPC 601, was released in 1992. It was supposed to end up in computers from IBM, but they never actually shipped.

The next item, “Send in the Clones,” assumes that “Mac clones didn’t make a very big splash,” but that’s not true. The intent of the clones was to expand the Mac marketplace. Instead, such cloners as Power Computing went with a vengeance after Apple’s core market of content creators with cheaper boxes and faster processors. All right, they were assembled with the same rough-and-ready lack of style as a standard PC box, but it was still a real Mac. I even owned a couple.

If the folks at Mac|Life had really checked the history, they’d see that Steve Jobs pulled the plug on the cloning program not because it wasn’t successful, but because it was successful in a way that hurt Apple.

Speaking of Jobs, item 11, “The Return of Steve Jobs,” merely reports that he “initially returned to Apple in 1996 as an ‘informal advisor.’ But the reason for his return is wiped away, since it was the result of Apple’s purchase of Steve Jobs’ company, NeXT for $400 million. The purchase was announced on December 20 of that year, and it brought with it the OS that eventually morphed into OS X. How soon they forget.

One the sillier mistakes is found in item number 12, “Introducing Bill Gates,” where they report on the deal Apple made with Microsoft involving the latter’s $150 million investment. As part of this transaction, according to Mac|Life, it was revealed “that Microsoft would be bringing Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, and Java to the Mac.”

Java? Java has nothing to do with Microsoft.

Besides, Internet Explorer and Office were already available on the Mac. The agreement called for Microsoft’s browser to become the default on the platform, and for Office development to continue for the next five years.

From the amnesia department, item 17, “X Marks the Spot” heralds the arrival of OS X in a buggy, feature-bare public beta in September, 2000. But nothing is said how that related to the 1996 purchase of NeXT that made it all happen. Out of sight, out of mind, I suppose.

I could go on, but I’ll mention just a couple more.

So, under item 20, “Amazing Developments,” Mac|Life publishes a photo of Steve Jobs delivering a presentation that’s dated 2002. But if you look at the pie chart presented in the photo, you see it covers “US Mobile Browser Usage,” and mentions the iPhone, Android and RIM, based on a set of 2010 statistics from Net Applications. Need I say more?

Even the story about the “Intel Inside” transition gets a key detail wrong. Steve Jobs didn’t announce the transition from PowerPC to Intel in 2006. It happened at a Worldwide Developers Conference in 2005, although the hardware didn’t actually appear until the following year. This move was designed to give developers more time to build Intel compatible apps.

The Mac has indeed had a storied history. There are lots of anecdotes that can be told way beyond a simple recitation of key milestones. But the lack of research, and the lack of fact-checking, has made the Mac|Life article less useful for those who want to know how we went from there to here.

The other day I mentioned a little exchange I had with an online poster who believes that Macs are high-end consumer machines, not suitable for business. As I said at the time, this is the sort of myth that has existed since the very first Mac arrived in 1984. Then it was about the pretty interface. When Microsoft cribbed that interface, the argument changed, but it never ended.

Well, according to a survey from Parallels, who makes virtualization software that lets you run Windows and other operating systems on the Mac, some 45% of the 200 IT heads surveyed presently give employees the choice of using a Mac at work.

The survey also reported that 77% of those IT “decision makers” find Macs more reliable than Windows PCs, 65% said Macs were easier to support, and 65% believed that offering Macs would help attract more employees. At a time when unemployment remains relatively high, the last is a surprising result.

The survey also indicated that Mac misconceptions still persist in the workplace. 68% of those who work at businesses that don’t use Macs said it was because they couldn’t run Windows apps on OS X. That this survey was conducted by a company that makes software that lets you run Windows on a Mac makes the result doubly curious. Clearly these IT people don’t know anything about Boot Camp either, which lets you reboot your Mac under Windows.

So maybe Apple needs to do a better job of educating businesses about what a Mac can do. Or maybe these IT pros need to do more thinking rather than acting. You see, Apple does have information online that covers Windows compatibility, such as this page. There’s another page that covers the reasons why a Mac is suited for business use.

All right, these pages are heavy on promotion as much as they offer the basics of why a Mac plays nicely in the business world. As the survey shows, more and more businesses let employees bring their own hardware, and the Mac’s status in the office has been helped greatly by the popularity of the iPhone. Indeed, a published report this week indicates that Apple recently sold the 500 millionth iPhone. The critics, by the way, seem to forget that, when Steve Jobs first announced the iPhone, he said Apple would be happy to have a 1% market share by the end of 2008.

This doesn’t mean that a Mac will suddenly take over the business PC space. Although PC sales are declining, they are well entrenched in the office. Many of the Macs that appear in a business environment are note-books, used by employees as a combo office and travel machine. The cheap PC in the front office will remain the cheap PC in the front office.

In addition, many PCs are outfitted with vertical applications for which there is no Mac equivalent. Using a Mac with virtualization software wouldn’t make sense from a standpoint of cost. And even if there is a Mac alternative, the issues of migration and retraining will often make that a difficult choice. Also, if a business is filling the office with cheap PCs that maybe run a single app or two, there’s hardly a reason to replace those machines with Macs, though a bank of Mac minis would seem quite suitable. One still has to be realistic.

But the myths will persist as the PC fades in the rear view mirror. Yet another was the claim from that online poster that even the Mac Pro workstation is really just a toy for hobbyists making electronic music. I don’t think such a ludicrous comment is worth any further explanation.

Now some suggest Apple might have done better early on in working harder to address the needs of businesses, such as offering specially configured Macs, and maybe even more low-cost models than just today’s Mac mini. But as Dell and HP have demonstrated in recent years, there’s little or no profit in selling tens of millions of cheap PC boxes.

That doesn’t stop Apple from marketing premium PCs — premium meaning not just the price but the hardware — for both consumers and businesses. The ability to bring a Mac into an office environment will also generate some sales from employees who don’t have to buy a PC because they want to duplicate the work machine at home.

But the presence of Macs in the enterprise has mostly flown below the radar when it comes to Apple. The information about Macs and business is relatively sparse, and the Apple Store, although businesses are welcomed, generally caters to the consumer.

Apple’s approach has been to build consumer interest in a product, and let it naturally spread into the business world. That approach has certainly worked with the iPhone and the iPad, and Apple does provide easy management tools for businesses to deploy hardware and apps. Indeed, when you consider mobile gear in the enterprise, Apple actually dominates.