I wonder how often Microsoft has actually done anything original. Sure, I suppose you can find instances where they have done successful adaptations of intriguing technology, or have bought a company to acquire needed intellectual property. But when they do their own in-house variations on a theme in response to someone else’s innovations, they can come up with pathetic results.

Consider Windows 8. The concept of presenting icons as tiles was tried on the Zune music player, and it failed. It was tried yet again with Windows Phone 7, and it still failed, although Microsoft is hoping the newest version of their smartphone software, combined with the manufacturing muscle of Nokia, will yield success. Oh, and Microsoft hopes to have Siri-like personal assistant functionality too some time next year that, with a better marketing message, will help boost sales. But don’t bet on it!

So consider the initial Windows 8 announcement, coming on the heels of news that Apple’s OS X Lion would incorporate some features borrowed from the iOS. In response, Microsoft decreed that both desktop and mobile versions must inherit the same overlay or user interface theme. That, I suppose, was meant to do one better than Apple, although I still have qualms about the whole thing after playing with the first Windows 8 public beta version.

Naturally, you had to wonder just how Microsoft will distribute Windows 8 after Apple made Lion a mostly downloadable product. I said “mostly,” because there is a USB stick version, if you’re willing to pay a $40 premium for it.

But Apple’s online distribution scheme is simplicity itself, maybe too simple. If you’re running OS X Snow Leopard and want to switch to Lion, you just have to go to the Mac App Store and buy a copy. Within seconds, it’ll begin to download to your Mac. Once the download is done, you launch the installer and let it do its thing. After the restart, you’re ready to roll. You don’t have to serialize your copy, or have it pass an online verification. It just works, and at $29.99, the price can’t be beat.

The advantages of this system are undeniable. For consumers, all the Macs in your home can get that update without buying family packs. Small businesses should be able to get away with a similar scenario, although larger companies will want to use Apple’s business ordering and licensing system.

I’m not unaware of the downsides, for those running older Mac OS X versions, but are otherwise compatible with Lion. Not having a broadband pipe in your home or office is also a problem, but you can always go to a Wi-Fi hotspot, or an Apple Store to retrieve your copy of Lion.

Now you had to expect that Microsoft would want to consider a similar scheme for Windows but, typical of their usual behavior, they can’t figure out how to make it simple. In one of those lame press releases for which Microsoft is famous, they treat the decision to offer an online installation of Windows 8 as something special, rather than just following a trend, recognizing, in the words of Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft’s Business Division, that “buying boxed software is quickly becoming the exception rather than the rule, with more and more software being purchased online as broadband penetration increases and large-size media downloads become more common.” Notice they don’t mention Apple, but that’s nothing unusual.

However, Microsoft will still continue to offer boxed versions, not with USB sticks, but with traditional DVDs. Microsoft just cannot move forward without lugging all that extra baggage.

The Windows 8 download, according to Sinofsky, will supposedly allow the customer to “pre-key” the installer, which, I suppose, means that your installer will already be serialized ahead of the download. The installation will therefore still be restricted to a single PC. How that makes it easier escapes me, since it still involves some sort of serialization scheme. The setup process will also involve using the online installer to scan a PC for compatibility ahead of the download. This is also Microsoft’s vision of simplicity.

Of course, with a Windows PC, the climate is far more complicated than on a Mac. It’s quite possible the user will be running loads of software and drivers that won’t be compatible with Windows 8, and it makes sense that the installation process alert users to the dangers. On the other hand, if the customer has already paid for an online download, does that mean they’ll get their money back if the installation is somehow deemed incompatible?

The other issue is the cost. Microsoft derives a hefty portion of their revenue from Windows licenses. They simply cannot afford to deliver a $29.99 product and expect a decent return. Sure, OEMs, PC makers who preload Windows on their computers, won’t pay much more than that for a basic license. But they are buying them by the millions. Microsoft is notorious for extorting loads of cash from individual customers for Windows upgrades, not to mention offering a confusing set of product alternatives. So there’s an “Ultimate” version with all the features, plus cheaper versions where selected sets of features are removed in exchange for a lower price. That’s also an impediment to simplicity. You have to expect that Windows 8 will be marketed in the same fashion.

Well, at least you can hope that the downloadable version will cost less. It would also be intriguing to see if Microsoft takes the hint and offers just one version for all, with perhaps a family pack for home users and a comparable deal for small businesses. But, as I said, the concept of simple continues to elude Microsoft.

An interesting phenomenon is playing out in the PC industry. To see where it’s going, let’s take a look at the past, particularly in the 1990s, when Apple as a company was regarded as lost. Before Steve Jobs returned, plenty of red ink was being shed, and some suggested Apple would be gone in a few months.

Consider a certain Macworld Expo keynote in 1997, where Steve Jobs, having recently regained control of Apple as iCEO, introduced Microsoft’s Bill Gates on a large screen via a satellite feed. You could feel and hear the boos in the audience. But the event was designed to announce that Microsoft had invested $150 million in Apple, and had agreed to a five-year deal to continue to produce Office for the Mac. Talk about confidence. And, of course, the Mac version of Office is still being produced.

But the most significant remark came from Jobs, who said that the PC wars were over, that Microsoft had won. Maybe he was right in a matter of speaking, but that victory may be a hollow one as time goes on.

In recent years, sales of Macs have increased by larger percentages than those of most PC makers. Nowadays, PC sales remain relatively flat, as even the largest companies are struggling to move product. Where Mac sales were once in the hundreds of thousands each quarter, now they are roughly five million for the same period. Apple is entering the top four and top five positions among PC makers around the world. This is a pretty amazing achievement for a so-called “niche” product, or, as Microsoft Steve Ballmer once suggested, a rounding error.

But when you analyze PC sales, it is becoming more and more obvious that you cannot limit market share figures to traditional desktop and note-book computers. The picture has become a whole lot more complicated, and it all began with a monster that may have been created by Microsoft.

For a number of years, Microsoft touted tablet computers as the next great thing, perhaps believing that if they said it long enough, it might just happen. But their vision of a tablet, essentially a tricked out note-book with a rotating display sensitive to a stylus, was too expensive and never caught on with consumers. Sure, some businesses embraced them, but not in large quantities.

So when the iPad arrived, the skeptics howled that it was nothing more than a glorified and swollen iPad touch. That is until customers embraced them in huge numbers, and higher and higher percentages of big corporations either tested or deployed them. Suddenly the industry took notice, but, unlike those other tablets, they weren’t initially classified as personal computers.

Of course, that takes us back to what a PC is supposed to be, and whether the iPad or any similar mobile device can fulfill all or most of the same functions. It’s not necessarily whether it uses a physical keyboard or not, which is probably the biggest area where the iPad differs from traditional desktops and note-books. And even then, if you must, you can connect a keyboard to it, so that argument goes out the window.

The other issue is screen size, but don’t forget that, for a number of years, those original Apple PowerBooks had displays that were smaller than the iPad, and even where the sizes more or less aligned, the iPad had more pixels.

Now it is reported that some of the companies that survey PC sales are including tablets too. Certainly, traditional PC makers who have had no luck competing with the iPad are going to freak. But when you combine Apple’s Mac and iPad sales into a single category, which in theory is where they ought to be, something magical happens.

Indeed, projections indicate that, assuming a huge uptake of the expected iPad 3 in 2012, Apple is poised to become the number one PC maker on the planet ahead of HP. The fact that Microsoft is going to deploy Windows 8 on traditional PCs and tablets indicates that, to them at least, they exist in the same category. Microsoft did present tablets as just another type of PC that, to them, was meant to run Microsoft Windows. That Apple chooses to use different operating systems on Macs and iPads shouldn’t change things.

So, yes, if you consider a PC as defined by the standards of the 1990s, I suppose Microsoft’s dominance is not expected to end anytime soon. But as soon as that huge fly in the ointment, in the form of the iPad, comes into play, the situation changes. Apple is a major player, and it doesn’t seem likely that Microsoft’s will alter their vision of what a tablet should be.

But there are numbers and there are numbers, and not all market research firms are quite ready to embrace this new reality. But that situation is destined to change.

When HP released the failed TouchPad for the same price as the iPad, few lined up to buy any, and no wonder. It was clearly rushed to market with an unfinished operating system, a severe lack of apps, and no real-world advantages over any of the existing tablets. However, after abruptly discontinuing the product, and putting the WebOS on the chopping block or hoping to pawn it off on some unsuspecting handset maker, HP had a fire sale. For $99, you could get your own TouchPad, while they lasted, and suddenly customers swooped in to get one.

Indeed, when my son visited us from his home in Madrid in August, one of his friends wrote him and asked him to try to get a TouchPad. He was too late to find one at the local stores, and not inclined to waste a lot of extra time in hunt for one online. It’s not that the TouchPad was such a big deal, other than a now-cheap curiosity.

With the $200 Kindle Fire, parts tear-downs indicate that Amazon is taking a small bath on every unit sold. But that’s not their game plan. They expect you to buy e-books and other products, hoping to make up the difference. If they attract enough new business to compensate, it’s a win. If not, the Fire might be an endangered species.

Right now, the Fire, assuming the reports of an unfinished and somewhat buggy OS doesn’t put off potential customers, stands to benefit by being a potentially credible and far cheaper alternative to the iPad. If you cannot afford a minimum price of $499 (or somewhat less for a refurbished product if you can find one), and you absolutely must have a tablet, no harm in getting a Fire, right?

Now selling a featured product at a loss is not a new marketing gimmick. Gillette does that with razors. If you’re not buying disposables, you have to feed the thing with new blades every so often, and suddenly the profit margins are high, high enough to compensate for a loss leader.

The biggest offenders in the expensive replaceables or consumables space are printer makers. You can get a pretty decent inkjet model for next to nothing. But replace the ink a few times, and the costs swell to levels far beyond the original cost of the product. Sure, some companies promise more pages from a given ink supply at a lower price of admission, but if you haven’t succumbed to that alleged paperless revolution, prepare to pay and continue paying until the thing wears out. Then it’s cheaper to buy a new one.

Apple is in a different business. Every single product is meant to be sold at a decent profit. Smart inventory management, and reported preorders for loads of components, results in keeping the costs as low as possible. Indeed, the iPad came in at hundreds of dollars less than those so-called analysts expected, sending the competition scrambling to keep up. Throwing the conventional wisdom that Apple sells gear at a luxury price on its ear, the iPad’s popularity continues to soar. Indeed, if you combine iPad sales with Mac sales, Apple is poised to become the number one PC maker on the planet in 2012. At the same time, Mac sales, by themselves, continue to outpace the growth rate of most PC makers, even in that so-called post-PC era.

Yes, Apple sells you apps for their mobile gadgets too, but those gadgets are perfectly functional if you never download any, or if you restrict yourself to free apps. Yes, Apple derives profits from their 30% share of app and e-book sales, but the margins aren’t very high. They’re in the hardware business.

For Amazon, their loss-leader scheme may pay off, despite the Fire’s acknowledged bugs. Early indications are that Amazon might move a pretty decent number of them this holiday season. One particular target will be customers who might appreciate a seven-inch tablet over a 9.7-inch tablet simply because of the greater portability. Other customers simply cannot afford an iPad, and find the existing lineup of Android-based gear to be totally unacceptable. If they are existing Amazon customers, the Fire may be a great choice for e-books and video playback. Or at least that’s the theory, because I’ve read reviews that point to fuzzy text and ragged video playback. If Amazon can’t deliver a software update to release those 1.0 bugs, they might be in trouble on the long haul.

At least the traditional Kindle, within its feature contraints, continues to fare well anyway. Even though performance is tepid, the E Ink display is great for reading a regular black and white books. In fact, it’s considered superior to the text on iPad, despite the fact that the page turning process is slow. With customer patience, and a cheap price, the Kindle has literally changed the publishing world. These days, it’s said that more people buy e-books than the printed versions. To Amazon, it doesn’t matter. They will continue to sell both. What’s more, the very existence of the Android-based Kindle Fire may put the nail in the coffin as far as other Android tablets are concerned, at least for this holiday season.

Whether the Amazon Fire will eat into iPad sales is an open question. Some surveys show a small possible loss, but that won’t be known until the holiday quarter numbers are tallied, although the impact may be obvious if store inventories of iPads seem to swell.

But the onus is still on Amazon to make sure their new tablet can deliver a smooth, elegant user experience for its low price, and you know that old saw about bad first impressions.

If you look at the sales figures, you can’t help but notice that Google’s Android platform is still doing exceedingly well. Yes, Apple continues to chart huge sales gains for the iPhone. Yes, the iPhone 4s is still backordered. But the conventional wisdom from the media is that it’s Google’s game to lose.

From a pure market share standpoint, maybe they’re right, at least until you begin to see why there are more Android phones out there. Suddenly, the picture isn’t clear-cut.

Part of the problem is that some commentators want you to believe that the Apple versus Google competition is nothing more than a replay of the old Mac versus Windows wars. There can be only one, as they said in some of those cult movies, but that’s not necessarily true. In fact, it’s no longer true in the PC world.

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