Now this may be the sort of column that works against my interests, since I’ve long been a member of the crowd that keeps making suggestions about improving Apple’s marketing and product plans. Like others in the tech media, though, I can tell you that I have no experience whatever running a multinational corporation. So I can say without fear of contradiction that none of my ideas of that sort have been tested and proven, even on a small scale.

At the same time, I like to think that, as a customer of Apple (and Microsoft for that matter), I can certainly tell you what I like and don’t like. That doesn’t mean that these companies should listen to me, but when lots of people demonstrate similar tastes and desires, maybe there’s some product potential that can be exploited.

On the media front, however, it’s all-too-common for commentators to behave as if a company, or even a government agency, is run by idiots and if they’d just listen to a few new ideas, their ideas of course, they’d fix whatever problems they allegedly have.

Long, long ago, for example, Apple was repeatedly urged to clone the Mac, allow other companies to sell products running the Mac operating system. In the mid-1990s, they listened, and it nearly destroyed the company. The companies that were licensed to build Mac compatible hardware, based on Apple’s own reference motherboard designs, went after the mother ship’s core markets with a vengeance. They showed more greed than common sense, of course, never considering the possibility that, without a prosperous Apple, they’d have nothing to sell.

Thank heavens Steve Jobs saw the folly of that misguided venture, and put a stop to it when he took over Apple. But with the advent of Intel-based Macs, those clamoring for cloning came out of the closet and, yet again, insisted that the Mac OS should not be allowed to work only on an Apple product. There are those unofficial hacks that allow you to induce Mac OS X to work even on a white box PC. There are a couple of companies trying to make a business out of it, and one of those, Psystar, is, justifiably, embroiled in a legal battle with Apple.

As I have said before, people who are in favor of opening up Mac OS X to other PC makers just aren’t doing the math. Apple makes the lion’s share of its income from selling hardware. Putting Mac OS X on the cheapest PCs on the planet, even if they didn’t offer a similar customer experience, would inevitably cannibalize sales from Apple. It’s not a question of whether a real Mac is better or not.

It would also make it far more difficult — and costly — for Apple to do quality testing, since Mac OS X would have to be compatible with tens of thousands of potential system installations. This is one reason, indeed, why Microsoft has always had difficulties delivering Windows in a timely fashion, and the situation no doubt explains why severe incompatibilities inevitably follow a new release. Sure, Apple isn’t perfect, but Microsoft, despite much greater company resources, is constantly playing catch up.

When it comes to Mac hardware, whatever sales figures Apple reports next week, you just know they won’t be as high as they might have been had the world economy been growing at a normal pace. So, of course, analysts are admonishing Apple to cut prices fast to salvage lost sales. However, Apple looks at the long-term, and it’s clear that short-term price cuts sufficient to fuel sales would make it difficult, if not impossible, to raise prices later on. So they’d be stuck with reduced profits, or the need to shave production costs to the bone possibly at the expense of product quality.

What the analysts also seem to forget is that Apple has billions of dollars in the bank, and even a few quarters of red ink wouldn’t put the company on the brink. When it comes to inventory management, COO Tim Cook is said to be one of the best in the business, and thus is perfectly capable of making sure Apple doesn’t close out a quarter with too much unsold hardware that they’d be forced to move at fire sale prices.

One more thing the analysts are requesting is a cheaper iPhone. Produce a “nano” version to grab the lower end of the market. Once again, they fail to realize that Apple doesn’t want to compete head-to-head with full-line mobile phone makers, such as Nokia or the fading Motorola.

The iPhone succeeds as a high-end product, one that requires lots of development expense and no doubt more expensive parts than the phones you get free in exchange for two-year contracts. It also means that Apple isn’t put in the position of the many companies that simply throw out tons of product, hoping a few will catch on and make up for the ones that don’t.

Now aren’t you glad Apple doesn’t listen to us or the financial doomsayers?

All right, depending on whom you believe, Apple’s sales were down last quarter. Or maybe they were flat, or perhaps there was a minor uptick, particularly in recent weeks.

Obviously, Microsoft would rather have you believe that PC sales are on the upswing again and Apple’s days in the sun have come to an end. It’s time to get the world back onto the Windows train and consign those would-be upstarts to the dustbins of history.

Yes, it does appear true that U.S. retail sales of Macs weren’t so terrific in January and February, according to surveys conducted by the respectable NPD Group. Knowing some of the people there, I’ll grant that they are serious and dedicated to providing accurate information.

However, those numbers do not reflect the entire story. They do not, for example, include online sales, where Apple does stellar business courtesy of its own site, nor third-party Web-based resellers. Overseas sales are also excluded, and that’s where Apple has been doing quite well in recent years.

Consider that iPod sales for the last quarter of 2008 were slightly depressed in the U.S., but higher in other countries. All told, there was a slight increase.

More to the point, consider that Apple released updates to the Mac desktop lineup in early March, which, for the most part, were ready for immediate delivery. Unconfirmed reports had it that Apple actually had to increase its production runs because of high demand, and it’s certainly possible that declining sales earlier this year were, in part, the result of people holding off their purchases in anticipation of new models.

I am not, however, dismissing the economic situation, of course.

Now Wall Street, in a surprising turnaround, seems bullish on Apple these days. Estimates of the company’s stock price are rising, as are estimates of the quarterly financial results that will be disclosed next week.

Until then, my friends, we won’t really know just how well Apple did, or whether they failed to perform to expectations. Certainly nobody within the company is talking, and outside analysts can all be regarded with a grain of salt. That’s particularly true of the hacks who are desperately trying to put positive spins on Microsoft’s performance, and if they continue to report relatively flat sales, what will they say then?

Before I continue, let me tell you that I do not intend to provide any estimates of Apple’s sales for the last quarter or for this month. Frankly, I have no inside information to present and, while I hope they were flat or on the increase, I can certainly understand how the economy may cause lots of people to give personal computer purchases a far lower priority on their shopping lists.

But consider what’s really happening.

Microsoft’s new ad campaign, demonstrating that if you want to buy crap, you can get plenty of it with a Windows PC, is getting a fair amount of attention. The same holds true for that controversial survey from alleged analyst Roger Kay, who tried desperately to make it seem that it’s an awful lot cheaper to buy and operate a Windows PC when compared to a Mac.

These two attempts to turn negatives into positives simply don’t ring true in any respect. But I won’t repeat my objections. You’ve read about them in past columns, and a number of other tech writers have provided extensive looks into the situation and reached the same conclusions I did.

Certainly it’s true that Apple will do what it can to set a positive ring to its press releases. Sure there are occasional efforts at exaggeration. That’s just good marketing. But Microsoft has gone way beyond that, by actually engaging in blatantly false or misleading advertising and releasing erroneous studies to buttress its fading Windows franchise. In other words, they’re lying, no ifs, ands or buts.

Considering Microsoft’s past history, it’s also possible that they are helping to feed some of the negative stories about poor Mac sales. Maybe not blatantly, but behind the scenes, by providing off-the-record briefings, story suggestions and, just perhaps, by sending Windows fanboys (or girls) free PC note-books equipped with a recent Windows 7 beta to play with. That surely would generate a sufficient amount of positive spin to work against Apple.

Of course, one particular online columnist is suggesting the reverse, that the recent news about Steve Jobs running Apple from his living room sofa while on the mend from his illness was done simply to reassure Wall Street and doesn’t actually reflect the real situation.

Then again, that columnist has no way to know one way or the other, and there is no evidence whatever that the stories about the health of Steve Jobs, originated by the Wall Street Journal, are false. But when Microsoft sets its spin-meisters loose, facts are seldom allowed to get in the way.

So out of the blue, the Wall Street Journal reports that Steve Jobs continues to work closely with Apple on new products, while he recovers from the illness that forced him to take an extended leave of absence. This does little more than confirm what Jobs said months ago when he went on his hiatus. In response, Apple’s stock price continues its generally upward trend, with only a few dips along the way.

Now officially Apple isn’t saying anything new, but you just know that stories that appear in such a prestigious newspaper must (or should) have some degree of substance. WSJ attributes the report to “people familiar with the matter,” without naming their sources.

But the phrase pretty much confirms where it came from, and that’s direct from Apple, but since the information was provided on background, it cannot be attributed to any particular individual. More to the point, it’s clear to me that the WSJ reporters weren’t just lucky. Apple sought them out to get this information published without having to go on record, knowing full well that it would still be accepted as authentic and quoted around the world.

Indeed, that’s what has occurred and, as you might expect, hardly anyone has questioned the report’s reliability. More to the point, it doesn’t seem likely that Apple would officially or unofficially provide any additional illumination. What you read is what you’re going to get, at least for now.

Without evidence to the contrary, I’ll take the story as genuine. Steve Jobs is not, as some feared, at death’s door, and he is indeed recuperating from his illness. More to the point, Apple fully expects him to return to his CEO post as promised by the end of June.

Indeed, it has already been suggested by some that Jobs will make a surprise cameo appearance during the WWDC keynote earlier that month to accept loud cheers and demonstrate to one and all that he is just about ready to resume full command of the company he co-founded. Of course there’s no indication that such a thing’s going to happen, but I rather suspect eyes will be on that keynote anyway in anticipation of a development of this sort.

To show just how much a single executive means in the tech industry, the return of most any other leader of a large company would probably receive a round of collective yawns. One example is Bill Gates. Let’s say that he decides that he just can’t stand spending the rest of his life as a full-time philanthropist and needs to assume a new position at Microsoft. Just how would the media react?

Well, I suppose it would receive a few headlines from Microsoft fanboys proclaiming his second coming as true salvation for a company that has seen reduced market share and has found it necessary to dump 5,000 employees.

Beyond that, I suspect few will care one way or the other, just as little changed when he “retired” last year.

As far as Steve Jobs is concerned, I suppose the downside is that, just when Wall Street was becoming comfortable with the prospect that he’d never return, and the company could live long and prosper without him, it turns out he was always around, if in a reduced capacity.

That would mean, for example, that Jobs would be credited as largely responsible for the great promise of the iPhone 3.0 SDK, the new lineup of Mac desktops, the revised iPod shuffle and so on and so forth. So maybe the company would do fine if he decided he couldn’t return for one reason or another, but we just don’t know.

I understand why Apple fed this story to the WSJ. It was surely a huge confidence builder, and that makes perfect sense. The timing may also indicate that Jobs and his physicians feel he is recovering from his illness more or less on or ahead of schedule and that they don’t expect any setbacks.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the human condition, nothing is ever certain. As much as any reasonable person would hope that Jobs is fully on the mend and on the road to full or near-full recovery, things can happen that just can’t be predicted. So if things went badly, Apple’s stock price might experience an even larger reversal.

In any case, perhaps it doesn’t really matter, and a worst-case scenario is highly unlikely. Apple accomplished its goal and that, my friends, is that.

I’ve been extremely hard on Microsoft in recent years. First, I’ve criticized them for their bait and switch and other shady marketing schemes, and then I’ve even gone so far as to suggest they are doomed to fail big time in a few years.

I don’t think many of you agree with me about Microsoft’s potential for future irrelevance. After all they still have billions in the bank, and they make huge profits on their software. All right, they are laying off 5,000 people, but maybe they were simply overstaffed and used the state of the economy as an excuse to dump unproductive workers.

But I’m quite serious about what I say, and I think Microsoft’s sordid history is sufficient to warrant some close scrutiny by the authorities. We in the states shouldn’t depend on the European Union to do the heavy lifting when it comes to fining Microsoft for various and sundry offenses.

Sure, the Department of Justice also clamped down on the company more or less, but the regulation-free environment of the Bush administration probably lessened the penalties. For example, efforts to break up the company were quickly abandoned.

Now in recent issues of our weekly newsletter, I have reminded you of some of the questionable tactics Microsoft has employed over the years. They promised technologies that were either never delivered or released in crippled form in order to ward off competitors. That the media continued to believe them through the years without bothering to follow up on past misrepresentations is highly unfortunate. It almost seems as if too many so-called reporters are afraid to ask Microsoft the hard questions about their shady behavior.

But let me put my cards on the table. You see, there’s nothing wrong with being a fierce competitor. It’s a jungle out there, and may the best company win. All too often, however, Microsoft has succeeded not because they built the best product, but because they were able to stomp down other companies in a dishonest fashion to gain ascendancy.

However, their worse offense was the early programming decisions that failed to anticipate the rise of Internet malware, and thus left Windows users supremely vulnerable. Some years ago, Consumer Reports published an article stating that some nine billion dollars had been lost by businesses as a result of PC-based computer viruses in the previous two years. What wasn’t mentioned is that every single penny was due to a Windows malware infection of one sort or another.

I suppose Microsoft could defend themselves by claiming that no computing platform is immune to malware. That is true. They could also state that they are targeted more often because they occupy the number one position in the operating system market. Further, that it’s largely the fault of their customers that their systems are not properly protected. Microsoft claims to release security patches in a timely fashion, and security software companies will also update malware definition files as soon as new infections are discovered.

This combination, they would probably assert, ought to keep most PC users fully protected. Yet, as many of you know, millions of PCs were invaded by the Conficker worm, and its full impact is not yet certain. All right, Microsoft will also claim that those who suffered from those infections failed to take proper security precautions. It is, therefore, their fault.

Unfortunately, a defense of that sort is based on the assumption that all malware can be controlled with Windows patches and security updates. The problem is that many PC viruses infect a large number of computers before patches are developed and virus definitions updated. That is, of course, the shortcoming of these techniques, since Microsoft and the other companies are always playing a game of catchup.

So how does the FTC get involved? Well, first, an action on their part could be based on misleading advertising. An example would be that fake survey Microsoft commissioned from industry analyst Roger Kay to prove PCs cost thousands less than Macs to buy and operate over a period of five years. The flaws are so blatant that I wonder how the guilty parties believed they could get away with it, and not suffer from careful scrutiny — and not just from loyal Mac users.

Other deceptive tactics would be more difficult to prove, but maybe worth the effort nonetheless. It would involve demonstrating that the flawed development process of Windows made it more susceptible to malware than it would have otherwise been. The examples of Unix, for example, would show that it’s possible to build a PC operating system that makes it more difficult for malware to spread, thus perhaps saving customers billions of dollars in lost productivity and revenue.

Indeed, I wonder why customers aren’t filing class action lawsuits right and left against Microsoft for its various and sundry offenses. Sure, no doubt there are such actions here and there, but none come to mind of a significant nature that are apt to gain sufficient credibility to yield positive results.

I realize that my request is difficult, and the FTC no doubt feels it has more important things to do. Then again, don’t they use Windows PCs too in large part? Surely they know what’s wrong with Microsoft without people like me having to tell them.