As I listened to the talking heads on the various cable TV news channels this week, I got to thinking that maybe they feel their audience is sick and tired about stories of a volatile stock market, a U.S. auto industry in distress and other oppressive events. So, having nothing better to do, they delivered warnings about the impending April Fool’s Day worm known as Conficker.

A Mac security software developer, Intego has this statement about the significance of this threat: “This worm, called Conficker, as well as Downadup and Kido, has infected unknown millions of Windows computers, and is expected to become active on April 1, 2009. For now, researchers are unsure of what the worm may do; it is just sitting on infected computers waiting for instructions. Researchers think it will connect to remote servers and download code and then become virulent.”

Certainly this is the sum total of what is known so far, except for ongoing speculation, and the news channels were filled with warnings to stay up to date on your virus protection software and so on an so forth. Few, however, bothered to mention this one salient fact, and I again quote Intego’s statement: “This worm, which affects Windows computers, has no effect on Mac OS X; at least not yet.”

Now that final phrase is based on absolutely nothing. There is no evidence whatever that a Windows virus has ever infected Mac OS X in any way. However, this doesn’t mean a Mac isn’t vulnerable, though not in the Mac OS X environment. You see, Mac users who run Windows either via Boot Camp or through a virtual machine, such as Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion, can be impacted, again within those environments.

In those cases, it makes perfect sense to keep up to date on your security software. Indeed, the latest versions of both commercial virtual machine applications ship with a security suite, so, assuming you’ve kept it up to date, all that’s necessary is to make sure that the latest virus signatures are downloaded and installed.

What troubles me most, however, is how the boys that continue to cry wolf continue to rant and rave about potential security lapses under Mac OS X and how the sky’s about to fall at any moment. Certainly Apple isn’t perfect, although it does appear that they are taking such matters seriously enough to deliver periodic updates that patch holes in the system discovered by security researchers around the world.

A tribute to the quality of their work is the fact that, except for some proofs of concept and a few Trojan Horses, Mac users by and large have so far been spared of the misery inflicted on their fellow Windows users. This doesn’t mean, of course, that the situation can’t or won’t change. I’m most concerned about the fact that premature fear mongering will just cause people to ignore the real threat when and if it arrives.

But maybe that doesn’t matter to the folks who are hot on the trail of the maximum number of hits for their fear-mongering pieces of misinformation. If the real threat arrives, they’ll just say “We told you so,” and pat themselves on their backs for being so prophetic.

At the same time, I’m not going to dispute the possibility that we’ve been living on borrowed time for the past eight years, since Mac OS X first debuted. All right, maybe the fact that Windows still commands nearly 90% of the market is one reason why Macs have been relatively free of April Fool’s worms and such, although the mainstream media doesn’t always make that distinction. If the Mac had 20% or 30% of the market, it’s possible that Internet criminals would target he platform more consistently to do their dirty work. On the other hand, Unix-based operating systems have been around an awfully long time. The first computer virus appeared in the Unix environment. However, Windows, which was not originally designed to interact with a wide open network — the Internet — got targeted early and consistently, and there’s been no letup.

Indeed, it’s a sure thing that lots of Windows users may remain unaware of the threat, despite the massive publicity the matter has received. I got a letter from someone today, an educator that I considered well-informed, who confidently wrote: “stick with Windows XP and have great virus protection … THAT’s the REAL solution!”

When I reminded him that there’s nothing inherent in the Windows XP installation that would necessarily protect him from malware of this sort, he responded and admitted that, yes, he does have an up-to-date security suite installed. So that rendered his claim pretty much irrelevant. Indeed, if he wants an operating system that’s more secure, and he isn’t inclined to switch to the Mac, he could upgrade to Windows Vista.

And despite the fear, uncertainty and doubt on the part of some members of the media, informed or otherwise, I am not going to tell Windows users “I told you so.” Instead, I’ll just urge them to make sure their PCs are protected, particularly the ones used in business. They do not need any more misery in their lives these days.

You no doubt heard the report the other day, about someone cracking Apple’s Safari in just a few minutes and taking home $5,000 for their efforts. What you didn’t know, until you read the fine print of course, is that this particular person spent weeks investigating possible security flaws, and, no doubt, rehearsing the routine so it would go off without a hitch in a public presentation.

Since all software has potential security lapses, about the best you can say for this sort of exercise is that the performance was good, and maybe there ought to be an Oscar for so-called security experts who can demonstrate their skills in public with the appropriate level of bluster and efficiency.

Not mentioned in those headlines is the fact that Microsoft’s browsers also succumbed to security breaches in short order, but then you expected that right?

So, no, you don’t have to order some security software to protect your Mac. At least not yet. What is unfortunate, though, is that by crying wolf on a regular basis for the past eight years, if and when a real threat does arrive, few will believe it’s for real. That’s the real tragedy of all this headline-grabbing behavior.

The other recent headline concerns some new online ads from Microsoft, in which they send someone to an Apple Store in search of a 17-inch note-book for $1,000. Now of course they know that there is no such animal, and that the buyer would end up in a regular consumer electronics store where they can buy a piece of junk that meets this singular specification.

It is very much akin to the request to purchase a new 2009 car in the U.S. for $10,000, sans rebates, incentives and other dealer or manufacturer bribes. Yes, you can find something at that price, but when you begin to examine the options chart and add the things that you really need, such as a radio an air conditioning, you’ll find that the price begins to rise real fast.

And, no, I’m not going to discuss that $2,000 mini-car from Tata Motors of India. Once it is upgraded to U.S. safety and emissions standards and given a reasonable number of options that would be acceptable to Americans, the price would also rise to a level way above that level. Then again, the chances that it’ll ever see American shores, except for auto shows and other demonstrations, is probably real slim.

In any case, Microsoft wants you to think that you have to be “cool” to want to pay the alleged Apple Tax when you can get a perfectly serviceable HP note-book for 25% of the price of the 17-inch MacBook Pro. What they don’t tell you is that if you actually went so far as to equip an HP to match a Mac, and not saddle yourself with a paltry 1600 x 900 screen resolution (Apple’s product gives you a native resolution of 1920 by 1200), the real prices would actually be extremely close.

What Microsoft is basically doing is akin to the car maker that entices you to visit the showroom to buy that awfully cheap vehicle, only to find that it’s either not in stock, or requires expensive upgrades to make it suitable for regular people. Either way, the salesperson would be only delighted to steer you to the vehicle they really want to sell you.

I suppose, then, that Microsoft should classify themselves as bait and switch artists of the first order, because they’ll been playing that game for years. Ask a Microsoft executive sometime about the fate of Cairo and other technologies they touted years ago that simply never appeared in real products. What, for that matter, about the new file system and other components cut from Windows Vista that are not going to appear in Windows 7?

That takes us to the industry analysts who tried to tell us that Apple couldn’t possibly succeed without Steve Jobs at the helm and that the road to hell remained ahead of them if he didn’t return as promised in late June.

Now I don’t know anything about his present condition or if he will extend his sick leave, quit the company, or amaze us all and show up for an unscheduled WWDC keynote in early June. However, so long as he is still breathing with or without assistance, I expect he’ll be busy working with Apple’s leadership to formulate strategy. If he is destined never to return, no doubt there are plans in place already that would cover Apple’s product and marketing plans several years out. You see, unlike far too many companies in this business, Apple doesn’t believe in short-term knee-jerk behavior. It’s not just today’s balance sheet that matters, but the ones five or ten years from now.

This is not to say that Apple doesn’t do foolish things, release products too early, or build gadgets that don’t really catch a breeze and succeed beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. They should be taken to task for their failures, but the real ones, not the imaginary ones that are strictly designed to look good in print.

I was 11 when I originally learned how to type. No, I didn’t take a course at school. In fact, my mom had rented a typewriter — an electric model — and gave me a few pointers on where to put my fingers. The rest I had to more or less figure out by myself.

That typewriter, an old IBM, was a predecessor to the legendary IBM Selectric, which became my favorite writing tool until it developed a few critical mechanical problems in the mid-1980s that would be costly to repair. However, by then, I had discovered the Mac.

However, the ultimate comfort of that Selectric was never equalled by any keyboard built by Apple. No, not even the legendary Extended Keyboard II, a product subsequently mimicked to a large extent by the Matias Tactile Pro, courtesy of similar key switches.

Yet, the Apple keyboard wasn’t my favorite by a long shot. The hefty, springy feel was great if you were accustomed to pounding your keyboards into submission, but that wasn’t my scene. The soft touch and the accompanying clack made by the Selectric and later IBM keyboards still echoed in my ears, long after I stopped using them.

Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.

When Mac OS X was first released eight years ago, a number of smart programmers found simple ways to customize the interface and behavior of Apple’s Unix-based OS. What made these methods all the more intriguing is that all they were doing was putting pretty faces on features that already existed. Only, for reason’s known only to Apple, they were simply not enabled within the graphical interface.

Consider, for example, the position of the Dock. Did you know it can be placed at the top of the screen? What sort of legerdemain do you have to use to accomplish that miracle? Well, the capability is already present, available in Mac OS X’s command line, the underbelly of the system. Such applications as TinkerTool allow you to easily access that and dozens of other features with simple checkboxes.

What about the dreaded 3D Dock introduced in Leopard? Well, it doesn’t bother me — or maybe I’ve just grown accustomed to its face — but you’re not stuck with it unless you decide to put the Dock on the sides of your display. Indeed, a number of those customizing tools will take care of the problem or, if you prefer, open Mac OS X’s Terminal, which you can find in the Utilities folder.

After it launches, you’ll see your username, followed by a dollar sign. Now simply enter this command, precisely as I’ve typed it (no periods please): defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean YES; killall Dock

When you press the Return key the Dock will quit (leave the screen) and return in 2D mode.

To restore it to its 3D glory, just reverse the process with: defaults write com.apple.dock no-glass -boolean NO; killall Dock

Simple enough, right? The question is, of course, why Apple adds features to Mac OS X but doesn’t enable them. Are they working in secret with those shareware developers, so that there’s still a market for system enhancement utilities?

Probably not. But while talking with prolific author Joe Kissell on this week’s tech radio show about his new e-book, “Take Control of the Mac Command Line with Terminal,” he came up with the term “Simplicity Police.” I didn’t invent it. He was simply describing Apple’s fanatical desire to make things as easy as possible.

I can see his point, at least compared to Windows, where many elements of the user interface, while quite visible, are simply irritatingly complex to use for normal people. Now some Windows users will rag on me for that statement, saying I’m just too stupid to understand their purpose and value. Let me just say that I am comfortable using the command line when necessary to manage our Linux-based Web server, so the accusation is without merit.

On the other hand, I do agree that Apple is overcompensating. They’d do better, to echo Kissell’s feelings on the matter, to have an Advanced option in, say, System Preferences. Once selected, there will be additional checkboxes strategically placed throughout Mac OS X’s user interface to allow you to access all or most of these extra features.

Sure, I know that might not sit well with the developers who hope to earn some extra cash from Apple’s decision to forgo such choices. But it’s also true that a fair number of Mac users these days are Windows converts. Those of you who switched from Microsoft’s operating system are accustomed to those extra options, and you might appreciate having more checkboxes on a Mac as well.

Of course, you can see Apple’s schizophrenic behavior in the Mighty Mouse. Even though it masquerades as a single-button mouse, a couple of clicks in the Mouse preference panel lets you access its right-click feature and other options. Mac users who are accustomed to a single button don’t have to change their ways. Those who prefer it the way it’s done on all other computing platforms can have the extra button and, of course, the scroll button. I will ignore the ability to press the sites to access additional features, since it’s so uncomfortable.

If you have been lucky enough to acquire one of the new unibody Mac note-books, again you’ll see a similar behavior. The single glass trackpad hides the ability to have it provide the same two-button mode as a Windows note-book. Or use it in the same fashion as on older models, which employ a single button.

But at least Apple has afforded you the choice, without forcing you to install some third party input device utility. That’s not available for lots of Mac OS X’s capabilities, unless you educate yourself on the choices in the command line, perhaps with Kissell’s new book.

Now I don’t think adding an Advanced option would represent a difficult choice for Apple’s developers to make. As they move towards the finish line with Snow Leopard, perhaps the biggest way they can present new features, beyond the rumored interface refinement, is to let us all access the operating system’s vast repository of hidden capabilities.

But first, Apple has to give its Simplicity Police their walking papers.