Although it had been previously announced, I was quite pleased to wake up Thursday morning to find a welcome message in my Inbox from Netflix — the online video rental company — that “now you can watch movies (some new releases) instantly on your Mac.”

Most Netflix rental plans beyond entry-level offer the free service, and they have 12,000 movies in the library right now, some of them fairly current. The only downside, from an emotional point of view, is that you have to install Microsoft’s free Silverlight browser plug to enable this feature. But I regard this as a trivial issue, since it doesn’t seem to have any negative effects that I can see. Picture quality in my early tests seemed decent enough, with just a few motion artifacts for action-filled scenes.

Some months ago, one of our sponsors, Citrix Online, proudly announced a Mac version of GoToMeeting, the popular online presentation service. Up till then, Macs could connect to a conference, but they weren’t able to originate one. Their sister service, GoToMyPC, has yet to add full Mac support, but it does appear that they have good reason to move in that direction.

A few weeks ago, I caught the tail end of a radio ad from another Web-based service that was touting its expanded availability for Mac users.

Now maybe this doesn’t seem to be such a momentous event to you, but hear me out: It wasn’t so many years ago that the Mac was largely an afterthought for many software and service companies. If there was a Mac version, it was often mentioned in passing, and the quality of that version would often be inferior to the Windows edition.

I remember, for example, when WordPerfect, once the leader of the word processing universe, proudly announced is move to the Mac. Unfortunately, it was a bad Windows port that paid only lip service to Mac user interface conventions.

All right, the folks who built the product at the time got the message and delivered an upgrade that definitely provided great support for the Mac OS. Unfortunately, WordPerfect failed to garner much market share, after some brief gains, before the onslaught of Microsoft Office, and soon abandoned Macs. But it does seem to me that the bad first impression they created with the first release didn’t help their situation.

Besides, how many people even on the Windows platform use WordPerfect these days?

True, with Word 6, Microsoft also tried to get away with a sloppy Mac version, and they got ragged big time as a result. However, in the wake of a new agreement with Apple to continue developing Office for the platform in the last decade, they mostly redeemed themselves with Office 98.

This doesn’t mean that I will let Microsoft get away with the fact that there are features and applications in Office for Windows that do not have Mac counterparts. The decision of the Mac Business Unit to abandon support for Visual Basic for Applications in Office 2008 was ill-thought, and I don’t buy the excuse that it would have delayed the suite’s arrival by a year or two.

While it’s true that Microsoft has learned from their mistakes and they promise the restoration of macro support for the next Mac version of Office — whenever that arrives — I just think they tried to get away with something and were justifiably criticized by customers and the press as a result.

All right, I am not going to dispute the time it would take to port VBA to Apple’s Universal environment. Maybe it would take a team a year or two to accomplish the task, but, considering how much money Microsoft earns from its Mac products, they could have hired a separate programming group that would work strictly on porting the macro capability. How many people would it require?

Or is Microsoft’s development process so inefficient that they can’t accomplish anything in less than a couple of years, even when it comes to a fairly modest task? Of course, I don’t know how difficult it is to transition macro capability from one programming system to another.

In the larger scheme of things, a software publisher these days that’s looking to expand their market ought to seriously look at Macs. Although PC sales, other than a few manufacturers such as HP, are stagnant, Apple appears to be doing quite well despite the state of the economy.

A growing market should be ripe for the pruning, and there’s always room for applications that pioneer new techniques and product categories, or just fill niches that aren’t well satisfied now. Certainly, the Mac OS could always use more vertical market software, catering to beauty salons, doctors offices and other professions.

Indeed, entering the Mac universe has, at last, become a good thing to do.

So the story goes that companies with higher-priced gear will most likely fare miserably this holiday season. Yes, folks are still buying lots of high definition TVs, as an example, but they are picking the low-end or smaller screen versions. The expensive models that generate the most profits for dealers and manufacturers may not do nearly as well, because customers just don’t have the cash or credit lines.

Now, rightly or wrongly, Apple is often criticized for having expensive products, and some even say that they are overpriced compared to the PC box competition. Now I happen to believe, based on my own comparisons, that Apple’s products are priced similar to a Windows PC with features that are closely matched both in the hardware and software. That, of course, doesn’t address the question of whether you need those features or not, of course.

So I suppose the conventional wisdom is that Apple would encounter difficulty moving Macs and other products this holiday season, and I agree that there’s logic in that. On the other hand, Apple is also known for defying logic with their products, and that has to confound the tech pundits who keep trying to second guess the company.

So first there are published reports that Apple did quite well during Black Friday, the day where retailers generally become profitable — and that’s where the word “Black” comes in. No, it has nothing to do with magic or convey some evil connotation. We all want our favorite stores to stay in business.

Analysts are now suggesting that Mac sales are going to increase again this quarter, though perhaps not by the margins previously expected. Don’t, for example, expect to see Apple move three million computers, although I suppose anything is possible.

There is also a published report that Apple is is running low on iPod stocks. Really. This is not a rumor generated by a Mac site that specializes in such things. Instead, the information comes from Shaw Wu, a respected industry analyst from Kaufman Brothers.

The lead times for getting an iPod touch on Amazon can range from three to five weeks, so you’d have to consider them “After Christmas” presents. Spot checks at other retailers also indicated shortages. Wu concluded that, “From our assessment, we believe iPod is holding up better than most, due to its relatively low [selling price] and strong consumer understanding of the value it provides.”

This does make a lot of sense. Nobody seems to care about the also-rans in the digital player business. It’s all about the iPod. What’s more, with prices as low as $49 for the basic iPod shuffle, Apple is delivering products that are highly affordable. So even if buyers are reducing their expectations somewhat, Apple stands to profit regardless.

As far as computers are concerned, I expect they are doing nicely, thank you, with note-books, although the iMac remains the third biggest seller at Apple’s online store, at least as of the time this article was written. Just a few weeks ago, a Best Buy stock manager, who works in one of the branches in Scottsdale, told me they were moving tons of MacBooks, and doing quite well with the other Apple products they stock.

What about netbooks and the regular Windows PCs? Well, I have to wonder just how well the companies who build these products are handling the marketing end. With Apple, they have a new TV spot extolling the environmental advantages of the newest MacBooks and MacBook Pros. Dell has this dumb holiday-oriented commercial featuring some regular office workers singing off-key renditions of Christmas carols. How, I ask, does that acquaint me with the advantages of choosing a Dell over every other PC box maker?

This isn’t to say that Dell sells bad products. I still maintain that their higher-end flat panel displays are simply wonderful, and are perfect choices even for Mac users. Despite his ill-considered statement that Apple should pay back its stockholders, made over a decade ago, I have nothing against Dell CEO Michael Dell. Nothing at all.

But when it comes to savvy marketing, Apple is way out in front. It doesn’t hurt to offer great looks, value and performance, at reasonable prices. So it does seem to me that, despite the obstacles, Apple will be a surprising success story this season.

If Wall Street ever gets the message, the stock price may eventually rise to the occasion too.

What I just wrote must seem so obvious, you have to wonder how anyone could possibly misunderstand the way the company operates, but it’s clear a lot of people do. That’s particularly true for the folks who claim to be experts about technology.

Maybe it’s the training. I mean, when my son attended college, he majored in journalism. Although there were classes on developing online content, there wasn’t a whole lot that would actually qualify one for this specialty. Indeed, some of the best practitioners of tech writing essentially acquired these abilities on their own.

One of the issues, however, is not so much the training or lack thereof, but common sense. Certainly if you’ve actually seen how Apple operates, you would get an indication as to how and why they enter product segments and what they hope to accomplish.

No, it’s not just selling boxes, as the PC makers try to do. Steve Jobs wants to change the world, and Apple follows his vision to take an existing product space into a new direction.

Take the iPod. There were certainly digital music players out before Apple entered the fray. Some looked pretty decent, but they all had serious shortcomings, such as dreadfully slow transfer of music from PC to player.

Indeed, I reviewed several of these gadgets for CNET, and there wasn’t  a single one that I’d actually buy.

Apple dealt with the file transfer issue by picking FireWire, which was far speedier than the original USB standard. Today, they use USB for cross-platform compatibility, but version 2.0 of that protocol provides data transfers at a good clip.

Using their user interface expertise, Apple also developed a product that was simple for most anyone to master, which is why tens of millions bought them. Others tried, but they didn’t come close, and the iPod continues to own the market.

Certainly when Apple entered the mobile handset fray, against all odds, they succeeded beyond the wildest dreams of the skeptics by again taking an existing product segment and doing something new and different. While touch interfaces weren’t original, Apple made the feature easy to use, and grafted Mac OS X onto the device to provide a familiar working environment. In contrast, the operating systems used by most mobile devices is simply pathetic, often inspired by Windows conventions, where extra features are just tacked on rather than integrated into the overall user experience.

Take a look at the highly-touted BlackBerry Storm. While Research in Motion is to be credited with developing great hardware that has taken over the smartphone market, their efforts to beat the iPhone at its own game are debatable. Yes, the touch screen provides the sense of tactile feedback the iPhone lacks, but it appears to fall down big time in other ways, particular the user interface. I won’t cover all the issues here, except to say that it doesn’t even support Wi-Fi. But if you are a Verizon Wireless customer and aren’t ready or willing to move to AT&T, it may be a suitable alternative.

Now when it comes to the netbook, which is basically a small PC note-book with a tiny screen, somewhat crowded keyboard, and low power, again there are growing demands that Apple enter that arena.

Forgetting for the moment my personal opinions on the subject, Apple executives have often said that they haven’t figured out how to build a cheap PC that isn’t a piece of junk. This isn’t to say the existing netbooks from Asus and other companies are all pieces of junk. I can see the value in an inexpensive portable computer that can handle the basic tasks that involve email, Web access and basic word processing. Certainly, the uber-lightweight MacBook Air would seem to be the ideal contender in this category if it cost a third of its present price.

So if Apple were to get involved, again they’d have to find a way to make a difference — and make it affordable to the masses. They would want to address the perceived shortcomings of existing netbooks, and add enough innovation to make the product a compelling alternative. Of course, they’d also have to see if they could sell enough to justify the investment.

Indeed, I have little doubt that Apple has various netbook prototypes percolating in development labs. If they felt they deserved production, they go at it full steam.

Again, I wouldn’t be the one to suggest what form they should take. Some suggest a sort of iPhone Pro that would somewhat resemble the eMate 300 of the 1990s, which was, in turn, a grown up Newton. Certainly the guts of the iPhone are plenty powerful, and I suppose adding a larger screen and a physical keyboard could be done easily.

But Apple doesn’t always accept the simple solution. Maybe they would keep the touch screen, only enlarge it proportionate to the screen size. Perhaps they’d even consider some sort of tactile feedback mechanism, and more traditional editing and navigation tools to match those of a regular portable computer.

Could they do it cheaply enough to make sense? I wouldn’t know, but I’d think that anything above $600 would be too much, as folks might as well just buy a white MacBook and get a fully-equipped note-book for $400 more. But if Apple went the iPod touch route rather than iPhone, thus ditching the wireless telephone capabilities, and if they could craft this into a something that weighed maybe a pound or so, I can see some fascinating possibilities.

Asus who?

At once time, Microsoft could accurately boast of owning 95% of the personal computer desktops in the world. Clearly they would have preferred 100%, but nothing would stop Apple from working hard to make its presence felt.

As Apple continues to grow faster than most skeptical analysts expect, the dominance of Windows has begun to erode, in the same way Internet Explorer’s lead has dropped. According to a survey of Web visitors from Net Applications for November, based on visits to some 40,000 sites, Microsoft’s share of the pie has dipped below 90%, amounting to 89.62%.

The Mac gets 8.87% and Linux a mere 0.83%. So much for claims about the possible success of Linux as a regular desktop operating system, although it continues to have a great presence in the server segment.

As far as browsers are concerned, Microsoft gets 69.77%, Firefox 20.78% and Safari picks up the third position at 7.13%. Although it has perhaps the most advanced feature set of any browser, Opera only captures 0.71% of the market, behind Google’s Chrome, at 0.83%. Chrome, as you might recall, uses Apple’s WebKit as its rendering engine but is not, so far, available for the Mac OS.

Now I realize that just measuring Web visitors may not be sufficient to really gauge the actual operating system share, although certainly it’s an intriguing bellwether. That, along with ongoing reports that the Mac may be the only success story as far as computer sales are concerned this holiday season, clearly shows that Microsoft has to do a lot of rethinking about its marketing strategy.

But there’s more.

According to a published report this week, many customers, particularly businesses, are buying used PCs, so they can stick with Windows XP, rather than cope with the bloat and incompatibilities of Window Vista. That strange happenstance ought to serve as a huge wake up call. But clearly Microsoft has other priorities these days.

For example, there are those renewed rumors that Microsoft is working hard to craft some sort of new agreement to acquire Yahoo’s search engine.

Now I suppose this is a good time for these two companies to come together. Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang is looking for the exit door as soon as his replacement can be named. As with the rest of the stock market, Yahoo’s price is in the toilet, in the wake of the failure to work out an arrangement over search ads with Google. Of course, possible anti-competitive issues came to the fore there.

So with Yahoo clearly on the road to nowhere, and Microsoft’s search business traveling exactly the same route, it may seem an ideal time for a deal to be concluded.

But just what would this mean for the search business? Would a forced marriage of two failures somehow result in a magical transition to success? What about the illusion of possible synergies between the two companies.

Also, knowing that Microsoft had captured Yahoo’s search business is not going to please the people who have already rejected Microsoft Live. Why would they suddenly turn around if Google’s two main competitors became one? More to the point, how many Yahoo employees would seriously consider leaving a sinking ship in the wake of such a misbegotten deal?

Well I suppose with the U.S. officially in a recession, it may be harder for disgruntled Yahoo workers to find new jobs, so they may simply stay put to put food on the table. But that would hardly inspire loyalty and the desire to work closely with Microsoft to build a search system that becomes a credible alternative to Google.

Meantime, it certainly won’t take a long time for Apple’s market share to break the magic double-digit barrier, perhaps as soon as the next Net Applications survey. But when and if Microsoft’s dominance falls below 85% and 80%, will the world’s largest software company begin to comprehend the change of their fortunes and realize they need to act and act quickly?

More to the point, does fiery CEO Steve Ballmer know what’s really going on and what he has to do in order to fix the company? Is he prepared to shake up the management team and hire people who can change direction before the company is overwhelmed by more and more inertia?

Or maybe he’s still waiting for the Zune music player to take off.

Indeed, maybe Bill Gates had the right idea to exit his full-time job at Microsoft and concentrate on philanthropy.