When Bill Gates appeared to a round of boos and catcalls on a satellite feed during a Macworld Expo keynote some years ago, you wondered why Steve Jobs was so readily conceding the operating system wars. Jobs went on to state that, for Apple to succeed, Microsoft didn’t have to lose.

You’d think he was just going to accede to the status quo and move on, but it hasn’t quite worked that way, although I expect Microsoft only realized it recently.

First there was the iPod, with Apple pushing tens of millions of them every single year. More iPods are sold to Windows users than Mac users, and with a library of millions of songs and sales of billions of downloads, it still seemed beyond belief when iTunes became the number one music retailer.

Imagine how it felt to Microsoft knowing that most of the PC users who owned music players had iPods, and how just selling a million Zunes seemed a chore.

With estimated sales of 13 million iPhones so far, the OS X user base has grown by 50% in just 15 months. It won’t be long before more people use that operating system on their iPhones and iPod touches than on Macs, but that’s only part of the picture.

Every single iPod and iPhone sold to a Windows user is a compelling advertisement for Apple’s products. While there are growing pains here and there and the need for periodic firmware updates, these products deliver an extremely high level of customer satisfaction. Check the ratings yourself, and then see how a BlackBerry and Zune might compare.

So next time these people want to buy a personal computer, how hard is it to switch to a Mac? Well, for the average home or small businessperson who uses a PC for email, browsing and word processing, the task is fairly simple. Apple offers a pretty good amount of online information on how to make the switch, including steps to move your stuff from a Windows PC to the corresponding folders on a new Mac.

Indeed, if you buy a new Mac at an Apple Store, just bring in your old Mac or PC, and they’ll take care of the file transfer process for you. Third party retailers who have smart management and savvy service departments will do it too. You don’t have to be a power user.

The other day I was talking about Mac users no longer being part of an elite class, but members of a smart mainstream population that has better things to do than waste half a day installing a printer driver. Yes, I know that some Windows users will say that rarely happens, but it does occur far more often than they care to admit. The other day I read a survey that over 10% of Vista printer installations fail, and, no, I won’t make it easy for you to find the link. That’s why we have Google.

Besides, I have difficulty believing that any single Windows user hasn’t encountered problems of one sort or another when moving beyond the default installation, particularly when deciding to go it alone without help from the IT staff. Did you ever wonder why you hear all those radio ads from companies willing to help you, by remote control, fix the problems on your Windows PC? What does tech talk show person Kim Komando talk about, mostly, on her weekly two hour radio show? You guessed it? How to save yourself from the Windows-problem-of-the-day. It’s particularly enjoyable to hear the self-proclaimed “digital goddess” describe the intricate details of repairing corruption in the infamous Windows Registry.

Apple is often criticized for not doing enough to push Macs into the enterprise, but maybe that initiative is no longer necessary. Even IT people are hearing more and more demands from employees — quite often from top management — to bring more Macs into a company.

While there is a common conspiracy theory that system admins don’t want to embrace Macs because they might lose their jobs, there are practical reasons to show caution. Even though a Mac may be easier to set up, and not difficult to master, there’s still a price to pay.

A Windows network might still require updates to admit Macs, and employees might have to undergo a small amount of retraining to understand how to handle some of the minor interface differences between the Mac and Windows. There are also software licenses to consider. Some software developers with both Mac and Windows versions of the same product will allow you to pay the standard upgrade fee to crossgrade from one platform to the other. But there’s still a fee involved, so even if the Mac and PC are comparably priced, it’s not a free ride.

On the other hand, a few years ago, you probably wouldn’t take any of this seriously. How could Macs ever gain a major presence in the PC market? But with a third of all potential note-book buyers in the U.S. now putting Macs at the top of their shopping lists, according to recent surveys, the future Microsoft never dreamed about even in their worst nightmares may already have arrived.

Back in July, the iPhone 3G, newly-released, seemed to be a buggy mess to many of the early adopters. Apps crashed constantly, so they say, and people couldn’t sustain decent voice connections or speedy broadband access. You had to wonder whether Apple had lost its mojo in its drive to push new products out the door as quickly as it could.

That was then and this is now.

As much as I liked the two iPhones I’ve owned, it’s also true that they had connection problems in my Scottsdale, AZ neighborhood. My wife would call me from time to time, and the phone wouldn’t ring, or if it did, wouldn’t keep the call active for more than a minute or two. And no my wife wasn’t just hanging up on me. In any case, the iPhone 3G seemed better able to handle marginal connections, but it wasn’t perfect.

Segue to November, weeks after the 2.1 firmware update addressed many of the connectivity issues. It also appears that AT&T has done its share of work to enhance network quality, as signal strength is more consistent, handovers from 3G to EDGE and back again are more seamless, and there are indeed fewer dropped calls. Now I don’t pretend to know what is actually going on behind the scenes to make it work better, but the formerly marginal connections in my home are more solid too nowadays.

That’s of high importance to me, because the local cable Internet provider, Cox, has been doing some heavy-duty reconstruction work on their network. As a result, I’ve been without Internet for up to a few hours on some days recently, so I’ve had to rely on the iPhone to get online.

As to Cox, all those service interruptions are symptoms of their efforts to improve their system, to support more high definition TV channels and to, ultimately, embrace the DOCSIS 3.0 cable modem standard. That, and a new cable modem to handle the upgraded technology, will allow for far faster broadband speeds. I get up to 20 megabits downstream now, and it’s very likely that will double or triple once all the hardware and software is in place. Of course, all that speed may come at a higher price too, but I hope not too much higher.

When it comes to my two Macs, I usually take them for granted these days. The first five maintenance updates seem to have cured Leopard’s worst ills, although certain Mac troubleshooting sites seem a little over-eager to find problems that either do not exist, or are extremely rare.

Wi-Fi connectivity, a bugaboo since the initial 10.5 release, appears to have become more reliable, at least in my particular environment. However, Leopard’s Spaces feature can still be problematic. Some applications, which spawn multiple windows and palettes, aren’t happy in a multiple desktop setup. You will find, for example, some palettes in one space, another in a different location, and it can get mighty annoying if you want to run the software properly. I don’t know if this is Apple’s problem to solve, or something that third parties will just have to handle more efficiently.

A year from now, of course, we all might be working on the second or third update to Mac OS 10.6, affectionately known as Snow Leopard. Well, that assumes you also have an Intel-based Mac in your computing arsenal, as it doesn’t really seem that the next Mac OS upgrade will support the PowerPC. Then again, by 2009, it’ll be over three years since the Intel transition began, so maybe it’s time to consider retiring the old hardware, although it does appear that Leopard will continue to get updates for a while.

When it comes to security, every time a proof-of-concept infection or even a potential security exploit is discovered, a number of salivating skeptics will rush to write purple prose claiming that the expected avalanche of malware is about to strike the Mac platform. Just you wait and see, they claim. It will happen real soon now, so be protected.

The first official release of Mac OS X arrived in the spring of 2001. Seven-and-a-half years later, that malware epidemic has yet to arrive, even though Apple is selling two or three times as many Macs as it used to.

No, this isn’t an invitation to trouble. It’s just a fact. Yes, maybe some minor malware infections have been found in the wild, and a small number of people have been impacted, but I don’t think the time has arrived to rush out and purchase security software.

Of course that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t practice safe “HEX,” as someone once described safe computing practices some years ago. You still shouldn’t click on a link in an email that purports to come from a merchant or financial institution with which you deal. Those online phishers are quite capable of duplicating the look and feel of the real sites. If you’re not sure, just go to the site directly, access your account and check things out — or just give them a call and see what’s what.

The other thing to take for granted is that Microsoft is not taken quite as seriously as it used to be. As I said in yesterday’s commentary, some ill-informed tech pundits still take statements from a Microsoft executive as gospel, without checking the facts or questionable history of the company.

That, too, will eventually change, and you can take that to the bank.

It’s not easy for a company that’s number one in its market to admit that its efforts to spread its dominance to other product segments have not succeeded.

Whenever Microsoft is mentioned, the fact that they own over 90% of the personal computer desktops on the planet often accompanies the reference. That and consistent high profits surely auger well for their continued success, but it has been hard for them to come to terms with the fact that they don’t do so well when they stray beyond their core competency.

Take digital media players, where Apple long ago rose to the number one spot and remains there. Microsoft first tried to parlay their PC operating system market share advantage and set up a standard for other digital players to follow. It went through an identity crises, but was last known as PlaysForSure. Except Microsoft realized they couldn’t succeed with this strategy, so they double-crossed their partners and created the Zune, which hasn’t done so well either.

Their efforts to extend Windows to the handheld market have done all right, I suppose, but, after 15 months on the market, the iPhone is doing better. In fact Apple’s smartphone bettered the RIM BlackBerry in the last quarter too, so two companies were embarrassed as a result. Only Nokia does better in that segment than Apple, and they’ve been in the wireless handset business a whole lot longer.

It’s not as if Microsoft truly realizes it is being battered and beaten by smaller companies. CEO Steve Ballmer will continue to rant and rave about how well they’re doing, and what little chance the competition has to beat them at their own game. Certainly Ballmer didn’t take the iPhone seriously.

Of course a lot of Ballmer’s trademark bluster may be manufactured. As politicians do during a campaign, you tear down your opponents in highly inflammatory, exaggerated ways in order to gain the upper hand and emerge victorious. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but having the facts on your side would certainly add to the credibility of the message.

That’s where Ballmer perennially comes up short.

For example, the latest maneuver to escape the Windows Vista tragedy is warmed over version, called Windows 7. Now Vista had some major and sometimes confusing interface changes when compared to XP — and for that reason among others, many PC makers and their customers want to downgrade.

So does Microsoft repair the damage by undoing some of the alterations? No, they’re making even more changes using the logic that user interface testing — make that focus groups — helped guide them to a solution. Thus they came up with a rejiggered taskbar that looks for all the world like Apple’s Dock.

All this comes from the very same company that pleaded with the U.S. Department of Justice and European Union authorities for the right to continue to innovate. Microsoft’s concept of innovation has mostly been to take an idea, imitate it to some degree, add a few half-baked ideas that seem to emanate from a PowerPoint presentation filed to the gills with bullet points, and pronounce it something new and different.

This is not to say that imitation is bad. Certainly many good ideas are influenced by what came before, and some manage to take that inspiration and meld it into something with its own unique character.

Certainly there were attempts at graphical computer interfaces before and after the Mac appeared. Microsoft, with smoke and mirrors and clever marketing, blasted most of them out of existence, although the Mac carried on.

Today, Microsoft’s executives must know that the old ways, the machinations practiced in previous decades, no longer work. Yet their public posture appears to be the same. They want you to believe that everything they do amounts to a momentous event in the tech industry, and that they have the skills and determination to make even a half-baked product number one in its class.

Yes, every single syllable uttered by Ballmer is breathlessly quoted by some still-fawning members of the tech press. They somehow believe that all of Microsoft’s silly product ideas are destined for huge success, whether its the Zune or that absurd Multi-Touch coffee table, the Surface.

Even if Windows 7, now in pre-beta form, actually contains all the refinements Microsoft promises, does that mean that it’ll fare any better than Vista? Well, assuming it has the same enormous system requirements, certainly today’s PCs, built to address Vista’s needs, will run about the same, or maybe better, if Windows 7 can be optimized or even trimmed down a hair.

But does that mean that Apple’s huge gains in market share will suddenly vanish overnight? Microsoft has no right to remain number one, as much as they might prefer to think otherwise. Their browser share continues to erode, and there’s little reason to think that their operating system advantage won’t decrease too over the next few years.

Will the Microsoft of 2013 or 2018 still be as dominant a force in the tech industry as they are now? I don’t think so, but maybe Ballmer and crew don’t realize that yet. Or maybe they do, which is why they want to spend their extra cash on a stock buyback so they can laugh all the way to the bank however it turns out in the end.

For better or worse, Apple is often way ahead of the curve when it comes to anticipating industry trends. Sometimes it’s even responsible for those new directions.

Take the AirPort, which arrived at the very beginning of the wireless networking revolution. Today, pretty much every note-book computer has Wi-Fi capability, and it’s also available on many desktops, although sometimes strictly as an option.

Even though Apple invented FireWire, they were also responsible for taking the nascent USB format and giving it credibility beginning with the iMac. Although they originally got plenty of lumps for ditching ADB for input devices and LocalTalk for printers and such, readily-available adapters came out to handle legacy devices. The rest of us quickly adapted.

These days, some suggest that the desktop computer itself is probably an endangered species. Indeed, over 50% of the new personal computers sold are portable. Apple, however, anticipated that trend, too, and the MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro, together, amount for over 60% of Mac hardware sales.

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