In recent months, I’ve come to believe that most people finally understand that Macs and PCs are comparably priced when comparably equipped. That is, until I read some more of that silly fiction that attempts to convey precisely the reverse, that Apple is the BMW, and the PC is the Ford, and that the former is priced accordingly when compared to the latter.

I suppose this is a highly frustrating argument that will never end, because a simple change of the terms and conditions is enough to deliver different results. Indeed, I know some of you will argue that I’m wrong and provide very detailed reasons why. So let me put my cards on the table: Take a Mac and a PC from a brand name company and not a home-built model. Equip both with the same options in terms of equipment as much as possible. Then make sure that the software bundle is also similar, which means that Windows Vista Basic isn’t part of the picture.. Only Ultimate is the proper equivalent to Mac OS X, and that can represent a fairly stiff price hike on what’s otherwise a low-cost computer.

Indeed, it appears that recent articles from CNET and editor/writer Joe Wilcox have implied they are going on fair shopping excursions, but they repeat the long-voiced fiction that you can buy a regular Windows computer for hundreds less than the competing Apple product.

Now I have to tell you that I am quickly losing patience over such shenanigans, because I can see a great degree of intellectual dishonesty in these comparisons. More to the point, when I do match-ups using the criteria I’ve mentioned over and over again, the results I achieve continue to verify my statement that the Mac and PC, when comparably equipped, are closely priced. On the high-end, the Mac Pro, in reality a workstation and not a simple personal computer, comes out way ahead.

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

All right, we all know that Apple Inc. traditionally gets better marks for customer support and service than pretty much any other PC maker or even consumer electronics company on the planet. Certainly those accolades are well-deserved, and they largely come from customer surveys.

So even Consumer Reports, which still doesn’t understand how to evaluate a PC versus a Mac properly, can at least report statistics correctly, since it’s primarily raw numbers.

However, the line of demarcation between good and excellent may be so wide that Apple can’t easily bridge it. While I’m sure most of you will tell me that you’ve had great experiences getting support for your Apple gear, I’m also sure many of you can tell me about war stories, where you take a problem up through several levels of support hierarchy, spend hours on the phone, and you can’t get your problem resolved.

This is not to say the issues are never addressed. But sometimes you have to call Apple’s corporate office and demand to speak to an executive before they will examine your specific support questions and get them straightened out. Steve Jobs has reportedly telephoned a few customers to reassure them and make sure that their specific troubles are resolved on the spot. I suspect, in those cases, the people who monitor his own email account go through the messages and locate the ones that require his special attention.

It seems to me that Apple is trying to do right by its customers. They aren’t trying to cheat anyone, and, even when forced kicking and screaming into confession mode, they’ll eventually admit to serious problems that might impact a fairly large number of users. All right, that’s fair enough.

But I still maintain there are things they can do to make sure that products are released with fewer defects and that bug fixes are not only clearly explained, but made easier to receive.

Clearly, Apple learned something from the MobileMe fiasco, witness the rapid-fire management change. Eddie Cue, Apple’s new Internet executive, previously managed iTunes, and he did a pretty good job leading a team that built the world’s largest online music retailer. If he can bring that expertise to other Apple-based Internet services, then we all benefit.

Without discussing the possible shortcomings of Rob Schoeben, Apple’s vice president of applications marketing, who previously headed up .Mac, certainly Steve Jobs had to put out a nasty fire real fast before things blew up in their faces.

Apple is evidently no longer advertising MobileMe as “Exchange for the rest of us.” Perhaps Microsoft complained, and since they license ActiveSync technology to Apple, it made sense to back off. Or maybe Jobs realized that this claim implied a level of service reliability they couldn’t achieve. So if they do indeed meet his goal of providing superior performance by the end of the year, maybe that phrase will be resurrected.

In the meantime, what else can Apple do to provide better support? Well, I do understand that support techs are human, they make mistakes, and they come with different skills and shortcomings. A support position usually exists at the entry-level in a company, even though it is by a wide margin perhaps the most important service they can offer.

So some support people are just getting into the job market, after getting their degree. Maybe it’s a seasonal job for some, but it just doesn’t fit into their ultimate career path. In this situation, they might not feel they have a stake in maintaining excellence, so they will coast and quickly move on to greener pastures when the right opportunity arrives.

However, many support people believe in the old adage that a job worth doing is worth doing well, and they will strive to perform their assignments to the best of their abilities.

Past the support level, let me repeat what I’ve said before: Apple needs to provide detailed information about what they fix in an update, so you know whether or not your particular problem has been addressed. You might see that information in a system update, or security fix, but not so much elsewhere. If Apple hopes to break into the enterprise market big time — and the situation is really improving by the way — they will have to work closely with system administrators. They need to deliver the critical information needed to help admins determine how and when — and even if — the patch should be deployed.

Another argument I’ve voiced before is that Apple needs to develop alternate ways to distribute those huge update files. Even the iPhone 2.0.1 update came in at just under 225MB, and that may be a walk in the park if you have a fast broadband connection. But millions of people don’t, and some can’t get a speedier connection unless they pay for an expensive satellite Internet system. Even that assumes that they don’t live in a wooded area, for example, with no clearing in the direction from which the satellite signal emanates.

I have suggested an optional software subscription system, where Apple will make monthly or bi-monthly CD mailings of all the updates you need for your Mac. I realize there are some programs of this sort in the business market, but the consumer may be most impacted. You may be in a situation where you have to depend on a reliable dial-up connection that can sustain itself for hours as the download progresses.

Remember, even now, AOL has over eight million members, most of whom still use dial-up. EarthLink also has millions of dial-up customers.

Will such things make Apple’s support perfect? Not by a long shot, but these and other improvements might take Apple closer to that worthy goal.

All right, we all know that Apple’s internal memo to employees admitting the MobileMe launch failure has been quoted extensively. So much for such documents being regarded as confidential, although I doubt if Apple is going to go after the employees who leaked that letter, in which Steve Jobs promised MobileMe would become “a service we are all proud of by the end of this year.” I’m sure they knew it would be publicized; that was part of the plan.

As a long time .Mac subscriber, I, for one, hope he’s right. As I patiently wait for the promised 30-day membership extension, I’m starting to wonder whether it should be extended to 90 or even 120 days, so I will only pay for a service that Apple can be “proud of.” Why should I accept something inferior? After all, I put up with that sort of thing from far too many vendors already.

By the way, there’s an unconfirmed report that the 1% of MobileMe users who encountered full outages and the loss of some of their newly-received email are being offered a full year’s extension to their subscriptions.

Moreover, now that Apple has gone so far as to admit its fault in handling Internet services, and even put a new executive, Eddy Cue, in charge of the whole thing, what about other recent shaky rollouts? Do you really think that the initial release of the iPhone 2.0 software was flawless or even close?

How many of you encountered slow keyboards and frequent crashes? Or even the failure to properly transfer upgraded iPhone software from iPhone to iTunes? Sure, iTunes 7.7.1 fixed some of that, and no doubt the iPhone 2.0.1 software addressed a fair number of ills too, although we only have unofficial information as to what was fixed.

But if Apple wants to play the mea culpa game in the proper fashion, how should they address the highly-flawed iPhone 2.0 rollout?

I suppose they could sacrifice their 30% cut from App Store sales for a month or two. That would show how serious they are about the problems millions of iPhone users encountered with the new software. Yes, it might have a small impact on their bottom line for a quarter or two, but not significant enough to hurt the stock price any more than it has been impacted in recent weeks. I do grant, though, that recent positive analyst comments about Apple may have contributed to the fact that the price is back on an upward swing.

Now I’m concentrating largely on the software component of Apple’s products here. When it comes to hardware, Apple is pretty good about extending warranties to address persistent defects, such as bad batteries and failing logic boards. True, they sometimes take a few months to sort things out, but that’s understandable when you consider that they have to not only isolate a problem, but confirm it’s actually a product defect, and devise a production change that will effect the appropriate repair.

For software, however, other than the initial support period, you’re pretty much on your own. It’s not as if you can send your copy of Leopard back to Apple after a failed update or two and demand your money back. Other than a few third-party products, you’re stuck. Plain and simple.

But there are things Apple might be able to do in order to address early release bugs, which seem to inflict more and more of their products and services these days. I could say just do better, but that’s hardly practical or logical. After all, I have no idea if these issues are the result of poor engineering, bad quality control, rushed release schedules, some combination of these three or other factors that we don’t know anything about.

Or just being human.

So how can Apple make things right?

Well, as I said in yesterday’s article, providing full details about a bug fix is essential. As one of you readers pointed out, businesses are going to require a lot more than a “bug fixes” phrase when deciding whether or not to deploy an update. Here Microsoft has it right. Take a look at the release notes for the various Office for Mac 2008 updates. There’s a good amount of information to consider, and while it may not reflect all the changes, it’s far more descriptive than most of what Apple generally provides.

While I can understand why Apple might want to keep things simple for home and small business users, there are professionals in many fields who will demand exquisite detail for every little change Apple makes. You can’t depend on power users to ferret out the information, because there’s no way to ensure all the details are fully accurate. At best, you might only get a general picture of what’s going on.

But when Apple really screws up with a software release, how can they make it right for customers, other than getting a fix released as soon as possible? Well, perhaps one way is to provide free CDs of that upgrade. Even the iPhone 2.0.1 update weighed in at nearly 225MB, and we still live on a planet where not everyone has a broadband connection and can download this stuff in a few minutes.

If your current address is in Apple’s registration database, they should send you, free of charge, the critical updates. If the bugs may cause you to lose data, or unduly slow down production, maybe even give you a discount on the next feature upgrade.

Through it all, Apple’s customers should be able to consult an online blog for all the relevant information, a one-stop information center. Apple made a good start with its MobileMe status reports, but the last promised update is days behind schedule. That does not leave a good impression.

Even better, maybe Steve Jobs should issue weekly or monthly updates to Apple customers. He’s already done a few blogs, notably with his criticisms about DRM requirements for music downloads, and the offer of a $100 credit for early iPhone adopters when the price was cut by several hundred dollars last fall. Clearly he — or his ghost writers — have a knack for such expression. I’d like to see more of it.

So we all understand the original version of the iPhone 2.0 software was mighty buggy. Applications had a propensity to crash far more often than they should, and that includes Apple’s own Mail and Safari. Even more irritating, text entry in Mail would sometimes become dog slow, and only a restart would set things right.

There were other general performance problems too. The innate snappiness of the original iPhone software had become lethargic, particularly when you opened your contact list. Not good.

Well, on Monday evening, Apple released the highly-anticipated 2.0.1 update. Exemplifying their propensity towards pithy comments, the only information provided was that it contained “bug fixes.”

Now I know many of you have been very concerned about the fact that Apple, with the exception of regular Mac OS X maintenance updates and security fixes, usually withholds the specifics of their various updates. This doesn’t mean there’s no way to find out what issues they addressed. There are enough Mac power users online these days that the specifics will no doubt be posted within hours of the update’s release.

So, with iPhone 2.0.1, we know that keyboard responsiveness is improved (but not completely fixed), the graphical interface has regained its mojo and backups via iTunes run considerably faster. The signal strength indicator for your wireless provider’s network is supposedly more accurate.

No doubt there are other more subtle changes that will discovered, but there’s nothing here that Apple couldn’t clearly explain in the update’s release notes. At worst, they could provide a link to the Web site, as they do with Mac system and security updates, for a full list of what’s been changed or repaired.

Now I realize Apple is secretive to the point of paranoia in releasing details about the company or its products. This makes a whole lot of sense when it comes to information about new stuff, since the vultures are circling One Infinite Loop and they’d love to know what Apple is working on.

But when it comes to simply addressing product defects, I fail to see a downside in providing the full story. It’s not as if the issue of improved keyboard responsiveness, for example, is somehow going to help RIM produce a better BlackBerry. So what’s the point?

Of course, this economy of words infects all of Apple, and it doesn’t serve them well. Take the question of Steve Jobs’ health. After the stock kept taking a beating, in part, evidently, because of those ongoing concerns, Jobs telephoned a reporter for The New York Times and gave him the specifics in a background briefing. While the story didn’t contain actual quotes about Jobs’ medical issues, the reporter referred to them in general as more serious than a “bug,” but not life-threatening.

Sure, that’s reassuring, but why couldn’t Apple’s board of directors just release a single paragraph on the subject that contained the essential details and be done with it? To what degree did Apple’s stock price decline by its failure to provide that information?

I agree that, for most companies, a CEO’s health is a private matter. But when it comes to a corporate head whose fate is so tightly entwined to that of the company he works for, such as Steve Jobs, this is critical information that affects everyone with a stake in the company, from employees and stockholders to customers.

Yes, perhaps Apple has a proper succession plan that will allow Apple to persevere for years following through on the vision of its co-founder. But psychology really influences the financial markets, and properly executed spin and/or damage control isn’t a bad thing.

That takes us to the recent release of a corporate memo from Jobs about the MobileMe launch fiasco. Sure, Apple has admitted that things went badly, and they offered existing subscribers a one-month extension. Mine hasn’t shown up yet, but I’ll cut Apple a little slack, so long as it appears before my renewal date, in early October.

Now Ars Technica, a terrific tech news and review site, has published the details of Jobs’ letter. There’s nothing in it, as far as I can tell, that contains proprietary information about Apple’s network, but the key details are worth repeating here, so you don’t have to follow the links:

“It was a mistake to launch MobileMe at the same time as iPhone 3G, iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store. We all had more than enough to do, and MobileMe could have been delayed without consequence.”

In addition, Apple has promoted iTunes executive Eddy Cue to handle all of Apple’s Internet services. What’s more, Jobs concedes that they’ve learned from their missteps and they hope to make MobileMe something they can be proud of by the end of the year.

In saying that, however, I wonder why this memo wasn’t just delivered as a press release in the first place? It’s not as if Jobs didn’t know it would get out anyway, since it wasn’t released under a corporate NDA.

While I am glad to see that Apple isn’t above admitting error from time to time, I wish they would make a better effort to be more forthcoming about such matters. Confessing one’s imperfections shouldn’t be a bad thing, as my wife continues to remind me.