I like being surprised, but I have to tell you that I didn’t expect Office 2008 for the Mac to do very well. You see, Microsoft’s reputation is heavily tarnished these days, and more and more people are embracing Macs; in greater numbers, in fact, than anyone had a right to expect. At the same time, sales of Vista are not so terrific, made mostly to people buying new PCs, and even then it seems a fair number of their customers really want to “downgrade” or “sidegrade” to XP.

So I have to tell you that I did not expect to wake up and find a Microsoft press release in my Inbox extolling the stellar sales of Office 2008. Other reports claim that they moved three times as many boxes as Office 2004 during the introductory months. Of course, in those days, Apple sold about a third as many computers, so I suppose this improvement is understandable based on the size of the market alone.

Indeed, Microsoft appears to have been working hard to rid Office 2008 of its early-release bugs, such as excessively slow launch times. The new SP1 update, for example, after an initial period where databases are rebuilt, results in the apps opening twice as fast.

Nonetheless, my expectations had been severely lowered because of Microsoft’s unfortunate decision to ditch support for its Visual Basic for Applications macro capability for the Universal version of office. This is a critical feature, particularly for cross-platform compatibility, or any issue involving documents that contain macros. Sure, Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit went to AppleScript for a macro-like capability, but there’s no easy transition or translation process.

Microsoft’s excuse was that it would take an additional year to move VBA from its original programming environment to Universal. That excuse — and I don’t know if it’s true or not — was later extended up to two years. At the same time, Microsoft said they were looking into a future solution.

That came with the promise that the next version of Office for the Mac, due some time in 2010 most likely, will provide VBA support all over again. The only open question is how complete it might be, because, power users tell me, there are known incompatibilities between the Mac and Windows versions even now.

Until then, if you must use macros, stick with Office 2004, or just install Windows on your Intel-based Mac, using Boot Camp or a virtualization application, and get by with Office 2007 for the time being.

That, of course, brings up another reason for Microsoft to love Apple, at least when it comes to dollar signs. You see, whenever a new PC with Vista preloaded is sold, Microsoft gets a discount OEM fee that reportedly averages around $50. However, the million Mac users who have bought Parallels Desktop and the countless others who use Windows with another solution are paying those much higher retail user license fees. Microsoft has to be delighted at the turn of events, since sales of retail Vista licenses have been charitably described as tepid.

In addition, Microsoft recently inked an agreement with Apple to provide ActiveSync support on the iPhone. Beginning with the version 2.0 iPhone update due late in June, you will be able to take advantage of full or nearly full compatibility with Exchange servers. In addition to getting the license fees from Apple, that means Microsoft stands a chance of selling more licenses for Exchange Server, which can cost a good $10,000 or more. Way to go Microsoft!

So, despite their well-known troubles, Microsoft can rely on Apple as a reliable partner — and competitor — to deliver additional profits. What a strange world we live in.

This isn’t to say that Microsoft get off scott free in this changed environment. As some of you have observed, their biggest problem is leadership, and it’s a leadership that has no vision whatever when it comes to true innovation. They are mostly involved with selling yesterday’s technology, repackaged or relabeled as something new and different When it came to their failed efforts to gain traction against Google in the search and online ad market, they believed that squandering tens of billions of dollars to buy Yahoo would somehow create the magic synergy that spelled success.

Now I won’t say that such a merger can never occur, even though it’s off the table right now. If Yahoo’s efforts to fix their business problems don’t bear fruit in the next few months, you can bet that shareholders will likely force a reconsideration of an alignment with Microsoft. If Yahoo’s stock price is in the toilet, Steve Ballmer and his crew might even get their prize for less money than they were wiling to offer right now.

At the same time, would it really make that much of a difference? True, Microsoft has one huge staff of talented designers and engineers and I am convinced they are as capable as any tech company when it comes to building first rate products. But they lack guidance from the top, and that won’t change unless Microsoft ditches its leadership and brings onboard people who can steer the aging battleship in a new direction.

What made the difference at Apple is, of course, Steve Jobs. Is there someone like him who’d be capable of cleaning out Microsoft’s huge bureaucracy and building a lean and mean organization that would cast out the cobwebs and allow the company to compete at full throttle in the 21st century?

That’s a tall order, and I suspect Microsoft can drift along without a rudder for a number of years before they realize something’s wrong. In the meantime, they can count on Apple to deliver a decent amount of profits to help keep them rolling along.

When I read an article the other day that Macs were finally getting a better break in the June 2008 issue of Consumer Reports, in an article entitled “Best & worst computers,” I felt optimistic. Up till now, although Macs routinely get good marks in their tests, the magazine’s editors do little or nothing to distinguish them from the generic PCs they review.

In fact, for all intents and purposes, you get the strong impression that a Mac is nothing more than a pretty PC with a higher price. Period.

So what was there about the June issue that seemed to inspire that optimism? Well, I read the article, and, frankly, I found nothing in it to foster the impression that Consumer Reports had actually changed its ways. For one thing, the few instructional paragraphs provided, such as what to do about removing programs, were decidedly Windows-oriented. Once again, the article and the various sidebars didn’t contain any information to help the magazine’s millions of readers decide whether to go Mac or PC.

Lots of product features were listed in the tables accompanying the ratings, but with little guidance about whether any of them have significant value or even the purpose they serve. The ubiquitous card readers, for example, which allow you to handle media cards from different hardware. How many Mac or PC users need them — really? Most of us have a single digital camera, which can be attached directly to your Mac’s USB port to download your photos. Where there are multiple devices at hand, you can always buy a card reader for a small sum, rather than pay to have it included with the computer as standard equipment.

The biggest missing category, though, is “Ease of Use.” You find that in the review on monitors, which, by the way, excludes Apple’s display line, but not with personal computers, where it really counts.

Years ago, one of the earliest TV spots about the iMac touted the simple setup process that involved three steps to get online. “There is no step four,” the announcer added. But Consumer Reports, owned by a non-profit corporation that touts its independence from influence by the companies whose products it reviews, doesn’t provide a single word about the setup process when you buy a new computer, nor the issues involved in migrating your stuff from an older computer, which can be a daunting process. Or used to be, since Apple’s Migration Assistant makes Mac to Mac upgrades a trivial process in most cases.

Worse, the magazine doesn’t do anything to explain to its readers how Mac OS X and Windows differ, their plusses and minuses — and such categories can be fairly applied to both. They fail to realize that personal computers are still not commodity products, such as toaster ovens, and they appear unable to address the real usability problems that persist on all platforms.

So, in the end, Consumer Reports fails abysmally in its PC review process.

Sure, Apple’s products got high marks. Their customer support ranks way ahead of all the competition, and those figures are based on reader surveys from tens of thousands of participants, not arbitrary editorial standards. There is, by the way, one potentially troubling area, which is note-book reliability, where Apple rates dead last with a rating of 23, compared to a high water mark of 20, achieved by Lenovo, which acquired IBM’s PC business a few years ago.

However, statistically speaking, such differences are relatively minor and may not impact you all that much. As the magazine itself states, “differences of less than three points are not meaningful.”

So where has Apple failed — if that is truly a failure? Well perhaps the well-publicized extended repair programs on certain Mac note-book models to replace such components as batteries and logic boards, which may experience premature failure. While current models seem to be quite robust, reliability scores follow an historical trend, and it may take a few years for improvements to register.

In saying that, I would grant that, within the limits of the survey, note-book reliability is quite close among all the major brands. The Dell is not any more likely to fail than an Apple, the top-rated Lenovo, or a Gateway. They are all, in fact, assembled by the very same Asian factories, using industry-standard components. So how would you expect them to be all that different?

In the desktop universe, Apple excels with a 12, compared to a range of 17 to 20, again statistically insignificant, for the rest of the bunch.

As to the magazine’s curious editorial posture, some years ago, one of their IT people told me that the editors who managed the PC test process were heavily biased towards Windows. While Apple’s products continue to be reviewed and garner superior ratings, the bias clearly persists, and that may explain why they still won’t provide any meaningful guidance as to which PC operating system is best for their mostly consumer audience.

When you consider that Consumer Reports has a combined circulation larger than all the Mac and PC magazines combined, that’s a tragedy. At the same time, I suppose you can find other product categories, such as autos, where their reviews may fail to distinguish the advantages of models that, while a little quirky in some respects, deliver a driving experience that is unique, enjoyable, but still safe.

Or maybe all of this is due to their ongoing editorial “dumbing down” process that removes important information that would better serve the interests of all their readers. Will that ever change? Frankly, I’m not at all optimistic. Next time Consumer Reports covers PCs, a few Mac commentators will again state they have changed their ways, but that’s just not the way it really is.

Although this conversation probably never took place, I can well believe the scene is playing out as if it did.

One day, Steve Jobs and Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who sits on Apple’s Board of Directors, were having lunch and talking shop. In one of those fated eureka moments, they both devised a strategy that would, over time, consign Microsoft to irrelevance.

Apple’s part of this grand scheme includes those cute little Mac versus PC ads, where the PC is a slightly paunchy, overweight corporate type who suffers the slings and arrows of Windows and never quite comprehends the folly of his ways. The Mac, portrayed as young, hip and perhaps a little full of himself, tolerates the PC’s foibles with a bemused expression.

The message isn’t lost on customers, who are deserting the Windows platform in droves, with the numbers growing larger every single year. Where Microsoft experienced a flattening of Windows sales — which they attribute to growing piracy in the Third World rather than confront the real reason — Apple continues to flourish. If you can believe the figures, some 50% of the folks who buy Macs at one of Apple’s own retail outlets are new to the platform. That’s a figure, by the way, which has sustained itself for several years, as Mac sales continue to soar.

So Microsoft continues to experience a steady erosion of its once insurmountable operating system dominance. While it’s not a stampede by any means, the handwriting does appear to be on the wall.

Sure, Microsoft doesn’t always lose a sale when someone buys a Mac. A number of you buy get a copy of Windows to run with Boot Camp, or under virtualization with Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion. And Microsoft appears to be selling a fair amount of copies of Office for the Mac, though I’m skeptical that the 2008 version is doing quite as well as previous versions.

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

Way back when, during the nasty 1990s, Apple had so many models, it was doubtful that any single company executive could identify all of them without a cheat sheet at hand. Even salespeople, who earned commissions on the hardware they could move, would have similar difficulties.

But it wasn’t just the hardware proliferation disease that consumed Apple in its efforts to break into consumer electronics chains in those days. Some models, meant for power users, remained downright hostile to upgrade. It wasn’t just fiddling with thin wiring harnesses to add a second hard drive. The actual RAM installation process sometimes required removal of the entire logic board in order to locate the slots placed, of course, in the rear.

I was once told by an Apple sales executive that the people who designed such user-hostile features, particularly in the Quadra 800 and its successors, were no longer with the company. I wonder why.

One day, I attended an Apple meeting where they demoed a new Power Mac with a sort of pop-out chassis arrangement, allowing for relatively simple upgrades. The presenter’s voice was soon drowned out by the resounding cheers and applause from the audience.

Today, upgrading Macs presents a mixed bag. It’s not so difficult on the MacBook and MacBook Pro, since it generally requires removing the battery and a protective cover. You just need the proper screwdriver. The MacBook Air, however, doesn’t have upgradeable memory, and you have to remove the bottom cover to change a battery. It is, in that sense, a close cousin to the equally unfriendly environment of the iPod and iPhone.

Sales, however, do not seem to have suffered as a result of choosing form above function — and, in large part, violating basic logic.

You’d think that the process ought to be simpler on a desktop Mac, but you’d be partly right. The usually forgotten Mac mini requires skills with a putty knife to pry open the case to access the chassis. Upgrading RAM became worse in the transition from Power PC processors to Intel, because now you have to remove the hard drive to reach the RAM slots. Either way, the risk of damaging the case is high, and you have to be really careful and have flexible fingers to avoid making scratches.

But I still wonder why Apple apparently hasn’t considered creating a removable cover for the Mac mini. That, and some judicious chassis design, ought to make the internal upgrade process fairly smooth. But, as I said, Apple ignores the mini and thus it remains a sealed box for most of you.

Today’s iMac isn’t quite so bad, since Apple designed a convenient RAM access door at the bottom of the case, which can be easily opened with a Phillips screwdriver. But don’t think about changing out hard drives and other components. It can be done if you do some online research to locate the correct instructions, but for normal people, it’s a difficult process best left to professional service people.

In the entire Mac desktop lineup, the Mac Pro is an absolute joy to work on. You don’t even need a screwdriver, except for adding and removing peripheral cards. Once you pop off the side of the case, using the rear latch, you’ll find the eight RAM slots split between two slide-out printed circuit cards. Replacing or adding hard drives is essentially a slide out process, and you merely anchor the drive with the four thumb screws provided in each of the four available slide-out carriers. No cables to fiddle with, and I still remember the cuts and bruises I suffered years ago when I had to navigate through the tight pathways of a poorly designed chassis to replace such things.

The vision of a mid-ranged headless Mac desktop — one without a display — would also involve a product that’s essentially as easy to upgrade as the Mac Pro, even though it would probably be less than half the size. That harkens back to the original Mac II and IIx/IIci series, where it was simple to pop off the top cover and have your way with the internal components to add the appropriate hardware.

In those days, though, Apple’s limited warranty seriously discouraged such practices. Later, it was modified to allow you to do what you would, so long as you didn’t damage anything, in which case it would be your responsibility to pay for any resulting damage.

When I look at Apple’s entire lineup nowadays, I do find it unfortunate that they apply the toaster oven approach to so many of their products. You don’t expect to pry apart your small appliance to change things, and Apple apparently doesn’t expect you to do that with your computing appliance either, except for some sharply focused exceptions.

The Mac Pro, naturally, exists in its own universe, since the people who exploit the power of eight cores are the ones who are apt to max out memory, add extra hard drives, and peripheral cards for various types of content creation.

As far as the mystical midrange minitower is concerned, though, it’s an open question just how much expansion you really need. Aside from RAM, most of you probably don’t concern yourselves with adding hard drives or pondering the advantages of a different graphics card. But if Apple does decide to build such a beast, which is by no means certain, I hope they will make upgrading easy, whether you care to exploit that capability or not.