On or about January 15, 2008, according to current plan, Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit will release the long-awaited — and somewhat delayed — Office 2008 for the Mac in the U.S. They are busy touting its new features, which include updated artwork, a page layout feature for Word, and various and sundry tools for easier organization and access.

The suite, which dominates the Mac market, though not nearly as much as Office for Windows dominates that platform, is a huge profit center for Microsoft. Compared to the grief they suffer with their own operating system, Microsoft’s Mac software requires far less technical support. For most people, it just works, even if the software is flaky and typically bloated.

I have little doubt that Office 2008 will be a marvelous upgrade, well worth the purchase price, even if you’re buying your copy from scratch and don’t have an older version at hand. I’m personally a fan of Entourage, the email and contact management application, although the current version is slow, even on the speediest Power Mac on the planet, the G5 Quad. On an Intel-based Mac, despite ongoing improvements in Rosetta emulation, Entourage can be a real drag — and you can interpret that phrase any way you like.

In addition, Office 2008 will reportedly be file compatible with Office 2007 for Windows. So far so good.

But there is one key feature the Mac version has dropped that may create havoc for a certain segment of business users, and that’s Visual Basic. You see, Microsoft’s programming language is used for macros, which automate many complicated Office procedures, particularly with sophisticated Excel documents. Some book publishers set up custom templates with Visual Basic macros, so the author only has to invoke the proper shortcut to embed formatting commands that translate during the final book production process. In other words, this feature is not only significant but crucial for many users.

On the negative side of the ledger, the so-called Office macro viruses use security holes in Visual Basic to do nasty things. On the Windows platform, they might cause extensive damage, since Office and other Microsoft applications are closely tied to the operating system. On the Mac, these viruses might kill your Office templates in various ways. In one well-known situation, you can no longer save new documents — they are all saved as templates.

If there’s any real reason to run anti-virus software under Mac OS X right now, it’s the risk of a macro virus, or perhaps accidentally sending virus-infected messages to a Windows user. So if you thought that Macs are safe, you are probably right — at least for now — but why would you want to hurt a Windows user? That is, of course, unless you don’t like the intended recipient of your message, but that’s still not the point, since it may accidentally spread to an innocent third party regardless of your intentions.

To be a bit more serious, though, Microsoft’s Mac BU gave a logical-sounding excuse for axing Visual Basic. It’s taken them long enough to port their code to Apple’s Xcode programming environment, so they can build a Universal version. The task of transitioning Visual Basic would take the better part of the year; at least, so they say.

Now it’s very easy to come up with a logical-sounding conspiracy theory here. Microsoft secretly wants Mac users to switch to the Windows platform, and thus they are crippling Office 2008 in ways to force people to make some critical decisions if they must use macros.

On the other hand, Office 2008 will have expanded support for AppleScript. All but the cheapest version will include a number of Automator actions to help deliver basic functionality without having to learn scripting. There already have been articles published about transitioning to AppleScript, so it may be possible to take some existing macros and make them work under the new system.

That, however, doesn’t mean there will be two-way translation between AppleScript or Visual Basic, or even that such a thing is possible. If it was, I wouldn’t be so concerned.

In the meantime, while Apple continues to tout Microsoft Office as an important Mac application suite, they have worked hard to improve iWork. In the latest version of Pages, for example, there’s virtually complete support for Word’s Track Changes feature. This is a critical workgroup tool that lets writers and editors collaborate on a document and keep tabs on the entire revision process.

If anything, Pages does it better, since you no longer have to put up with Word’s silly change balloons and other awkwardness in exchange for a method that’s at once smoother and easier to handle. It also appears, based on my brief testing, that you can transfer documents back and forth between Pages and Word and not lose any of the edits.

This is not to say that iWork ’08 is a 100% alternative to Office. Many of the advanced features of Microsoft’s suite aren’t supported. Apple has carefully targeted iWork for home and small business users, who will rarely, if ever, require the sophisticated elements of Office. It’s fair to say, in fact, that only a fraction of Microsoft’s users ever thoroughly attack the convoluted nooks and crannies either, so maybe it doesn’t make a difference.

Certainly, Apple is not overtly going after Microsoft’s customers. But the delay in releasing Office 2008 may accomplish that result anyway. And for folks who really don’t care about macros anyway, this may just be the last straw.

Is Microsoft listening? Will they take the blame if Office 2008 isn’t a smashing success, or will they just say that Mac users don’t care anymore, that maybe it’s time they packed up their bags and went home?

Of course, Microsoft has also done some pretty screwy things with its Windows products. In the end, if they lose the Mac market, it may indeed be more the result of stupidity than conspiratorial thinking.

One of the big stories this weekend, other than the usual political shenanigans and lurid celebrity gossip, was the claim that some iPhones were turned into bricks by the latest firmware update from Apple. Of course, Apple warned iPhone users about the potential consequences of unlocking their phones, which is intended to allow them to work on other phone systems.

In the wake of that update, some of those unlocked iPhones were predictably rendered all or mostly inoperable. Yet, it also appears a few phones that were never hacked also suffered in a similar fashion from the firmware revision. Without knowing what may have happened, on rare occasions, firmware updates do fail, but one would hope Apple will remedy such matters forthwith.

The core question, however, is whether Apple has the right to treat folks who choose to make unsanctioned upgrades to their iPhones in this fashion. Are they playing dirty tricks, or simply acting appropriately?

Consider another example in a different industry.

You buy a spanking new $75,000 BMW and, when you get home, you perform various modifications to the engine to improve breathing and give more power and fuel economy. Unfortunately, your hardware alterations eventually result in serious engine damage.

Does BMW have the obligation to repair that engine under warranty?

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

In the business world, there are many factors that can cause a company to suffer big time and ultimately fail. One is, of course, poor sales, which usually combine with poor profits to destroy the bottom line. Certainly competitors can cause a business lots and lots of grief. But sometimes a company does things that do not work in its own best interests.

Now before I get the typical “Apple fanboy” insult from a few of our readers again, let me tell you that Apple has also done things that, in the long run, seriously damaged their potential to own a much greater portion of the PC market. A lot of that happened years ago, but the impact is still felt. Many of the myths about Macs, that they are too expensive, not serious business machines and that there is very little software available, descended from early missteps made by Apple.

Up till now, Microsoft has been regarded as the 800-thousand-pound gorilla that can do no wrong, and besides it treats its customers well enough that they keep coming back. Or they perceive there are no better alternatives.

Regardless, it does seem to me that Microsoft is doing its level best to anger its customers. They aren’t quite so blatant in their actions as the RIAA, which has been suing music lovers who allegedly downloaded and uploaded pirated music for years, but the handwriting may be on the wall.

I’m more concerned, though, with the ways in which Microsoft intrudes on the privacy of its customers and makes other wrong-headed business decisions. It’s bad enough that they forced people to download a Windows Genuine Advantage patch that was actually designed to continually report back to their servers whether you were using an authentic, properly-licensed copy of Windows. Now had they been up front about what they were doing, that might be another thing. But they weren’t, and thus the WGA updates came down, without giving folks a proper explanation. Worst, the initial version was actually a beta, and was required for you to receive further software upgrades for Windows and other Microsoft products.

If that wasn’t bad enough, what about folks who got updates installed that they don’t want? Well, Microsoft pulled this stunt recently, sending a patch to its Windows Update system, even to people who specified that they didn’t want the updates. Does that make sense to you?

Sure, I can see where the update might have contained an important change, perhaps a bug fix, which was required to download and install critical patches. But if you don’t want the updates, you have a right to make that decision. If you then choose to get them manually from Microsoft’s site, they can just set things up so you take this update first before the rest.

Otherwise, this is a forced and needless intrusion into the privacy of a PC owner who is already being besieged with unwanted email and the threat of malware. What was Microsoft thinking anyway?

Yes, I suppose they can deliver appropriate corporate spin that their intentions were good and all, but what about a newly-discovered side-effect, which is that some repair installs of Windows were flaky after that stealth update? Now, a repair install on the Windows platform usually involves taking your original system software CD and using it to perform a reinstallation that leaves all your applications in place. Of course, you then have to download all your patches all over again, dating from the Windows revision your CD contains.

Unfortunately, dozens and dozens of those updates would fail to download if you did that repair installation after the unannounced, unwanted update from Microsoft.

In addition to abusing its Windows customers, Microsoft has reserved a few smoke bombs for the Mac. First came an apparently greed-driven change in the Windows Vista EULA, which prohibits you from installing any Vista Home version on a virtual machine, courtesy of Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion. Does that make any sense? On a practical basis, this only means you have to buy a more expensive edition of Vista unless you stick with Boot Camp. There are some lame excuses about improved security and all, but they don’t wash.

Then there’s the news that the Mac Business Unit has removed support for Visual Basic in the forthcoming Office 2008 for the Mac. Yes, there will be AppleScript support, and even Automator actions on all but the $149 Home and Student Edition, which, strangely enough, lacks that and Exchange support.

However, what are Mac users to do if they need to work on a Word or Excel document with a macro required for their job? Even book authors may have to use one of these documents in order for the final manuscript to be properly formatted. With Office 2008, that won’t be possible. Thus, the promise of true cross-platform compatibility has been broken.

In their response, Microsoft claims that porting Visual Basic to the Universal version of Office would take prohibitively long, and thus seriously delay release of the product. Maybe, but how many Mac users are going to be forced to stick with Office 2004 as a result?

If sales of Office 2008 lag, would Microsoft simply stop building Office for the Mac as a result? That will result in the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of income, and it would be no fault but their own.

Indeed, Microsoft’s executives need to spend a little more time looking into their mirrors and do some soul-searching about such foolish decisions.

As Apple continues to grow a lot faster than most people ever expected, it’s inevitable that there are going to be comparisons with Microsoft. This is particularly true when it comes to the iPod and iTunes, both of which hold serious majorities in market share.

So if you complain that Microsoft is a monopoly, shouldn’t you also make the same complaint about Apple and its standing in the digital music market?

Unfortunately, many of the people who make this claim have failed to learn from the lessons of history, particularly how Microsoft came to occupy a dominant position in PC operating systems and office suites. And, no, it wasn’t because they built the best product and beat their competitors fair and square.

From the very beginning, when Bill Gates played a shell game with IBM to sell them the original MS-DOS operating system before he acquired it from another company, it is clear that Microsoft knew how to play the game of business hardball, ethical or otherwise.

Through the years, Microsoft has grown, in part, by double-crossing its partners. Remember when they were working with IBM to develop OS/2, the next great industrial-grade operating system? Well, that partnership evaporated, and Microsoft created Windows NT instead. That way, they could keep all the profits to themselves and not have to share the glory with anyone.

This is not to say that NT was necessarily a bad operating system. Certainly it was a tremendous leap beyond the DOS-based Windows, and thus something that benefited all Microsoft customers in the end. But you don’t have to question why IBM these days is pushing open source.

More recently, when its PlaysForSure partners couldn’t gain a foothold in the digital media player market against the iPod, Microsoft released a modified version of a Toshiba Gigabeat player, called it Zune, and went off in their own direction. Still no success, but it does show the folly of partnering with Microsoft.

I do not need to recount the issues that led to antitrust actions against Microsoft in America and Europe. Even though some of the fine elements of those complaints may be debated, the overwhelming evidence shows that Microsoft employed all sorts of questionable tactics to achieve and retain market dominance.

It was never about having the best product.

Now compare that to Apple Inc.

Over the years, Apple has done some pretty foolish things that squandered their prospects for early control of the personal computing market after the huge success of the Apple II. You can certainly argue about a lot of things that could have been done better — or at least differently — but can you honestly say Apple has used illegal marketing tactics to achieve its present-day status as a industry-leading consumer electronics manufacturer?

Certainly, although it hasn’t always met shipping dates, Apple hasn’t played dirty tricks to enhance the Mac’s market share. They’ve simply built the product, shipped it, and let the customers decide whether or not to buy. There was no tie-in with other companies, forcing you to pay for their products even if you didn’t want them, as you have to do with the typical PC and Windows.

But what about the iPod? Doesn’t Apple have a huge advantage in that market segment? Sure they do, but they also started the iPod from absolutely nothing and, I gather, without any expectation that it would become a culstural icon. Apple had never built a digital music player before, and there were indeed a number of competitive products out there.

Apple didn’t succeed by riding roughshod on Creative and other companies building music players. When the iTunes store first appeared on the Mac expanded to the Windows environment, Apple didn’t demand exclusive agreements with the music companies. They all had product at other music stores too.

But a combination of ease of use, sex appeal and smart advertising drove Apple to the top of the heap. They didn’t prevent competitors from building their own music players. While the iPod and iTunes were closed platforms, that didn’t prevent other companies from building similar environments for their own gadgets, or offering superior hardware and music store integration.

Should there be one unified format that would allow you to take your iPod and have it work with any music store? Should iTunes integrate as seamlessly with the Zune and other products? Maybe, maybe not. But that doesn’t mean music lovers don’t have a choice.

However, don’t forget that many Apple products these days are fully compatible with Windows. On the other hand, Microsoft and its PlaysForSure partners treat the Mac as if it didn’t exist.

No, Apple isn’t a monopoly and it doesn’t behave like one. Let this argument die a quick death once and for all.