You know, lots of companies have “corporate communications” departments, where they examine the public impact of a policy or product, and choose the best way to handle it. This may be difficult where the news is unfavorable, because they have to somehow spin a bad story into a good one.

But it all-too-often seems as if Microsoft, despite listing corporate communications people on their employee roster, doesn’t have a working department to determine and control the fallout of the moves they make. How else can you explain some of the utter stupidities that emerge from their executives and actions?

It wasn’t so long ago that outgoing Chairman Bill Gates pronounced spam dead within two years. Of course, that was more than two years ago, and nothing has changed. Then again, most of the prognostications that emerge from Gates have been equally wrong. If he charged a fee for his guesses, he’d be a poor man now.

In terms of wrong-headed actions, do you recall that notorious Windows Genuine Advantage update, which was considered “mandatory” for XP users? What it turned out to be was a scheme to make your PC contact the mother ship every single day online and confirm that your Microsoft software was “genuine.” So the only advantage was to Microsoft. In fact, the lack of WGA also meant you’d be unable to download the updates you needed to keep your operating system as reliable and secure as possible. Or at least reliable and secure according to Microsoft’s definition, which you can truthfully regard as questionable.

Worse, the software they initially provided was a beta version, not even a final release. Now imagine if Apple forced you to install beta software? The hue and cry from certain tech pundits and Wall Street naysayers would be deafening, but they hardly uttered a whimper at Microsoft’s blatantly hostile shenanigans.

After lots of people objected to being hoodwinked into downloading and installing that thing, they relented and extended the duration of the online snooping process.

Another scheme, recently revealed, is just as blatant, and it’s clear they didn’t learn much from the WGA debacle. Or maybe it wasn’t so much of a debacle, because the complaints vanished near as quickly as they came. I suppose Windows users are inured to abuse from the ever-present malware threat and the other problems that plague the platform.

The latest scam affected even XP and Vista users who had configured Windows Update to switch off the automatic updating feature. Despite that choice, Microsoft’s servers have been regularly pushing out “Secret” updates that were installed behind-the-scenes anyway.

What sort of updates? Why to the Windows Update software of course? But why would anyone need that update unless the feature was activated? Why indeed?

Microsoft’s excuse is that this sort of uninvited updating process has been in place for for several years, and, according to a published report, is done “from time to time to ensure that it is running the most current technology.”

Right, sure!

The only possible reason you’d need that update is when you switch on Windows Update, or chose to perform the update scan manually. Then the first update can be a newer version to facilitate future updates.

In fact, that’s precisely what Apple has done in the past when they needed to refresh Mac OS X’s Software Update software. If the feature was running, the first update you received would be the patch that upgraded the update mechanism. Then you’d be ready to receive future upgrades for Apple’s software without further fuss or muss, and you could still select whether to check for them via remote control or manually. Your choice.

Of course, Microsoft made its usual half-hearted apology, and strongly urged Windows users to allow the updates to be performed automatically anyway. Just this week, Microsoft compelled users of Window Live and MSN Messenger to perform upgrades due to a security issue if they wanted to continue to use these applications. Yes, give them continued control of your box.

Lots of businesses, however, won’t listen and with good reason. If you think Mac OS X updates are bad, it is not uncommon for Windows updates to break a lot of stuff. Thus, IT people will test those updates extensively to make sure they work with the software needed to run the business. Then they deploy those updates in a controlled fashion, to cause as little disruption as possible.

Microsoft, alas, wants to have it otherwise. From the company that brought you the brown Zune, and was forced to take a $100 charge on every single Xbox 360 sold to repair serious defects, that’s the sort of lame behavior you come to expect.

But they still remain number one, and rake in huge profit margins on their software. Some continue to regard them as unstoppable, and so long as you believe the old adage from P.T. Barnum, “A sucker is born every minute,” I suppose they’re right.

I know, you love to hate your wireless phone company, your local car dealers (unless you work for one of course), and certainly that company that provides your cable TV service and perhaps the Internet.

Of course, there are good reasons to feel less-than-pleased with such businesses, because they are notorious for delivering bad service and equally bad customer support. I know I’ve had any number of war stories to tell over the years with those three and others.

Yet, from time to time, I’ve had encounters that aren’t so bad. Take our local cable TV provider, Cox, which proclaims to visitors to its site that: “With more than 6 million total residential and commercial customer relationships, over 22,000 employees and a firm commitment to education, the Cox team is widely regarded industry leaders, having earned multiple distinctions in customer satisfaction, diversity practices and company strategy. In 2006, Cox received highest honor in in J.D. Power and Associates’ residential cable/satellite TV customer satisfaction study as well as in 2005 for customer satisfaction among high-speed Internet service providers.”

Among cable TV companies, Cox is dwarfed by Comcast and Warners, but they are all busy competing with local phone companies and satellite TV services to give you entire suites of bundled services. Not just TV and the Internet, but telephone landlines, and even, through partnerships with Sprint, wireless.

I’m sure each and every one of you has a horror story to voice with one of these firms. In the normal course of events, however, despite the horrendous complexities of their networks, the systems do manage to function well enough to satisfy millions of people.

Where a company proves its mettle, however, is when things go wrong. Indeed, there’s plenty of opportunity for that here in Arizona, where summertime temperatures frequently exceed 115 degrees in the shade, and the vast underground and above-ground networks of fiber, coaxial, copper cables, amplifiers and distribution networks required to maintain a cable system can easily break down.

And don’t get me started about car batteries, although we’ve been lucky so far this year.

Indeed, we encountered some difficulties this summer, during which time the Phoenix area had more days where temperatures exceeded 100 degrees than at any time in recent years. Early in July, TV reception became flaky, with occasional bouts of tiling (image breakup) and distorted sound. Clearly the digital ones and zeros weren’t getting through correctly, as the set top boxes had to work overtime to provide data correction.

At the same time, my Internet connection also would become unduly slow for lengthy periods. Normally, download speeds are supposed to exceed 12 megabits, and usually they do.

Getting a handle on all these problems proved difficult, simply because there were, in the end, several causes. Through it all, the Cox support and service people distinguished themselves as friendly, hard-working people who were dedicated to solving the problems and making sure the fixes took.

In recent weeks, they’ve been at my home a number of times, and I’ve occasionally observed them hanging out near the wiring panels nearby, diligently monitoring the systems for hours on end to make sure everything worked perfectly, or as perfectly as possible in a highly imperfect world.

Just this morning, in fact, one of their representatives called me about their solution to our most recent problem. Knowing I was technically savvy (they have, of course, been to my home and the word gets around), she was quick to talk in her native lingo, referring to a bad drop (defective wire in “cable TV talk”) and how it caused packet losses and other issues that contributed to some of the problems I had with my Internet connnection. Once they isolated this particular issue, they were quick to bypass that drop — er, wire — until it could be replaced.

In the end, it was that, plus a combination of aging splitters, a defective amplifier and other wiring issues that caused most of the troubles. In addition, they had to split our cable node, because the growing number of people using their Internet services had exceeded their capacity in this neighborhood.

Now I am not sure what it cost them to perform all that repair work, but certainly it far exceeded my monthly bill for the cable bundle. They also gave me a generous credit towards that bill for the troubles I encountered.

Through it all, in fact, our regular Cox phone service never missed a beat. The local remnant of Ma Bell, Qwest, has to be shaking in their boots over this, as Cox continues to aggressively encroach into traditional telephone service.

As I said, you always expect things not to work when it comes to cable TV and related services. But when the cable company fixes the problems with a smile, you have to feel a little encouraged to know that some stories indeed have happy endings.

It’s sad, really. Apple’s iTunes store has sold billions of songs, millions of TV shows and movies, yet the entertainment industry still resides in the middle of the 20th century, so they can’t appreciate what’s actually happened.

For those of you who weren’t around in those days, we were saddled with black and white TV, and vinyl records. Of course, we didn’t realize that was any particular disadvantage. Except perhaps in laboratories, digital sound was nowhere in sight, and the prospect of recording a TV show for later viewing with cheap gear in your own home was something confined to science fiction stories.

You see, in those days, the entertainment industry had full control over what you heard or saw, and when and where the product was exhibited or sold. Sure, there was piracy, I’m sure, but not in the sense that we see it today, where show business representatives and their high-priced attorneys sue their customers — and not just each other.

Every time the consumer had the chance of gaining control, the industry would fight tooth and nail, without actually thinking of the consequences. Take videotaping your own shows from TV. That was a huge one. How could they let you get away with that? However, when they finally thought it through, they realized they could rent and sell videotapes and make a bundle.

With the arrival of the compact cassette, and later the CD and DVD, they discovered another scheme to separate you from your money, and that is to make you buy all your favorite tunes and movies all over again.

The problem with CD and DVD, of course is that, unlike vinyl recordings, they don’t wear out very often, and then usually only if you scratch the living hell out of them.

So the money-grubbers in Hollywood finally devised a way for you to still buy all new versions of what you already own, by dint of remixing and remastering albums, and providing special “Director’s Cut” editions of movies, sometimes with alternate endings on a separate disc. There were even “collections,” which contained several movies in a series, or even a full season of a TV show.

In fact, some shows, such as the all-too-quickly-canceled science fiction western, Firefly, got a new lease on life, sort of, and generated more income for the movie studios, because of the DVD versions. All right, I freely admit that this is one collection I actually purchased.

However, when the world went digital, the entertainment industry went bananas. They couldn’t see the forest from the trees, so rather than embrace the new medium and monetize it, they could only see the physical media that wouldn’t be sold. They sat on their heels and watched people go to Napster and BitTorrent to illegally download the content they wanted.

In the end, they should bow down before Steve Jobs for showing them what they couldn’t see for themselves, and that was how to make billions from legal downloads. However, rather than thank Jobs and Apple for bringing us the iPod and iTunes, they got the bright idea to try to induce Apple to increase prices. Or just charge extra for hot product, and a little less for older catalog selections that weren’t selling near as well.

Jobs, however, wanted things to be simple and straightforward, so he said no. Worse, he had the temerity to tell the entertainment industry that they should remove all the DRM that tethered music to a handful of computers.

So far, only one music company, EMI, has acceded to those demands, at least on iTunes. But they got something in the bargain, which was to sell the DRM-free music for $1.29, rather than 99 cents. Sure, you also get a high-reslution 256K version for the extra cash, but EMI’s costs don’t change one iota. They just have to give Apple two versions of the same music file, and count the money; that is, except for the pittance they pay the artists and song writers in royalties.

Universal/NBC, of course, couldn’t tolerate operating in an environment that actually succeeds, so they tried to play chicken with Apple. They decided to sell DRM-free songs elsewhere, and move TV shows to Amazon Unboxed, the better to ignore Mac users. Yes, that’s really smart, folks! Exclude millions of potential customers. And for what purpose? To spite Apple? Engage in a power play?

As I said, the entertainment industry has a golden opportunity to expand their marketplace and reach millions of younger folks who live online almost 24/7. I see lots of potential profits there, and Apple can show them the way. But, typical of Hollywood moguls, they may hear, but they do not see.

All right, here’s the deal: When Steve Jobs announced last week that Apple was dropping the price of the iPhone by $200, the company’s stick took a dive. Indeed, even though this was supposed to be a good thing, some Wall Street analysts went out on the limb with ill-informed claims that this was some sort of fire sale, that the iPhone had tanked and Apple took a desperate move to reinvigorate the product to meet its sales goals.

Cut to July, where the same gang of alleged analysts claimed that Apple failed to meet its estimates of selling one million iPhones on the very first weekend, rather than 270,000, as indicated in their quarterly earnings report. Only Apple never many any such estimates, ever, anywhere, although this fiction was repeated over and over again online, in print and on the airwaves as if it were something truthful.

Clearly the initial sales figures also caused Apple’s stock price to drop and reduce the company’s market cap by billions of dollars. Now maybe a volatile stock price is a good thing if you’re hedging your bets and using your money as if it were Monopoly cash to eke as many profits as you can on back of the misfortunes of others. Don’t pass go, and don’t collect $200!

Now I understand the profit game. What I don’t understand is telling blatant lies to manipulate a company’s stock price. Isn’t that supposed to be illegal in some quarters?

Yes, I realize that mistakes can be made, too, but the foregoing erroneous reports were not based on any known facts whatever. There was no indication in the sales channels that the iPhone was in difficulty, and, as I already said, Apple never made a sales prediction on that first weekend.

On the contrary, AT&T jubilantly announced that no wireless phone had ever exhibited sales that high in the first 36 hours. Even the original Motorola RAZR, which the mobile phone provider formerly known as Cingular debuted, didn’t attain a similar milestone for a month.

In July, it was reported that the iPhone had beat out all comers in the smart phone market in the U.S., and matched the sales of the LG Chocolate, a popular if highly flawed feature phone.

Not to add fuel to the conspiracy theories, but it does seem as if certain Wall Street analysts and pundits ache to rain on Apple’s parade, and find bad news even where it doesn’t really exist.

Contrast that to the way Microsoft is treated. When they took an over one billion dollar charge to cover repairs of millions of defective Xbox 360’s, it doesn’t seem that their moribund stock price moved significantly one way or the other. I suppose they expect Microsoft to fail, or they have grown bored of the matter entirely, so there weren’t all that many complaints.

Surely, if Apple took even a few hundred million dollars in charges against a defective anything, you’d hear yowls aplenty from lots of sources.

Is Apple the victim of its own success? Does the image of Steve Jobs as the smug, mercurial CEO offend certain people so much that his company’s operations are given excessive scrutiny?

Perhaps Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer are imagined as flawed beings who might rant and rave about things, but can’t be taken seriously.

Except, of course, that Microsoft is notorious for embracing and then double-crossing its partners, and in promising products that it simply cannot deliver. Yes, Apple is also blamed for unsavory dealings with third parties, but Microsoft was there first, and acted in a far more blatant fashion. Just look at their history in the way they partnered and then competed against Apple, IBM and others for the full sordid story.

Now put yourself in the shoes of the person who invested a lot of hard-earned money in Apple Inc., or perhaps the manager of pension fund. Consider how they are hurt by the shenanigans of a small number of unscrupulous individuals who regard Apple has a plaything that they can spread fake stories about with a clear conscience.

Do they have a right to sue? Can they call the S.E.C. and demand an investigation of these possibly illegal practices? Sure, it’s the right of a journalist to report the news, even if they get it wrong. But can you do something about people who make a living on Wall Street and do it for financial gain?

Is anyone listening and does anyone care?