A spate of bad news surrounding Mobile Me and iPhone 3G quality problems paired with renewed vigor from competitors Microsoft, Dell, and Nokia has Apple running out of slack from the normally fawning press (TUAW certainly not withstanding).

Forbes has a story about why Apple seems to have lost its luster recently. The New York Times is waxing nostalgic with a retrospective article titled Apple Imperfect. The National Post cites TechCrunch's Michael Arrington saying Apple is "rotting" and "flailing badly at the edges."

Consider the parable of the friend. Say you have a good friend, who's trustworthy, reliable and generally happy to be around you. If that friend suddenly isn't glad to see you anymore, swears at the elderly and starts drinking cheap bourbon from a hip flask in meetings, you'd say something, right? At least you'd worry that your friend was on the wrong path.

That's where we find Apple today: A friend on the wrong path. Many have noted that a lack of transparency in admitting its mistakes is hurting its credibility. The fact that it's making mistakes in the first place is generally forgivable, but we've been spoiled by Apple's pristine track record of consistently delivering quality. As consumers, we want the quality back. If anything, our expectations are even higher now to properly correct the various perceived injustices we've suffered.

Taking the long view, Apple will pull out of its funk. Knowing Steve Jobs, it will do so in a spectacular fashion, too, with new products, product improvements, or both. Apple isn't suffering from a lack of talent or innovation. It's suffering from management problems that any company of its size faces on a daily basis: scheduling new products, preventing employee burnout, and managing logistics.

We're nowhere near Apple's nadir under Gil Amelio, over a decade ago. In fact, investors don't seem to be fazed at all, with stock prices rebounding to their levels in May. Apple may already be back.

If you thought the new Get a Mac ads were spot-on or funny, then you will definitely get a kick out of this. On Microsoft's Photosynth website, they admit something that we've known for years: They're not cool enough to run on Macs.

Microsoft has set aside $300 million for an ad campaign featuring once-funny comedian Jerry Seinfeld in a series of advertisements targeting Apple. [Insert "master of his domain" joke here. -Ed.]

According to the Wall Street Journal, Microsoft will pay Seinfeld $10 million to appear in a series of ads for its "Windows, Not Walls" campaign that will feature Seinfeld and Bill Gates, Microsoft's chairman. According to AdWeek, other highly-relevant comics like Chris Rock and Will Ferrell may also appear in the ads.

Wired notes that Microsoft's "choice of Seinfeld was an effort to avoid pandering to the kids with 'a celebrity that was too hip.'" Mission accomplished.

It's unclear why the titan even has to advertise; its highly successful Windows Vista and Zune media player products have dominated the landscape for ... I'm sorry. I just can't type anymore. I'm laughing too hard.

The campaign is due to launch September 4, and will be produced by MDC Partners' Crispin Porter + Bogusky. The agency is responsible for such memorable hits as Burger King's "Subservient Chicken" and Miller Lite's "Man Laws," the latter with Burt Reynolds. Will his star ever stop rising?

[via Macworld]

Erik Schwiebert is one of the lead developers on the Mac Business Unit team under the Microsoft banner. I find their position constantly interesting -- even in these enlightened days of Safari for Windows, many dyed-in-the-wool Mac users still consider Microsoft the enemy, and yet the Mac BU has always been like a kind of diplomatic envoy. We have to use things like Office and Entourage, so we cautiously let them across the border, regarding them like strange visitors from the other side of the wall.

But maybe that's just all in my mind. Recently, the Mac BU released an update for Office 2008, and lots of users, apparently, have suffered from error problems while trying to install it. So many, in fact, that Schwiebert has responded to the problems on his blog, saying that the problems are most likely because users have deleted or otherwise messed with files inside the installation, causing the installer to abort. And that strange Mac BU/Mac users fragile truce comes into play here as well -- he specifically calls out Xslimmer and Monolingual, two programs that delete often-unnecessary files in OS X, for causing the issues.

There's a workaround floating around, but Schwiebert warns it leaves the application suite in a possibly unstable and unsupportable state. Unfortunately, Schwiebert doesn't really offer any solutions (other, we guess, than to reinstall the software so that it's back to the full install, and then apply the update). And the alliance between the Mac BU and their users remains fragile -- we've got to work together, but it seems that many are unhappy about it.

Google Docs gives you document storage in the cloud, so why shouldn't you be able to access your documents anywhere you are connected to the cloud -- including your iPhone? Well, Google Docs viewing on the iPhone has been a bit kludgy ... until now.

Thanks to MiGhtyDocs (iTunes link), you are now free to roam about the office to view your Docs on the go. You can't edit and you can't view spreadsheets or presentations, but MiGhtyDocs does cache your documents for offline viewing.

This application just does one thing, and does it great. And did I mention that it's free? You can download MiGhtyDocs from the iTunes App Store today.

Earlier today, Microsoft released the 12.1.2 update to Microsoft Office 2008, downloadable via MS Software Update and from the MS website. The 160 MB update requires Office 12.1.1 and, in addition to security fixes, resolves several bugs. The hit list includes two of my personal annoyances: Word's sluggish launch speed and Entourage's insistence on truncating URLs after the ampersand character. The full list of changes is in the continuation of this post.

Installed the update? Let us know if you see any dramatic performance changes, gotchas or improvements.

Thanks to Erik Schwiebert for the heads-up (and best wishes from TUAW for a speedy recovery).

This is news that is certain to make Mac based Windows Admins (of which I am one) very happy: Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection 2 is finally out of beta. The final release includes all the new features that Microsoft added, some of the highlights include:

• The ability to open multiple instances of Remote Desktop without resorting to a hack (though I do believe that each connection spawns a new instance of the app itself).
• Redesigned UI
• Support for Network Level Authentication (which makes connections more secure)

You can get more info about this release from the MacBU blog post.

Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection 2 is free, and a Universal app. And as always, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the very capable CoRD, which is an open source replacement for Microsoft's tool.

Microsoft has released a "critical" Office 2008 update, 12.1.1, which "contains several improvements to enhance stability and performance."

Several issues are fixed with the updates, including charting problems, Entourage crashing when the computer wakes from sleep, and issues regarding converting documents to and from the Open XML Format. A complete list of improvements is available in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

The update can be installed via Microsoft AutoUpdate (accessible by choosing "Check for Updates" in any Office application's Help menu) or from Microsoft directly. The update is a 153MB DMG file, and is available in 11 languages.

Thanks, Tommy!

You might have heard that Microsoft Research has released WorldWide Telescope (WWT), it's software to devour the universe whole provide a fun way to browse the planets and stars.

The BBC mentioned that you can run WWT on your Mac ... so long as you have Windows on your Mac. Sigh. VMWare helpfully gave the system a try, though, and found it worked great (and even posted a video about it.)

I fired up the ol' Boot Camp and saw it wasn't bad. It boasts high-resolution photography of many parts of the sky, and is reasonably easy to use (for a Microsoft product). There were some weird, annoying flicker problems, but I'll chalk that up to the fact that it's beta software on a MacBook with a pokey graphics card.

As an amateur astronomer with his own 10-inch Dob (that's right, ladies), I tend to use astronomy software less as a casual browsing tool, but more to find interesting things in the sky on a particular night. And for that, WWT ain't great. You won't find any satellites (like Iridium flares) in WWT. Worst of all -- there's no horizon I could easily find. (Found it, thanks to commenter dh!) So good luck trying to find that fuzzy thing next to the blue thing when it's under your feet.

The Mac, however, is blessed with a great variety of native astronomy tools, most of which are free. Stellarium is excellent, free planetarium software. It's worth noting that Google Earth has a spiffy sky tool built-in, too. Last but not least, Starry Night Pro is the king of all astronomy software (and my favorite), but is a little spendy at $150.

Macworld UK is reporting that Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac saw record sales since its release, becoming the best selling version ever. Of particular interest, however, is that Microsoft has announced the next version of Office will return Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) to the Mac platform.

You may recall that one of the big brouhahas connected with Office 2008 was the elimination of VBA, which was present in Office 2004 and earlier versions; Microsoft suggested that users rearchitect their macros and automation with AppleScript. While it's generally a good thing for third-party applications to support AppleScript thoroughly, in this case it created a lot of problems for cross-platform users since the Windows version of Office depends on VBA for macros. While it is possible to duplicate some (though not all) VBA functionality with AppleScript, cross-platform macros were completely broken, leaving some users, especially in corporate environments, unwilling to upgrade from Office 2004. In this light, it is good news that VBA will return, though no timeline is yet available.

In addition to the roadmap announcements, today Microsoft is also releasing Service Pack 1 for Office for Mac 2008 with a host of improvements, including improved compatibility with Windows versions and better printing support. It should available for download at noon PDT from Microsoft or via Auto Update in Office. Full change list in the continuation of this post.

Update: Mac BU developer Erik Schwiebert has a post up on the revitalization of VBA; he originally discussed the decision not to implement it for Office 2008 here.

Getting Office 2008 loaded and running on one Mac is easy enough if you put your mind to it. Getting it loaded and running on hundreds of Macs, with Entourage data to upgrade and users tearing their hair out over macros that no longer work? Bit more of a challenge, to put it mildly. In the interest of supporting the IT pros who are deploying the latest and greatest from the Mac BU in large educational and corporate enviroments, Microsoft is sending key managers and developers out to face their customers (no!) in half-day intensive Q&A sessions.

In addition to the usual draws for techies (free lunch, nice swag) the road show offers a rare opportunity to get feedback to the people behind Office 2008 face-to-face. The upcoming schedule (NYC and Toronto sessions have already taken place) is as follows:

• Reston, VA - Thursday, May 8
• Los Angeles, CA - Tuesday, May 13
• Downers Grove, IL - Tuesday, May 20
• Redmond, WA - Thursday, May 22

You'll need to register on Microsoft's site if you want to participate.

You may remember Steve Ballmer (CEO of some other company) criticizing the iPod and iPhone on several occasions. Something that he definitely cannot criticize is the Mac, mostly because he was seen using one for with one at the podium while he gave a presentation. MacLife pointed us to this Flickr picture showing what really powers the other Steve's presentation. What's there? You guessed it, a MacBook Pro. We imagine that it is running Windows via BootCamp, proving once again that the best Windows machine money can buy is a Mac.

I guess Microsoft is staring to "Think Different," eh?

Update: As noted by several Flickr commenters, Ballmer didn't actually use the Mac to present; all that was displayed was his title slide, most likely driven by backstage gear, and presumably the MacBook Pro was left at the podium by the conference organizers or a previous presenter. Still a pleasant thought to imagine him slaving away over his PowerPoint (or Keynote!) presentation on the MBP, but it doesn't look like that's how it went.

The kind folks at the Mac BU dropped me a note announcing Messenger for Mac 7's availability. The big ticket item is full Audio/Visual conferencing support between Messenger on the Mac and on the PC. Sadly, this is only available for corporate accounts, so if you have a personal account you'll need to wait a little longer for that feature. Personal users, though, aren't entirely left out in the cold. You can now assign nicknames to contacts, search your contacts, and chat with people on your Bonjour network.

I use Messenger for corporate IM everyday, so I was excited to get by hands on this new version. Sadly, I can't seem to be able to log into my account using Messenger for Mac 7, so I'll have to take Microsoft's word on the new features.

Update: Oops, Messenger 7 does work for my corporate account because it requires Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 (my workplace is still running 2005). Ah well, the neato new features will be mine soon enough.

Apple's headed straight to the top with a bullet -- they went from 159 to 121 in last year's Fortune 500 ranking, and this year, they've pushed their way up to 103. On the list of the "20 most profitable tech companies," they are solidly at number eight -- Fortune says that the introduction of the iPhone and "record sales of Mac computers" have Apple on a rocket trajectory.

Of course, Google's sitting upstairs at number 7, and you-know-who (not the Harry Potter villain, but close) is up at number one.

But yes, there's no question that Apple has really been hitting it out of the park lately, and considering the future (the fruits of the SDK, another possible iPhone iteration, and whatever else they're brewing up in Cupertino), the trends will continue.

Remember a few days ago we reported that the Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection Client beta had expired, making users deal with an annoying, 'Why don't you download the new version' screen when no new version was available? Yeah, that was no fun. Luckily, the Mac BU has recently released Remote Desktop Connection Client for Mac 2 Beta 3. The biggest improvement in this new beta is that it doesn't expire, so users who need to connect to Windows boxes from OS X won't be left in the cold as the actual ship date slips later and later.

Also new in the Beta 3 are full help files (which are localized in a few languages) as well as support for non-English keyboards.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.