Apple and Microsoft used to be arch-rivals, but Google seems to have taken that spot in today’s market. Just the same, Microsoft has a multiple personality — maybe not a disorder — pose when it comes to supporting Apple’s business products such as an OS or office software.

From the Macintosh Business Unit, Apple desktop customers can get the first 30-day-free trials for Office 2011 starting this week.

Today Microsoft has made a free 30-day Office for Mac 2011 trial available at www.officeformac.com/trial.

This week also marks the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. This year the Office for Mac team has a show special tied to the event. If you attend the expo check out your badge for details and see the Office for Mac blog for more information and don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more Macworld goodness throughout the week.

From its Windows unit, CNET reports on a comparison between Windows 7 products and the iPad in the enterprise IT world, with some predictable results. I wince a bit when I see the Microsoft slide boasting that Windows 7 has support for “the largest breath of printing software” when it means “breadth.” Not a word breathed about Windows Tablets out there working in businesses.

Microsoft is big enough to be both kinds of creature in the Apple world: adversary and ally. Pick your posture while evaluating products.

Using Windows software on a Mac is as simple as installing one of three tools: Nova Development’s Parallels, VMWare’s Fusion, or Apple’s Boot Camp. But of these three, only Parallels and Fusion supply the essential anti-viral component that every Windows installation requires.

This month I’ve installed the latest Version 5 of Parallels, as well as a trial copy of Fusion 3, on the Mac I use as a test system. (It’s a Mini with 3GB of memory, one that accesses the Internet though a wireless network port, since the Mini comes with a built-in Airport card. The 3GB is essential, since these Windows emulators suck up memory.) I can report the Fusion installation is smoother and tinkers less with a Mac’s user environment. Fusion uses McAfee anti-virus software, quite the brand name among Windows users. Parallels replies on the Kapersky Anti-Virus suite. Parallels seems to offer a half-dozen ways of using Windows alongside your Mac environment, but this slight of hand goes so far as to install folders on your Dock to speed up access to Windows programs. This trick erased a couple of useful Dock icons for my databases on the Mac side, demonstrating that Parallels Version 5 is like so many other versions of the software: buggy, with lots of fixes (long downloads) needed for stability.

Another thing that gets tricky about using these products is the constant updating that Windows users endure. Microsoft seems to add patches on a weekly basis to Windows (I use XP Home, very affordable) — so if your Windows use is infrequent, every startup of these environments will include downloads and restarts to get Windows into a secure state.

The anti-viral tools need their own updates religiously, too. This is a separate set of updates. In my tests I’ve found there’s an order to be recognized here: get the anit-virals updated first, even though Windows will ask you to restart itself before the anti-virals get their updates downloaded.

The process of running Windows on a Mac, essential for any programs you may need for your business that don’t have Mac versions, is an eye-opener about security. Don’t believe the Apple commercials about viruses, no matter how entertaining they are: Macs run on a variant of Unix, an operating system with plenty of security holes. Visiting the Windows world with Parallels or Fusion makes you aware how lucky we Mac users are, simply because there are fewer of us. We present a smaller target to the virus hackers, so we enjoy Security by Obscurity. Read the rest of this entry »

Any company using Macs in a world full of Windows users needs a virtualization program. You get Windows running on your Mac, so you can make sense of that fussy Web site that won’t behave well enough to run correctly on a Mac, for example. Parallels launched this kind of product, but the much-larger VMWare came out with Fusion about a year later to offer an alternative. Now we hear that Fusion, in any version below 2.0.4, can permit a Windows malware virus to take over a Mac.

Virtualization users run a copy of Microsoft Windows on their Macs. Most use XP, and an independent security company has announced that Fusion permits a Windows bug to take over the Mac OS. VMWare released a 2.0.4 version to fix the hole. This is the opening round of what will probably be a growing problem for Mac owners: viruses built to attack users of things like Fusion and Parallels.

The independent Immunity, Inc. has a video of the kind of hack Fusion permits. It’s enough to make you consider going to Parallels instead of Fusion, if you haven’t selected this kind of tool yet. What’s most important is to keep up with what the virtualization supplier reports about their product. Both of these companies are being proactive about closing these holes. Parallels even includes a one-year-free subscription to its Windows virus-malware protection tool.

The price tags did not rise, but Mac features advanced this week. Is this a way of discounting Macs? Maybe more to the point, can a small business owner or an independent Mac user call his computers inexpensive? I had a chat with a longtime Mac owner this week who doesn’t think so, but still keeps buying Macs.

Analysts and pundits have estimated that the average price of a Mac dropped 8 percent this week. The 24-inch iMac sells for $300 less than its predecessor, and the only thing a buyer seems to give up is one Firewire 400 port and the numeric keypad portion of the keyboard. In exchange there’s twice the memory, more than double the graphics speed, and a disk twice as big as its predecessor. (I know these numbers well, since I bought the 24-in predecessor in January.)

But it’s still a $1,499 computer, my friend says. You can get PCs like this for a lot less. A lot turns out to be around $200 if you stick to a name brand. How much value that $200 represents is the genuine question. Around here, we buy Macs and use them for five years or more. That’s $40 a year difference, about what you spend on one tankful of gas, no matter how big a car you drive. Read the rest of this entry »

At times, Microsoft and Apple have been at each other’s throats during the past 25 years, jousting for the position of Most Innovative Computer supplier. Even though Google has eclipsed both companies in hubris aimed at that title, over the years small business users had to make a hard choice over and over: Windows for inclusion in the big, cluttered clubhouse of computer resources, or Apple for ease of use and a narrower neighborhood.

Many years ago, however, the companies felt like they needed one another. When the business user was choosing personal computers for the first time — and PC didn’t automatically mean Microsoft-based, Intel-driven computers, Apple and Microsoft engaged in a public lovefest.

With the weekend’s amore still in the air, we offer this sentimental look at Steve Jobs and Bill Gates dating in public. Both their companies seemed like eligible bachelors back then, rather than the lifelong mates they’ve become for Mac business users.

Jobs and Gates in 1983

Bill loves Steve, and Steve loves Bill in 1983

By now the business user can have the intimate relationship these two boys swooned over more than a quarter-century ago. Fusion from VMWare as well as Parallels both provide a Windows sandbox to use the tools of the “PC,” as the world has come to call the Wintel systems. Can’t you just feel the love? If nothing else, Fusion and Parallels give the Mac user a way to run Microsoft’s Explorer and see just how awful the Microsoft browser is rendering Web pages for Windows users.