The latest duel between Apple and Microsoft is playing out in a series of much-discussed ads from both companies that purport to present their sides of the great operating system wars.

On the one hand, you have the pleasantly satirical Mac versus PC spots from Apple, in which the PC is depicted as a pleasant but always frazzled person, while the Mac is simply cool. Microsoft’s answer is to have actors masquerade as regular people who are given money and the task of buying the best notebook. Hint: It’s always a PC. So what did you expect?

Now you just knew that Apple fans would quickly pick out the blatant flaws in Microsoft’s advertising, which only goes to show that the company didn’t vet those ads properly. Surely they could have staged it so their performers selected more compelling Windows-based notebooks, as there are some models that compete far better with the Mac alternative. It’s almost as if they were designed to fail.

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Let’s take a fascinating journey through time, before many of you readers were using Macs or any personal computer for that matter. Back in the 1980s, when most user interfaces were text-based, Apple burst on the scene with the Macintosh.

Even then, though, they only had a minority share of the marketplace (although larger than it is now), and Microsoft soon decided to build a competitive operating system known as Windows. At first, Windows was just a graphical shell atop DOS, but the intent was similar, and that was to bring personal computing to the masses. And, of course. make lots and lots of money.

Even before then, Microsoft’s approach to the tech business was well-established. Over the years, they have asked government regulators for the right to innovate. But, historically, they have merely attempted to play catch up with existing technology and exploit it to beat out the competition by any means possible. Very seldom — if ever — do they actually advance the state of the art, except when it comes to generating record profits from their products.

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So the story goes that companies with higher-priced gear will most likely fare miserably this holiday season. Yes, folks are still buying lots of high definition TVs, as an example, but they are picking the low-end or smaller screen versions. The expensive models that generate the most profits for dealers and manufacturers may not do nearly as well, because customers just don’t have the cash or credit lines.

Now, rightly or wrongly, Apple is often criticized for having expensive products, and some even say that they are overpriced compared to the PC box competition. Now I happen to believe, based on my own comparisons, that Apple’s products are priced similar to a Windows PC with features that are closely matched both in the hardware and software. That, of course, doesn’t address the question of whether you need those features or not, of course.

So I suppose the conventional wisdom is that Apple would encounter difficulty moving Macs and other products this holiday season, and I agree that there’s logic in that. On the other hand, Apple is also known for defying logic with their products, and that has to confound the tech pundits who keep trying to second guess the company.

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So I recall all those lurid commercials of many years ago from certain high-power electronic retailers promising that they positively won’t be undersold. Of course they had so many terms and conditions in those offers that few people who requested a price match or a refund for overpayment were ever actually compensated for their efforts.

It’s a game, really, meant to reassure the customer, not a promise that they expect to have to fulfill very often.

With the economy in shreds for this holiday season, folks are talking up the claim that Apple’s own retail stores have been given the marching orders to match prices from third-party retailers.

Now I suppose you really can’t complain. After all, you will, I’m sure, take a lower price wherever you can get it for your new Mac or iPod. But, sorry folks, the iPhone 3G isn’t part of the plan.

However, according to published reports, Apple has traditionally told its managers that they do indeed have the authority to meet the competition head on, only that policy apparently hasn’t been given much publicity.

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