I'm sure Apple fans will agree, but consider this statement: "Without a doubt, [Microsoft CEO Steve] Ballmer is the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company today." Well, that doesn't mean ALL CEOs, of course. But it's not something that came from a Mac fan site, or even a tech commentator for the mainstream media. Instead, this pronouncement originates in a story published in a prestigious business publication, Forbes magazine, entitled "Oops! Five CEOs Who Should Have Already Been Fired (Cisco, GE, WalMart, Sears, Microsoft)." I won't bother with the other four.

Number one, with a bullet, is Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer who, over his twelve years on the job, has utterly wrecked the company's reputation as the dominant player in the technology industry. Yes, Windows still powers 90% of PC desktops. Yes, Office is still the most popular productivity suite on the planet. But Microsoft's efforts to spread the joy beyond their 1990's accomplishments have been largely unsuccessful.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook surely charmed Twitter users -- and lots of others -- with that famous comment about Windows 8 and the merging desktop and mobile operating systems. It would be very much like trying to combine a refrigerator with a toaster, he said, using extreme examples to get his point across.

But maybe there's more to be said about that subject.

The feeling that OS X and the iOS would some day merge was fueled by the arrival of Lion, which represented a clear move in that direction. Not only were there more gestures in OS X, although I won't bother to list them, but certain features, such as full-screen apps and even that dreadful Launchpad, were reminiscent of the iOS. Well, you don't have to use either, nor accept the reversal in the direction of the scrollbars, or their part-time mouse-activated appearance.

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Back in the early days, Mac users confronted a moderate level of malware infections. I remember one occasion when I visited a local software store -- back in Edison, New Jersey -- and bought a screen saver from a reputable publisher. The floppy was infected, however. I didn't have anti-virus software at hand, and had to reformat my Mac IIcx's drive and reinstall everything. Well, it was only weeks after I bought the computer. I didn't have much to reinstall, so the restore process wasn't as intimidating as it might have otherwise seemed.

In passing, I quickly discovered the value of security software, and download an shareware app, called Virus Detective, which I used until the author, Jeffrey Shulman (no relation to the famous poker player by the way), give it up. The computer store took back the infected floppy and refunded my money, with abject apologies.

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As the world anticipates, expects, or ignores, the arrival of Windows 8 later this year, the real question is whether Microsoft has made a huge gamble that may not pay off. While previous versions of Windows at least had close resemblances to one another, the Metro interface seems to be daringly different, or is it?

Responding to a question that few might have asked, Microsoft decreed that the Start menu, where you access your most-used apps and, curiously, restart or shut down your PC, must go. In its place comes the Metro interface, an overlay of square or rectangular tiles, which most recently graced the face of Windows Phone.

The artwork is minimalist. Sometimes it's just a label with thin white text, or perhaps some stick figure artwork. In a vague sense, Metro harkens back to Microsoft's Bob, a failed attempt to place a warm and fuzzy cartoon-like face on Windows from the 1990s. Then, as now, Microsoft used old fashioned artwork in an effort to seem somehow relevant.

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