I don’t take TV ads very seriously. Some are mildly entertaining. Except when I’m watching a live broadcast, however, I’m too busy whizzing past them with my DVR’s fast forward function. Unless the claims are overtly bogus, rather than just mildly questionable, I don’t give them much attention.

But this doesn’t happen if you’re Apple Computer and your every step is put under the microscope. Poor Steve Jobs must sometimes think he’s put in the same category as the President of the United States rather than just another CEO, because he can’t do or say anything without lots and lots of second-guessing.

So when the “Get a Mac” ad campaign debuted, and everyone (including this site) began to talk about it, it was only a matter of time before someone got the bright idea to really make an effort at fact checking. Understand that if Apple did overemphasize a point to make a sale, it won’t wreck your life, or your finances. It’s a personal computer, not a drug with a thousand and one side effects, or an auto that, lacking side curtain air bags, may be more susceptible to harming its occupants in the event of a crash.

But I should give PC World’s Harry McCracken his due. He did take his quest seriously, and thus subjected Apple’s new spots to a fairly extensive degree of examination in a recent article. Better him than I.

Before getting to the point, McCracken spends several paragraphs reviewing the quality of the ads before he gets to the actual claims. As far as the latter is concerned, Apple seems to fare well as purveyors of TV ads go. While the accuracy of some of the claims may be “vague,” he points out that Apple attempts to back them up at its site with additional information and declares it “a pretty good overview of points in the Mac’s favor.”

So far so good. But would a computer magazine render the same treatment on ads from other PC makers? Shouldn’t their claims, whatever they may be, be given similar levels of scrutiny? I mean Apple wants to put itself in the same league, so fair is fair, right?

Well, this creates a larger problem, because PC companies are circumspect about making overt claims, except for the specifications they share with the competition. Dell may, for example, tell you how cheap its entry-level boxes might be, but it doesn’t actually say those prices are less than, say, HP or Gateway. It might be inferred, but the scripts went through the appropriate level of review from the company’s lawyers, and hence are meaningless.

The one that may, on the surface at least, seem misleading is the one about Dell’s 24/7 support. Yes, it’s true, but that has nothing to do with the quality of help you get if your Dell PC is misbehaving at three in the morning. Notice, they make no claims on that score, which is good, because they’ve had technical support problems in recent years. That’s one of the things they vow to address as they try to repair slowing growth.

So far, there’s not much meat for McCracken and his PC World colleagues to explore. Then there’s that dumb Gateway ad where people carrying cartons containing computers are sprinting through a field. The company’s ad agency no doubt felt it was conveying a message when the campaign was greenlighted, but it escapes me, beyond the impression of being especially dumb.

Of course, when one PC maker is selling essentially the same commodity product as dozens of others, it’s really hard to do much to distinguish itself. For the most part, I bet a large portion of the audience actually thinks the ads are all done by Intel, since its logo appears at the end, the better to claim those co-marketing dollars.

Companies that make soap or laundry detergent actually fare better because, based on tests from such resources as Consumer Reports, some are truly better than others. Ditto for washing machines and air conditioners. I don’t need to mention autos, where there are tremendous quality differences from one model to another. If you can’t push quality, you just tell the prospective mark, I mean customer, how much of a bribe you want to give them to take delivery of your product.

In the scheme of things, however, Apple is a rare breed as advertisers go. They are actually making factual claims, and it appears they are largely correct, even if you have stretch a bit to reach that conclusion. That’s something good, right? I’m just wondering.

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So it was only natural. On the one hand, there’s a simply superb personal computer, the 17-inch MacBook Pro, and the ability to run two or more operating systems. Independent tests show that it actually can run Windows XP faster than many dedicated Windows boxes. So with two popular methods of setting up the “Dark Side” on an Intel-based Mac, I decided to take the ultimate plunge: The public beta of Windows Vista.

This isn’t quite as simple as it seems at first glance. Yes, the download process proceeded with nary a hitch. In fact, I got the file via Apple’s Safari, and used Mac OS X’s Disk Utility to convert the disk image to a DVD. Piece of cake. At first, I wanted to use Parallels Desktop to host the Vista beta, hoping it would let me do some direct comparisons with Tiger without a reboot.

Alas, that wasn’t to be. The PC BIOS that Parallels supports isn’t compatible with Windows Vista. That’s a limitation that will be addressed in a few months, so far now I decided to see if Boot Camp would work, without any weird workarounds or hacks. In order to deprive myself of even the most basic common sense information, I decided to approach the task directly without doing any research first. That, as you will learn shortly, is not the path of least resistance.

Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.

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One of the things often criticized amount Mac OS X is the large number of interface inconsistencies. You have brushed metal, a so-called platinum look, and a variation or two. It may seem as if the Finder and Mail were designed by different teams for different systems.

True, there is a set of interface guidelines for developers to follow, but some have rightly criticized Apple for not always following them. But that raises the larger question of whether every window should have the same basic look and functionality. Do people really care all that much, except for a few purists?

Well, except for any remaining maintenance releases, Tiger is yesterday’s news. In August, the wraps are officially lifted from Leopard, Mac OS 10.5, and you wonder what Apple is planning. Part of it, of course, will no doubt be to trump Windows Vista as much as possible. Barring further delays of Microsoft’s troubled system, there may even be a near-simultaneous release.

As far as I’m concerned, though, matters of basic window functionality are small potatoes. I’m sure most of you can accommodate them in the scheme of things and keep the complaints to a low growl. The real issue here is whether Apple can take operating system development to a new level, or just deliver more eye-candy to catch attention, with a few plumbing alterations to optimize performance and create a few more headaches for developers to cope with.

You see, as Mac OS X gets better and better, it’ll get more difficult to persuade you to upgrade to the next version. Sure you’ll get it free on a brand new Mac, but what about sales of upgrade kits? It’s not just a matter of the bottom line. If a system gets a wider user base, it makes it easier for companies to come out with products that support its best features.

To be sure, there ought to be stuff that serves ease of use and maintenance. I’d want, for example, more of a self-healing system that can run its own background diagnostics and fix such things as permission-related troubles and corrupted preferences and cache problems without forcing you to see a third party utility. Sure, Terminal mavens can do that, but a system that “just works” shouldn’t require command line use, except for folks who happen to want to work that way.

More ought to be done to make the operating system anticipate your needs, in a sense train itself to understand your working routing, in the manner, perhaps, if the automatic transmission in some luxury cars. Some basic functions would be to automatically drop into sleep mode or shut down at the end of the day, after asking you a simple question of which you’d prefer once or twice. If you go to lunch every day, queued downloads can proceed without your interruption.

Don’t tell me about Automator workflows that can address every single issue. You are talking about a state-of-the-art personal computer operating system on a desktop or notebook with supercomputer number crunching capabilities.

The interface? Well, again it’s time to look at the everything with an eye of what’s confusing many users. The Open and Save dialogs, for example, ought to fully, not partially, mimic a Finder window, so you can handle simple file management, such as deleting or moving a file. It’s not that I want to kill the third party product that can handle such chores, such as Default Folder X. The reason developer Jon Gotow created this terrific utility in the first place is because Apple couldn’t or wouldn’t do it themselves.

In the larger scheme of things, despite Spotlight, fundamental file management is still confusing. Some of you toss everything on the desktop just to have it there when you need it, and you may end up having to comb through dozens and dozens of pretty icons to figure out what you want. You may, instead, bury everything through multiple folders created at one time or another on a whim, and now you have to figure the best way to retrieve it. Now, what did you call that file? Did you actually write about that house remodeling project using this phrase or that one?

My tech show’s Special Correspondent, David Biedny, suggests that 3D features ought to be used to enhance the file system. Maybe a way can be found to visually “age” a file, so you know it’s something you haven’t touched in six months.

In a sense, Apple ought to hammer away at the remaining issues that flummox both novice and experienced users, the things that are sources of irritation for most of you. No, I don’t have to listen them, as I’m sure you’ll give me a list of the most notorious chronic offenders.

In the past, I’ve suggested that today’s operating systems are still stuck in 1984 in terms of the way you interact with them. I do not expect things to change much in Leopard, at least in that respect. But there’s a lot Apple can do to make it run more efficiently, take better advantage of the powerful processors inside those pretty cases, and really empower you to spend more time working and less time making things right.

Macs just work? Don’t make me laugh. They may be far better than Windows in that respect, but there are still too many exceptions to the rule, too many usability shortcomings. I know you readers have lots of bright ideas on the subject, and I’m curious to see where this discussion leads.

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