With lower third quarter earnings, lower market share, poor sales of their new flat-panel iMac, and rack-mounted servers, Mr. Steve Jobs (CEO) and Apple are hoping PC users can think different and join the Mac revolution.

In spite of Apple’s negative financial news, I believe the big bomb came on Monday when The Wall Street Journal broke the following story: Apple Partners Complain OS X Is in Need of Stronger Marketing.

According to the article written by staff reporter Pui-Wing Tam, Microsoft blames Apple. "There hasn't been a concerted effort to promote Mac OS X, even though the opportunity is there and our willingness is there," says Kevin Browne, who heads Microsoft's Macintosh Business Unit. Mr. Browne says Microsoft is committed to delivering another version of Office for Macintosh in 2003. But beyond that, he says, "It's harder to predict. If things don't dramatically turn around, we'll be evaluating this business with Apple."

Phil Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing at Apple says they are doing plenty to market OS X, including making it a prominent part of this week's trade show and featuring it in its new "switchers" ad campaign aimed at Windows users.

If Apple is serious about attracting "Switchers", the last thing Apple needs right now is for potential Windows users to hear that Microsoft is unhappy with Apple. I usually side with Apple, but not this time. Mr. Browne is 100% correct with his statement. The "switchers" campaign is not focused on promoting Office for the Macintosh and that is the problem with the campaign.

Mr. Schiller claims Apple is doing a lot to make OS X for office a prominent part of their campaign but I disagree. A closer examination of the campaign reveals that these "switchers" have a strong demographic resemblance to typical Apple users. Apple does not appear to be making the real breakthrough they need with Fortune 1000 executives or mobile professionals.

One of the reasons is that Apple does not have the necessary applications, price or services to support these users. This will ultimately prove to be the downfall of the "switcher" campaign. Apple might be very happy to promote to the world that a Tattoo artist and a 73-year-old grandmother had no trouble "Switching." I do not believe that this demographic is going to add much to Apple’s bottom line.

Adding to Apple’s list of growing challenges is that PC’s are becoming far more price competitive as well as offering far greater value for the dollar. Charles Smulders, senior analyst with Gartner Dataquest, said Apple’s recent price cut still does not make Apple price competitive with lower-end PCs. "It seems to be an almost conflicting message. On one hand, they're trying to persuade consumers to move from Windows to Apple, but on the other hand, they're not presenting products that are affordable and would enable users to make that choice."

Mr. Schiller says critics don't take into account the fact that iMac prices include monitors, which are added costs for PC buyers. Where does Mr. Schiller do his shopping? A top of the line Dell 8200 with a hard drive double the size of an iMac, a smoking Pentium 4 2.0 GHZ processor, Microsoft XP and a lite version of Office, yes including a 17" flat screen monitor prices out at $300 to $400 less, than an iMac.

A "switcher" would need to spend an additional $350 to $450 to acquire Microsoft Office, pricing the iMac $650 to $750 higher than a much faster and better-equipped PC.

Let me add that I am not a neophyte that was force fed PC's my entire life. I have been a die hard supporter of Apple Computer during my twenty plus years in the printing and publishing industry. I co-founded one of the very first high end postscript prepress shops in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1992. We opened our doors with Quadra 950's when everybody else was still on proprietary Scitex systems.

Apple did introduce some new products and services that will excite many Mac users. Mr. Jobs continues his fixation on all things that begin with “i” - iCal and iSync, to go along with iTunes, iMovie, iDVD and iPod. It will be interesting to see if Mac users will pay the $100 a year Apple will require for users to access some of these services.

The real news at MacWorld New York is that not much has changed since the last MacWorld. If you love the Mac, you will find what Mr. Jobs had to say was more icing on your cake for a truly great computer system. If you are part of the 95% of the world who use a PC, nothing significant was announced that would make you rush down to your Apple retail store and shell out an extra $300 to $750 dollars to be the proud new owner of an iMac.

Until Apple brings better business applications, pricing and services for the Mac, there won’t be a whole lot of switching going on.