Microsoft needs to learn how to talk about Apple and Android

Five years ago, Microsoft may have been justified in assuming that every visitor to your web site is running Windows. In 2011, in such circumstances are not realistic. Yes, Windows still commands an overwhelming market share for desktop PCs and laptops, but these days people get information from other places, like Android Smartphone and iPad and MacBook Pro. None of these devices are running Microsoft operating systems.

Microsoft is aware that these other markets exist, of course. They got Office for Mac 2011, and have just released Microsoft OneNote to iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad, you can get Windows Live Mesh for Mac. There are applications Bing for iOS and Android (on all U.S. carriers as last November. Most of the Microsoft online services these days work incredibly well in non-Microsoft browsers on non-Microsoft devices. So why isn't Microsoft talk directly to people who use those other operating systems and devices?

I thought earlier this morning, when I had an odd interaction with Microsoft.com. As you might recall, I am using a Mac and a PC side by side for the past few months, moving between environments throughout the day and, sometimes, as part of the task.

This morning, someone on Twitter pointed me to a bookmark manager add-on for Internet Explorer. That tweet includes a link that took me to the IE Add-ons page at Microsoft.com. Clicked on a link in TweetDeck, which opened the page in Google Chrome. On a Mac.

Now, Microsoft should know that I am using a Mac and no Windows. It's right there in the user agent string that went along with my request:

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10_6_6; Chrome/9.0.597.94 for EN-US) AppleWebKit/526.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/533.13

So, here is a close-up of what I have served in reply:

"We recommend that you install Internet Explorer 8 for free". Really? How very careful.

Except I can't. As you and I and everyone on the planet knows, Microsoft does not make a version of Internet Explorer for OS X, or indeed for any operating system besides Windows. So this is a bit empty. But there is.

And what happens when you click Download now? Get this:

As user experience goes, this is pretty awesome. It is almost a bait-and-switch.

Microsoft: "You want Internet Explorer for free?

Me: "sure, why not?"

[click]

Microsoft: "Sorry, that you may have. Can we sell is Windows 7 instead? "

The first page was perfectly able to detect my operating system. When you see that I am running OS X and Windows, knows that for a dead certainty that I cannot install Internet Explorer. It should not force me to go to another web page to learn this truism.

Get a result equally useless if you visit the Microsoft Fix It Solution Center on the Mac. Imagine this scenario: I have a PC and a Mac at home. For some reason, my PC cannot reach the Internet. You cannot use it to find help online. So I am going to Mac, where my connection is alive and well, and I make my way to the Microsoft support site. Here's what I found:

Those top two audio solutions as they're worth trying. But now button a run? Really? Maybe they can run on a Mac.

But there is, and not saying anything like "Windows only". So I click and Chrome downloads a Windows executable file and saves it in the downloads folder on my Mac. At that point, I am my own.

They may provide some instructions on how to copy this file to a USB flash drive and then run it on your PC. But that is not the case, and I left to figure things out for me.

A lot of devices these days is running non-Microsoft operating systems, including phones and tablets. Smartphones are outselling PCs in many markets. In the scenario above, where I need help to understand why my Windows PC can connect to the Internet, I could use a Android powered phone or an iPad to seek help through a connection 3 G.

Every visitor who comes to microsoft.com using a Mac or an iPhone or a droid has slightly different information needs and challenges of interoperability of new and interesting. It would be smart to anticipate these needs? In the process, instead of trying to sell me a copy of Windows 7, why can't I point to services like Bing and Windows Live SkyDrive which will help me to connect my PC Windows and my device not Windows?

Microsoft is missing an opportunity here. Really.

Ed Bott is an award-winning technology writer with more than two decades experience writing for mainstream media and publications online.