Bill Gates: “Buy Apple.” First Virus For Mac Arrives.

Exclusive. Mark today’s date in your calendar. Today may go down in history as the worst Friday in Apple’s history.

The news stuns Mac users and Apple watchers. What else could go wrong? Here’s how the news started:

To stem the tide of bad media publicity surrounding the dismal launch of Windows Vista, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates indicated he has drawn up plans to buy Apple, Inc.

Gates recently was interviewed by an Advertising Age columnist who asked him to comment on the apparent success of Apple’s “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” television commercial campaign. The Mac’s market share has increased 50-percent in six months.

Gates refused to comment, saying, “I’m not gonna comment on someone else’s ad.” He said it twice.

Gates then left the interview abruptly, but was overheard to say, “Let’s buy that damned company and shut down those TV ads.”

Is Bill Gates ready to buy Apple? That’s bad news for the Mac.

Bad news for Mac owners continued amid Apple’s plans to delay Mac OS X Leopard. Many Mac oriented web sites have indicated that Leopard will debut in April. The latest recon to Mac360 says to expect Apple’s new operating system later in 2007.

Remember the “secrets” of Leopard that Apple CEO Steve Jobs didn’t announce last year? He didn’t announce those secrets for a reason.

We have it on good authority that Leopard’s new features actually looked so much like Windows Vista that Apple had to delay Leopard’s launch while Mac OS X programmers worked feverishly to revamp the entire OS from scratch.

Adding to the dismal news day, an earlier report indicated that the first Mac virus has been released into the wild. Symantec discovered the virus and informed the media that many Mac machines had been infected.

When asked how the virus was causing damage, Symantec spokesperson Peter Ferrie said, “it simply replicates.” Source code for the virus had been distributed across the internet sparking additional fears for Mac users.

Meanwhile, a recent study debunked a number of PC myths, causing one news report to conclude that Windows Vista rates higher than Mac OS X in select user studies, one of which may have been sponsored by Microsoft.

Countering that study, is yet another study available on a Mac vs. PC web site which displays the truly proper way to compare Macs vs. Windows PCs. This 115 page report counters the commonly accepted knowledge that Windows are better than Macs.

As if the news for Mac users couldn’t get worse, an article in Apple Matters defined the proper steps for Mac bloggers to “Write The Most Popular Apple Article Ever.”

Devanshu Mehta pointed out that for an article to get plenty of hits from rabid readers, Mac and Windows, it must include a certain number of elements, designed purely to attract readers through a misleading headline, then tease them with a soup of unlikely “news” items.

Among the mixture would be some mention of Microsoft, or Bill Gates, particularly regarding Apple or the Mac. Mehta then said to add a rumor, or make one up if a legitimate rumor wasn’t available.

Some conjecture on Mac vs. PC would be required, particularly regarding market share—or, anything that indicated “love Apple” or “hate Apple.”

According to the Apple Matters article, adding such elements to an article would be a sure fire way to bring many readers to the site, producing what is known as The Slashdot Effect, or The Digg Effect.

Oh, I almost forgot. Some people are suing Apple for no good reason. And, others are suing Apple for legitimate reasons and I hope Apple loses. Steve Jobs is ill. Sorry. One more. Dells are faster and cheaper than Macs.

See how easy it is to write a headline-grabbing, froth-laden, eyeball-glazing article that everyone will read? It’s a good thing that Mac web sites don’t engage in such behavior—too often.