The pundits complain about Apple all the time, particularly the decision to supposedly leave tens or hundreds of millions of potential sales on the table because they won’t build a product that answers a specific need. Consider how Apple, by limiting product configurations to the minimum, may not be delivering what the customer wants. Even when there is a customize choice, as there is with a Mac, the variations tend to be fairly limited. Only the Mac Pro appears to give you some solid choices.

When it comes to Apple’s mobile gear, other than the choice of carrier, the options are largely in storage capacity, and only on the newest models. With the iPhone and the iPad, Apple keeps a few older versions in the lineup for the benefit of those who want to save money. With an iPhone 4, in fact, if you take a carrier’s contract, the purchase price is essentially free.

But there is always a chorus in the media saying that Apple is messing up big time, that they should be selling more alternatives to their most popular product lines. After all, why not fill a demand that clearly exists?

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During the most recent financial quarter, Microsoft spent huge amounts of money to entice you to buy a Surface RT tablet. The ads were loud, frantic, and were models of misdirection in the sense that you learned nothing more about the tablet other than it was a device that made lots of clicks and resembled a thin and flat PC note-book. Period.

The original Surface media event, a few months earlier, was a model of ineptitude. Microsoft invited the press to the Los Angeles area for the June 2012 presentation, but apparently didn’t reveal the exact location until the day of the event. Even Apple, with its legendary penchant for secrecy, will at least tell the media where their special events will take place. There’s hardly any reason to keep that under wraps. Better to leave the speculation to the products that will actually be introduced.

When all was said and done, the Surface launch was lots of talk with very little substance. Specs were bare bones, and the media was only allowed seconds to touch the thing before it was abruptly taken away. So there wasn’t much to say about performance, except for one report I read at the time indicating that it was glacial. At least, when Apple rolls out a new product at a special event, the press is given a reasonable chance to put it through its paces, before they have to let someone else get their chance.

To be sure, when the Surface went on sale in October of 2012, the reasons for Microsoft’s reluctance to give the media extended face time were understandable. It wasn’t very good, although some reviews were mostly positive. The first model to hit the store shelves, the Surface RC with an ARM processor, seemed to represent a clumsy attempt to move Windows 8 to a mobile platform. It looked essentially the same as the Intel-based Pro version, other than the fact that you couldn’t run standard Windows apps. Microsoft did give you Office, designed largely to operate in a desktop layer patterned after the traditional Windows interface, rather than in the touch-enabled Modern UI, formerly known as Metro.

Microsoft said sales for the holiday quarter were “modest,” but hasn’t revealed the actual numbers. But iSuppli, a market research firm, claims that Microsoft only managed to sell between 55% and 60% of the production run, which totaled an estimated 1.25 million units. That means sales of 680,000 to 700,000  units, which is utterly pathetic compared to the top-tier Android tablets, let alone the iPad.

Worse, returns were said to be “very high,” though the reasons why were unstated. Perhaps customers were disappointed to discover that these tablets couldn’t run traditional Windows apps. Yes, people who follow the nuts and bolts of technology knew what the Surface RT could and couldn’t do, but I’m sure lots of customers, knowing that Office was included, would mistakenly assume all their Windows apps would run too. After all, the Surface is being represented as essentially a netbook with a touch keyboard, rather than a tablet in the tradition of the iPad.

People who buy an iPad know that it doesn’t run their Mac apps. Having a Surface RT and, soon, the Surface Pro, is only going to compound the confusion. The more expensive Surface Pro is priced close enough to a MacBook Air as to make the comparisons inevitable, and the Apple wins out in most respects, even though the thing is bigger and heavier. So the Surface Pro is basically a regular Windows PC in a new dress, but does anyone care?

When it comes to the Surface, Microsoft meant it as their “design point,” to show the direction OEMs should take in building their own Windows 8-savvy computers. But the obvious failure of the RT version isn’t encouraging such companies as Samsung to deliver their own solutions. Perhaps a few products will appear that are in the tradition of the Surface Pro, but I expect PC makers will largely hold out and see whether it takes off, pleased that Microsoft is taking the risk.

Of course this doesn’t mean the Surface will vanish, or that Microsoft will discontinue that irritating TV ad campaign. Indeed, I caught the original spot, playing yet again on the TV the other day. Well, actually I didn’t see it; I just heard the noisy synthesized music and incessant clacking, and didn’t bother to pay any further attention.

Unfortunately, Microsoft will probably continue to develop the Surface, hoping that if they release enough new models, one will magically take off and vindicate the company’s PC+ vision. But Windows 8 hasn’t done so well either. It may be faring worse than Windows Vista, which may indicate that Microsoft will be forced to rush out of fix of some sort. What sort of fix? Well, in addition to restoring a Start menu, perhaps there will be improvements to make the convoluted touch interface less convoluted. Maybe the desktop layer will be enhanced to provide more of the look and feel of Windows 7. None of this is certain, however, but I can’t believe Microsoft won’t try to prevent a train wreck, if it’s not already too late.

Maybe it’s better to just stick with Windows 7, and forget about this misbegotten release. On the other hand, tens of millions of Windows users are still, after 12 years, staying with Windows XP. Or buying a tablet instead of a PC, which is where Apple, despite the growing competition, still reigns supreme.

All right, Apple has fought with the competition in the courts over patents for several years. There have been a few wins, a few losses, and a few draws. But at the end of the day, how have these legal skirmishes changed what you or I can buy? Except for some minor software revisions as workarounds, the end result is that people are still buying iPhones and Samsung Galaxies in huge numbers, and ignoring most of the rest of the pack.

Certainly, the legal teams that have managed all these cases have prospered, and the cash hoards of the companies involved have been reduced somewhat. Of course, with Apple, it’s all just chump change. But at the end of the day, it’s hard to say that the industry has changed at all.

Now this doesn’t mean that a company shouldn’t protect intellectual property. Apple’s designers have created all sorts of amazing and not-so-amazing products, and every single nook and cranny is subject to a patent application of some sort. You almost wonder if the lawyers are always in call, days, nights, or weekends, to rush the applications to the patent office as soon as the details of a new invention are set down.

The patent portfolios continue to grow to incredible numbers. In recent intellectual property auctions, thousands have changed hands, and sometimes these auctions involve several companies who decide to work together to share the technology, rather than fight in the courtroom.

You almost imagine that, every time a new tech gadget is available, competing companies will buy up a few of them, take them apart and examine the components, the design, and the software to see what, if anything, might infringe on their intellectual property. With so many thousands of patents running around, that itself must involve an incredible and time-consuming effort.

I suppose you might compare it to a fire station. The personnel wait for the alarm to sound so they can put on their uniforms, or suits, race to the trucks, and rush to the scene of the disaster. Or maybe envision the scene in the 1960’s version of “Batman,” where, pressed into action,  the “Caped Crusader” and the “Boy Wonder” raced down a fire poll to reach the Batmobile and speed on their way to the scene of the crime.

Now in an ideal world, these tech companies would happily license industry standard patents to all comers who are willing to pay the price. Proprietary features would remain proprietary, and a company will make sure that their new products aren’t infringing somehow on another company’s product, though there are expansive gray areas. It may also be that management will often decide to take a chance where they regard a feature as possibly infringing on someone else’s patent, hoping to fly under the radar, or escape an import ban or other legal action. In the end, the cost of litigation may be less than the sales achieved by incorporating that feature. So it’s a risk worth taking.

But the real culprit may be lax patent laws, where even minor revisions to existing technology might receive approval. The new “first to file” scheme in the U.S. probably won’t change the situation all that much. In a world where Amazon’s “1-Click” feature is protected — and Apple and other companies license that all-so-obvious technology from Amazon — you wonder how such an “invention” got protection.

Of course that’s not the only case of a questionable patent. What about being able to record one TV show on a DVR while watching another? It’s just common sense, right? Well, not to TiVO, which owns the patents for that technology and has probably earned far more money from selling the rights and suing the infringers (such as Dish Network) than from the sale of hardware and software.

You also have companies that have never invented a thing, never sold a thing. Instead, the business plan is to buy up loads of patents, and then demand payments from companies who appear to be using the technologies they represent. If they don’t pay, they are sued. But these patent trolls don’t just file suits anywhere. For some reason, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas has become a patent lawsuit haven, a venue where the patent trolls seem to stand a far better chance for victory.

Now most companies, faced with uncertain legal outcomes if they fight, would rather just write checks to the patent trolls and move on. Some sue, with mixed results. Again, you wonder about patent laws that have allowed such paper pushing and paper shuffling companies to prosper without actually advancing the state of the art in any respect.

The recent technology sharing pact with Apple and HTC, and the decision of the U.S. government to order Motorola Mobility to license industry-standard patents fairly may indicate that the current level of legal skirmishes are due to die down. Certainly Apple’s victory against Samsung last year in a Northern California courtroom is hollow. They won some money, but the infringement wasn’t considered “willful” and no products were banned. So was it worth the bother? Probably not, and if more courts act that way, perhaps a little sanity will eventually prevail.

With so much speculation about as to Apple’s next great hardware revolution — or minor refresh — the most important issue may be the state of the OS, not the gadgets. Without OS X and the iOS, Apple’s greatest achievements may be little better than any other tech gadget. It’s the software that provides the smooth, elegant user interface and the relative ease of integrating all of your Apple gear.

With the apparent promise of annual OS X upgrades, maybe it’s time to start speculating about where Apple will take OS 10.9. According to some published reports, not confirmed by Apple of course, 10.9, known by whatever feline name seems to make sense, will support Maps and Siri. The former will reportedly come with an SDK, so developers can add the capabilities to their own apps. I would assume, in passing, that the ongoing improvements to Maps for iOS 6 will assuage ongoing concerns about the quality of the service compared to Google.

While Siri might work well enough on Macs, I should imagine you’d want to silence her in a busy office. I would also be curious to see how Apple expands Siri from just a cool gimmick to something very useful in a traditional personal computing environment, particularly where accessibility issues are involved. That’s where Siri might just come into its own, assuming voice recognition accuracy rises above the current level of mediocrity.

Apple will, of course, add yet another 100 to 200 flashy features to justify the upgrade, although I think the time has come to make it free. In the scheme of things, $19.99 is just a token payment anyway, and Apple would no doubt want to encourage every possible Mac user — those with supporting hardware and having no incompatible apps — to upgrade as quickly as possible.

Beyond those features, the appointment of Jonathan Ive to handle OS interface issues might result in fewer skeuomorphic excesses. Maybe Calendar will no longer mirror the physical desk calendar equivalent. A more consistent, somewhat more minimalist user interface certainly would be welcomed by some of you, though the current layout doesn’t bother me. Or at least when it’s consistent, which isn’t always the case, unfortunately.

It’s not just interface cleanups that may be significant, though. There are probably loads of problems with OS X that cry out for fixing.

Consider a recent article from long-time Mac developer Lloyd Chambers, who might be remembered by some of you as one of the authors of DiskDoubler, one of the best Mac compression utilities of the 1990s. In a recent blog on the state of OS X, entitled “Apple Core Rot,” Lloyd makes a very compelling case that Apple needs to make some serious changes, and make them fast.

Lloyd’s article is long, detailed, and presents first-hand experiences delving into the nooks and crannies of OS X. He makes so many compelling points that summarizing them here barely scratches the surface. But I’ll cover a few:

• The Finder: The center of the Mac user experience, according to Lloyd, is a mess, one that “damages the system, can’t copy files reliably, can’t do useful things it ought to do at all, hides key files, rife with bugs.”
  
• File system: The existing HFS+ is a patchwork that should have been replaced long ago by something far more modern, such as ZFS.
• iCloud: No need to summarize. It’s one huge mess for many of us.
• Disk Utility: Hardly changed in years, sadly in need of a serious upgrade.
• iTunes:  You really think iTunes 11 was an improvement? Some regard it is an incoherent mess that’s less usable than the previous version.

He also complains that system upgrades these days are riddled with mostly needless eye candy, rather than improving the user experience and improving system reliability. His language is strong, and his arguments are reasoned and well presented. One particularly indicting statement suggests that “The real talent at Apple has probably been diverted away from OS X to iP* development, leaving incompetent and truly reckless programmers working on areas they have no business touching.”

Now this isn’t the first time the critics have claimed that the quality of the Mac OS is deteriorating. You could say the same, and more, in the 1990s, when the aging, creaking OS was hardly capable of handling the needs of professional users. The end result, along with stagnation in the hardware segment, was that many rushed to embrace Windows, where the state of affairs wasn’t necessarily better, but there was some hope for eventual improvement.

Apple’s decision to switch to a tried and true Unix platform was a good thing. It extended the life of the Mac, and with the migration to Intel processors, made the Mac a mainstream product at long last.

Today, however, the Mac is only a small part of Apple’s product portfolio. The largest share of cash is earned by the iPhone, followed by the iPad. We are in a Post-PC era, where traditional computers are being supplanted by tablets in greater and greater numbers. That may present a severe disincentive for Apple to invest a whole lot of resources into improving Macs.

Since I am not a programmer, I wouldn’t presume to accept everything Lloyd suggests as ideal solutions to OS X’s problems. But I agree with a lot of what he writes about, and I have to wonder whether Tim Cook still takes the Mac seriously enough to make the necessary changes. To him, and his executive team, Macs may be mostly in maintenance mode these days. Yes, you’ll get lots of fluff, and the hard-to-get 2012 iMac is but one example, but the OS will merely coast along until it is finally supplanted by some future version of the iOS, where the “real” innovation may be occurring. That’s not an encouraging prospect, and I hope Apple will seriously consider investing a little more of their cash hoard to making the best OS X they can, and not just let the platform die of inattention.