On Thursday, Apple released the first maintenance update for Mountain Lion, coming just over four weeks after the release of 10.8. This rapid schedule is pretty much par for the course. With every version of OS X, a fixer-upper has arrived a short time after the point-zero release.

Now there have been several issues reported by early adopters of Mountain Lion, such as poor battery life, which impacts some Mac note-books. This has been confirmed to me by a colleague, and a published report from Ars Technica, a popular online tech publication. But their tests involved a single model, a MacBook Pro with Retina display. The problem was made all the more confusing because it didn’t seem consistent enough to pinpoint specific models and configurations. Some said battery life was as good or better than under Lion; others said it was worse.

It was also reported that Apple was working with some customers to determine the cause of the battery life issue. This harkens back to iOS 5, where both the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4s suffered from reduced battery life. Again, the problem didn’t occur on all units, just some. After a couple of updates, Apple managed to eradicate most of the problems.

I expect there will be a 10.8 update to deal with Mac battery life problems, but it doesn’t seem as if 10.8.1 was designed to address that issue. Or at least the list of fixes doesn’t mention that problem. Indeed, most of the fixes appear to deal with issues that aren’t apt to impact a large number of users. Here’s the list:

• Resolve an issue that may cause Migration Assistant to unexpectedly quit
• Improve compatibility when connecting to a Microsoft Exchange server in Mail
• Address an issue playing audio through a Thunderbolt display
• Resolve an issue that could prevent iMessages from being sent
• Address an issue that could cause the system to become unresponsive when using Pinyin input
• Resolve an issue when connecting to SMB servers with long names
• Address an issue that may prevent Safari from launching when using a Proxy Automatic Configuration (PAC) file
• Improve 802.1X authentication with Active Directory credentials

However, Apple has an escape clause, that 10.8.1 is designed “improve the stability and compatibility of your Mac,” so there could be other fixes that weren’t identified in the short list. That’s not unusual for Apple either.

When it comes to battery life, one Apple developer said a 10.8.1 seed fixed the problem. Although the story got a decent amount of publicity in the Mac blogosphere, it wasn’t confirmed by other developers. At the same time, Apple has reportedly begun testing a 10.8.2 update, with unmentioned fixes, which may deal with battery life problems. Or maybe not. The key change is said to be support for Face-book. But since nothing is confirmed, the best I can report is that Face-book support was promised for this fall, about when a 10.8.2 update might appear. So we’ll see.

Other reported Mountain Lion problems are all about performance. Slow system response, spinning beach balls, the whole nine yards. Once again, such problems aren’t necessarily the fault of the OS. If it happens on a system where you do an in-place OS update (just launching the Installer, accepting everything, and letting it do its thing), something might be left from the previous installation that creates a problem. Perhaps there are system enhancements, kernel extensions and other changes that might cause problems under Mountain Lion.

In theory, incompatible software will be disabled and moved into a separate folder during the installation process. But there are no guarantees of perfection. Perhaps the installer may leave behind something that isn’t part of whatever database Apple uses to check for software that won’t work.

Under these circumstances, a clean Mountain Lion installation might be in the cards. That basically involves backing up all your data to an external drive, erasing your startup drive, and reinstalling Mountain Lion, after which you restore the rest of your data.

It sounds like a daunting process, but it’s more time-consuming than difficult. You can use a Time Machine backup or a third-party backup app, such as Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! These two apps create what are called “clone” backups, which means that your startup drive is duplicated exactly. The Mountain Lion installer has a Migration feature where you can retrieve your data from a backup after the OS installation. That’s a lot simpler than just reinstalling everything from scratch and copying your data, although I grant it’s not quite perfect. But this sort of clean installation often fixes unexplainable quirks with a new OS.

My biggest problems have been with iCloud, not so much with Mountain Lion. I haven’t done a battery life test on my MacBook Pro, so I’m not prepared to say whether it has gotten any worse. Most of the time, the thing is hooked up to the power outlet anyway.

Insofar as Apple’s updates are concerned, I always hope they’ll make a better effort to inform you about all the fixes, not just a cross-section. But a battery life fix would surely be among the bulleted items if it happened.

So let’s see now. The rumor sites have it that Apple will move to in-cell display technology for the iPhone 5. This scheme combines the touchscreen with the LCD, which should make for more efficient production, and thinner components. According to published reports, Apple recently received a patent  for technology “integrating the layered structure of an LCD and touch sensor,” which seems to be essentially the same thing. This development only makes the story seem more credible.

Now let’s assume that the next iPhone will incorporate in-cell technology. I mean, nothing is certain until Apple makes the official announcement, which is expected during the expected September 12 media event. Even then, there has been enough supposed informed speculation to almost, but not completely, confirm the basic details of the specs of the iPhone 5.

There is yet another wrinkle about the iPhone 5’s expected features, a report, citing “sources,” which claims that early production yields of the in-cell displays are lower than expected. The production figure is said to be 15 million for the September quarter. While I realize that Apple wants to have several weeks of production in hand before a product ships, even assuming that the iPhone 5 officially goes on sale the week after media event, there will surely be sufficient quantities to move several million copies the first weekend, and another few million the following week as the quarter ends.

However, the key question is this: Is there really a production problem? How would that information get into the media, since it is one of the super-secret details that Apple would strive to suppress. Sure, if production difficulties did impact earnings, that factor may be disclosed during an earnings conference call with financial analysts, but it wouldn’t happen until the latter part of October. It wouldn’t be disclosed so early in the game.

Besides, between now and the end of September, it is always possible that, if there are production issues, they would be resolved, and the ramp up would continue at full tilt?

Now consider this: Since this is a story attributed to unnamed sources, you have to wonder whether the media is depending on one or more people, if not directly connected with Apple, who might have axes to grind. Wouldn’t stories of production problems with the iPhone 5 impact Apple’s stock price, since investors may expect Apple’s earnings to be negatively impacted? I can see where Apple’s competitors would like to see Wall Street bet against Apple, or perhaps try to persuade customers that they should buy something shipping now rather than wait for a smartphone that may be backordered for months.

Of course, a product that is backordered may thus become even more attractive to potential customers. It means that there is a lot of demand, so might as well join the crowd. Don’t forget that the iPhone and the iPad have always been backordered when shipping began. It usually took weeks or months for production to catch up with demand. Even the MacBook Pro with Retina display was backordered by several weeks until very recently. No conspiracy theories needed.

Yes, it is perfectly true that pretty much everything we know about the next iPhone is steeped in rumors and speculation. We don’t know that Apple will really hold a media event on September 12, though certain tech pundits, such as The Loop’s Jim Dalrymple, have said so. That Jim is always right should be an indication that the claim has substance, not to mention the fact that the mainstream media has given the story the same level of authority.

That employees from wireless carriers that carry the iPhone have reportedly been advised to avoid vacations and expect overtime the last part of September also indicates that they will be busy filling orders for a new product, which is expected to be the iPhone 5. That phenomenon played out during previous iPhone introductions.

As for the rest: Well, there have been pictures of leaked prototypes that indicate a four-inch display, with a vertical but not horizontal increase in size. Similar leaks have included a slimmer dock connector, with 9 pins as opposed to 30 pins; even a cable prototype has been shown. If it’s unidirectional, it would mean that you wouldn’t have to hunt for the proper direction in which to insert your dock connector into your iOS gadget. I don’t know how many broken connectors have resulted, but convenience is convenience.

If Apple is building a larger case for the iPhone 5, you have to expect a redesign to some degree, rather than just taking the existing form factor and make it longer. LTE networking is a given, since that’s the requirement for a high-end smartphone. But I’ve already covered the rumors and expectations. I suppose Apple could pull a few surprises, and it’s even possible that rumors of in-cell technology for the product’s display are themselves incorrect. That Apple patents something doesn’t mean it will ever show up in a shipping product, although so-called leaked prototypes seem to confirm this particular feature.

As far as production problems are concerned, if serious, Apple may move out the actual shipping date. If slight, the expected shipping date won’t change, just the amount of product available for customers to buy. Even then, you may not know the truth unless backorders slip to a couple of months, in which case even higher than expected demand might also explain why.

When Apple announced last month that iPhone sales weren’t quite as high as Wall Street expected in the June quarter, the stock price took a huge dip, pushing it back in the upper 500s. Well, that would be amazing for any other company, but Apple has to walk on water. Perhaps a little reality took over, though, as the stock price began a fairly rapid ascent to levels never before achieved. Apple’s market cap soared to levels higher than Microsoft achieved in its heyday in the late 1990s.

Well, not if you factor in inflation, which puts Apple in second place. But it hardly matters, except to show the heights from which Microsoft has descended over the years.

Clearly investors believe Apple will hit a huge home run when the next iPhone is announced. It is very much accepted that the new iPhone — expected to be called the iPhone 5 — will be announced at a media event on September 12, and will go on sale the following weekend. This will give customers ample opportunity to preorder online and clog Apple’s sites, along with those of various wireless carriers and independent retailers.

The spec sheet for the iPhone 5, and I don’t think Apple will call it “new iPhone,” has already been fleshed out by both rumor sites and the mainstream media. There’s plenty of talk, and alleged prototype photos, indicating a four-inch display, and a new case design that’s longer but not wider. The presence of LTE seems a given, since all new high-end smartphones support the latest and greatest cellular standards. From there, the specs become hazier. Maybe the rear-facing camera will have a higher resolution, maybe a 9-pin dock connector will replace the 30-pin dock connector, and perhaps there will be a surprise feature or two.

The “one more thing” is said to be a smaller iPad, dubbed the iPad mini. Most of the published reports speak of a 7.85-inch form factor that may be closer to the iPod touch in basic design, with the same 4:3 aspect radio as the regular iPad. It would have the same resolution as the iPad 2, but images would be sharper on a smaller display. This basic similarity means that existing apps will work fine on the supposed iPad mini, although changes will probably still have to be made because of the iPhone 5’s alleged larger display.

The retail price of this iPad mini may be in the $249 to $299 range, not so much above the Amazon Kindle Fire and the Google Nexus 7 as to give Apple a competitive disadvantage. Don’t forget that the iPad mini, and that name isn’t a given, would tie into the huge iOS ecosystem. Everything you have installed on a regular iPad will run great on the iPad mini, so how can it miss?

Another factor fueling the higher stock prices is the possibility of other fall product introductions. The iMac and Mac mini are overdue for refreshes, so Apple might spruce up the product lines in the next couple of months. While some suggest that the next iMac must have a Retina display, in the fashion of the 15-inch MacBook Pro, that seems questionable. Even if Apple could get enough displays to meet the expected demand, the price would be unacceptably high. What’s more, since you will be sitting farther away from a 27-inch display, the benefits of Retina may not be quite as obvious. Yes, there may be a decent redesign of the iMac case, possibly thinner without an optical drive, but it may just be a simple upgrade with newer components.

And don’t forget that a new Mac Pro isn’t promised until next year.

The one unknown as the Apple TV. Will there be a newer version, or will Apple deliver a smart TV of some sort? There are some rumors that Apple is already building TV sets, but it may just be product samples, and no final production decision has been made.

The other possibility is a new version of the Apple TV that will support existing cable and satellite systems, although the present model, with software updates, ought to be sufficient. According to the Wall Street Journal, DVR capabilities will be passed on to the cloud, so you won’t need a large local hard drive to store the shows you’ve flagged for time shifting.

While the reality of any of the new products, other than an iPhone 5 and an iMac and Mac mini refresh, are very much speculative, it may well be that Apple will have a busy fall. All that anticipation may well explain why Apple’s stock price has soared. As a passing note, if Apple is victorious in the current patent lawsuit against Samsung that’s playing out in Northern California, you can bet that Apple’s stock price will get an even bigger bump, in anticipation of possibly higher sales if Samsung faces the possibility more products will be banned. Samsung might even have to pay huge royalty.

Or maybe that case will just be appealed and appealed again, and not be settled for years.

In the tech world, three years is an eternity, so it may come as a surprise to realize that Apple’s own office productivity suite, iWork ’09, was first released in January of that year. Since then, there have been a few maintenance updates, and the latest versions of the three apps that make up the suite, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote, are fully compatible with Mountain Lion’s Auto Save, Version and full screen features. Microsoft remains behind the curve, having apparently forgotten the promise to make Office 2011 compatible with Lion that was made last year.

Now that an app doesn’t receive a major upgrade doesn’t make it less usable. Some prefer older versions of Microsoft Office, for example, simply because they aren’t quite as bloated with useless features. I have one client, who consults for education, who runs Word 5.1a on an old Power Mac, using an ancient macro program from the 1990s to automate his workflow. He does have a newer version of Word on his iMac, but cannot find any new features that he needs. This is doubly true on the Windows platform, where much of what Office 2013 has to offer is a pathetic implementation of touch for the benefit of Windows 8 users.

That iWork hasn’t seen a major update doesn’t necessarily mean that the existing version is close enough to perfect not to require some changes. I still see some raggedness around the edges, such as relatively slow initial launch times, somewhat slower than Word 2011. You’d think a relatively lightweight app would somehow get going in a more efficient fashion. Subsequent launches of Pages are pretty quick, however.

But the real issue with Pages is the fidelity of translation with Office documents. Text documents seem to go back and forth without serious glitches. But writers will rely on Track Changes to keep tabs of ongoing edits. Publishers generally insist on full Word compatibility, and sometimes provide Word templates or macros to ensure that the copy you prepare is correctly formatted. The Track Changes feature in Page is passably accurate. Macros simply won’t work, but that’s mostly true even for other Office alternatives, such as OpenOffice. If you need Word or Excel macros, you pretty much forced to stick with Microsoft.

I suppose, in the scheme of things, Apple could open source a new macro and Track Changes capability. It would allow third parties to latch on to these features, but Microsoft will stick with a proprietary solution, so it remains a non-starter. I also doubt that Microsoft would license Office’s macro capability to Apple.

Of course, Pages doesn’t necessarily have to be 100% compatible with Office. There are enough people who will survive partial compatibility, particularly in bringing older documents into Pages and, of course, Numbers. With the iWork apps also available in iOS versions for the iPhone and iPad, Apple has the opportunity to build market share with customers who are able to leave Word, or have opted never to use a Microsoft product. There are tens of millions of customers who would welcome Pages and the rest of the iWork apps.

So the question is how does Apple expand iWork with a ’12 or ’13 edition. I suppose more page layout capabilities could be added for those who have yet to embrace Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress, though Apple isn’t going to want to play in the high-end publishing arena. That market is already saturated with existing players.

But enhancing the ability to create sophisticated documents, improving mail merge capabilities and making iWork a more compatible with Office — except for macros — would possibly help boost sales. Considering the low price of admission, maybe Apple should also consider offering iWork free on new Macs, but I can see where a decision of that sort could cause problems with Apple’s relationship with Microsoft.

Yes, they compete. But Apple has kept iWork promotion strictly low-key. The apps are cheap, available for download from the OS X and iOS App Stores, but Apple still sells Office online and through their retail outlets. Bear in mind that Office is still a standard in many offices, and I do not think Apple is wants Microsoft to discontinue the Mac version of the suite.

Yes, I suppose it’s somewhat disconcerting to see Microsoft essentially reneging on the promise to make Office 2011 fully compatible with Lion — and little has been said about Mountain Lion. Other than Outlook 2011, none of the Office apps support the MacBook Pro with Retina display, meaning everything on your display seems less sharp than, say, iWork.

Is it possible Apple hasn’t upgraded iWork because they only want to enter Microsoft’s turf on the low end? That’s a really good question, and I wouldn’t expect Apple to shy away from a fight. It may also be possible that a major new upgrade to iWork is even now under development, and we’ll see it this fall or early in 2013.

Since I do not pretend to know or understand Apple’s priorities, I can just hope for a better iWork in the near future. Remember there is an iOS version, so it is highly unlikely Apple wants to abandon the suite. But how it may improve going forward is anyone’s guess, and it’s not as if the blogosphere is getting worked up over it.