As I’ve said in past columns, some media pundits, not to mention so-called industry analysts, believe they know more about the tech market than Apple. So when there’s a product niche that’s not being filled, they will attempt to make strong cases for why Apple needs to create those products right away.

Now as the iPad’s sales began to soar, Steve Jobs said that Apple had experimented with different display sizes, and decided that seven inches was just too small for most of you. That statement came at the time when other companies resorted to the smaller screens in an effect to somehow match Apple’s price.

The apparent success of the $200 Amazon Kindle Fire is being cited as a requiem for smaller tablets. If Amazon succeeded, Apple is not only missing the boat, but losing loads of potential sales to tablets with the smaller form factor. Therefore, they must be planning one, if not now, in the very near future.

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Somewhat lost in the news about the build up to the arrival of the next iPad is the fact that Microsoft has also released a “Consumer Preview” of Windows 8. Now Windows 8, in case you’ve tuned in late, is Microsoft’s latest and greatest effort to somehow seem relevant in a world where Apple Inc., the former beleaguered tech company, is now worth more than Poland.

The Face of Windows 8 is Metro, a tiled-based overlay that’s meant to replace the venerable Start menu with something more catchy. Those of you who are familiar with the Zune music player and Windows Phone will find the interface familiar. Similar to Apple’s move to graft iOS elements into OS X, Microsoft is also adding loads and loads of gestures, which is the reasoning behind the “slide, swipe, and zoom” concept that is supposed to have a deep meaning to bored PC users.

Now the Night Owl tried out the first prerelease version, which became available last year, but wasn’t very impressed. My biggest complaint about the interface then, and now, is that there are too many tiles with thin white lettering embedded on tiles with too many muted colors that tend towards the darker side of the spectrum, making those labels hard to read unless you look real close. On the Internet, this is bad Web design, but Microsoft’s OS developers clearly haven’t been clued in.

True, Microsoft’s decision to use small, thin letting with stick figure style artwork might be a clumsy stab at conveying minimalist and elegant intentions, thus being more business-like, against Apple’s shaded and photorealistic icons and backgrounds in OS X.

But I want to be fair and balanced here, although that’s a phrase that’s become more of an ad slogan than a statement of ethics. It may well be that Microsoft’s attempt to put a new face on Windows 8 will catch fire even though the Metro interface has so far failed to gain traction.

The real question is what Windows 8 will offer once you’ve clicked past Metro, and it doesn’t seem like a whole lot. Sure, there will be a version for ARM-based processors — something that Intel isn’t going to like — but that doesn’t mean your regular Windows apps will run on the new generation of tablets using that mobile processor. They’d have to be reworked. This is the sort of thing Mac developers encountered when Apple went through processor transitions, such as the 2006 switch to Intel.

The other features I’ve read about don’t seem compelling enough to mention, except in passing, such as the ability to boot the OS from a USB stick. In turn, Apple has touted over 200 new features in Lion, and another 100 for Mountain Lion. I also expect you’ll see Mac based Metro-styled launching docks, which, in full screen mode, will make your Mac resemble Windows 8, if you truly care. But beneath Metro on a PC box, it’s still just Windows.

In any case, yes, I did install the latest Windows 8 prerelease, and ran into the usual Microsoft clumsiness and complications. Using the latest Parallels Desktop, which supposedly will work reasonably well with a Windows 8 prerelease, I opened a disc image version, or ISO file, downloaded from Microsoft. Shortly into the installation process, which, aside from some passing Metro-based interface artifacts, doesn’t seem much different from Windows 7, I encountered a request for a product key.

A product key?

Why on earth should you need a product key for a free product that, ultimately, must expire after the final release of Windows 8? Well, it seems that, if you download the tiny setup file instead, which, in turn, downloads a full installer as part of the process, you don’t need to concern yourself about such trifles. But since I went straight to the ISO file, I had to poke around Microsoft’s site for some answers. I found one, buried in an FAQ, where a standard 25-character product key was provided.

But as I said, this is a public beta, available for anyone to install if their PC meets the basic system requirements. Besides, the product key I saw is the same one anyone gets, so having one in the first place seems an exercise in foolishness. Yes, it makes sense for Microsoft to want to serialize the retail version of Windows 8, but requiring a single product key for a public beta that you have to jump a hoop or two to locate doesn’t seem terribly logical.

But that’s Microsoft for you. I would have also hoped they’d do more to make the installation user friendly. Why first download a tiny setup file, when all it’s going to do is retrieve the full installer online, or from a network? Why not one file, period? Microsoft is the sort of company that seems to believe that forcing you to follow 20 steps is better than 10.

This doesn’t mean that I think Windows 8 is destined to fail. Once Windows 8 is out, new PCs will be preloaded with the OS. But the real problem for Microsoft is whether millions of business owners will prefer to buy PCs with Windows 7 or — perish forbid — Windows XP instead. Consumers might take to Metro, but businesses may very well pass it by.

All right, so I wasn’t the first person on this block (or any other block) to get an iPhone 4s. I felt no rush to upgrade, but finally decided that I might as well get one, inasmuch as my two-year contract with AT&T was up, I was enriched with a new ad deal, and they were bugging me with regular pitches to buy a new handset.

Since they are now supposedly available everywhere, more or less, I drove over to the nearby AT&T factory store, pleased to discover they had the one I wanted in stock, the 16GB version. It’s more than sufficient for my needs, since most of my stuff is in the cloud, and I’m only using a small part of the storage capacity. Please note that the closest Apple Store is another mile or so away, and a Best Buy, a Wal-Mart and a Sam’s Club are another few miles distant. It’s not as if I wouldn’t have choices if AT&T’s stocks were dry.

I won’t make much of a deal over the fact that the AT&T rep tried to mislead me about Apple’s terms and conditions for buying AppleCare coverage in an iPhone. According to AT&T, you have to buy it when purchasing the handset, or you are stuck with AT&T’s own insurance plan. Not true, as many of you know. You actually have 30 days, but you have to go to an Apple Store to have them confirm you haven’t destroyed the phone first.

Regardless, setting up the iPhone was mostly all right; that is, until I decided to install a custom ringtone, from a new iTunes collection featuring The Beatles. The one I choose, “Hello Goodbye” from the “Magical Mystery Tour” album, seemed most appropriate. As part of the download, I tapped the option to make this 30 second snippet the default ringtone. It even worked — for two days flat!

On the third day, the ringtone disappeared from my iPhone. It was nowhere to be found, and thus began a three day odyssey with Apple’s support to solve the case of the missing ringtone. Now before I contacted Apple, I restored the phone, using my most recent backup for settings, a mistake I later lived to regret.

Finally, with Apple connected to my desktop iMac by remote access, we tried everything in order to induce the file to appear. It didn’t, so I did another restore, this time setting up the iPhone as a new device. The process involved revisiting the brief setup questionnaire on the iPhone, and redoing all of my customizations. When all was said and done, the contacts were synced via iCloud per my settings. I manually added my email accounts, wondering why iTunes never puts them in the same order as they appear in Mail. You cannot reorder them either; the only option would be to remove them from the iPhone and manually add your accounts in the order in which you’d like to see them appear.

Now my iTunes issues weren’t restricted to the iPhone. I ran into a problem downloading one of the 17 songs on the iTunes remastered version of “The Best of Pink Floyd: A Foot in the Door.” Song number three, “The Happiest Days of Our Lives,” kept coming up corrupted. Apple support is looking into the problem, since the download hiccup was repeated on both the iPhone and an iPad 2.

With those negatives out of the way, there’s a lot of good to say about this iPhone. Voice quality on regular calls is far better than the iPhone 4, and, in fact, superior to any mobile handset I’ve ever used. The fools at Consumer Reports rate voice quality as “average,” same as the iPhone 4. They are either deaf, or just plain wrong, because voices are clearly more solid, more robust, with less digital grain. It’s not a case of imagining a difference, since it wasn’t expected. Whether using the handset directly, or connecting it “hands free” to my Honda, voice quality remains clean and crisp. Connection quality is also like a rock, although I haven’t used it long enough to wander into areas around Phoenix where dropped calls impact AT&T’s network.

The move from an Apple A4 to A5 processor is more subtle. Application and notification wipes and transitions seem more fluid. Web pages display faster, and the wireless connection in my home is stronger, almost always at three bars. With the iPhone 4, it would usually descend to two bars in the main bedroom; that seldom happens with the 4S. For your reference, I’m using a Cisco E4200 version 2 router, which also delivers great performance with an iPad and an Apple TV.

After two restores, I’m still a little uncertain about battery life. In theory, it should be about the same as the iPhone 4. In practice, the percentage display seems to descend more rapidly, but it’ll take a few days to determine whether I’m just doing more things on it for testing, or whether there’s an issue. I’m using the 5.0.1 iOS update meant to fix those ills, though I gather some of you still have issues.

Of course, there’s always Siri, and it’s fun to have it show me a listing of the best rated restaurants in my neighborhood, the nearest gas station, or attempt to respond to the foolish questions I ask. I can see where it might become addictive, though I don’t invoke the personal assistant in public. People think I’m crazy enough already, especially after hearing that ring tone go off.

When the Mac App Store arrived last year, some suggested it was only Apple’s first foray to move all Mac app sales under a single umbrella. Independent retail sales would be history, and Mac developers would soon have to get with the program in order to sustain a viable business.

Now from a practical standpoint, having someone else manage downloads and order processing might be a good thing, but it also means a developer has to depend on Apple giving them the green light to have their products posted. That’s where things get dicey. While there are thousands of Mac apps available via Apple’s software repository, a reasonable number of apps stand little or no chance of making it through Apple’s approval process, at least right now. It’s not just whether the apps work and are free of malware, but if they tap unapproved system resources, or have complicated installers that take them beyond the constraints of the Applications folder, Apple will say no.

Consider, for example, an app that can capture audio from your Skype or iChat conversation. This sort of inter-application legerdemain is prohibited, and things will only get worse once Apple institutes sandboxing, which is promised (or threatened) for June 1.

Now sandboxing, already available for iOS apps, basically walls off one app from another. This can help prevent a buggy, corrupted or infected application from wreaking havoc with other software, or the entire OS. From a security standpoint, it’s a good thing, but it also means that apps that need to talk to the OS or other apps are severely limited. For Mac apps, even those that perform backups may be severely constrained once the new conditions take effect.

Sure, Apple does provide hooks, called entitlements, which allow apps to grab onto certain system features or talk to other apps. Developers are evidently talking to Apple about expanding the entitlement repertoire to suit their needs. The current sandboxing deadline has already shifted twice, and it’s very possible things will change by the time the final policies are put into effect.

But there’s no indication yet that Apple will demand that app developers put all their stuff in the Mac App Store. At the same time, Apple has a new program called the Developer ID. According to Apple: “Developer ID is a new way to help prevent users from installing malware on their Mac. Along with Gatekeeper, a new feature in Mountain Lion, signing applications with your Developer ID certificate provides users with the confidence that your application is not known malware and has not been tampered with.”

There’s no extra cost and no specific restrictions on those apps, other than being free of malware, obviously. If a developer’s apps are found to contain malware, the certificate will be revoked, and the offender will lose their developer account. That’s only logical, and it’ll also make it difficult for Mac users to install and run those apps if they select the middle or evidently default Gatekeeper option, which restricts you to running apps with a valid Developer ID, or which came from the Mac App Store. Sure, that security block can be easily defeated with a control-click on the app icon, but most Mac users won’t consider that step under normal circumstances.

Now I suppose it’s easy to consider the Developer ID a scheme to coerce developers into the Mac App Store, but there’s no such requirement. The apps won’t be curated, and they can still be sold independently at a developer’s site, or through an independent reseller. The app can even be sold in a traditional hard copy form, with discs and printed documentation.

Besides, wouldn’t customers want the extra reassurance that an app, with certificate embedded, is therefore safe from a possible malware infection? It wouldn’t stop an Internet criminal from supplying a bogus version of the app with an embedded Trojan Horse of some sort, but Mac users will still be safer in a world where the platform is growing by leaps and bounds. That itself may make Macs more of a target for malware, although outbreaks so far have been relatively few and far between.

But does this mean that developers will ultimately be forced to alter their products to get approval from the Mac App Store? The marketplace may well make that decision, particularly as more and more newer Mac users — a large portion of whom are accustomed to the iOS App Store — will confine their software search to that source and no other. Sure, savvy marketing from developers will allow them to keep going, but the trend will ultimately take them to Apple’s download center.

I realize some of you will disagree with me, but so long as I’m making predictions, here’s one more: Apple still wants the larger developers, such as Adobe and Microsoft, to do business with Mac users. Thus, they they will make the appropriate changes to the store requirements to allow extra classes of software that today aren’t being accepted. Apple already offers a few titles from Adobe and Microsoft. I don’t think Apple’s management is crazy enough to want to prevent Mac users from buying the software they need for work or play. In the end, the Mac App Store will be adjusted to work with most developers without restricting the features customers expect.