The conventional wisdom has it that PC sales flagged over the past quarter, with more and more customers looking at sexier gadgets, or just buying smartphones and tablets. HP suffered more than most, with a case of corporate musical chairs and the lack of a sensible strategy about their PC division. According to a Gartner survey of preliminary PC sales for the fourth quarter, HP’s U.S. sales were down a whopping 26.1%.

For a while, in fact, it wasn’t at all certain whether HP would spin off PCs or sell off that division, simply because it wasn’t very profitable. That cloud over the business may have convinced lots of potential customers to look elsewhere. Besides, it’s not as if HP’s computers are really all that different from a Dell or other generic PC boxes. At least the newly-minted CEO, Meg Whitman, finally announced that PCs would remain in HP’s future, but that announcement may have come too late to restore confidence.

But as I said, what distinguishes the HP PC from competitors anyway? Because it’s HP?

In the meantime, all signs from industry analysts seem to indicate that Apple’s Mac division continued to score higher and higher sales. Apple has moved into the number three spot in the U.S., ahead of Toshiba, with a sales boost of some 20.7%. Understand that this happened without a major advertising campaign, at the same time that Microsoft has been spending lots of cash running utterly pathetic ads for Windows 7.

Now remember that Apple no longer uses those Mac versus PC ads, or much of anything else to promote Macs on radio and TV. Most of Apple’s advertising is focused on the iPhone or the iPad. You hardly know there is such a thing as a Mac nowadays, at least if you considered the number of ads you hear or see about them. It almost seems as if they sell themselves.

Indeed Apple is doing amazingly well with Mac sales. The iMac, for example, has about a third of the all-in-one desktop PC market. This is one of Apple’s huge strengths, since the very first Mac, in 1984, was an all-in-model. But nearly three quarters of the Macs sold these days are note-books, and the MacBook Air also remains a great success story.

Certainly, the PC world is noticing. They continue to introduce all-in-one models, and Intel’s ultrabook program will allow them to build ultra thin note-books designed to compete with the Air. So far, however, the PC makers haven’t found a way to beat Apple on price with their thin and light portables, except by cutting back on features or using cheaper parts.

But Microsoft’s biggest dilemma in helping fuel sales of PCs is that they really have nothing new to offer. Sure, Windows 7 is better than Windows Vista, but largely in areas that aren’t necessarily visible to the end user. It’s still just Windows for better or worse.

Later this year, Windows 8 will arrive, with a Metro graphic layer consisting of tiles rather than icons, but it didn’t do so well on the Zune or Windows Phone smartphones. When you set Metro aside, it’s still just Windows, at least on the developer beta I tried some months back. That there will be a Windows 8 running on tablets using ARM processors, but that doesn’t necessarily allow for application sharing between the two platforms.

While Microsoft is flailing, Apple is soaring into the stratosphere on all fronts; well, perhaps not the iPod, where people who want music players will use the iPhone or iPad instead. But the prestige of Apple’s gear across the board no doubt contributes significantly to the continued success of the Mac.

Despite reports that sales of tech gear simply failed to take off over the holiday season, every indication has it that Apple did great business, particularly with the iPhone 4s, which still remains somewhat backordered. Clearly customers are willing to buy if they perceive the product has value, and maybe they have begun to decide in far larger numbers that the perceived value of a PC is not terribly great. Maybe they have decided to just keep the old PC until it breaks, or consider other options, such as Macs.

This doesn’t mean that the PC business is finished, only that the current structure may be in need of life support. You can expect the various manufacturers to be hoping and dreaming that Windows 8 will somehow turn things around, or that their various and sundry attempts — so far unsuccessful — to make it in the tablet space will come to fruition.

As the economy improves, of course, lots of companies may be ready to upgrade their old PCs, though you wonder if Windows 7 will take over XP as the default OS of choice, even after Windows 8 arrives. While Microsoft’s pathetic attempts at visual eye candy might count for something in the consumer market, it’s not at all certain that this sort of window dressing will mean much in the corporate world. Beneath Metro, it’s still Windows 7 with a few refinements. How’s that going to change the game?

Meantime it appears Apple is in no rush to overhaul the industry any more than they already have with the MacBook Air and the iMac.

When the iPhone 4s first arrived, the critics complained. Despite being “late” on arrival (even though there was no official release schedule), it didn’t look any different from the iPhone 4. Why bother?

Of course, that didn’t stop customers from lining up to get one. Even now, there’s a backlog of several days at Apple’s online store for any iPhone 4s configuration. Published reports indicate possibly record shattering sales, as the iOS gains market share against the Android OS. Clearly the internal changes, particularly the addition of the Siri personal assistant, have made a huge difference.

But there is one published opinion that attempts to turn Apple’s decision to retain the iPhone form factor on its head, that it was an amazing sign of genius on the part of Tim Cook for having done something Steve Jobs wouldn’t have done. If this sounds curious to you, I’m just getting started.

Obviously Steve Jobs was still present and accounted for during the development process of the iPhone 4s. Even though Tim Cook was acting CEO, Jobs very likely was making the critical product and marketing decisions until shortly before his passing. This being the case, it’s obvious that Jobs green lit the decision not to change the case for this particular iPhone revision. To say otherwise is a stretch, and certainly without any evidence.

Of course, the lack of evidence doesn’t stop pundits from advancing an agenda.

Let’s take this further. You see, it’s not a given that Apple will completely change the iPhone’s case design each and every year. Consider the iPhone 3GS, which is still available through AT&T. That form factor is identical to its predecessor. I don’t recall such unproven speculation then about Apple’s brilliant marketing plan then in not changing the look of the iPhone.

More to the point, there’s nothing in the iPhone’s history to indicate that Apple must make such a drastic change each and every year. Besides, it’s not the case, but the insides that really count in how well the product works. If Apple delivered an iPhone 5, with an all-aluminum backing, would that have made it a better product than the iPhone 4s if nothing else changed?

Yes, it is true that Apple is addressing a wider range of potential customers nowadays. From the iPhone 3GS, to the 64GB iPhone 4s, most anyone can afford to buy one. No excuses. But to suggest that this is a new strategy on the part of Apple that would never have been formulated when Steve Jobs was running the show is simply without any support. It would seem to me that Cook is just carrying out a marketing program that Apple’s executives, including Jobs, devised months or even years ago.

Yes, there have been some changes in the way the leadership is organized at Apple. No doubt those large stock option grants by the board of directors are designed to keep the key executives on board for years to come. Jobs worked for one dollar a year, although his stock options were nothing to be ashamed of. But other Apple executives, despite unwavering loyalty to the company, cannot possibly have the same emotional commitment. Huge paychecks and lucrative stock options can certainly make them feel better, and less inclined to consider tempting offers that are likely coming their way from Apple’s competitors.

On the other hand, there’s nothing wrong with speculating about Apple’s strategy, future products, and marketing schemes. If you believe Apple is making serious mistakes, say so. Even though Apple has become amazingly successful with their present strategy and product lines, I’m sure there’s room for improvement. In the same way, feel free to imagine yourself in the CEO’s chair at Apple, and consider what decisions you’d make, what products you’d approve, and what products you’d pass on.

At the same time, making things up doesn’t help anyone in attempting to understand Apple’s moves and future product planning. It’s easy to assume you know what Apple will do in 2012 based on previous product introductions and overall strategy. But few outside the company, and maybe nobody outside the company, understands the details of their long-term roadmap, or why particular decisions are being made. There are also compromises in terms of technology and the development process that may explain why one feature appears, one doesn’t appear, or why things don’t quite work they way you’d expect.

A key example is iCloud, which is still in somewhat shaky condition. It is not fully understood by many Mac users, and the fact that you cannot integrate multiple Apple IDs only makes iCloud more difficult to configure. Instead of just working, you may have to examine a range of features that may not always act in the way you expect, and Apple’s documentation on the subject is expansive but not well integrated.

This isn’t to say that iCloud is necessarily a failure. But it is clearly a huge work in progress, and you can always hope that Apple will flesh out the features, make them more consistent and, in the end, make it possible to make your Apple ID work like your social security number. You should be able to merge them into just one, and have that ID follow you throughout your life as an Apple customer. I expect confusion about iCloud and how it works will certainly be reduced once the Apple ID issue is resolved.

Meantime, feel free to try to read the minds of Apple’s executives. But don’t be surprised if your telepathic abilities fail big time.

With Lenovo and other tech companies hoping to beat Apple at the integrated TV game, I wonder how many of you even care. I mean, it’s not as if today’s TV sets are broken. For the most part, they work just fine, and deliver an entertainment experience that most of you are pleased with. They are not in any way the same as personal computers, where crashes, system instability, and malware are possible. They are appliances that mostly just work.

Sure, the set top box provided by your cable or satellite provider may be less instinctive to use. But changing channels is done pretty much the same way regardless. Sure, checking an onscreen menu’s channel listings and recording a show may not always be as user friendly as they could be. Sure, the complexities increase when you connect accessories to your TV, such as a Blu-ray player, an auxiliary set top box, such as an Apple TV, or perhaps a game console.

Where a problem may arise is when a user is trying to do more than just switching channels and setting recording schedules. Having to cope with different boxes, different remotes, or programming a universal controller, can, I suppose, present some setup frustrations.

Depending on your setup, you may even receive most of your stations off the air with your TV’s tuner, but I expect most of you have an account with a cable or satellite provider. Whether you take the basic packages or order up a bundle to get all the stations you want (and loads of stations you have no use for), and perhaps the DVR to record shows, you are still making that service your first-tier connection. Everything else is an add-on.

This is why Steve Jobs regarded the Apple TV as a hobby, because it’s near impossible to compete with the free or leased set top boxes. Clearly Apple would have to find a way to replace those services, or at least those set top boxes. How he “cracked the code” is anyone’s guess, as is the final solution, but it doesn’t necessarily mean there is an Apple Connected TV, or iTV, in our future.

However, that phrase was sufficient to start a media frenzy, and we have such companies as Lenovo wasting time and money developing products that they hope will somehow head off Apple at the pass. Lenovo’s K91 Smart TV is a product that appears to have been designed with checkboxes, such as 3D here, voice recognition there, not with a vision or any awareness of what works and what doesn’t work. It’s not as if Lenovo has demonstrated the ability to create innovative tech gear. Their PCs are certainly quite good, but hardly original.

Apple’s shadow is surely hanging over this week’s Consumer Electronics Show, with loads of products, such as smartphones and tablets, which pretend to respond to something Apple is already selling, or they expect to sell in the very near future. The TV makers are aware of the rumors about an Apple TV set, and thus they are joining Lenovo in hoping to get a leg up on the expected competition.

But as I suggested earlier in this column, it’s not as if tens of millions of customers are chomping at the bit for an Apple branded TV set, or would even consider buying one should it appear. Unless someone is already considering a new TV, they aren’t going to throw out the one they have just because Apple made one. It’s not that simple. TVs are expected to last ten years, and sometimes longer. Even if a new model has a slightly better picture, 3D, or Internet apps, that’s not sufficient to convince large numbers of people that they need to upgrade. 3D is a colossal failure, and probably won’t gain traction until there’s a credible and cost-effective way to deliver multidimensional content with great picture quality and no glasses. Getting Netflix and other apps merely requires buying an Apple TV, a Roku or a similar product, or a new Blu-ray player.

Even if Apple did introduce a TV set, it is very possible they will recognize the reality too, that converting existing TV owners is going to be a steep climb. More than likely, there will also be an revision to the Apple TV that will incorporate a similar feature set. That way, customers who can’t afford, or don’t need, a new TV, will have a low cost path to achieving a similar goal.

More to the point, the tech media cannot design Apple’s products. We can all make assumptions of what the next Apple TV or a rumored Apple connected television set might include. From Siri, to iCloud and iTunes, certain features might be a given simply because they would leverage products and services that Apple already produces. But few outside of Apple know what sort of content deals Apple might be negotiating, except that the TVs from Lenovo and other companies are strictly hardware. Lenovo will depend on Google for the set’s OS, and none of the TV makers are engaged in providing exclusive content beyond a basic app store and access to such streaming portals as Netflix. They’ll just put in whatever’s available from the parts and service bins.

But if Apple comes to the realization that there aren’t enough customers for such a product, you won’t see it, at least for now. Instead, there will probably be a killer Apple TV to consider instead, one that’ll work on any high definition TV with an HDMI port. That may mean that TV makers may be spending lots of money attempting to compete with the wrong product.

All right, you know there is no such thing as an “Apple Connected TV,” an iTV whatever you you want to call that so-far nonexistent Apple entry into the flat panel TV market. You know, as I do, that there have been plenty of rumors about such a product, but nothing from Apple to indicate that their solution to the living room is yet another TV set in a highly saturated market.

Of course, all those rumors arose from a statement Steve Jobs was quoted as making in his authorized biography, that he’d “cracked the code” of building the simplest TV interface possible. That statement has become the jumping off point for loads and loads of speculation that Apple is going to introduce a flat panel TV set that will exploit that technology.

It didn’t take long for the media to hop onto the iTV bandwagon. The set will use Siri voice control, a possibility that doesn’t require a whole lot of imagination to believe. It will be powered by the latest Apple A-class chipset, run iOS apps, and so on and so forth. From there, the speculation encompasses some sort of advanced LCD panel, maybe using a new technology for which Apple has applied for a patent, which will allow for better display of letterboxed content.

Notice, so far, that nothing is being said about a superior presentation of home theater sound. There is, for example, that 46-inch Bose LCD TV set, the $4,999 VideoWave (it used to be several hundred dollars more). Bose justifies a price over five times that of competing products by promising to deliver superior audio. It doesn’t even have 3D, and you’d think that you could buy a separate audio system with great sound for a whole lot less. But this is nothing that you’d expect from Apple, even if that rumored Apple Connected TV boasts better audio.

If Apple’s TV set is delivered at a very competitive price, at best a few hundred dollars above that of a premium set from such companies as Samsung, Sony, LG, and Panasonic, it will be a strong competitor, but that’s no guarantee of success, as you’ll see later in this article. And I haven’t begun to consider whether Apple would even consider 3D capability, with or without those dreadful glasses.

Now let’s go back a couple of years, to the time when the first rumors about an Apple tablet computer were hitting full steam. Before the iPad was announced, loads of companies were demonstrating tablet prototypes at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show. When the iPad came out, at a much lower price than the pundits expected, you can bet a lot of companies went back to the drawing boards. The marketplace is littered with the failures from HP, RIM, Motorola and others. Efforts to build iPad simulations were wanting, although perhaps the Amazon Kindle Tablet, cheap and without frills, probably did quite well during the holiday season.

Taking the iPad anticipation frenzy into consideration, I wasn’t surprised to see evidence that tech companies are trying once again to upstage Apple with new contenders in the TV market.

So there’s the news that Lenovo, the maker of some of the best Windows PC note-books you can buy, has announced the launch of the K91 Smart TV. The new set, which is being demonstrated at this week’s CES, will include all the usual bells and whistles of a “smart” TV, including voice recognition, apps from different services, plus Google Android 4.0, known as Ice Cream Sandwich.

Other features include 42-inch and 55-inch IPS-style LCD displays, SRS TrueSurround, a standard method of producing faux multichannel audio that many TV makers offer, plus a 5-megapixel camera for videoconferencing. There’s even a cloud-based storage system, but nothing is mentioned about special deals with content providers and some sort of competitor to iTunes. Indeed, a lot of the iTV speculation centers on Apple making deals with the entertainment companies for a new subscription TV service.

Now other than featuring Android and supporting voice recognition, I’n not seeing much new in the K91. Will Lenovo be able to provide any unique video processing tricks to produce a superior picture, or just imitate what other TV makers are already offering? Indeed, there’s little to nothing original here. It appears Lenovo may have simply considered the rampant speculation about what Apple might produce, and cobbled something together in an effort to enter the consumer electronics space as quickly as possible.

Don’t forget Apple has been building consumer electronics gear for years. Back in the 1990s, they had digital cameras, the Newton, and other gear. So when the iPod arrived, it wasn’t so much of a stretch for Apple to build such a gadget. But Lenovo is  PC maker pure and simple. It’s all about PCs, servers, and accessories, period. Sure, there are really good products to be found there, but are they prepared to jump into the cutthroat TV market with both feet?

If Apple wants to build a TV, they could leverage their experiences over several decades to turn the market upside down. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. Just finding lots of buyers may be difficult at a time when TV manufacturers are struggling to move product as prices continue to drop. Even if an iTV is as truly amazing as the iPhone and iPad, it’s not as if people are going to be quick to buy one. While users will trade smartphones and computers quite frequently, a TV set is apt to have a five or ten-year lifecycle. Customers won’t buy one on a whim, when the existing set is working just fine, even if the replacement offers a superior picture and user interface.

So the companies who are hoping to upstage Apple may just be whistling in the dark.