Two weeks late, but definitely not dollars short, Apple’s iTunes Match service launched Monday. Accompanied with the release of iTunes 10.5.1, the new $24.99 a year service will provide up to 25,000 equivalents or matches to the tracks in your music library, courtesy of iCloud, which weren’t purchased from Apple. One published report has already confirmed that Apple will accept tracks you didn’t get from “kosher” sources and offer their own 256K AAC equivalents. Just as fascinating, they may also match older CD albums with the latest iTunes remastered versions. A case in point: I ripped a copy of The Beatles’ classic “Revolver” album, a CD version I bought in the 1980s. Since then, these classics have gotten a full digital remastering, ahead of the release of iTunes versions. Sure enough, the album was “Matched” with the up-to-date iTunes equivalent. Those amazing songs sound great. As I continue to rip my Beatles collection, I can just count all the money I’ve saved.

So a survey is published this week claiming that growth of Mac OS X Lion is unaccountably stagnating. A marketing firm, known as Chitika, has released the survey, which alleges that growth in Apple’s new OS, after an initial spurt, has slowed down seriously. If true, you’d think Apple has a problem, but are these figures to be believed?

Let’s just say, the results raise loads of questions.

Consider that, each and every month, Apple is selling more than 1.5 million new Macs. Since late July, every one of those Macs, other than a small number of units remaining in stock, were preloaded with 10.7 Lion. Most of these models cannot be downgraded. So where does Chitika get its figures? Unfortunately, when you examine their site, you’ll find precious little information about test methodology, though I did learn the company had to settle with the FTC last year over complaints about online ad targeting. Seems there were complaints about the opt-out process, involving people who didn’t want to receive such material.

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You can be assured that few people outside of Apple know much about how the organization is being run these days with Tim Cook fully in charge. But there have been some leaks, stories based on alleged informed sources that reveal a somewhat more open management style, with greater opportunities for collaboration among key executives.

When Steve Jobs was in charge, he supposedly micromanaged every little detail, although the facts demonstrate that he did allow his lieutenants to do their thing more or less. Cook is one example, being the person who reformed Apple’s supply chain and thus made it possible to keep better tabs on demand. Well, it works unless the demand outstrips production, in which case waiting customers just have to continue waiting.

A lot of the changes have to do with personality. Jobs blew hot and cold, depending on his viewpoint or mood, whereas Cook appears to operate on more of a low-key level. At the same time, he is reputed to be a whip cracker too when he needs to prod his staff to work harder.

Now when it comes to new products, even Cook admits he’s not a product person. The job of designing new gadgets, and entering new markets, is left to others, with every indication that industrial design guru Jonathan Ive is getting more authority to do the vision thing. As those of you who have read Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs know full well, Ive sometimes chafed at not getting full credit for some of his innovations. That’s not likely to happen anymore.

Indeed, there’s a story out now suggesting that Cook plus Ive, working together, are becoming suitable substitutes for Steve Jobs. Combine their strengths, plus the Apple Way that was embedded into the corporate DNA by Jobs over the years, and it’s quite possible Apple can continue to innovate in a big way for many years to come. Even after the product roadmaps reportedly conceived by Jobs are all executed, Apple will continue to create new roadmaps.

Of course, that’s a particularly optimistic view to take, but consider how well Apple fared even during the times when Jobs was clearly unable even to advise his interim CEO on day-to-day strategy. It seems the company never missed a beat. Certainly Cook’s success must have heavily influenced the decision of Apple’s board to hire him as permanent CEO, not to mention awarding him tons of stock options to keep him on board.

It may also be that Apple is now becoming more proactive in communicating with customers about problems. Take the iOS 5 battery issues, where updated gear and, above all, the iPhone 4s, suffered from seriously shortened battery life in some cases. Apple engineers reached out to customers who complained to the support people about the problem, and, this week, reportedly offered early access to the iOS 5.0.1 update that fixes that issue and a few others.

I have little doubt that, had this problem occurred last year when the iPhone 4 and iOS 4 arrived, Apple would have acted just as quickly to push an update. But I highly doubt they would have contacted customers to help them diagnose the problem, knowing full well that the media would learn about it within short order. I may be wrong, but I think this indicates one key operational change at Apple.

Here’s another possibility: One of my colleagues, author Kirk McElhearn, has encountered a curious problem with his recently-purchased 27-inch iMac. When the unit is put under heavy load, such as rendering data, he detects a smoky odor, as if the power supply is overheating. Unfortunately, service people were unable to duplicate the problem when the machine was sent in for diagnosis. So Kirk sent an email to Tim Cook. In response, someone from Apple’s executive support team tried to solve the problem. I don’t suggest Cook himself saw the message, anymore than Steve Jobs actually read all the email sent to him. More than likely, assistants examine those mailboxes and act on critical requests. But it’s also true that similar email sent to Steve Jobs would sometimes get a response from the proper corporate people.

Does this mean that Apple will also establish a more open public relations policy in releasing information to the media? I expect they won’t. Secrecy is an important part of Apple’s DNA, and turning new product announcements into special media events has proven successful each and every time. Apple garners millions upon millions of dollars in free publicity during the run up to an expected product intro. You can’t buy that sort of advertising. Yes, Apple does give advance briefings to a handful of journalists from key publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time magazine and elsewhere. But the rest of us have to fend for ourselves, or hope that our speculation will bear fruit.

Meantime, we can’t stop talking about Apple. Going forward, we will all continue to look closely at Apple’s ongoing behavior and performance, to see just what real changes Tim Cook has wrought. I expect some will be more than skin deep, while, in the most important respects, Apple will still be Apple.

When Steve Jobs posted a letter last year blasting Flash as being unreliable, slow, buggy, a battery life killer, and a known malware target, among other things, Adobe cried foul. They complained loudly, got plenty of favorable press, but could never prove Jobs wrong. When I presented a challenge to Adobe in these columns, that they should demonstrate that Flash can be made to run efficiently on an iOS device, I expected they wouldn’t respond, and they didn’t. But it was such a sensible request, I’m surprised so few took up the cause to egg Adobe on.

But even with media support, the pressure on Adobe grew harder, even as they demonstrated a poorly-running mobile version Flash on the Android and BlackBerry PlayBook platforms. The argument was that one of these gadgets could give you the full Internet, whereas Apple excluded Flash and thus deprived you of a significant amount of online content.

Of course, few bought the PlayBook, and not just because Flash performance sucked. As of now there are over 250 million iOS devices, none of which support Flash. Only a small number of mobile devices do support Flash, such as it is, and it’s quite clear Adobe wasn’t having much luck fixing the well known problems.

Before I go on, let me tell you that the lack of Flash doesn’t bother me so much, but Mrs. Steinberg does complain from time to time when she can’t bring up a site on an iPad 2.

But it was time for Adobe to throw in the towel. The announcement that came this week from Adobe, in the form of a blog entry from Danny Winokur, vice president of the Flash Client Platform, does attempt to play down the obvious implications. But the meaning is clear. Adobe will concentrate on supporting HTML 5 on mobile devices from here on, and Flash will only get maintenance updates. Development will cease after the coming release of Flash Player 11.1 for Android and the PlayBook. There will be no further development of the mobile version, which basically puts the kibosh on expectations that you’ll see expanded support in the years to come.

However, the AIR platform will survive, meaning that developers will be able to use that tool to create native iOS apps from Flash content. But it also seems clear that these developers need to be looking for alternatives. The future of Flash on desktop personal computers may also be uncertain, especially since the forthcoming Microsoft Windows 8 will not be shipped with Flash as a standard installation. As with Mac OS X Lion, and all new Macs shipping for quite a while, you have to make a separate effort to download a copy of that’s what you want.

At the same time, Adobe is restructuring their business, which means issuing more pink slips. This time, Adobe is shedding some 750 employees, roughly 7% of their worldwide workforce.

Here’s Adobe’s excuse for the cutback: “Adobe is investing aggressively in Digital Media and Digital Marketing, two growing market areas. In Digital Media, the company is the industry leader in content authoring solutions, enabling customers to create, distribute and monetize digital content. In Digital Marketing, the company intends to be the leader in solutions to manage, measure and optimize digital marketing and advertising.”

Two years ago, Adobe axed 680 full timers, which goes to show that this particular company isn’t the place to get a job if you count on long-term security.

Now I’m not going to denigrate Adobe because they wanted to leverage that multibillion dollar buyout of Macromedia, primarily to get control of Flash and, as a consequence, allow them to kill Illustrator’s only serious competitor in the digital artwork market, FreeHand. However, Flash’s time has clearly passed, and it’s time to embrace open Web standards.

But isn’t it funny how some criticize Apple, one of the prime movers behind HTML 5, for closed platforms. Flash is, after all, Adobe’s proprietary format, and it’s not one that has always worked well for Web developers, although it makes it fairly easy to build sites with multimedia content. I know that, early on, my original Webmaster said Flash was the future, and I needed to embrace it as completely as possible.

Then came the iOS, and the forced decision to rid myself of Flash-based content as quickly as possible, so my sites would continue to run with all features intact on those fancy new mobile gadgets. Fortunately, it was mostly about fancy menus that could have been designed to work as well or better without Flash. I still have one Flash-video and a couple of other widgets on one of my sites, but that’ll change soon.

Meantime, I want to convey my best wishes to those soon-to-be former Adobe employees; I hope they find new employment soon, and I’m sure they did nothing to lose their jobs. It’s all about the bad decisions made by company executives. At the same time, the late Mr. Jobs is now vindicated yet again in his predictions about our online future. Did you expect otherwise?