Well, my friends, the folks at Consumer Reports are at it again, making pronouncements born of ignorance, or inadequate testing methods. In the September 2011 issue, CR is focusing on such topics as cars, “top coffees” and tablets and e-readers.

While, the iPad 2 rates a tad better than the competition in the CR feature — and this fact will be touted to the skies by Mac sites — the test methodology remains highly flawed as usual. CR concentrates on the raw hardware features and performance, which actually puts the top-tier tablets on a fairly similar footing. But where it counts, such as the iOS versus Android, Web OS, and so forth and so on, CR hasn’t a clue. “Consider software” is the last criterion in choosing a tablet, where common sense should place it pretty much near the top, just below the actual performance and reliability of the product.

CR also offers precious little information about software. You know that “Apple has provided upgrades for the iPad’s iOS.” They correctly point out that upgrades for Android aren’t always available. But app selection is pretty much ignored beyond the presence of an “Approved app market.” How the App Store differs from other app repositories isn’t mentioned, nor is the number and quality of the apps themselves. So you are never informed that there are over 100,000 iPad apps, but only a tiny number for the Android OS and other tablet-based systems. What’s the good of having a tablet with a pretty interface and snappy performance if the app selection is minuscule?

Maybe CR expects you to just look at them.

Well, maybe not. In a section entitled “12 apps that make the most of a tablet,” only two are available for the Android OS. CR’s excuse, “As noted, many are available only for the iPad OS, at least for now.” Clearly they assume that Android will ultimately catch up. Curiously, the iPad’s rich selection of games is barely touched upon. Just two, specifically “Pocket Frogs,” a free game, and “Infinity Blade, available for $6, are supposedly the best of the breed. Pathetic.

CR also fails to pay attention to the marketplace, where those other tablets have, in large part, been total failures. One of the most widely promoted, the Motorola Xoom, moved just 440,000 units in the same quarter in which the iPad sold 9.25 million. Clearly the customers know what’s best for them, even if CR cannot understand the ingredients of a good tablet computer.

But none of this should come as a surprise. CR has also failed big time to figure out what makes a top flight personal computer. They rate products in arbitrary categories with little regard as to how the raw specs beyond display size relate to one another. So you are left with the impression that a Mac is just a pretty computer with a fancy price. The distinctions between OS X and Windows are utterly lost on them; they never truly compare the two in terms of usability and security.

When it comes to autos, CR has always been the standard barer. You take them seriously, particularly when they claim that a vehicle has a tendency to tip over when making an abrupt maneuver to avoid a collision.

Well, this time, CR has aimed its arrows at the venerable Honda Civic, for years one of the best rated and best selling compact cars in the U.S. But the redesigned 2012 model isn’t getting the love from CR. The rating, compared to the previous model, dropped from 78 to 61, and is thus classified as not recommended, even though the Civic is expected to be a very reliable car.

The major criticism is that it isn’t as agile as its predecessor, has a choppy ride and long stopping distances. The last may be the unkindest cut of all, because it means that brakes may not stop you in time to avoid a serious accident.

Honda has hit back, claiming they disagree, and you have to expect that. However, you wonder why such glaring defects eluded the commercial auto magazines, none of whom report serious problems with ride, handling and braking. Is it because they take ads from Honda and other car companies, and are thus more inclined to give a marginal car a pass? CR claims not to be influenced by manufacturers because they do not accept advertising and buy the gear they test direct from regular dealers.

Now speaking as someone who has owned two Honda Accords — the mid-sized step up from the Civic — I think I have a fair sense as to the company’s design objectives. I also spent about 15 minutes test driving a 2012 Civic, one of the high-end EX models, and found the ride and handling to be mostly typical of other Honda vehicles, meaning firm, comfortable, with reasonably responsive steering and braking. No, I didn’t have the opportunity to test the car on rough roads or attempt to stop on wet pavement, where the Civic supposedly suffers.

Typical of most of the published reviews, Car and Driver spoke of the Civic’s “smoother ride,” which is the polar opposite of choppy. Among the notable criticisms has it that Honda excised some of the character out of the vehicle in terms of delivering somewhat numb steering (I didn’t drive the car long enough to notice one way or the other). The increased use of hard plastics in the interior was another negative, particularly at a time when the competition, particularly the Ford Focus and Hyundai Elantra, have gone upscale in terms of looks, ride and interior amenities.

Sure, one is entitled to their opinion, but the differences between what CR says about the Civic, and pretty much all the major car review outlets, are serious enough that you have to wonder if the former reviewed the same car as the latter. As I said, the ride didn’t seem at all choppy to me.

But as long as CR is taken seriously by the media, and they aren’t asked to account for the discrepancies in their reviews, nothing’s going to change.

The reviews are coming thick and fast. OS X Lion (the word “Mac” is now restricted to the hardware, not the software) is a hit. Apple’s huge experiment, changing a few cherished Mac OS features to conform to iOS conventions, isn’t getting a huge number of complaints. For the most part, it’s as snappy or snappier than Snow Leopard.

So is there anything worth a complaint?

Well, you can complain to Apple because Auto-Save and Version doesn’t work in all your apps. But it’s up to each software developer to update their apps to make them Lion savvy. A number of updates are out already, but the key publishers, such as Adobe and Microsoft, will take a while to get their stuff finished. It won’t happen overnight, and it’s quite possible Apple will have to release one or two maintenance updates to 10.7 to make it all possible. The watchword is to be patient.

That doesn’t mean, for example, that Office 2011 for Mac is necessarily crippled. It’s not, really, although there are a few glitches here and there. What Microsoft ought to worry about is the fact that the refurbished email client/contact manager, Outlook, has become less and less useful in Lion. Combine Address Book, iCal, and Mail, along with support for Exchange Server 2010, and most of the people who might have required Outlook don’t need it. There are some power user features that might be required by some, and having an app compatible with the Windows version of Outlook is a good thing for the business world. I have tried Mac version of  Outlook, but still find it too buggy for regular use, at least for me.

The Adobe CS5.5 apps I normally use, such as Photoshop and InDesign, seem to work reliably enough for my needs. I just formatted two large books in InDesign, and every feature that I require worked just fine. No support for Lion’s Auto-Save, of course; I won’t be able to liberate myself from the Command-S addiction for a while longer. I suspect that it will take at least six months for most Mac users to feel confident that this important function can be handled behind the scenes, without your intervention.

But it was right for Apple to want the system to take over the manual chores that have been inflicted on personal computer users for so many years. You shouldn’t have to worry about remembering to save a document, and you shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to restore a previous version if that’s what you want.

The security experts say that Apple has some good things to improve OS X security. Sandboxing walls off apps, so one compromised app can’t infect others, but it’ll take time for apps to get with the program. Address space randomization is yet another feature that helps keep the Internet criminals at bay. It doesn’t mean that OS X is completely secure. In addition to the security lapses that continue to be patched, there is the matter of social engineering. That means your misstep can result in downloading an app that might cause mischief because you have been fooled into thinking something useful will happen. Consider the MAC Defender episode, a scareware outbreak, in which a fake app claims to be able to remove viruses from your Mac, at the expense of separating you from your money.

As far as real bugs are concerned, they might be mostly app related. But I know of one issue encountered by a colleague, author Kirk McElhearn, where his iMac would predictably crash under certain circumstances when he played videos. Kirk originally thought, and suggested on my radio show, that the Apple RAM on his spanking new 27-inch iMac might have been responsible, but he was able to duplicate the problem without those memory modules. He’s still investigating, and we’ll update you when the true cause is known.

Besides, you can be assured there will be a 10.7.1 before long, though the rumor sites haven’t mentioned anything about when it might arrive; instead, they are talking of a 10.7.2 update that will be needed for iCloud when it arrives this fall.

One article I read dings Lion for its high system requirements, which is a questionable claim. You need an Intel-based Mac with 2GB of RAM and a Core 2 Duo processor or better. Most recent Macs meet the memory needs; older models require inexpensive upgrades. But no Mac user would expect Leopard or Snow Leopard to delivery snappy performance with less than 2GB of RAM.

Besides, it seems unrealistic to expect Apple not to want to exploit the potential of more recent Macs. Sure they would rather sell you a new computer, but I installed Lion on my son’s 2008 MacBook, with 4GB of RAM, and performance was pretty much on a par with Snow Leopard. What’s more, all the apps he needs work just fine, thank you. If he had a complaint, I’d hear it fast.

As Mac OS upgrades go, Lion seems off to a fine start.

One huge difference between Apple and other PC makers can be summarized by the word “legacy.” They rarely look back, even when it comes to honoring an anniversary, which is why you never saw a twenty-fifth anniversary Mac in 2009.

This marketing strategy became obvious first in 1998, when the original Bondi Blue iMac was introduced. The critics howled. The customers howled. Where is the floppy drive? Where are all those ports I need to hook up my accessories, such as hard drives and printers? All I see is USB and Ethernet.

For a while, there was a market for external floppy drives, along with converter plugs so that your old stuff would still mostly work the way it used to. In fast order the floppy vanished from other Macs and even the staid PC world soon followed, with most models lacking floppy drives. As old peripherals and the need for floppy drives lessened, the accessory drives and converters went away.

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This commentary contains the sort of logical progression that I’m sure most of you understand. Unfortunately, some tech and financial pundits don’t, and so you have to repeat it over and over again. Even then, the meaning isn’t grasped.

So the other day, I read yet another article about how the growth of Google’s Android OS exceeds that of the iPhone. I wouldn’t presume to dispute the numbers, since they are probably correct. Indeed, it makes perfect sense when you consider that there are a number of companies making gear featuring Android around the world, and that there are dozens and dozens of models to choose from. So when you visit your local wireless phone center, you’ll see a hefty selection, but only one product line called iPhone. Well, make that two in an AT&T store, because they are still selling the 3GS, circa 2009.

By sheer force of numbers, you can be assured Android will get the lion’s share of sales, particularly when you consider that many of the models are cheaper than an iPhone, although others are in the same price bracket.

I hope I’m not boring you by repeating the obvious.

But Android’s presence is used as evidence that Apple’s iPhone strategy isn’t working, and is destined to fail. Customers aren’t comfortable with Apple’s “walled garden.” They want open even if the app selection isn’t as good, and even if the gadget is more susceptible to malware. What we have here, they say, is a repeat of the long-ago PC versus Mac wars.

Of course, Windows was never open in the sense that you could get a copy free with few restrictions. The difference has always been that Microsoft will license Windows to you if you pay the fee, whether you’re a small PC assembler, a large multinational corporation, or just a single consumer. Buy it, it’s yours, and you can install it on any PC with compatible hardware, up to the number of licenses you purchase. Period. Except for a failed foray into hardware licensing, only Macs are licensed to run the Mac OS (or OS X, as it’s officially known beginning with Lion).

In passing, it’s also true that Apple’s Mac growth continues to beat the industry, as it’s done for several years. Despite stalled PC sales, Apple continues to make lots of money from Macs.

When it comes to the iPhone, don’t forget how, in the last quarter, Apple reported sales of 20.34 million iPhones, some 142 percent better than the year-ago quarter. Not too shabby, particularly when you consider that Apple blew away Wall Street estimates, and hasn’t updated the iPhone since last June. Yes, a Verizon Wireless edition came out in February, but it was essentially the same phone with only the essential changes needed to support the CDMA network architecture. In April, the long-delayed white iPhone arrived, but again it was basically the same model in a new dress.

At the same time, Android OS handset makers are constantly churning out new models. Unless you follow the industry carefully, it’s nearly impossible to tell one from another, except from the spec sheets, or checking which version of the OS happens to be installed.

If Apple can keep the rapid growth curve on track to a reasonable degree, the profits will continue to soar, and it won’t make any difference how many people buy Android OS gear. Or phones featuring Windows Phone 7 or its successors for that matter.

But there is a huge cloud hanging over Android OS land, and that’s all the lawsuits filed against Google and their licensees. Apple won a round against HTC, although HTC’s purchase of the assets of S3, a company that owns graphics-related technology, resulted in a loss for Apple. Maybe there will be a cross-licensing deal that will put the matter to rest. But that won’t help Samsung and other companies facing legal actions over Android.

Worse, some Android OS licensees are already paying a $5 per handset ransom to Microsoft to receive licenses for intellectual property. It’s not that Microsoft’s demands for royalties have been successfully tested in court to my knowledge, but I gather they are not taking chances. But imagine if those companies were also forced to also pay money to Apple to license their technology, assuming Apple doesn’t get a ruling that forces infringing gear off the market. The free OS becomes more and more expensive, and you can bet handset makers will be looking for alternatives without the baggage.

I suppose Microsoft could be the big winner if that happens. HP’s WebOS still needs work to be competitive, and there’s no indication that customers are lining up to buy the new HP tablet.

And none of this addresses the biggest problem with the Android OS, which is that the tablets powered by Google’s OS have failed to demonstrate sales momentum in the marketplace. Although some companies claim to have sold more than a million units (the Motorola Xoom sold far less), those figures are dwarfed by the iPad, which seems to be getting more and more popular. For now, the tablet market is strictly an iPad market. The critics swear that, too, will change some day. Maybe. But if Apple can keep moving more and more iPads into the hands of eager customers each quarter, it won’t matter if rival tablets also succeed.