It seems pretty clear to me that AT&T has a serious problem. They clearly didn’t plan for the onslaught of data consumption on the part of newly-minted owners of iPhones and other smartphones over the past few years. Problems are legion. In some larger cities, iPhone users report frequent disconnects, assuming they’re able to get a usable signal in the first place.

The arrival of the iPhone at Verizon Wireless has been a revelation to some. Where they once confronted serious problems making phone calls, suddenly everything just works, well more or less anyway. Remember that Verizon’s CDMA network doesn’t let you do voice and data simultaneously, an advantage for AT&T, which allows both functions to operate together. And don’t forget that cell phones use a two-way radio system, which means that buildings, network traffic, and even weather might conspire to make it difficult, if not impossible, to make and receive phone calls. So even the top-rated cell carriers will have dead spots, but they have fewer than the ones at the bottom of the pile.

It’s not just Consumer Reports own reader surveys, but AT&T traditionally hasn’t scored well in many cities. If you haven’t had problems yourself, just check anecdotal reports online and you’ll see loads of reports about dropped calls and other difficulties. Sure, AT&T claims they’ve spent billions of dollars to upgrade and expand their network. I’m assuming this is true, but that doesn’t guarantee it’ll get any better in your city. Even if AT&T has a pile of cash to build new towers, local zoning laws and resident objections may prevent them from building the one that’ll serve your neighborhood.

According to Steve Jobs, it takes three years to get a cell tower construction permit in San Francisco, whereas the same approval process can be done in weeks in Texas. Maybe that explains why AT&T still has serious problems in San Francisco, but the same is true in many other cities. Here in the Phoenix area, I don’t encounter serious signal lapses during my travels (except for a recent episode that was addressed by AT&T after a couple of complaints).

But the iPhone has become so popular, it appears millions of customers are willing to endure subpar service because of its other advantages. Certainly it doesn’t appear that AT&T’s revenues have been hurt.

I suppose AT&T’s decision-making process makes sense. They claim it would take five years to gain the advantages in network capacity that will be delivered far sooner by adding T-Mobile’s mostly compatible network structure. But mergers of this scope won’t past muster overnight, and I’m not just referring to the logistics in integrating these two companies. First, regulatory agencies in the U.S. have to approve the transaction, and it’s a sure thing that they will carefully scrutinize not just the impact to the two companies, but to the country at large. Opposition from consumer groups is already growing, largely because of the fears of the consequences of reduced competition in pricing and job losses.

Up till now, there have been four major wireless competitors in the U.S. (following the acquisition of Alltel, the fifth largest carrier, by Verizon some time back), along with a bunch of lesser players. But some of those lesser companies simply lease network space from the larger carriers, and then resell the services to their customers. If this AT&T/T-Mobile deal passes muster, there will be three major players, and it’s a sure thing that Verizon Wireless will be looking closely at Sprint, which has a compatible CDMA network, in hopes of regaining the number one spot in the market.

I expect, though, that a Verizon/Sprint hookup will be a harder sell. AT&T can argue that their well-known network problems would be solved much faster as the result of the T-Mobile merger. That, in turn, would appear to benefit customers. T-Mobile, while praised for good service and network quality, has its own coverage problems in some areas, not to mention being unable to get an iPhone to sell. This deal appears to be a win-win for both companies, except for employees whose jobs will be deemed redundant, unfortunately. Verizon Wireless, however, is not confronting any serious network congestion issues.

Whether the customer benefits is a mixed bag. T-Mobile is known for low prices, particularly for their data plans. You might expect that AT&T’s pricing plans will be adopted if the deal goes through. Then again, it’s possible government regulators will insist on more aggressive pricing before they give the go-ahead. Some divestitures may also have to be made, which may force AT&T to auction off some of their wireless spectrum contracts.

Even if the deal goes through, it may take a year or more to close the transaction. Once that happens, AT&T’s engineers will have to work with their T-Mobile counterparts to integrate their networks. Even if adding AT&T’s GSM frequencies to T-Mobile cell towers can be done without serious difficulty, it may require a fair amount of time for the improvements to be felt.

It’s quite clear that T-Mobile customers who hope to have an iPhone on their network are going to have to continue waiting. I expect you’ll be seeing the iPhone 6 before this deal is closed.

As many of you know, AT&T wireless was cobbled together from several mergers. This meant several years of growing pains, to integrate networks, and to make the wider system of cell phone towers compatible with each other.

It’s fair to say that AT&T still gets ragged on for being way behind the curve, particularly when it comes to the iPhone. The arrival of Apple’s iconic smartphone on the Verizon Wireless network has made it possible for people who ran into connection problems with AT&T to find a superior alternative. Well, superior in some cities, but at the expense of not being able to use voice and data services at the same time. But if you can’t get a stable connection, or encounter frequent dropped calls, the tradeoff may be worth it.

As to Verizon, they became number one on the basis of acquiring another compatible carrier, Alltel. But even before the merger, both companies were praised for superior networks and customer service.

After that merger, there were four major wireless carriers, two of which, Sprint and T-Mobile, were not offering the iPhone. Indeed, one of T-Mobile’s controversial ads touts their alleged “4G” network, while criticizing the iPhone for being on networks that don’t offer the higher speed technology. In passing, the critics disputed T-Mobile’s claim that their network is anything but 3G.

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Back in the old days, they used to say that Macs were toys. In order to get “real” work done, you needed to use DOS, particularly in the form of MS-DOS, the text-based OS that was all the rage before graphical user interfaces (GUI for short) took over. Of course, that was until Microsoft begat Windows, which was originally fashioned by overlaying a pretty face — or shell — over DOS. You could still get to the command line if you wanted to show what a power user was made of.

True, today’s Windows is very different, but you can still call up text commands if you want.

With Mac OS X, what you’re getting is a pretty face that covers the king of text-based operating systems, Unix. You can still type arcane commands at the start of your “session” and bring up that a text-based screen. But if you really need to get up close and personal with the underbelly of the Mac, you invoke Terminal and exist in command line heaven.

Personally, I seldom visit Terminal. I know you had to in the early days of Mac OS X to get yourself out of a system-related jam. But that’s rarely true nowadays. I am forced to exercise my limited command line powers from time to time to manage our Web server, which uses a flavor of Linux, and let’s not get into any debates over why I didn’t choose Mac OS X Server for that chore. Let’s just say that generic Linux boxes are a whole lot cheaper to lease, and leave it at that.

In any case, it’s clear that Apple prefers to make operating systems that are warm and fuzzy, and usually get out of the way (more or less) when you want to get something done, or just enjoy music, videos, or an e-book. In building the iOS, the guts of Mac OS X were pared down to the raw essentials, and a superbly simple user interface was created. While I realize some of you prefer the Android OS, and the extra configuration options offered for power users, if you crave a mobile computing appliance, that may not be the way to go.

Following the mantra of “keep it simple,” Apple first announced the iPad with the words, “You already know how to use it.” Most functions can be mastered in a short time, even without having to read a manual, or even a tiny instruction book. Yes, there are loads of hints and tips to be found, but you can discover quite a bit just by touching, pinching, swiping, and so on and so forth.

It appears that Apple’s ultimate goal is to meld the iOS and Mac OS X as much as possible, so you can switch from one to the other without having to think about it. Indeed, they’ve already done a fair amount of that sort of integration with input devices. The basic feel of any Apple standalone keyboard these days is near-identical to the one on their note-books. The Magic Mouse inherits some of the touch capability of the Mac portable trackpad, and I haven’t begun to consider the Magic Trackpad. But I probably won’t, because I had difficulty becoming accustomed to one, despite spending a month with an Apple review unit. But maybe that’s just me.

The point of it all is that it’s clear to me that Apple wants to reduce the learning curve from device to device, and increase the comfort zone. That explains why some iOS features are being transported to Mac OS X Lion, for better or worse.

I’ve got mixed feelings about it, and not just because I’ve spent so many years working on regular Macs beginning in the 1980s, with only rare interruptions to visit the Windows world. In those days, your new Mac would come with several thick books that I expect many of you studied from cover to cover. I read them three times, in fact, although many portions were repetitive, and the prose was hardly of the page turning variety. It was closer to book closing, actually, but I persevered.

These days, Apple expects you to figure out the basics on Macs and mobile gadgets with minimal instruction. It should “just work” is the mantra, although Macs still cause trouble from time to time.

While I’m not averse to having more touch commands in Mac OS X Lion, nor Launchpad and other accouterments of the iOS, some choices are questionable. You shouldn’t, for example, have to click on a document window before the scroll bars appear, in the fashion of the iOS. But I presume that you’ll be able to revert to standard scroll bars, based on the current chatter about the Developer Preview release. But I’d prefer to see the standard scroll bars join the iOS interface, and I can’t be that old fashioned.

All in all, if all these iOS-inspired goodies are retained in the final version of Mac OS X Lion, I only hope it’ll be easy to turn them off.

Not so long ago, some people ragged on The Night Owl because they misunderstood my statements that the Mac Pro might be an endangered species in the near future. My point was not that it would happen this year, or the next, but that the future might be bleak for its continuation several years from now. That fine point of distinction was lost to some.

But it’s clear to me that Apple’s product development path is clearly designed to bring workstation-class power and performance to less expensive gear. The new Thunderbolt connection port, as far as I’m concerned, is clearly the harbinger of major changes that won’t take long to manifest themselves.

Consider the major advantages of a Mac Pro. One is the more powerful Intel Xeon processor, the ability to install high-end graphic cards for 3D and CAD design, and those expansion ports for RAID cards and other peripherals that are essential tools for many content creators. I know that, in the past, I always bought the top-of-the-line Mac, or something quite close, and that choice was first made in the late 1980s.

But it wasn’t just the desire to cut expenses that made me switch to a 27-inch iMac with Intel i7 quad-core processor a little more than a year ago. The arrival of desktop-class multicore processors means that you can come awfully close to the power of a Mac Pro for a much lower price. Indeed, I was able to sell a 30-inch display plus a 2008 Mac Pro, buy the iMac with a faster processor and memory upgrade, and still get $300 in change to pay some bills. And I don’t think I’m alone in making this move. I expect that sales of the Mac Pro are far from being the shining light of Apple’s Mac product lineup.

Apple’s biggest move yet to equalize your access to a powerful personal computer came with the Early 2011 MacBook Pro family. Two models are available with quad-core Intel i 7 processors, from the Sandy Bridge family, which deliver benchmarks very close to a Mac Pro. More important, however, is the arrival of Thunderbolt, which means you have an external PCI Express connection port that can support up to six daisy chained peripherals, not to mention an external display.

Sure, it’ll be a while before Thunderbolt comes into its own. Accessory makers are just starting to gear up with gigantic hard drives, RAID configurations, and other products that’ll benefit from Thunderbolt. Imagine a MacBook Pro, a portable computer that’s easily transported between work and home, which can be easily connected via a single cable to a desktop configuration with an external display and powerful peripherals for whatever work you plan to do.

I would expect to see Thunderbolt included in the next iMac upgrade, and I wouldn’t be surprised if a future Mac mini refresh had it too. Apple is famous (or infamous) for leveraging parts across as many product lines as possible to keep production costs down. With millions of Macs outfitted with Thunderbolt ports — and Windows PC boxes will ultimately have them too — you can expect a rich selection of high-speed peripherals to connect to that port.

Some have suggested that a future iPad might also sport Thunderbolt connectivity, but I rather that’s overkill. At least for now, but it’s inevitable that more and more of the functions of a desktop computer will pass on to tablets. After all, the iPad 2 sports a level of computing power that you might have expected from a traditional Mac or PC not so many years ago.

As far as the Mac Pro is concerned, I’m looking at the long picture here. Much of how Apple handles that product depends on demand. If it still offers features that a sufficient customer base of content creators and power users crave, it won’t disappear anytime soon. At some point in time, though, as other products continue to assume the Mac Pro’s functions, more or less, that situation will change.

Remember that the Xserve was discontinued, not because it wasn’t any good, but because demand was not sufficient to justify development. Apple doesn’t have a romantic attachment to products that have outlived their usefulness. Even the Power Mac G4 Cube, clearly a pet product for Steve Jobs, got axed because they couldn’t find  a way to continue to sell them.

Remember that Apple won’t stop building the Mac Pro simply out of piqué or disdain for professional customers. It’s all about sales, and you are the people who will determine its future, now and in the years to come. More to the point, if other Macs can deliver the performance and flexibility you need, maybe it won’t matter.

Now I expect some of the folks who misquoted my previous columns on the subject will now flex their fingers to do it yet again. But make no mistake about it! I don’t see the Mac Pro disappearing immediately. The end of the tower computer will take time to happen. It’s also possible that future iMacs will add a tiny bit of extra internal expandability, such as the ability to easily install an extra drive, to compensate.