The reviews are in, and, to nobody’s surprise, it does appear that Verizon Wireless is quite doing well with preorders of the iPhone, although there appear to have been some glitches in the ordering process. The real test will come next week when the unit actually goes on sale. Then we’ll be able to separate the adults from the children, assuming they do any better than AT&T during an iPhone rollout.

As to the initial reviews themselves, most follow a predictable trend. Other than the required hardware modifications to support CDMA, the iPhone 4 that you buy from Verizon Wireless will be basically the same as the one you buy from AT&T. But there are important differences, and whether they mean anything to you depends on where you live and, perhaps, where you intend to travel.

The main reason why you’d want a Verizon iPhone, other than being an existing customer of course, is the fact that AT&T has serious network quality issues in some parts of the U.S. This includes such major cities as New York and San Francisco. Testers have found that, in such key locations, the Verizon iPhone is far more capable of sustaining a good connection than the AT&T version. In other words, fewer dropped calls. If that’s your problem on AT&T, the story ends there, assuming your contract is nearly up, or you’re willing to the pay a hefty early termination fee, and perhaps make up all or most of the difference by selling your iPhone on eBay. Verizon will also give you a trade-in that might also cover a good portion of your loss.

Actual voice quality may favor the GSM technology employed on AT&T and other carriers around the world in over 220 countries. The audio is warmer, more pleasing. Reports about the Verizon iPhone describe a crisper, but tinnier sound, typical of an audible digital artifact. But if you have fewer dropped calls, it won’t matter. Because of the stronger signal, the first batch of reviews don’t report success in reproducing the alleged Death Grip on the Verizon iPhone. Yes, the antenna is in a different location, apparently because of network considerations, but it may also resolve signal loss issues if you hold it the wrong way. But don’t forget that the Antennagate problem mostly appeared in places where signal strength was marginal. The jury is still out on that question.

On AT&T’s side of the ledger, world travelers will find far more countries support GSM, and, where a good signal is present (very important), data transfer speeds are measurably faster than on Verizon’s network. You can also use voice and data at the same time. On CDMA networks, there’s a separate pipe for each, and data is suspended soon as you make a call. That really hurts if someone calls you while you’re browsing the Internet, or using your Verizon iPhone as a Wi-Fi hot spot. Suddenly, the connection is halted. Well, it’s halted unless the data can instead be funneled through Wi-Fi.

The CDMA powers-that-be are reportedly readying the ability to allow simultaneous voice and data transmissions later this year, but whether that can be done without a hardware change on the iPhone isn’t certain. The problem will ultimately be solved when Verizon transitions to the 4G or LTE network, which is just where AT&T is going.

Around the world, you’ll also chafe over the fact that CDMA is limited to about 40 countries, and, since there’s no replaceable SIM card, you won’t be able to swap accounts with another cellular network even if Verizon lets you unlock your phone. However, AT&T probably wouldn’t either, even though popping and replacing a SIM card is a simple process that takes about a minute to do. Now I know AT&T let my son unlock his Motorola RAZR when he moved to Europe. I don’t know if they would have done the same with an iPhone, and I welcome your personal experiences in making that sort of request.

Remember that, either way, overseas roaming charges are simply horrendous. So long as you’re still paying the same monthly fee, AT&T shouldn’t care if you set up a temporary account with an oversea’s provider for trips, so you don’t bust your budget or credit card. In practice, you can also jailbreak your iPhone and do whatever you want, even though that practice can create potential security problems. Remember that jailbreaking itself is a process that may be considered equivalent to a hacker taking control of your phone.

There’s one more key consideration: Even though the early evaluations of the Verizon iPhone demonstrate that you’re on a superior network and won’t suffer from the ills that plague AT&T users, once a few million of them are using up bandwidth, those advantages may disappear. Verizon claims they can handle the expected load. AT&T said that too, and you shouldn’t believe anyone until large numbers of new Verizon iPhones have been activated.

As far as I’m concerned, AT&T treats me right, at least so far. My advice applies to anyone: If AT&T is good for you, don’t worry about the Verizon iPhone. If not, then at least you now have a choice, one that, I hope, will be better for your needs.

In my youth, radio disk jockeys would laugh about the local papers, calling them “daily fish wrappers.” At the same time, the news departments of those stations were busy combing through the pages of those fish wrappers in search of leads for a story. In those days, the broadcast newspeople would largely “rip and read,” in other words, use wire service copy, rather than do any actual reporting and writing.

Nowadays, the steady decline of newspaper circulation and ad revenues continues. Yes, there are spots of income stabilization or minor circulation increases, but the trends are clear and certain. More and more people get their news from the Internet or those 24/7 cable news talking heads.

In keeping with that tradition, News Corporation’s CEO, Rupert Murdoch, joined Wednesday Apple in introducing the latest generation of news publications, The Daily, a subscription app for the iPad. For 99 cents a week or $39.99 per year, you get your regular fill of news and information in a digital format that preserves much of the features (or sections) of your typical daily paper.

This new in-app subscription feature, so far exclusive to The Daily, is very different from the way iPad publications have been handled up till now, which meant either free ad-supported versions, or regular editions that you had to buy as separate apps; a monthly magazine meant twelve different apps per year. As you might imagine, this purchasing method hasn’t been too successful.

Each edition of The Daily promises over 100 pages of news, entertainment, opinion, sports, all the reading matter you expect in your newspaper. Taking advantage of advanced digital technologies, you’ll find 360-degree photos, interactive charts, local news, weather and sports, and even a crossword puzzle. You’ll also be able to share stories on such social networks as Face-book and Twitter. In passing, it doesn’t appear that News Corp’s own network, MySpace, is part of the picture.

I expect you’ll be able to make hard copies of the stories you’ve read, or just save them on your iPad. Those of you who depend on your local newspaper for supermarket coupons, and ads for local firms, such as car dealers and consumer electronics outlets, may be disappointed, although there are no doubt great opportunities for interactive ads based on your location, assuming you allow The Daily to track that data. Or maybe I’m too old fashioned to expect people to care about what might be lost in the rush to the future of journalism.

I’m also going to avoid concerns of the apparent conservative bias Murdoch exhibits in some of his other news-oriented properties. I’d rather believe that The Daily will confine its opinions to the editorial pages, and run the rest of the publication following traditional journalistic values; in other words, coverage will be fair.

In the scheme of things, lots of hopes and dreams are riding on the success of The Daily. If a rapidly rising subscription base greets the arrival of this interactive digital newspaper, you can expect other publishers are going to want to get a piece of the action. That could mean subscription versions of The New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Post and, perhaps, the hundreds of small and medium-sized papers that still dot the landscape in this country. I also suspect that publishers around the world will want to follow suit.

If The Daily, despite the modest subscription price and advance hype, fails to sustain itself on the long haul, it doesn’t mean the marketing plan is faulty. It may take time to find the right mix of content and presentation that will attract a wide audience of paying subscribers. I also wonder just how many papers will attempt to compete with The Daily in the first few months, or just wait on the sidelines to see how Murdoch’s venture fares on the long haul.

As for News Corporation, when they commit to a venture, they’ve been known to keep that commitment for years, even if it costs a bundle. Murdoch has reportedly dumped tens of millions of dollars into some projects, waiting years for them to pay off. It’s well known that Fox News, the controversial 24/7 cable network, was a money losing proposition for a number of years before ad revenues were sufficient to stop the flow of red ink. Murdoch’s tabloid paper in New York City, the New York Post, has been losing loads of money for years without any certainty it’ll ever become profitable. In that sense, you can almost compare News Corporation to Microsoft in the dedication to sustain money-losing products and services without giving up.

In contrast, Apple is known to even kill successful products if a better idea comes along. The Macintosh G4 Cube wasn’t successful, and so it was axed in less than a year, even though Steve Jobs appeared to have a personal liking to that clever reimagining of the original NeXT Cube. In contrast, the Apple TV, although no doubt profitable, remains a hobby because of relatively low sales.

In the end, whatever iPad digital publishing venture emerges triumphant, Apple can be content that they will earn their 30% from each and every subscription.

But I still wonder when or if the dream of the iPad replacing printed school textbooks will ever come to pass. I expected that to arrive soon after Apple’s iconic tablet computer was released, but haven’t heard much about it lately. If it happens, every child who has to lug a heavy backpack to and from school will be grateful.

Almost since the first Mac, an all-in-one personal computer, appeared in 1984, the critics and competitors were fervently wishing Apple would just go away. It’s fair to say that bad marketing decisions, and a procession of mediocre CEOs that were clueless about advancing the platform, almost made those wishes come true.

By the time 1996 arrived, the acquisition of NeXT, the company Steve Jobs formed after he was bounced from Apple, seemed a move of desperation. Apple’s in-house efforts to build an industrial-strength operating system to replace the aging, bug-prone Mac OS, had failed.

Only later was it revealed how close Apple had come to shutting down, and perhaps vindicating the morbid wish to that effect once expressed by Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell. Fortunately, Steve Jobs learned a trick or two during his absence from Apple, and approached his return to the CEO job (it was iCEO then) as a ruthless manager. Underperforming products were axed, and he worked hard to shore up the bottom line.

In the end, Apple prospered and has, of late, boosted revenues above those of Microsoft, whose fortunes, other than yesterday’s operating system and office suite technologies, have flagged.

But the biggest surprise of all was the incredible success of the iPad. From the day it was introduced last year, the critics said Apple was due for a huge fall. The iPad was nothing more than an overgrown iPod touch. What was the point? After all, the PC industry had been touting the arrival of tablets for years, and, other than adoption in a few vertical markets, few cared.

What Apple offered, however, was a warm and friendly computing appliance, a full package that was ready to run out of the box, even if you never installed a single app, without the need to connect extra peripherals (other than docking with iTunes during the initial setup process). Compare that to Windows 7, where even the email app is an optional installation. Does that make sense, or does Microsoft prefer to be the hard task master who forces customers to exert extra effort to make your PC  capable of managing email?

The sales results of the iPad not only confounded most critics, but rapidly surpassed those of the Mac. This year, the industry analysts are pegging iPad sales in a wide range, from maybe 30 million or so to over 50 million. Nobody knows for sure, and it may be that even Apple was surprised by this gadget’s rapid adoption not just by consumers, but by businesses as well.

Just the other day, for example, I saw a TV ad touting the Hyundai’s luxury vehicle, the Equus, which, like other high ticket cars, comes with the user manual preloaded on an iPad. It may not be long before lower cost vehicles offer a similar configuration, although absorbing a $499 product as part of the purchase price may be difficult for entry-level models.

Of course, that also assumes that Apple isn’t going to offer the original iPad as a lower cost “Classic” model, when version two appears later this year.

At the same time, some members of the tech media are still trying to spin the iPad as less of a success than it really is. Factoring the claim that the Samsung Galaxy Tab sold over two million copies, they sharply reduced the iPad’s market share for the last quarter of 2010. Unfortunately, this misguided effort at wishful thinking failed big time when Samsung revealed, during a financial conference call, that these figures were based on the number of units shipped to dealers. The actual sell-through was described as “quite small,” and Samsung must be embarrassed by those numbers, since they didn’t reveal the specifics.

This isn’t to say that Samsung isn’t trying to push the Galaxy Tab. I’ve seen TV ads for it, and Consumer Reports rated it a close second to the iPad in a recent survey. Unfortunately, CR didn’t notice the poor quality image and animation rendering, nor did they seem aware of the fact that the version of the Google Android OS installed on the Galaxy Tab was never certified for use in a device with a screen larger than that of a standard smartphone.

That’s only more evidence that CR still doesn’t get it.

The other key issue that most of the analysts who build sales surveys choose to ignore is that the iPad is, in its key functions, a personal computer. If you add iPad sales to those of Macs, Apple’s total computer sales soar. But there are far too many vested interests in the tech industry to allow for such comparisons, since the figures would make the largest players in the business, particularly HP and Dell, appear far less successful.

The key to the iPad’s end game is what Steve Jobs said a few months back, that today’s PC is the big truck, whereas the iPad is the car, the PC of the future. It’s already clear that the iPad has gutted sales of netbooks, and it may be only a matter of time before other PC product sales are cannibalized. So far the Mac hasn’t been harmed. But I will repeat my prediction that, when the iPad is five years old, the Mac will another iPod, an older technology whose best days lie in the past.

That doesn’t mean you will all adopt iPads in place of a Mac or a PC, but I expect many of you will. Meantime, if Apple’s competition really hopes to make waves, they need to realize that shipping products that don’t sell isn’t going to accomplish anything but make them seem foolish.

Just this week, I caught several articles quoting Patrick Lo, CEO and global chairman for Netgear, a maker of network gear, viciously attacking Steve Jobs. Typical of many executives who cannot cope with Apple’s incredible and ongoing success, Lo went after the well-known ego of ailing CEO Steve Jobs, and the company’s closed platform.

The most telling statement demonstrate’s Lo’s bad taste: “Once Steve Jobs goes away, which is probably not far away, then Apple will have to make a strategic decision on whether to open up the platform.”

Forget about the timing of this morbid-flavored comment, coming at a time when Jobs has taken his third leave of absence to deal with ongoing health issues. Lo is one of those forgotten executives that nobody pays attention to, so he clearly hoped to leverage Apple’s success, and the Steve Jobs mystique, to get his name in the papers.

It’s not that the statement is anything new. Apple’s business plan has proven to be amazingly successful. These days, Apple’s total revenue exceeds that of Microsoft, and is only a few billion dollars short of the figures just posted by Ford. Imagine Apple eventually reporting higher sales than the second largest auto maker on the planet.

If Lo has his way, that isn’t going to happen. Like other Apple critics, Lo believes that Apple cannot possibly sustain record growth with a closed, vertically integrated platform that covers all their products, from Macs, to iPhones, even to the Apple TV. How dare they?

To paraphrase an online political blog, maybe we should call this “Apple derangement syndrome.” This ailment apparently infects people who desperately want Apple to fail, and are very frustrated that Apple’s near-death experience of 15 years ago hasn’t been repeated. How dare they?

From stem to stern, Lo’s rant criticizes everything Apple does, warning that we’re about to see a repeat of the Mac versus Windows wars, where Apple was nearly destroyed by Microsoft’s industry dominance.

When it came to Jobs’ concerns about Flash, Lo said, “What’s the reason for him to trash Flash? There’s no reason other than ego.”

What Lo needs to do is actually read Jobs’ blog post on the subject, where he discusses several serious technical issues that define the problems with Flash. The poor performance exhibited by the mobile version of Flash, available in the newest versions of Google’s Android OS, have clearly vindicated Apple’s approach. Besides, Adobe has never been able to demonstrate that they can actually build a functional version of Flash for the iOS that addresses all or most of Apple’s concerns. That, in and of itself, shows how wrongheaded Lo has become.

Oh, and Microsoft wasn’t immune to Lo’s wrath. He trashed them too.

In the real world, Microsoft’s overwhelming Windows dominance is slowly eroding, largely because of the growth of the Mac OS, which is way ahead of most PC makers. Windows Phone 7 remains a non-starter, and the market share of the Internet Explorer browser has been on a steady decline at the expense of Mozilla’s Firefox, Google Chrome, Apple Safari, and, to a lesser degree, Opera.

Here maybe Lo hit pay dirt: “Microsoft is over — game over — from my point of view.”

So much for open PC platforms, or maybe Lo didn’t notice.

The real issue, however, is that Lo sought his 15 minutes by making Apple and Jobs the main subjects of his wrath. Nobody outside the tech industry ever heard of Patrick Lo, or even Netgear. Few customers of commodity network products actually look at the brand names. They buy on spec. Today it’s Netgear, tomorrow Buffalo Technologies, and the next day, Cisco (or their Linksys subsidiary). There’s little to no innovation to be found, and differences tend to be relatively minor, except where one product exhibits substantial failure in implementing one or more product features.

Attacking is easy, and Apple is a prominent target. That they won’t pay attention to most critics only frustrates those critics more. A reality check doesn’t hurt either. You see, even if Jobs doesn’t return to Apple, there’s little to no chance that they will, of a sudden, alter their marketing strategy. Apple has tens of thousands of employees, and a tightly organized executive team that has carefully managed product development, releases, and sales initiatives.

It’s clear Jobs has assembled a team that is infused with the company DNA and will, at least for a number of years at least, survive the departure of the CEO without suffering or changing direction. Well, at least they won’t change direction unless that’s required by changing market conditions.

Fifty years from now, MBA students will be carefully examining the life and times of Steve Jobs. Nobody will pay a lick of attention to Patrick Lo, then or now. Speaking of which, he’s had far too much time in the limelight, and, in fact, has already begun to walk back some of his more incendiary remarks. Now what was his name again?

Another story that delivered a smile was the frantic wish from a CNET blogger that, based on early sales of Android OS tablets, the iPad’s share took a nosedive in the last quarter. The reason for the smile was the news from Samsung that the initial sales reports actually represented some two million shipped to dealers. Actual sales to customers were described as “quite small.” So much for the alleged popularity of the largest selling iPad killer.