All right, so we all know that Mac OS X Lion is going to incorporate some stuff from the iOS, but those few features are mostly special effects, rather than actual productive tools. Chief among the additions are Mission Control, a single window showing open apps and comments, Launchpad, which mimics the icon display on an iOS device, and the full-screen document window feature.

Two other features, automatic saving of documents and resuming apps, are pretty useful, though unexceptional. Especially the first, even though Apple is doing little more than incorporating a feature in the operating system that has long been available in certain apps and by third-party utilities. The real question is why it took Apple over two decades to get the message that people often forget to save critical documents regularly, and need a little help.

With auto-resume, you can reopen to an app in an instant, same as on the iOS. You won’t have to endure those dreadful 20 to 30 second launch times on some software, particularly the stuff that loads plugins and extensions on first launch. But you’ll have to wait for apps to actually support the system frameworks that’ll no doubt be required to allow that to happen. Don’t expect Adobe, Microsoft, or even Quark Inc. to jump on that bandwagon for a year or two.

One other feature in desperate need for improvement is Time Machine, but we don’t know if anything of that sort will happen in Lion. Yes, it’s great to have a fairly seamless automatic backup capability as standard issue in Mac OS X. We all know that Mac users are as bad as their PC counterparts when it comes to protecting their stuff. But Time Machine is also inflexible, and, just as bad, dreadfully slow. You can get third-party utilities that’ll allow more scheduling choices, but you still can’t easily restore an entire volume. You’re forced into a scheme not much different from Apple’s Migration Assistant, which is used to grab your stuff from your old Mac to your new one. It’s not as if you can restart from a backup drive in case something goes wrong with your hard drive, as you can with some of those nifty backup apps that make actual clone backups.

My backup routine, for example, uses Time Machine — which sends my stuff to an Apple Time Capsule — but I also use Shirt Pocket’s SuperDuper!, which backs up my entire drive to an external device. It’s a smart product, because you don’t have to back up all your stuff after the initial run. An incremental feature, common with such apps, only copies the new or changed files, and removes the ones you’ve deleted. What this means is that, as of the time my daily backup is done, the backup drive mirrors my iMac’s internal drive. Apple’s clearly got some work to do to catch up.

The most important issue, however, is whether Apple will actually deliver something original to Lion. The fluff is fine, the rethinking of old utilities is also encouraging, but where does Apple want to take us? Would it be a couple of hundred flashy features or minor enhancements that leave the significant capabilities alone, or will Apple try something totally different and attempt to wean us off the old fashioned file/folder metaphor of the last century?

When Mac OS X first came out, fans and critics alike talked about the fancy Aqua interface, sitting atop a tried and true Unix operating system. When I wrote a book on the new OS at the time, my first chapter was meant to show how similar Mac OS X seemed when compared to the first Mac OS in 1984. You still had files, folders, pull-down menus and document windows. Even in 2010, of the skills you learned 26 years ago are readily applied to the Mac of today. Yes, there are interface refinements and some changes in the way things are done, but the learning curve for a mythical time traveler from the days of the original Mac wouldn’t be so severe. I rather think such a visitor would be surprised how similar things turned out. What about Star Trek’s talking computers?

Of course, you don’t change the fundamentals of personal computing casually. It’s nowhere as trivial as ditching the floppy or optical drive, or replacing SCSI and ADB with FireWire and USB. There will be lots of relearning to be done, unless, of course, the replacement interface is more intuitive, more readily grasped even by the inexperienced user.

Today’s iOS has some of that down pat. The original ads for the iPad, with voiceovers from actor Peter Coyote, promised that “you already know how to use it.” Indeed, even a child will touch things to learn more about them. It doesn’t take a whole lot of practice to master an iPad or iPhone’s touchscreen. While there are some power user tips to be discovered, most of you, I’m sure, don’t need them. What you need to know to make these gadgets work is readily grasped without the learning curve.

Now touch isn’t so useful with a large screen, although Apple has been expanding the things you can do with trackpads and, of course, the Magic Mouse. But that’s just input, and it doesn’t change how you actually manage your documents. Worse, even power users may run into trouble, from time to time, dealing with files, folders, and figuring out what goes where. Managing the OS should be an afterthought. It should be seamless, not an ever-present intrusion that far too often prevents you from actually doing something productive with your Mac.

Does Apple have a solution at hand? I’m not expecting to see it in Mac OS X Lion, but I sure would love to be amazed one more time.

I’d like to consider that headline a payback of sorts. Whenever a supposed competitor to an Apple product or service comes along, so-called financial and media analysts will hint of lots of trouble. Apple is a closed ecosystem, a walled garden, and so on and so forth. Any well-financed competitor, and there must be many, will ultimately defeat them.

Of course, we’re all still waiting for that iPod killer to knock Apple from their pedestal. It’s nine years and counting, and it hasn’t arrived.

With the iPhone, it has to be different. Apple and one wireless carrier in the U.S. (although there are lots of others elsewhere) pitted against loads of products and several major platforms. The Android OS has done well, Droid does, and thus Apple is destined to lose the battle for — what?

Now it appears that there may be a little trouble afoot in Android land. In the last quarterly financials, despite two-for-one blowout sales, Verizon Wireless didn’t add as many new accounts as some had expected, particularly in the smartphone space. Maybe Droid doesn’t.

I won’t even get into the Blackberry situation at Verizon, since they cast their lot with Google, Motorola, HTC, and other companies building Android-based gear.

Of course, the figures from the current quarter are still works in progress, so it may well be that Android will resume the fast upward path. After all, it’s all about many against one, and that’s a hard nut to crack for Apple.

There’s also a report that ad impression growth on Android has also stalled, and that can be the harbinger of bad news for Google, since the operating system is given away free. Income comes from the ads, and if the number of click-throughs stalls or declines, that potentially means less money for Google. It’s as simple as that.

One day, Android was on fire. Now it’s cooled down big time.

But you had to see the problems. Despite all the proclamations about being open and accessible, the app situation in the Android universe remains highly fragmented. Developers have to allow for vastly different hardware configurations, with no guarantee that users will be permitted to download the latest and greatest Android software, even if there are security fixes. The situation is nowhere as simple as on the iPhone, where iTunes is the gatekeeper for your software updates, and they are readily available. Sure, older iPhones may not support the some of the newest features, but you don’t have to depend upon the whims of the carrier to decide if they deign to let you have a software update.

Perhaps even more important is the fact that there’s really a lack of killer apps on Android. It’s not as if mainstream software, such as Skype, will necessarily light your fire. How many silly ring tones and sound effects do you want? What’s more, there is, as yet, no proven economic model for developers to make a living in that environment. Rather than developing for a single set of related models, they have to consider the needs of different manufacturers, carriers, and, worse, software versions. All told, it’s far more complicated than, say, Windows. At least with Windows, you have one company, Microsoft, controlling the user interface, development environment, and distribution of updates, so all registered users can take advantage of security and stability releases.

Even worse news in Android land is the forthcoming arrival of the iPhone on the Verizon network. As I’ve said in previous columns, I don’t pretend to know the ins and outs of the agreement between Apple and Verizon. It may well be that there will be a sort of semi-exclusive, meaning that Sprint and T-Mobile won’t get their chance to take a piece of the pie for the foreseeable future.

With the iPhone onboard, how will Verizon deal with existing partners, such as HTC and Motorola and all those slow-selling Droids? This is an area where direct competition will strongly favor Apple.

Sure, I understand the rap about open platforms and so forth and so on. Unless you’re a power user, though, it doesn’t make a bit of difference. If the phone delivers good performance, and there’s a healthy choice of apps, most customers aren’t going to care one whit.

Moreover, where does all this leave Microsoft and Windows Phone 7, which hasn’t exactly been a barn burner from the starting gate? Probably nowhere. Despite launching the new mobile OS and smartphones with an immense ad budget, it’s not as if the public is lining up to get one. Microsoft will probably do all right with business customers, but Windows Phone 7 is no game changer. Even though there are some nice things about the interface, as usual it’s behind the times. By the time Microsoft catches up, Apple and Google will be operating at another level.

Windows Phone 7 may not be destined to become another Zune, but it will probably make little significant impact in the marketplace. But right now, even Google may not realize quite as much success with Android as they originally hoped.

You’ve heard the complaints over and over again. AT&T is a bad wireless carrier, and that, all things being equal, you are better off with the market leader, Verizon Wireless. Of course, if you crave the iPhone in the U.S., you have a choice of one, at least for this year. Both tech and financial pundits agree that there will be a version of the iPhone for Verizon some time in 2011, probably shortly after the first of the new year.

As to what sort of phone you’ll be able to buy, if it’s early in the year, it’ll likely be a modified version of today’s iPhone 4 with the hardware to support Verizon’s CDMA network and, perhaps, the forthcoming 4G or LTE technology. It may even be a combo product that supports CDMA and GSM, in a sense making this a “world phone.”

Now there have been some published reports that the new Verizon iPhone will be strictly LTE, the new-fangled 4G network that’s just beginning a slow phase-in. On the other hand, that won’t make a lick of sense, since it means that most customers won’t be able to use one. More to the point, Apple doesn’t always jump into new technologies until they’ve had their shakeout cruise. The first iPhone, for example, didn’t even support 3G until AT&T had time to expand the service into more cities, and improve system capacity.

Since nobody outside of these companies, or partners under confidentiality agreements, know for sure, and since I’m using AT&T, my personal interest in the whole affair is mostly academic, at least so far. In saying that, however, there are also published reports that Verizon hasn’t fared near as well as they hoped in moving Android OS smartphones, and forget about Windows Phone 7. So having the iPhone in their arsenal will be a win.

But does that mean that AT&T has something to fear from the expansion of the iPhone network? I rather suspect they might, simply because loads of customers — or at least those who fill out surveys for Consumer Reports magazine — have given AT&T a collective thumbs down in  some 23 major cities. These surveys ask readers to apply one of five value judgements, from “Worse” to “Better,” in four cell phone performance categories. These include encountering areas where there’s no service, confronting dropped calls, and whether there are any issues with texting and data.

Now I want to make it quite clear that I am no fan of Consumer Reports, particularly when it comes to technology. With personal computers, they are utterly clueless. Their reviews of smartphones are also questionable, witness the curious way in which the iPhone 4 was dinged for its alleged antenna deficiencies.

The survey itself is part of questionnaires listeners receive, usually on an annual basis. As you might imagine, the scores are highly subjective. There is little empirical data for readers to consult in deciding whether a wireless carrier’s service is good or bad, or somewhere in between. It’s not as if Consumer Reports gives you a reference chart saying, for example, that five dropped calls a month is bad, three is average, but one is just right. They aren’t capable of that level of granular detail.

In saying that, though, if most customers regard a company as bad, they probably have good reason, so AT&T clearly has something to worry about. There are, of course, well known problems in such cities as New York and San Francisco. Indeed, AT&T got the lowest “Worst” rating in all four categories in those locales, along with Los Angeles. Overall, AT&T never left the fourth spot compared to Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon.

Surprisingly, Sprint fared better than I might have expected, especially considering the fact that it used to be one of the worst cell phone providers in this country. While Verizon was the overall winner, Sprint came close, and was rated number one in some cities. T-Mobile did all right, but was third, usually, ahead of AT&T.

My personal experience with AT&T in the Phoenix vicinity is nowhere near as troubling. Although I had some problems with weak signals and dropped calls early on, AT&T, with some flourish, has managed to increase both cell towers and capacity. For the most part, I’m quite satisfied with their service, so I find it hard to understand why they rate so poorly in Phoenix. That is unless Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile are so far superior, it’s no contest.

Regardless of my qualms with CR’s testing methods, a survey such as this has to be troubling to AT&T, which has been touting for several years all the billions they’ve spent enhancing their network. They still claim — and that appears to be borne out by independent tests — that their data service delivers superior download speeds compared to Verizon. But when loads of customers regard them as subpar, you can bet they have something to fear, particularly if some of those customers, iPhone users now, decide to buy the next model from Verizon.

I suppose AT&T will dispute these results as being outdated and not representative of their current level of service. I’m not about to reach a final conclusion. But it’s a sure thing that, once my AT&T contract expires in mid-2011, I’ll definitely be open to other options, although I may stay where I am regardless.

In the endless search for sound and fury, some so-called journalists are intent on seizing upon something, anything, in search of a story. Now I want get into the political wars here. That’s far too polarizing and way beyond the scope of these columns. Instead, I’m going to take another article that represents an all-too-typical attempt to find a signal in a tiny but of noise, but ends up with mostly smoke and mirrors.

The article in question comes from one of the usual offenders, the ZDNet Mobile division of CNET. That CNET is part of CBS has evidently not impacted its longstanding reputation for shoddy reporting and questionable speculation.

The article in question, which, as usual in such cases, doesn’t deserve a link, says it all in the headline: “Apple risking performance (and reputation) by switching to Intel for budget note-book graphics?”

So what’s the story all about? Why would Apple, on a roll with powerful hardware, soaring sales, and millions of loyal customers, sacrifice it all for the “privilege” of using new and supposedly inferior parts from Intel?

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