Steven P. Jobs certainly didn’t gain any friends at Adobe when he pronounced Flash dead and buried earlier this year, essentially the next floppy disk. In response, Adobe’s PR people, and some of their executives too, have engaged in pointless spin control, while at the same time continuing to avoid the real issues.

The most recent volley of complaints arose over Apple’s decision not to bundle Flash with Mac OS X anymore. Starting with the revised MacBook Air, and all new hardware, Flash will be an optional installation. If you want a copy, you have to go to Adobe’s site and get it for yourself.

Forgotten during this latest uproar is the fact that Windows Vista and Windows 7 weren’t bundled with Flash either. The only difference is that Adobe will let you know if a newer version is available on that platform. That’s not yet true on the Mac. But give it time.

However, the deepest cut of all was the news about an independent test from the Ars Technica Web site, which revealed that battery life on the new MacBook Air is substantially less with Flash installed and rendering Web content. That’s something that hasn’t been tested previously, simply because Flash has been ever-present for years.

So product reviewers now have something new to evaluate, not just on the MacBook Air, but on all Macs and Windows note-books. Just what is the resource impact of the typical collection of Flash menus, navigation buttons, videos and games?

When Steve Jobs said, in that infamous blog a few months back, that Flash was resource-hungry, it does seem as if that proposition was never actually examined — at least until now. It was assumed he was referring to the mobile version, not the impact on a regular note-book computer.

More to the point, just what Flash content has the worst impact? Videos? Games? I would presume they would sit at the top of the list, but this sort of testing would require use of the same sort of animated content formatted, where possible, in HTML5.

Once those results are available from several sources, the truth will be out there, and Adobe won’t be able to make any excuses if Flash rates inferior to an open source Web standard.

Of course, it may be that there won’t be such a material difference, in which case the Ars Technica test simply reflects what might happen whenever a personal computer is forced to render animated content of any kind.

Or maybe it’s a byproduct of the fact that the latest versions of Flash don’t provide hardware acceleration with the integrated NVIDIA graphics chips in the MacBook Air. If rendering is forced to occur in software, that would also harm battery life substantially.

Then again, if Adobe can devise a fix, a demonstration of the revised plugin would go a long way towards mending the company’s tarnished reputation.

However, the biggest potential problem of all is revealed in Apple’s most recent massive security release, which arrived as part of the 10.6.5 maintenance update, and as a separate download for 10.5 users.

Among all the fixes, some 42%, 55 of the total, involved security lapses in Adobe Flash. That’s the unkindest cut of all, and that, in addition to those resource issues, represents another objection that Jobs voiced about Flash — poor security. What’s Adobe’s excuse, or is that, too, a deep-seated plot on Apple’s part to destroy Flash? After all, a security leak is a security leak, and nobody believes that Apple somehow hacked Flash to add them.

On the other hand, it’s not as if Adobe wants to kill a cash cow, because they continue to build new products for the Mac. Consider Audition, their high-end audio post-production product, which has just entered public beta with lots of promise. Indeed, I will be evaluating this release against our current post-production tool, Peak Pro, to see which gets the job done better. And, no, I have no prejudice against Adobe. If it’s the better product, I’ll consider buying the final version.

Adobe has also joined with Microsoft in saying that, yes, they love HTML5. At the same time, Adobe continues to tout Flash, as much as Microsoft wants to promote Silverlight, as the best cross-platform multimedia technology.

Of course, Apple is building more and more iOS-equipped gear that supports neither, and is dissuading Mac users about installing Flash simply by not including a bundled copy. So it’s a sure thing that Adobe’s corporate masters of spin will have to devise more paranoia about Apple, while at the same time doing what they can to sell more products to Mac users.

When you consider Flash’s absence from Mac OS X, the decision not to upgrade Java, and the forthcoming demise of the Xserve, you can see that Apple is moving faster and faster to embrace their own future. If older products must disappear — whether Apple’s or someone else’s — that’s the way it’s going to be.

I’m very surprised that so few members of the tech media recognize the serious flaws in the testing methodology of Consumer Reports. Yes, I realize that the magazine appears incorruptible, because they buy all the products they test, do not accept advertising, and are run by a non-profit organization.

That, however, doesn’t mean that they have a clue about many of the consumer electronics products they test. Just recently, the iPhone 4 failed to receive a “buy” recommendation because of that alleged “death grip” problem, even though other smartphones suffer from the same limitations. And this decision came despite the fact that the iPhone 4 otherwise rated ahead of the pack.

Now any responsible testing source would have examined the well-known real world methods to duplicate these signal loss symptoms. But CR devised a wacky laboratory test that only caught the iPhone 4 in its net.

Pathetic? You bet, but yet here we go again, as history repeats itself.

So the news came forth this week that Consumer Reports had, as usual, given Macs high marks in the most recent ratings of personal computers. This report comes on the heels of the rave reviews granted to Apple’s revitalized MacBook Air by most of the traditional tech media.

So you learned that the 11.6-inch MacBook Air rated tops between the two tested models with similar screen sizes. When it comes to 13-inch models, the larger Air got the same rating. The more traditional Toshiba Portage R7056-P35 received high ratings as a budget-priced model. The regular MacBook, costing $1,000, or $220 above the price of the Toshiba CR reviewed, didn’t quality as “budget,” although it ties with the Air as the cheapest Mac note-book.

Of course, if you optioned a 13-inch Toshiba to match a MacBook, the price disparity might be far less, but CR fails to grasp such not-so-fine distinctions.

I could go on. In the standard-price categories, the 15-inch and 17-inch MacBook Pros led the pack, as did the Mac mini and 27-inch iMac.

CR’s overall scores are irrelevant and I won’t repeat them here. The real problem is that the magazine’s testers haven’t a clue about the difference between the a Mac and a Windows PC. Or maybe they do have a clue, but prefer to dumb down their tech reviews to the point where they are utterly useless.

Indeed, their choice of models to test is also inscrutable. A PC box assembler may have loads of models that fit a particular category, with plenty of checkboxes with which to customize, but CR clearly opts for a simple cross-section. With Macs, there are only a handful of models, so they test them all, with the exception of the Mac Pro, which is rarely covered.

The vast majority of CR’s readership is probably not interested in a high-end computer workstation anyway.

I suppose it’s possible that CR believes most of their readership has already made the decision whether to embrace the Mac or the PC, so the magazine’s tech editors don’t choose to address the subject. But it’s also true that a large portion of Macs are sold to Windows switchers. The total at Apple’s retail outlets is usually said to be over 50%.

If CR is assuming that PC platform decisions have already been made, they are dead wrong. So they should be making at least a token effort to define the differences between Mac OS X and Windows. They are certainly capable of staging usability studies to see which OS offers a superior working environment, but they don’t.

They obviously have the budget to buy dozens of computers, but they don’t seem to be motivated to seeding a few dozen readers who are computer novices, offering minimal instruction, or maybe a few “Dummies” books, and letting them adapt. Or maybe CR would prefer to have a canned computer-based modeling system perform the task. Certainly, they couldn’t figure out a way to correctly test the iPhone 4 and other smartphones to see if there were antenna deficiencies or defects, so I suppose they wouldn’t know how to judge one computer operating system over another.

Then again, they also declared the iPad inferior when it came to gaming performance compared to the cheapest PC note-book with integrated graphics. So maybe I’m better off just calling them incompetent.

For those who have wondered whether I have contacted CR to discuss their test methodology, let me say that I have tried to get them on The Tech Night Owl LIVE, and they haven’t graced me with a response. Maybe they know who I am, and my approach to the subject, so they’d rather not try to defend the indefensible.

Or maybe they would prefer a mainstream environment where they will only face softball questions. I don’t presume to have the final answer.

I continue to be concerned, however, as to why most of the rest of the tech media continues to give CR a pass. It’s clear to me their test methods are extremely faulty, and they need to be forced to account for their shortcomings.

If you think the media can sometimes be too harsh on Apple, spend a little time with a long-time Mac user, and you will hear a surprising amount of complaints. No matter that they are intensely loyal to most anything with an Apple logo on it. When it comes to the shortcomings of any particular product, they will have a long list to offer.

Certainly, I’m no exception, but I make my living complaining about Apple. There’s no love fest here.

Take the iPhone. As much as I admire Apple’s efforts to build the best smartphone on the planet, minor lapses in the interface infuriate me.

Take scrolling in Safari. You click the title bar to zoom to the top, but what about the bottom of a long page? You’re fingers may have to do an awful lot of walking, but wouldn’t it be better to be able to just click on the bottom to take you there? Or is Apple afraid you might accidentally strike one of the page/site buttons instead?

Indeed, the entire scroll bar system is broken. You have to touch a page to see gray scrollbars, so you know whether it extends horizontally or vertically beyond the narrow display boundaries (assuming that’s not already obvious). Maybe Apple believes you don’t need to know just by looking at the screen, or maybe they want to save a few prevoius pixels except when you need to navigate. But why not inform you of that before you touch something with your dirty fingers with full-time scrollbars? This can be particularly irritating when I’m eating something, but Apple would be right to say I shouldn’t be touching the iPhone or iPad unless my hands are clean, as if anyone is going to listen.

What irks me most are the rumors that a similar misbegotten interface decision may migrate to Mac OS X Lion. I sure hope not.

When it comes to Mail for the iOS, I just wonder why you’re saddled with one system-wide signature, forget about rules. Now I realize Apple wants to keep iPhone apps lean and mean, and not add resource-consuming features. Maybe that’s why there’s no spam filtering, although it doesn’t matter so much if your email service does most of the heavy lifting. But a signature? Why can’t you apply a separate one to each email account, or is Apple so wedded to the “Sent from my iPhone” default, which I have altered by the way, that they won’t consider why you’d want other options?

When you are dealing with the narrow confines of a mobile gadget, you’d certainly want to be able to automatically funnel your messages to specific folders, or treat them in a specific fashion, which is why a rules system makes sense. At the very least, Mail for the iOS ought to recognize the ones you’ve configured on your desktop Mac, assuming you’re using Mac Mail of course.

On the Mac, the printer queue app has a long-time quirk. If you dare to click on the icon to observe the progress of your jobs, it won’t quit manually once the jobs are complete. You have to close the window to exit, even though auto-quit works fine if you don’t bring up that window. Now maybe Apple believes this is appropriate behavior. I don’t. Also, the age-old ability of the Classic Mac OS’s PrintMonitor to drag and drop jobs to reorder the queue has never been duplicated.

I have the proverbial love/hate relationship with Spaces, the Mac OS solution to multiple desktops. In theory, whatever you place in a particular slot or position should remain there. In practice, some apps don’t cotton to Spaces, such as Peak Pro, our preferred audio post-production software, and they might unexpectedly switch position. Infuriating? You bet it.

Unfortunately, I never took to Expose to keep tabs of open document windows, and the Mission Control alternative promised for Mac OS X Lion seems overkill. Having to put up with multiple windowing displays on the same screen is bound to confuse even the experienced Mac user.

When it comes to Apple’s apps, Pages remains credible alternative to Microsoft Word, although the 2011 version of the latter has successfully “borrowed” a few ideas from the former. Unfortunately, after you print a Pages document, before you quit the program, you have to Save, even if you didn’t change anything. Now maybe that’s a glitch for a 1.0 product, but as of version 4.0.4 (iWork ’09), the problem is still there. Oh well, maybe next year.

I realize no operating system or app can be perfect. But the little things ought to count, and Apple delivers the promise of superior spit and polish. Steve Jobs is infamous for being tough on product designers and engineers to make sure everything is as perfect as possible. But far too often, he’s letting glitches persist that should have been eradicated long ago.

Besides, these suggestions, and others I’m sure you readers can produce, shouldn’t be all that difficult to implement. But does Apple really care?

With the unexpected (but not surprising) announcement that the Xserve rack-mounted server was being discontinued last week, it is understandable that some are wondering whether Apple is giving up not just a tiny money tree, but corporate credibility. After all, isn’t it true that Apple cares about consumers, not businesses?

The reason for the Xserve’s demise are simple to discern. Sales estimates have remained at approximately 10,000 “pizza boxes” per quarter over the years, which is hardly enough to make regular development make sense for a company that’s used to selling millions of copies for any specific product. Don’t forget that a few hundred thousand Apple TVs each quarter fell into the hobby class. So how do you categorize the Xserve?

Steve Jobs is already quoted as saying, in one of his famous pithy emails, “Hardly anyone was buying them.” There’s no evidence to dispute that statement.

More to the point, Apple asserts they were selling more Mac minis with the server option than the rack-mounted variety, and that’s the hardest cut of all. Yes, an IT person will remind us that the Xserve has redundant power supplies, the ability to replace drives while the unit is still running, and all the rest of the capabilities of a traditional rack-mounted server. What’s more, you can’t put a Mac mini or a Mac Pro in a standard server cabinet. They’re usually meant for companies that, at most, might buy a handful, and stick them in a back office or closet.

That Apple couldn’t penetrate the corporate server market in any meaningful fashion may be unfortunate, but clearly there are other priorities. Besides, abandoning the Xserve doesn’t mean businesses will soon stop acquiring Macs, iPads and iPhones. Clearly the situation is quite different, since the Xserve was rarely a factor.

Remember that Mac OS X is provably capable of working just fine with a Windows or Linux server. Besides, you can buy the latter, with the open source OS you prefer, for far less than a basic Xserve. As I wrote last week, Web hosts seldom care about adding Xserves, and when they do deploy them, it is usually as a means to promote multi-platform capabilities for their customers.

The world’s largest Web host, Go Daddy, has been offering an Xserve-based cloud server solution. In a statement to the Night Owl, the company’s Hosting Product Manager, Flavio Andrade, said: “Go Daddy has been using Xserve in cloud-based Mac OS X virtual server environments. But this announcement is not going to stop Go Daddy from doing whatever it takes to ensure our customers are getting the products and services they want.”

Whether that means they’ll be switching to banks of Mac Pros or Mac minis, or choosing a different OS platform, isn’t certain.

Perhaps the most telling evidence of Apple’s expanding commitment to the enterprise is the recent announcement of a marketing deal with Unisys, which will involve sales to large corporations and government agencies. Apple wouldn’t do that if they didn’t expect such a partnership to be fruitful on an ongoing basis.

More to the point is the information regularly conveyed at recent conference calls with financial analysts to discuss Apple’s quarterly sales figures. In almost every case, you learn that a high percentage of the Fortune 100 or Fortune 500 companies are either testing or fully deploying an Apple product. Just this past week, it was reported that two of the largest banks in the U.S.A., Bank of America and Citibank, were testing iPhones for possible widescale deployment in place of the Blackberry.

Every update for the iOS has included additional enterprise features, to allow for secure deployment and wiping of iPhones. Don’t forget the expanded support for Microsoft Exchange in the most recent versions of both the iOS and Mac OS X.

Add to that the decision by Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit to offer a fully-loaded version of Outlook to Mac users once again, along with additional collaborative capabilities throughout the suite. Although Outlook 2011 is a little unfinished and somewhat buggy, it does represent a credible effort from Microsoft to cater to business users who just happen to prefer Macs.

The difference is that Apple hasn’t traditionally shmoozed with IT executives, or built custom versions of Mac hardware to cater to the needs of the enterprise. Special configurations are limited, other than the Mac Pro. You can’t buy a MacBook, MacBook Pro or an iMac sans Web cam, Wi-Fi, or other features that some companies would prefer not to be there. At best, the IT people may be forced to disable such capabilities via software or a hardware hack (cutting some wires), to ensure suitability in their individual environments. I do wonder, in passing, how that impacts product warranties, since Apple normally won’t cover Macs you’ve tampered with.

That Apple has done so well in the enterprise despite the consumer focus is a tribute to the fact that quality will out from time to time. Not every company is happy with the uncertainties of generic PC hardware, and the unpredictable nature of some Windows installations. And don’t get me started about Windows-based malware.

The loss of the Xserve may sting a small group of devoted customers, but the vast, vast majority of buyers of Apple gear just don’t care. If they did, the Xserve would have been a better seller, and it would not have been discontinued.