Even when a story is just not true, that doesn’t stop it from being repeated over and over again. Take the silly theory that Apple won’t allow Flash into its mobile walled garden so Steve Jobs could exert more complete control over your online experience. Few will admit that the objections contained in his infamous blog posting by Jobs are true, and that Apple’s reasons at the very least include significant technical considerations.

So it just happens that the latest Android OS software includes the long-promised mobile version of Flash. But it’s also true that this version of Flash remains incredibly buggy. Some Adobe-approved sites work just fine, whereas others cause serious system slow-downs, or plain don’t work properly.

As Jobs — and too few independent tech writers — stated, there are tens of millions of Flash sites out there that weren’t designed with touch in mind. They expect you to use a mouse, trackball, trackpad or similar conventional device to point and click. Touching isn’t a part of the picture, so loads of sites would have to be redesigned extensively to take advantage of this expected state of affairs. The experience with the Android version of Flash fully confirms this serious shortcoming.

Jobs also said that Adobe was late to the party, that they promised a working smartphone version of Flash, but never delivered. You can argue that, yes, such a release exists on the Android platform, so Jobs must be wrong. But that would be true only if that version of Flash answered all or most of Apple’s complaints. It doesn’t.

Just this week, Adobe’s stock is suffering because their earnings report, while showing a 69% increase in net income, has a less favorable outlook for the next quarter, due to flagging back-to-school orders and poor sales in Japan. I suppose it’s possible the “Not Welcome” sign for Flash-based content on the iOS platform has hurt Adobe to some extent, but it doesn’t seem that most people buy Creative Suite products simply to focus on building Flash-based content. Besides, Apple has loosened the requirements for building iOS apps, which means you can, once again, port them from Flash, if that’s what you want.

What that means is that, in the end, the marketplace will decide. If those apps fail to catch on, the developers will either have to find ways to improve them within the existing structure, or use a different programming environment.

Unfortunately many of the objections to Apple’s original position didn’t take into account the consequences of building inferior apps.

Now this doesn’t mean Apple isn’t exerting a substantial level of control, particularly when it comes to the mobile platform. However, Mac OS X, though legally limited to Apple-built personal computers, pays a lot of respect to open source apps. The underbelly of Mac OS X has loads of them. Apple also continues to push industry standards, such as HTML5.

Surprisingly enough, one of the promised advantages of the forthcoming Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 for Windows is that there’s greater adherence to industry standards, including HTML5. Those who have played with the current beta version say it’s as fast or faster than the latest Firefox and fully competitive with Safari and Google Chrome. Such are the advantages of genuine competition.

Returning to the mobile platform, Apple has decided that a controlled environment is good not because the company is populated with control freaks, but because you get a predictable, consistent, reliable user experience without having to worry about carrier-based customizations, or complicated preference settings. Despite the occasional complaints about arbitrary App Store review policies, Apple’s published standards provide at least the assurance that what you download — and often pay for — will perform as advertised without crashing your iPhone.

You cannot say the same about an Android phone. One is definitely not the same as another, once you consider the various OS versions and the fact you may not even be able to install OS updates. Tack onto that the customizations added by the manufacturer and/or the wireless carrier, and all bets are off.

As far as Adobe Flash is concerned, the company is ignoring the best way to demonstrate Apple is wrong in its objections, and that is to deliver a version for the iOS that meets Apple’s objections. If they can do that, a simple YouTube video would prove to one and all that Steve Jobs was wrong.

That hasn’t happened because it is clear to me that Adobe is unable to meet those objections, not out of spite or because they were made by a mercurial control freak CEO, but due to clear and provable technical grounds. The version available for Android smartphone users fails to vindicate Adobe.

So it’s high time that tech pundits abandon their claims about Flash. The truth is out there, if they can handle that truth.

The more I read about the expected avalanche of iPad killers, the more I’m surprised about the miracle Apple has wrought. For a company that is credited — or accused — of charging premium prices for luxury gadgets, the iPad is emerging as a surprisingly cheap contender.

Consider the expectations before the iPad was launched. The consensus had prices approaching $1,000, as tech pundits wondered how Apple could possibly emerge triumphant against the burgeoning netbook market.

When the starting price settled in at $499, the critics weren’t silenced. That was still somewhat costlier than an Amazon Kindle, and, besides, you can get a netbook for less than $300. How could Apple possibly compete with that?

As the more knowledgeable analysts have correctly stated, you can’t really compare the iPad and the Kindle. The former is very much a handheld computer, whereas the latter is essentially an e-book reader. The iPad can serve that purpose, but that’s only a small part of its usefulness.

When it comes to the so-called iPad killers, it appears that the new entrants from such companies as Dell and Samsung will use sleight of hand to convey the illusion of a lower selling price. As with cell phones, you’ll be tied to a two-year service contract after paying what seems to be a modest upfront cost, usually in the range of $300. But as soon as you calculate the total cost of admission, the iPad emerges as surprisingly cheap. Remember, even if you pay extra for the 3G version of the iPad, you don’t have to order a data plan unless you need it, and then it’s strictly on a month-to-month basis.

Without a contract, the competitors might end up charging lots more than Apple for less. Less? Well, the first products to hit the market are slated to use the Android OS, which has not been optimized for larger screens. The Chrome OS, originally designed as a Web-based OS for netbooks, is not expected until 2011.

This isn’t to say that the PC industry won’t get the message. If one product fails, they’ll release dozens more, hoping that one or more will gain traction, or they’ll just saturate the marketplace to confuse and befuddle the would-be buyer. You’ll see the come-on prices widely promoted, and sales droids getting large spiffs from these companies will proudly claim they are all much cheaper than the iPad. After all, isn’t Apple the BMW of the tech industry? Why pay more, when you can get something almost as good for much less money.

In the end, you’ll also see imitation tablet computers selling for less than the iPad, even without a contract with a wireless carrier. That’s all well and good, but the real issue is whether that will make a real difference. If Apple is selling tens of millions of iPads, it would become more and more difficult for also-rans to get a huge piece of the pie. It’s not the same as the smartphone industry, where there were decent and widely-accepted products before the iPhone arrived, such as the BlackBerry.

Yes, the iPhone made a huge difference, particularly in making touchscreens credible alternatives to the tiny physical keyboards most smartphones offered. The arrival of the App Store delivered a lot more value to Apple’s mobile platforms, with a far richer range of software than is presently being offered even via the Android OS.

But the core functionality of a smartphone was already there. Apple just refined it.

With tablet-based computers, they had gone nowhere for years. Microsoft kept touting the imminent arrival of the tablet revolution, and it never happened. Aside from getting a little traction in vertical markets, such as medical offices, tablets were non-starters.

Apple changed the rules. It’ll take a while for the competition to get the message and come up with gear that’s almost as good. You might compare it to the digital media player market, where there were lots of entries before the iPod arrived, but nobody cared. The aftermath of the iPod’s success brought with it loads of promised killer products, but none gained traction. Even when Microsoft double-crossed their PlaysForSure partners and released the Zune, a product with a closed ecosystem that was designed to emulate the iPod and iTunes, it went nowhere.

This isn’t to say that the iPad is the next iPod in terms of long-term success. But Apple has seriously raised the bar, and it doesn’t seem yet that the competition understands how to offer compelling alternatives. A hint: It’s not going to happen by using the bullet point feature method, where they evaluate what the iPad doesn’t do, and add some of those features to their gear. So, yes, some of the announced products may have front and rear cameras, but that doesn’t mean they can take good quality pictures, or that the software behind them is well executed. That is the message Apple’s competitors haven’t grasped.

But it’s always possible a real iPad-killer will appear, and, as a result, help inspire Apple to work harder and build better iPads. That is the best possible result, but it may take a while for anything of that sort to happen. It may, in the end, be too late for the rest of the PC industry.

Consider the disconnect. Apple’s market cap is way ahead of Microsoft’s, putting the company second only to Exxon. As I write this, Apple’s stock continues to rise ahead of the rest of Wall Street, meaning that, at long last, the financial community has a lot of confidence in the company.

At the same time, the critics continue to rant about the things Apple is doing wrong, which threaten to derail the company’s growth. Alas, those are the same things they’ve complained about for years, and there’s no more truth to the objections now than before.

Part of the problem is that Apple’s business model is not the same as the companies the critics want them to emulate.

Take Microsoft. Microsoft is in the business of selling software. It doesn’t matter if those software licenses come with new PCs or are bought separately. One license is as good as another; well, not quite, because the end user pays much more for the same products. But if a company buys a few million licenses every year, little things quickly mean a lot.

Google is in the business of selling ads. That may seem obvious, but it has to be mentioned over and over again. When somebody buys an Android OS phone, the wireless carrier and the handset maker get a sale. Not Google. Google only makes money if you click or touch one of the ads they present in their search engine or software. If everyone stops selecting those targeted ads, Google goes out of business. It’s as simple as that.

Apple, as most of the critics should know, but evidently don’t, earns the lion’s share of corporate profits from the sale of hardware. The OS is the value-added extra that makes that hardware distinctive. Yes, profits are also earned from software licenses, from iTunes and the App Store. But the latter two are there mainly to push hardware. In the end, iTunes and App Store profits are said to be small, hardly above the cost of doing business.

Yes, I realize the critics believe Apple makes money hand over foot from music, movie and app retailing, but the company’s financials do not support that contention. So unless they are prepared to claim Apple is releasing misleading, or outright false, numbers, there’s no reason not to take them seriously.

In light of this situation, Apple can’t act in the same fashion as Microsoft. If the Mac OS were licensed to third-party companies, sales of new Macs would be gutted. It doesn’t matter if the value proposition of a Mac is provably superior. In the end, loads of customers will buy based on price, not value. Apple would have to sell a number of operating system licenses to compensate for the loss of a single Mac sale. That’s where the numbers mean a lot.

There’s also the advantage of offering a reliable and predictable user interface across all products. You see, companies who license the Google Android OS are afforded the freedom to do pretty much what they want to the user interface, features, or bundled apps. Verizon Wireless is substituting Microsoft’s Bing for Google’s search engine on many models. The wireless carriers and the handset makers may add special apps and interface features for branding, or just to look different. What that means is that the Android-powered smartphone you buy may look and work somewhat differently when compared to another model from the same carrier, or a similar model from a different carrier.

When it comes to getting OS updates, nothing is guaranteed. The latest and greatest Android OS versions let you use a version of Adobe Flash, but you may not be able to download that update on your smartphone, unless you resort to some sort of hacking method.

Even if you could declare the iOS and Android OS to be fundamentally equal in most respects — and that’s a possibility that few experts will accept — it doesn’t help if you’re not assured of getting the latest version. Yes, I grant that older iPhones can’t use iOS 4, or will get only a subset of the new features. But that’s a hardware limitation, not the result of Apple’s refusal in inability to let you have updates.

At least Windows looks pretty much the same from PC to PC, except for the crapware the manufacturers load onto desktops to earn extra profits.

When it comes to the smartphone platforms, it may well be that, in the end, more people will be using an Android-powered device rather than an iPhone. But that’s the result of comparing the combined sales of several dozen models to just one. It’s also the result of dumping, since Verizon Wireless is still offering two-for-one sales. You buy one smartphone, the second is free. Sales double, but profits are being sacrificed in the name of volume.

In the end, Apple’s executives appear to know how to run their business in a way that delivers stellar growth and profits, not to mention value to the customer. If market pressures force them to change strategies, such as the recent loosening of requirements for the App Store, so be it. The customer benefits regardless, and if you don’t like what Apple does, nobody forces you to buy their products.

As most of you know, Apple’s is notoriously secretive about forthcoming products, and rarely says much about the beta test process even when a forthcoming product is demonstrated. So you may know that a new version of Mac OS X — or the iOS — is under development, but most of the information about prerelease versions comes from unofficial and unapproved sources, usually in violation of Apple’s confidentiality agreement.

That appears to have turned 180 degrees with a recent announcement that “it is releasing a beta version of its AirPrint wireless printing for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch to members of Apple’s iOS developer program…”

The press release goes on to amplify and extend what Steve Jobs announced at the recent media event where the latest and greatest iPods and Apple TV were demonstrated. So we learn that AirPrint “will be included in the free iOS 4.2 software update in November. AirPrint automatically finds printers on local networks and can print text, photos and graphics to them wirelessly over Wi-Fi without the need to install drivers or download software. HP’s existing and upcoming ePrint enabled printers will be the first to support printing direct from iOS devices.”

All well and good, but the real surprise is that Apple not only revealed the specifics of the new feature, but also explained it was contained in a beta release that had been seeded to developers. That’s a rare, rare thing for Apple to do.

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