Up until this week, if you attempted to jailbreak your iPhone — which means unlocking it and making it possible to use apps from sources other than the App Store — you might be regarded as a rogue, maybe even a lawbreaker. You might wonder if Apple might actually show up at your door and seize your iPhone.

Of course, in the real world, Apple has continued to tolerate the practice, while warning customers that if you accidentally brick your phone — make it unusable — they aren’t responsible for the consequences. The risk is all yours.

However, a new modification of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act essentially makes the practice legal, at least insofar as you possibly suffering any unsavory consequences. That is, aside from risking the voiding of your iPhone’s product warranty because of the possible misuse of the product.

What makes matters doubly confusing is that this revision will be in effect for just three years, meaning that future copyright officials might opt to let it expire, or devise something totally different.

The real issue, however, is whether Apple’s decision to place double-bolt locks on the iPhone, the iPod touch and the iPad are right and proper. That, of course, is evidently one of the reasons that the U.S. FTC is inquiring as to Apple’s business practices.

Now I suppose you can appreciate Apple’s point of view. The App Store is a relatively safe and secure environment from which to download software from a choice of over 225,000 products. You don’t have to worry about malware, porn or bug ridden apps. If a submission has a show stopping bug or behaves in an unsanctioned manner that Apple otherwise missed, not to worry. They’ll delete it pronto!

Certainly families ought to feel comforted acquiring software for their Apple mobile products in the online equivalent of Disney World.

However, there are also power users will feel constrained by the limitations Apple imposes on the use of their mobile gadgets. They want to be able to install anything they want, and jailbreaking is their route to freedom. After jailbreaking, they can also unlock their iPhones to use on a different network that’s also hardware compatible.

All well and good, except for one thing: You see, Apple doesn’t hold a monopoly position in the smartphone segment. Far from it. Nothing stops you from buying someone else’s product, if you want more freedom to use a gadget of this sort as you see fit. Certainly, Apple doesn’t want to lose a sale, but in the hotly competitive mobile device universe, owners of products using Google’s Android OS appear to have more power to use and abuse their handsets if that’s what they prefer.

On the other hand, the real question is whether Apple would benefit if they installed an “Exit” sign on their mobile products. Such a setup could, with appropriate warnings that Apple isn’t responsible for the consequences, allow you to do something already available on an Android phone, which is to leave the safe confines of an App Store and fend for yourself.

Now from Apple’s point of view, it’s also possible that their legal department feels they might still be considered liable if something goes wrong. Support people might also be inundated with calls from folks who installed buggy software, suffered malware outbreaks or ended up bricking their iPhones and iPads after departing the App Store. Not a fun prospect.

My feeling about all this is that having a “red light” district or App Store exit strategy wouldn’t be a bad idea, although I can see the potential for support complications. On the other hand, that approach would go against everything Apple stands for, which is to provide a seamless end-to-end user experience. In fact, I rather suspect that, if Apple had introduced the Macintosh in 2010 rather than 1984, they would have devised a similar scheme for handling software purchasing for that platform too.

The Mac, of course, first appeared when the Internet was still largely a work in progress among a small number of power users, so such a merchandising approach would never have been possible.

Today, the cows have already left the barn, so it’s too late to shut the system down. This doesn’t mean Apple can’t — or won’t — unleash a Mac App Store as an alternative, not a replacement, for traditional software purchasing. It wouldn’t prevent you from buying a physical copy from a retail store or online merchant, or downloading the app from other vendors.

Apple is already part way there with an online store and a retail chain. The server infrastructure has been established with iTunes, and it wouldn’t take much in the way of backend development to add yet another storefront for you.

The problem is, of course, third-party dealers who wouldn’t appreciate the competition. But Apple hasn’t been afraid to take on their own resellers in other ways. What difference would it make this time?

Now that the notorious Antennagate scandal has apparently died down, the tech media can return to talking about Apple’s “other” product lineup — the Mac. Yes, there’s finally news that disproves the unfounded rumor that Macs are playing second fiddle these days, which is why they allegedly don’t receive regular upgrades.

After ongoing rumors of reduced availability of the iMac and Mac Pro, Apple finally met expectations and revised both Tuesday. Although the basic form factors remain essentially identical to the previous versions, there’s more horsepower under the hood and, typical for Apple, the prices are essentially unchanged.

The key here is that, despite claims that Apple is ignoring the latest chips from Intel, it does appear that they are embracing many of them for these speed bumps. The aging Core 2 Duo is gone from the low-end iMacs at long last, replaced by Intel’s Core i3, accompanied by discrete graphics from ATI. That decision is a response to the fact that Apple cannot use NVIDIA’S powerful integrated graphics with Intel’s current processors due to an ongoing contract dispute.

One other notable change is the ability to add a second internal drive, a solid state device, which now brings the iMac ever closer in capability to the Mac Pro.

As far as the Mac Pro is concerned, that update still incorporates Intel’s older Nehalem chips in the less expensive configurations, and relies on the new Westmere six-core processors for the super-expensive customized versions, beginning at a price just shy of $5,000. But don’t expect one on your doorstep quite yet. The new Mac Pros will ship in August.

While there’s little to offer in these products beyond enhanced number crunching capability, Apple did introduce two other products that have long been anticipated. Come September, the aging Apple display lineup will be updated with a $999 27-inch LED model, offering the pretty much the same image quality as the larger iMac for those who already have, say, a Mac mini or a Mac Pro. The 24-inch and 30-inch models will be history as soon as stocks are depleted.

There are a few extras in the new display, such as an ambient light sensor that behaves in a similar fashion to the one on an Apple note-book, adjusting brightness based on available lighting, and even a MagSafe connector to function as a convenient recharging station and somewhat reduce your cable clutter.

In addition, a recent patent filing from Apple has paid off in a real shipping product, the Magic Trackpad, which is, at $69, basically an 80% larger version of the one you find on a Mac Pro, but tilted to match Apple’s current lineup of aluminum keyboards.

This product may be the most intriguing, since it further integrates the feel of input devices on both desktop and portable Macs. As most of you have come to realize moving from Apple’s keyboard to the ones on the MacBook and MacBook Pro, they already act very much the same in most keyboard entry situations.

Indeed, this may be one of Apple’s most significant, if unheralded, innovations, because it smoothes the transition from one Mac to another; that is, assuming you aren’t using a third-party input device with either. I know that I’ve always had to spend a few moments adapting from desktop to portable and back again, and some of you never succeed.

Compare that to the widely different keyboard actions on various Windows-based desktops and note-books, because, frankly, this is not an issue those manufacturers ever consider. Unless you opt for a special keyboard, the ones you get on most desktop PCs are junk, and note-book keyboards and trackpads are seldom crafted for comfort and speed. That’s particularly true with the compressed keyboard on a netbook.

Sure, the touch keyboard on an Apple mobile device is decidedly different and clearly less suited for extended typing sessions, but an external keyboard can remedy at least some of the known shortcomings if you are willing to give up portability and travel convenience. Or just confine your text entry to more limited functions and consider a dictation program for everything else. That way, you don’t have to fret about keyboard feel.

There is yet one more new product, a $29 “eco-friendly” battery charger that can handle up to six AA cells and keep them fully charged for your battery-powered Apple input devices. Six long-life rechargeable batteries are included, and Apple boasts you can, with regular recharging, use them for up to ten years. Of course that will be long after your Macs have been replaced by something far more advanced in terms of power management. But the promise is at least intriguing.

All told, this would appear to be pretty much the end of the anticipated Mac upgrades for the year, except for one thing. The fate of the MacBook Air remains uncertain. It is the only product in Apple’s personal computer lineup that has been left untouched so far this year. But it’s also not a large seller, and some feel that people who want a really thin and light portable computer might opt for the iPad instead.

As far as software is concerned, there are still unproven reports about a forthcoming iLife ’11 upgrade with some mysterious added app, and you have to wonder when we might see the first glimmers of a substantial rumor about Snow Leopard’s successor, Mac OS X 10.7.

According to the conventional wisdom, Apple is selling more and more Macs every quarter, but remains far behind on the global market, with just a slim single digit market share.  The real issue, however, is whether the well-known surveys are seriously understating Apple’s success.

You see, in addition to selling 3.47 million Macs this past quarter, Apple also moved 3.27 iPads. So how do you define an iPad anyway?

To some, the iPad is just a swollen iPod touch, a handheld personal information gadget that’s best used for book reading and Web surfing. On the other hand, just where is the line of demarcation between a tablet, typified by the iPad, and a personal computer, such as a Mac?

You can use both to browse the Internet and handle your email. The presence of Apple’s Keynote and Pages means that you can also create content on an iPad, and I haven’t begun to cover the thousands of other content creation apps available from third parties. That’s still a burgeoning market, although the Mac is still way ahead.

On the other hand, today’s iPad is far more functional than many older Macs, and probably a whole lot faster to boot. The 9.7 screen is larger than any of the original compact Macs and earlier PowerBooks.

So why not call it a personal computer and be done with it?

Of course, such a conclusion entails the recognition that a device using an operating system originally installed on tiny smartphones and similar gadgets is also sufficiently powerful and functional to run a “real” computer. That assumes, of course, that a smartphone or an iPod touch, for that matter, isn’t a PC, although they share many features.

At least three posts I read online, from Tony Smith of The Register, Michelle Maisto at eWeek, and Jonny Evans at Computerworld, suggest that the sales of Macs and iPads ought to be combined, and if you do that, suddenly Apple is selling close to seven million PCs, sufficient to place the company among the top five PC makers worldwide, with a market share of over eight percent. According to these reports, one market research firm, Canalys, has evidently begun to take that approach, and you wonder when or if such companies as Gartner and maybe even NPD might use the same statistical model.

Sure, it’s quite possible Apple’s rivals will claim that sales of their tablet-based products ought to be considered in the same light. But I expect they already are, since pretty much all of the existing iPad rivals are just gussied up note-books with special screens running the very same version of Windows used on regular portables.

Or maybe not, if they can’t devise a credible iPad killer, and that’s still an open question. The latest would-be contenders are expected to use Google’s Android OS, Google’s forthcoming Chrome OS, or in the case of HP, the WebOS they acquired when they purchased Palm.

As far as I’m concerned, I’ve no problem whatever with combining the iPad and the Mac when it comes to overall sales. Yes, they are two set of answers to the same questions, but they overlap sufficiently that lots of customers can comfortably use one or the other and pretty much accomplish similar tasks.

On the long haul, I expect the continued growth of the iPad may well mean that it will become the PC of choice for many buyers. Right now, there’s little evidence of cannibalization from Macs, though. The combined iPad/iPhone/iPod halo effect simply attracts more people to Apple’s products. All three comfortably mate with a Mac or PC courtesy of iTunes.

But once a customer is exposed to Apple’s technology — even the vast majority of iPhone 4 users despite the alleged impact of that antenna issue — they are more apt to consider a Mac when it comes time to buy a new PC.

On the long haul, it means Mac sales will continue to climb ahead of the PC market. But it’s also true that future iterations of the iPad will become more and more credible as PC replacements. Today that means fewer netbook sales, but in the future it may also mean that the traditional PC, even a Mac, will be an afterthought except for people who are accustomed to the mouse and keyboard configuration or engage in heavy-duty content creation.

You will, as Steve Jobs suggests, still need the truck for heavy lifting or powerful productivity apps, but the sleek family car will comfortably serve the needs of the rest of us.

In the end, I think Canalys has the right idea. Total iPad and Mac sales should be combined and, particularly in the U.S., that approach would place Apple’s market share far closer to its major rivals.

Of course, that may also be one reason why industry analysts will keep them separate as long as they can. It’s not as if Apple’s rivals want to see them credited with a heavier share of the PC pie.

If you can believe reports from the mainstream media, Apple was poised to announce a software fix for the iPhone 4 antenna problem last week. I’m not referring to a more accurate display of signal strength — meaning fewer bars in many instances — but an actual method to compensate for the effects of using the famous death grip on that device.

Now it doesn’t matter much that you can create similar symptoms on other phones, including the highly touted alleged iPhone killer, the Motorola Droid X. Facts don’t matter when the public’s perceptions and misguided commentaries count for everything. If you believe it’s true — or close to the truth — that’s all that counts on 24/7 cable news channels and the blogosphere.

But that software fix report didn’t come from the usual online suspects. Instead, it appeared in The New York Times, the fabled newspaper of record. Hence you had to take it seriously, even though Steve Jobs denied it outright during that special media event at Apple headquarters.

Also denied was the story from Bloomberg News claiming that Apple’s chief antenna designer protested the decision to use an external antenna system. That, too, seemed credible ahead of Steve’s response, but let’s take the stories to the next level.

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