It seems that some members of the media and the industry research business never miss finding ways to top themselves when it comes to abject stupidity. You have to wonder whether their readers actually believe such nonsense, or become attack dogs, hoping to knock a little sense into their thick skulls.

One particularly lame pronouncement came from one Sarah Rotman Epps of Forrester Research, who avers with a straight face that some 3.5 million tablet-based computers will be sold in the U.S. in all of 2010. Does anyone find something seriously flawed in this pronouncement?

You see, most of the two million sales of the iPad reported in the first two months since it went on sale come from the U.S. I suppose the skeptics would assert that these are early adopters, and once that demand is satisfied, sales will inevitably tank.

But, you see, the sales momentum has yet to stop, or even slow down for that matter. If you want to buy an iPad today here in the U.S., you might be lucky to find one at an Apple Store or perhaps a Best Buy. But I’d call that a fluke. Apple’s online store still lists delivery times as between seven and ten business days for all models. This clearly indicates that demand continues to outstrip supply, so unless Apple has suddenly stopped building near as many iPads as they were just a few weeks ago, Forrester has it all wrong.

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I suppose you can say I’m weird when I tell you that I enjoy the lame attempts by some members of the media to devise sensational — and usually misleading — headlines and content about Apple Inc. and loads of other subjects.

So in the wake of that massive system breakdown when hundreds of thousands of people tried to preorder the iPhone 4, one silly article suggested Apple should have known demand for the new “Jesus phone” would increase by ten times and they, and AT&T, should have been prepared for the online onslaught.

Using what? Fortune cookies? Ouija boards?

Consider that Apple can only build so many pieces of hardware. The contract manufacturers with which they work have a finite capacity, and they have to place orders well in advance to guarantee that they’ll get priority when it comes to production. More to the point, they have to make good guesses about how many units they might need. If they build too many, they are left with loads of unsold inventory.

Now most of you who have followed Apple since Steve Jobs returned to the company are aware that they keep sharp control over production. COO Tim Cook is said to be the best in the business, so they seldom possess inventories of more than a few weeks for any of their products. Often it’s less when demand exceeds those supplies.

You have already seen what’s happened with unexpectedly high demand for new products. It took several months for you to order up a 27-inch iMac without waiting a few weeks for yours to arrive, particularly the models with quad-core processors. The iPad remains backordered, and if you can’t find one at your local dealer, expect to wait 7 to 10 business days for one to arrive.

Last year, Apple sold more than a million iPhones over a single weekend when the 3GS was introduced. Even if they assumed the iPhone 4 would sell twice as many units on its launch, it’s clear they underestimated. Some 600 thousand were pre-ordered the very first day, and some suggested initial demand is ten times higher than Apple or its mobile partners anticipated. While I don’t know how many units they plan to have available this month, if you weren’t lucky enough to have your order accepted right away, expect to wait until some time in July for your next iPhone to be delivered.

That’s the sort of success any company would die for. In Apple’s case, these days they have far more competition than ever. Smartphones running the Android OS are nipping at their heels, boasting enhanced hardware features and a more powerful operating system. There was even a survey released by the NPD Group recently that indicated Android-based devices had actually outsold the iPhone for a time in the U.S. Of course, it’s also true that Verizon Wireless is desperately trying to move as many units as they can, even if they have to give many of them away with those two-for-one offers.

What’s more, the iPhone is sold in the U.S., still, by one carrier, whereas all the cell companies have several Android models available. The odds are stacked way against Apple, yet customers still managed to overwhelm the ordering systems. Think about that.

Now I suppose some critics will say that Apple has a mystique that no other tech company can match. Also remember that Apple is actually advertising a product they want to sell. When you see even a “Droid does!” ad from Verizon Wireless, they aren’t selling you a smartphone. They are selling you a two-year contract containing buckets of minutes, plus a data plan. The handsets you acquire are sold at heavily subsidized prices. If you actually paid a regular price for a Droid or an iPhone 4, the price would be closer to $599, each, and very few of you would bother. Those insanely cheap deals are strictly intended as an inducement to order service contracts.

My feeling, based on what Apple has said, is that they remain thoroughly amazed at the public’s reception to their recent products. They didn’t expect to have trouble fulfilling demand for an expensive all-in-one computer, and they probably expected to have decent supplies of the iPad by now.

With the iPhone 4, I’ve little doubt that Apple anticipated a decent increase in sales, but how far it’ll go is anyone’s guess. First they have to build enough units to satisfy initial demand, and accommodate waiting customers as the international rollout expands.

The problem, of course, is that if Apple expands production too quickly, not only do they risk greater quality control issues, but they have to know when to slow down as demand catches up with supply. That requires incredible skills at managing production and inventory that many companies cannot master near as well as Apple.

Then again, not having enough products to sell isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The only downside is that some customers may just decide to go elsewhere rather than wait. But when an alleged journalist claims that Apple should have known and prepared for unprecedented demand, it’s downright absurd!

I’m even inclined to give AT&T — despite its well-known network issues — a pass on this one.

When first announcing Snow Leopard, Apple stated that they had decided to take a break from snazzy new features, and concentrate on the OS plumbing instead. So you had Grand Central Dispatch, to help with app multithreading, OpenCL, to offload processing chores to graphics chips, enhanced 64-bit support and lots more.

The number of visible system “enhancements” totaled 100, but you couldn’t call them features, at least according to Apple’s marketing approach, even though some might have been regarded as such with previous releases of Mac OS X. Regardless, they were clearly taking a breather.

The slow-down approach made a lot of sense. As of now, few applications support all or any of Snow Leopard’s key performance-related features. This despite the fact that, except for the first Intel-powered Mac mini, all Macs that can run 10.6 sport processors with two or more cores. The 27-inch iMac with the optional Intel i7 processor actually uses hyperthreading to simulate eight processor cores, but it makes no difference of the app only uses one.

You’d think that developers of high-end apps would be jumping to incorporate 64-bit support, but not so. Adobe Photoshop and Premiere made that transition to 64-bit, but not much else in their lineup. Microsoft has confirmed that Office 2011 for the Mac will be 32-bit, even though being able to support extra memory would help with huge Excel spreadsheets and Word documents with complicated formatting and macros. But in claiming that one of the reasons for the decision was to maximize compatibility with the 32-bit version Office 2010 for Windows, you wonder whether the 64-bit version of Office on that platform is trouble-prone.

Just this week, it was announced that Apple and their graphics chips partners, ATI and NVIDIA, are only now working to improve gaming performance, and no wonder. Preliminary reports indicate that the newly-released Steam for Mac delivers games with half the frame rates as their Windows counterparts. That doesn’t mean those games aren’t playable, but it doesn’t look good to see comparable Windows hardware, or Macs using Boot Camp, fare much better with the more sophisticated, resource-hungry settings.

This state of affairs explains why saddling Mac developers with a new operating system and additional compatibility issues wouldn’t be politically correct. Even if Apple wanted to spend R&D money to rush 10.7 into production, it would be a bad idea. Give the third parties time to catch up first.

But know this: I do not for a moment believe that Apple has lost their Mac mojo, and that they’re unable to craft any more compelling Mac OS X upgrades. I’m sure they have already architected the basics of Snow Leopard’s successor, and preliminary versions are making the rounds at the Apple campus. Indeed, Web stat firms that catalog online activity have already reported the presence of 10.7 users in growing quantities.

So if there is going to be a 10.7, I’ve already suggested that you won’t see it until late in 2011, with a major launch at the 2011 WWDC. It’s even possible that the WWDC will be split into separate events, one for traditional Mac developers, and another for those who focus on the iOS. But that hasn’t been confirmed, although such an approach would avoid confusion and help attract a larger number of participants. Indeed, this year’s event was sold out within days, with the larger proportion of workshops devoted to the mobile platform.

When it comes to the actual features, the time is ripe for suggestions, since it’s real premature for Apple to nail down a final feature set. Some high-end users are talking of a new, more resilient file system to replace the aging HFS+. As a practical matter, though, you have to wonder how the transition might occur. Would you have to reformat your drive, wait till you buy a new Mac with upgraded hard drives, or just run some sort of background file conversion utility?

I’m thinking the latter, because that’s Apple’s way. Since it’s possible to partition your Mac’s hard drive “live” to install Boot Camp, I can see a simple solution, although there would have to be a lot of redundancy and error checking in the upgrade utility in case something goes wrong during the conversion process.

When it comes to the whizzy features, there are no doubt loads of things that can be done with the Finder and other Mac OS core apps. You can even return to the Classic Mac OS for influence, and just restore some of the missing capabilities, such as the highly customizable Apple menu.

There isn’t even a system-based Print Window feature, where you can output a copy of a Finder window. Why should you have to depend on third-party utilities for this and other lost features?

Perhaps Apple might reconsider an irritating OS change, where it no longer recognizes age-old Mac OS type/creator information. Suddenly documents formatted in industry-standard formats, such as audio and movie files, open in iTunes or another Apple app rather than the one you’ve always used. Yes, the Finder’s Get Info command lets you change that, so such documents open with the app you prefer, but why should you have to go through the bother?

In any case, I do think it’s important for us to continue to pursue a 10.7 wish list. It’s early enough in the game to actually influence Apple to add or change a feature for once.

In the wake of a WWDC devoid of Mac-related announcements, beyond a press release to introduce Safari 5 for Mac and Windows, some ill-informed pundits have again declared the Mac dead and buried. This is the sort of thing they do to fill blogs and incorporate misguided analyst comments, without bothering to see what’s really going on.

Actually, Mac sales have continued to climb ahead of the PC market as a whole, and on Tuesday morning, Apple released a major refresh to the Mac mini. For the first time, they ditched the plastic case, and went aluminum. As you might expect, the internal workings are more powerful, with a slightly faster Intel Core 2 Duo processor, more powerful NVIDIA-based integrated graphics, and a larger hard drive.

The extras include a separate HDMI port for direct connection to your flat panel TV and an SD card slot, the later the same as you find in most MacBook Pros. But the critics are sniping at the increase in the purchase price of the entry-level model from $599 to $699. This is unfortunate, because it would seem that the value of the added parts would compensate for the price change.

More to the point, Apple has evidently worked hard to make the new Mac mini an easier pill to swallow. For one thing, you don’t need a putty knife or a similar implement to open the case and add memory. There’s a removable panel on the bottom of the unit, something that we have been asking for ever since the original Mac mini debuted in 2005. With two readily available slots, you can increase onboard RAM to 8GB, and you don’t have to restrict yourself to the Apple brand which adds $500 to the purchase price.

All right, if you want to change the hard drive, the task is clearly more onerous, but I’ll let the teardown experts figure out the easiest methods to perform that chore. Or just add $100 to the purchase price to get a custom built version that increases drive capacity from the standard 320GB to 500GB. That would appear to be worthwhile, since you don’t have to hand over money to a service person to do the task for you.

The other big improvement is the integrated power supply. No longer do you have to concern yourself about managing another huge power brick below your desk.

Whether there will be resistance from would-be purchasers go the Mac mini price boost is anyone’s guess. In any case, the server version, which sports a pair of 500GB drives, Snow Leopard Server, but no optical drive, remains at $999.

Forgetting the response to the latest and greatest Mac mini, that Apple was willing to invest in a very new form factor after more than five years makes it quite clear that this model lineup has a future. Adding HDMI also portends a possible Apple TV replacement, although it’s clear the end game isn’t apparent just yet. But clearly the Mac mini has meant to function in your living room.

Typical of recent Mac hardware updates, the arrival of the Mac mini was heralded with a simple press release. That leaves the Mac Pro and the MacBook Air getting long in the tooth, but it’s always possible one or both will receive a refresh in the next few weeks.

My friends, this is probably pretty much the routine you are going to see when it comes to new Mac introductions. The only difference will be the launch of Mac OS 10.7, which clearly isn’t going to happen until some time in 2011. At that point in time, Apple will no doubt unveil the specifics at a special media event or WWDC conference. There will, of course, workshops for developers to help them master the new features and make their apps fully compatible.

Although I’m not into making predictions, the earliest possible release date for Snow Leopard’s successor would probably be the fall of 2011. There is really no incentive for Apple to rush things. PC hardware, aside from those dreadful netbooks, is largely unchanged, and there’s nothing so compelling in Windows 7 that Apple is forced to work any harder to devise a new operating system reference release. They can take their time and release 10.7 when it’s ready, not based on anyone’s timetable.

More to the point, I think it is clear that the Mac, as successful as it remains, will ultimately be largely supplanted by the iPad, a successor, or someone else’s product for most regular users. Content creators will demand heavy-duty hardware as always, though I suppose there will be more advanced tablet-based devices that could serve as traditional PC replacements.

But that’s something I don’t think anyone has to worry about for the next few years. There’s no question that you’ll still be seeing plenty of “death of the Mac” pronouncements between now and then. Just take those claims for what they are worth, which is next to nothing.