So Steve Jobs has thrown down the gauntlet. He is clearly sick and tired of applications that perhaps run decently on Macs and other Apple platforms but don’t take advantage of all the features. The media wants to suggest Apple is really at war with Adobe and other companies that use runtimes and cross-platform tools to create their apps. But is there anything wrong with that?

I realize most of this programming stuff doesn’t mean much to most of you, but consider your user experience. With Java, a programming method that was supposed to allow apps to function on loads of computing platforms, do you actually recall any that look good and work well? Any? Or do you end up with compromised garbage with poorly-formed user interfaces and erratic performance?

Large software developers, such as Adobe and Microsoft, generally use cross-platform development environments so they can basically write many of an app’s features once and then deploy them to the Mac and Windows after doing the requisite work to make them appear native to their target OS. At the same time, it means that those applications may not only have interface glitches but lack native capabilities.

Now Apple migrated to Intel processors four years ago. They have evangelized developers to support 64-bit processing, the better to maximize performance and, if need be, use larger amounts of RAM. Here in 2010, you look at the specs for Adobe’s forthcoming CS5, and find that just three apps in the suite truly support 64-bit. It would seem Adobe has tossed us a bone by offering that support for Photoshop, Premiere Pro and After Effects. Yes, those are the apps that are apt to benefit most, but what about support for Grand Central Dispatch for superior performance on today’s multiprocessor Macs, or OpenCL to harness the power of the most powerful graphics chips?

When you check the specs for Photoshop Extended, the high-end version, all Adobe tells you about enhanced capabilities is: “Some GPU-accelerated features require graphics support for Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL 2.0.”

What about the reworked plumbing in Snow Leopard? Why isn’t Adobe addressing any of those features, other than token support for 64-bit? Do they not believe that the Mac content creators that form a hefty portion of the user base would somehow benefit from the best possible rendering speeds?

Or did Adobe saddle itself with cross-platform tools that make adding extra support for a custom OS feature more difficult? Or maybe, as some have suggested, Adobe took a gamble years ago to emphasize the Windows platform over the Mac. Despite the Mac’s resurgence, they have been slow to adapt.

That takes us to Flash, where Adobe’s new tool to port Flash apps to the iPhone platform will be stillborn come version 4.0 of Apple’s mobile OS. I suspect Adobe’s spin control machine is working overtime to paint this as an act of revenge on the part of Steve Jobs in his eternal efforts to maximize control.

But also consider what I just said, that using non-native compilers to build an app may provide compromised results that fail to support all of the custom features of a particular OS. Maybe that’s fine if you want to deliver the same stuff for the Android OS and iPhone. But what about the new multitasking capabilities for iPhone 4.0, and the other 99 new features? If apps don’t support those features, it hurts the platform because customers can’t use all the capabilities that Apple promises. It also hurts the apps themselves, because they deliver a sub-par user experiences.

That may have worked fine on the Mac, where Apple had to struggle to encourage developers to stick with the platform over the years, particularly after migrating to Mac OS X. Indeed, the original release of Mac OS X was delayed by several years because Apple was forced to build the Carbon environment to make it simpler for the largest developers, such as Adobe and Microsoft, to support the OS more easily and not have to redo all their apps, a prospect to which they objected.

In the real world, Carbon worked well enough, but as Mac OS X matured, Apple encouraged developers to migrate to Xcode’s Cocoa technology. The situation became all the more important when Macs moved from the PowerPC to Intel processors, and it’s essential if new apps have any hope to support Snow Leopard’s new features.

Returning to the mobile platform: Despite the complaints, it doesn’t seem that Apple’s tighter control has hurt sales in any meaningful fashion. It’s not as if loads of customers are moving to Android or BlackBerry devices because Apple changed the terms of its developer agreement or has blocked Flash from the platform. Yes, the lack of Flash can be inconvenient, since you can’t get the full experience from loads of sites. By the end of the year, however, there will be 100 million Web surfers who have great demographics in terms of education and income who won’t be able to view Flash content. You can see how fast sites are dumping Flash and that trend will only accelerate.

In fairness to Adobe, that company may have spent a bundle to buy Macromedia and acquire Flash, but in the end, their content creation tools can live long and prosper even if Flash dies. And no, folks, I don’t for a moment believe those new rumors that Adobe might sue Apple over its change of iPhone SDK terms, or perhaps the decision to ban Flash. Sounds like someone’s having a psycho fit.

You know that sales of new Macs are increasing at a speedy pace, generally faster than the rest of the PC industry. You also know that Apple’s mobile platform has long since surpassed the Mac in terms of total user base. With 80 million and counting, against roughly 30 million folks owning Macs, you might see reason for Apple to care less about the computing platform that made it famous.

Also consider how Apple has promoted new Mac hardware. Pretty much all recent upgrades have been announced with simple press releases, even the iMac, said to be the hottest desktop computer in years. At the same time, Apple’s mobile platform and even the iPod both earn special media events, where the press is invited to San Francisco or Apple’s campus in Cupertino to get personal treatment and even time to get hands-on experience with the new hardware.

All right, it’s true that new versions of the Mac OS also get the full treatment. Then again, special demonstrations plus lots of WWDC sessions are essential to help developers learn about new features and updates to Apple’s development environment. No way to avoid that.

Now in the wake of the unveiling of iPhone 4.0, there are reports that Apple has put off Mac OS 10.7 in order to allocate more developers to work on the mobile platform upgrade. Of course, it’s not that anyone outside of Apple can know for sure. There may be loads of reasons for a presumed delay, if one exists, and perhaps it’s just to give Apple more time to devise a load of sexy new features and make sure they are fully integrated into the existing OS structure.

It’s not as if you actually need a new version of Mac OS X. Snow Leopard is still pretty new in the scheme of things, and the vast majority of apps still don’t support the most important new features, such as better performance with multicore processors and harnessing the power of advanced graphics chips.

Even the enhanced 64-bit support hasn’t lit much of a fire when it comes to companies who build the software that takes best advantage of accessing more system memory. In the forthcoming Adobe’s Creative Suite 5, out of over a dozen apps in the various production packages, only three —Photoshop, Premiere Pro and After Effects — are listed as providing 64-bit support. Then again, I doubt Adobe could offer any reasonable excuse if these high-power apps didn’t gain that capability with this revision, since the Mac was bypassed in CS4. At that time, by the way, Adobe’s excuse was that Apple just completed its Intel migration, and thus there wasn’t enough time to take advantage of Apple’s revised development tools. Then again, Adobe does a lot of cross-platform stuff, and didn’t Steve Jobs poke holes into that approach because he regards the results as “sub-standard”?

When it comes to Mac hardware, it’s not as if speed bump upgrades have been coming at a fever pitch. On the other hand, Tuesday morning’s MacBook Pro upgrade — a step that vindicates the pithy email from Steve Jobs telling a customer not to worry about the long delay since the last refresh of this model — does indicate that Apple is still in the business of delivering compelling upgrades.

Although the announcement arrived in press release form, in keeping with their recent posture, it does offer the promise of up to 50% faster performance. The graphic chip dilemma, the response to the conflict with NVIDIA and Intel over the former’s license to build integrated graphics for the latter, was resolved in possibly a less satisfactory fashion. Basic graphics are now handled by an Intel HD Graphics chip, with the option of using the discrete NVIDIA GT 330M when you need superior performance.

As with the previous model, pricing for the cheapest MacBook Pro starts at $1,199. The 17-inch version, the only one containing an ExpressCard/34 slot, lists for $2,299. Battery life is estimated at eight to nine hours, due to the greater power efficiencies of the new parts.

Now as to the OS itself, remember that Apple exists to make a profit, not to upgrade its personal computer operating system on a fixed timeframe. That upgrades comes when they decide that they can provide value in a new version, perhaps sell lots of upgrades and, more to the point, push out more Macs that take better advantage of the new features. If sales are moving along at a good clip, and Mac users aren’t filling Apple’s Feedback pages with loads of complaints about a long-in-the-tooth operating system, I suppose there’s no real incentive for them to move forward any faster.

Then again, maybe the rumors about a delay in 10.7 are just that — rumors. Maybe Apple is working full steam ahead on getting the new version out according to an internal timetable that, of course, we know nothing about. Yes, it’s true Apple delayed Leopard’s arrival to finish the first iPhone OS, but don’t assume history is about to repeat itself.

No sooner than the ink dried on the updated iPhone 4.0 developers agreement than the complaints flared up. Apple was engaged in a plot to destroy Adobe, and kill a number of third-party development tools that were supposed to make it easier to build iPhone apps — and those for other mobile platforms too.

Here’s the key paragraph that generated the furore: “Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).”

This may not mean a thing to most of you, but the key is that this evidently means that apps created through some sort of “runtime” scheme, such as a port from Flash, or using a cross-platform compiler, are prohibited. No ifs, ands, or buts.

So you can understand that Adobe and a number of other companies are complaining about the alleged hubris in Apple’s decision to want to force you to do use their own development tools to build apps for the iPhone and iPad. How dare they?

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Apple’s Thursday morning rollout of iPhone 4.0 was more about meeting expectations than necessarily beating them. For long months, the iPhone, the iPod touch — and now the iPad — have been severely criticized for the lack of certain features. Most prominent in this list is expanded multitasking, which had, up till now, only supported Apple’s own apps.

If you take Apple’s excuse at face value, multitasking wasn’t extended to third-party apps because of the potential to severely hurt performance and battery life. But Apple’s developers threw us a bone, in the form of Push Notification. This allows an app to silently send you a message using Apple’s own servers.

For most people, the lack of multitasking wasn’t an issue. Apple’s mobile platform is so responsive, apps can be quit and launched again with practically zero delay. But there are situations where running more than a single third-party app is critical, such as using the Pandora music software rather than iTunes. Right now, you can’t play a track via Pandora while doing something else, such as answering a call, but that’s going to change this summer when iPhone 4.0 is released.

In their presentation, Steve Jobs and crew said that developers would get a lucky seven APIs that they can use to multitask. The end result appears, from the onscreen demonstration at any rate, to be a near-perfect solution to the multitasking dilemma. Double click on the Home button and you’ll see a dock containing open apps that are a click away from accessing. If an app starts a task, such as downloading a file, and you switch to another, the previous app will finish the download before shutting down. Although some apps do this already, Apple’s updated tools will allow for a saved state, meaning that you can resume when you were doing previously when you launch an app again.

There will also be a local version of Push Notification, so a third-party app can communicate with you in the same way as Apple’s own calendar and alarm clock.

There’s a lot more, such as allowing a navigation app to continue operating and directing you to your destination while you take a phone call or send someone a message, perhaps to notify them about your impending arrival.

All told, it appears Apple has carefully examined the reasons iPhone, iPod touch and iPad users might require multitasking and they have addressed just about every one, with the promise that performance won’t be seriously impaired. Of course, if you use a battery hogging app in the background while doing something else, you will still have to expect a trip to the charger a lot sooner.

The rest of the features listed by Apple are probably no less significant, but since multitasking has been given such a high level of prominence, it takes first place. During the presentation, Apple referred to the seven major enhancements in iPhone 4.0 as “tentpoles.” For example, you’ll also have an enhanced version of Mail with a global Inbox, same as the desktop version, and speedier access to your email folders. There’s expanded enterprise support, including encryption and the ability to set up multiple Microsoft Exchange accounts, the ability to create folders by dragging and dropping apps one upon another, and a whole lot more.

Devoted gamers will get the Game Station, a social networking scheme that is probably meant to put Apple’s mobile platform on a par with other gaming systems. You wonder, in passing, when the Mac will support this setup, so that dedicated gamers will have a complete solution. Then again, Mac OS 10.7 has yet to be revealed, so you never know. I still think you’ll see a demonstration at this summer’s WWDC.

Rather than cover all the features, which mostly involves repeating Apple’s own information on the subject, check out the iPhone preview site for regular updates as the new OS is fleshed out. Meantime, developers are poring through the iPhone 4.0 SDK and they will soon begin to reveal more of the fine details.

In a short press meeting after the session, Steve Jobs said, to nobody’s surprise, that iPhone 4.0 wouldn’t have Flash. Did you expect otherwise? And nothing was mentioned about native printing support, although I suppose there’s still hope.

Now if you have an older iPhone, you might want to take pause. You see, the enhanced multitasking capability requires an iPhone 3GS, a current model iPod touch and, of course, an iPad. Older iPhones and iPod touches aren’t powerful enough to manage this and other power-robbing features, so maybe you want to consider upgrading when the next model refresh arrives.

Oh sure, you can probably suggest that Apple is omitting some features from older models in order to sell you new gear. That is probably true, in part, but Apple is also concerned about the end-user experience. You wouldn’t want multitasking if your Apple mobile gadget bogged down under the load of a few apps, right?

As I said, the new release will arrive this summer, no doubt coinciding with the next generation iPhone. The iPad’s update will come this fall, perhaps to flesh out certain features and customize them for a more powerful device.

Of course, some people will suggest that Apple can never do enough to satisfy their needs and desires. But with 100 new features, some of which we don’t really know about yet, I’m sure there’s plenty of meat and potatoes for most of you.