Unlike many tech companies, Apple has a long-range vision. Maybe you didn’t see how the iPod would develop, the ongoing improvements in the iPhone or the path from Mac OS X 10.0 to 10.6, but there’s little doubt Apple had broad concepts about the direction of these products from Day One.

I wasn’t surprised when I learned that there was a program to develop a version of Mac OS X for Intel processors years before Steve Jobs announced the switchover at a WWDC. Sure it had only been rumored for quite some time, but a responsible company would always keep the options open, and Jobs was quoted as saying just that when questioned about the future of the PowerPC.

Of course, the tech press generally doesn’t have a concept of long-range goals, although one recent article outlined the substantial but incremental changes you see in each generation of an Apple product. But you don’t see the end game until you take a look at the entire picture after several years have passed. Then a smile comes to your lips.

With the iPad, it’s clear the first version is mostly a consumption device, despite the fact that Apple is releasing a special version of iWork for their new mobile gadget. Most of the people who buy them will be reading books, magazines and newspapers, checking their favorite sites and perhaps managing email. There will be plenty of game playing as well, not to mention listening to music and watching videos.

I’m also certain that public acceptance and the way the product is used will help fine tune Apple’s end game. So features will be added based on the reaction of the newly-minted iPad users. If iWork doesn’t sell so well and other productivity apps don’t appear in reasonable numbers, using an iPad to actually create something may not be a significant part of the picture.

But to get a sense of Apple’s real direction, it makes sense to look at the original 1984 Macintosh. It may have seemed underpowered in its time and internal expansion wasn’t in the picture. Worse, there wasn’t a lot of Mac software to be had.

In a sense, that first Mac may be regarded in the same fashion as the first iPhone. Any additions you’d make came in the form of accessory products and software options were limited. Remember that the App Store was still a year away.

One thing was certain way back when, and that was the ongoing complaint that Macs were just toys and not real computers. Real computers had text-based operating systems, and easy methods for hobbyists to take them apart and fiddle with them extensively to create customized systems. It took years and loads of changes before Macs were taken seriously and graphical operating systems became the norm.

Of course, Bill Gates and Microsoft realized the potential, which is why they stole the fundamentals of the Mac OS and slapped it onto regular PCs. But quite some time passed before Windows was stable enough to actually turn those PCs into productivity tools. Even today, in fact, lots of Windows users just barely cope with the known eccentricities and complexities.

But others complain that the Macs don’t allow for enough flexibility. Expansion is limited to a few choices provided by Apple and anything else requires extensive reworking of the product in ways that might just cause trouble. Today’s Mac is still regarded as more appliance-like than anything that comes from Redmond, WA.

With the iPhone, the obvious consumer orientation once again became a bone of contention. Businesses had the BlackBerry after all. Then Apple added Microsoft Exchange support and remote wiping, plus greater levels of security. Over time, more and more businesses came to believe the time was ripe to bring iPhones aboard. You’ll notice, as the result, that the concept of multi-touch has been duplicated in other smartphones, and this is a big part of the logic behind Apple’s lawsuit against HTC, with the increasing Google threat ever-present.

The iPad is clearly the first member of a growing family of 21st century computing appliances from Apple. As with the original Mac, you are tied in to the factory hardware configurations, and whatever third-party accessories become available. But the ability to use an external keyboard clearly means that there is a larger potential to use an iPad in place of a Mac in many situations. The 9.7-inch screen, while small by today’s standards, is actually larger than the display on the original compact Macs, PowerBooks and loads of other note-books, and much in line with today’s netbooks. It may be small, but not too small to get actual work done.

Assuming the iPad is successful — and nobody knows for sure right now — future generations will not just restore alleged missing features, such as a Web cam, but may take more cues from traditional computers. In 2015, do you really think lots of people will be carting their Mac note-books around when traveling?. Or will they just take out their latest and greatest iPads? Are we seeing the real future of personal computing? I think so.

In recent years, it was widely assumed that Apple and Google were working together to combat Microsoft. That may have been true at one point in time, but a lot of things have since occurred hat have put Apple at Google at loggerheads.

The most recent salvo in this growing conflict was that intellectual property lawsuit against HTC, a Taiwan-based mobile phone manufacturer. The action, involving 20 Apple patents that they claim have been violated, is regarded as an action really targeted at Google. So HTC is supposedly the proxy.

Now that may, in part, be true, but one fact frequently overlooked is the fact that some of the devices mentioned in Apple’s complaint use the Windows Mobile OS. So what does Google have to do with that?

More to the point, one key reason for Apple to go after HTC is because that company appears to be the largest maker of Android devices. I suspect Apple’s attorneys have reasoned that, without being installed on any devices, Android would be nothing more than an idea, not a source of infringement. It’s only when it’s actually used on a shipping product that the issue arises.

Be that as it may, even though Windows Mobile products are involved, Microsoft seems remarkably sympathetic to Apple’s concerns. According to a report in AppleInsider, which quotes a newspaper story on the subject, Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel and senior vice president, suggests that this litigation “is not necessarily a bad thing.”

Assuming the quote is accurate, it may simply be true that Microsoft feels that they stand to benefit if Apple prevails, since Google would be hurt the most.

It’s also true that Microsoft appears to be surprisingly upbeat in their comments about Apple these days. The AppleInsider piece reminds us of a statement that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made about the App Store recently during a presentation of the University of Washington, that “Apple’s done a very nice job that allows people to monetize and commercialize their intellectual property.”

For Windows Mobile to succeed, Microsoft would clearly need to attempt to emulate the success of the App Store, and there’s no reason to think they’re capable of getting such a venture off the ground successfully.

At the same time, there are rumors that Apple and Microsoft are negotiating a deal to replace Google’s search and mapping feature with the corresponding Bing versions on Apple’s mobile devices. Now it’s quite possible that Apple is just hedging its bets, in case the dispute with Google makes it difficult to continue to carry their apps. However, it’s also possible that Apple wants to provide alternatives and leave it to iPad, iPhone and Mac users to make the final decision of what to use.

Bear in mind that there’s already a Yahoo! search option on the iPhone, one that will probably carry over to the iPad version of Safari. Since Yahoo! will be powered by Microsoft’s Bing search engine in the very near future anyway, this may all be about modifying the agreements accordingly.

However, Microsoft is clearly being far more sanguine about Apple these days, and not missing an opportunity or two to issue some praise. The company’s Mac Business Unit is busy working on a new version of Office for the Mac, version 2011, which will, at long last, offer a modern Mac version of the Outlook email client/contact manager application. A more concerted effort is supposedly being made to make the Mac and Windows versions of the office suite as compatible as possible.

That may not seem terribly important to many of you, but don’t forget that Microsoft’s Mac software has frequently lagged behind the Windows versions when it comes to key features. The loss of Visual Basic for Applications in Office 2008, regardless of the excuses for its absence, was a critical factor preventing many Mac users from upgrading. Word and Excel macros have long been critical to certain workflow situations, and having Apple’s Automator as an alternative made no sense whatever.

Sure, Microsoft claimed that they dumped VBA because it would have added a year to the project, and made Office 2008 into Office 2009. On the other hand, I’d think they could have just as well hired extra people to get the job done faster. It’s not as if Microsoft lacks resources. VBA has been around for years, so it’s not as if trained coders can’t be deployed. At the time, I felt it was a strategic decision, an effort to entice Mac users to move to Windows to get the genuine, full-featured version of Office.

However, that situation has changed, partly because of the Google situation, and partly because growing Mac sales have the potential to deliver much higher Office for the Mac sales. The Mac platform’s greater stability also means less support costs for Microsoft, so why run away from a great income source?

All in all, it’s a good reason for Apple and its old enemy, Microsoft, to work together closely once again.

Sometimes I feel that I’m becoming the tech equivalent of the Media Matters Web site. That’s the one where they analyze what they regard as erroneous reports from their opponents. Since they have a liberal orientation, that means anyone with a conservative bent; their biggest target is Fox News.

But I have no political agendas to advance. I’m just interested in reading responsible and informed commentary and news about my favorite subjects. Contrary opinions don’t bother me, so long as they are based on logic and reason and not knee-jerk reactions to something that hits the wrong emotional nerve.

Unfortunately, far too many news sources, particularly the online variety, seek hits and ad revenues above everything, and the facts be damned! Combine that with the terrible proliferation of lazy research, where it doesn’t seem they are even doing a basic Google search, and you understand why such much misinformation passes muster.

I’m also deeply concerned about the fact that some of the sources quoted in these stories have their own overt agendas that make anything they say suspect. Unfortunately, what they say is taken as near-gospel anyway.

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When I suggested recently that we had returned to the silly season, perhaps a little earlier than I might have expected, I didn’t know how right I was. A recent article, from a site that I won’t name, is now suggesting that the iPad is the first nail in the Mac’s coffin, that it won’t be long before only the Mac Pro remains in the lineup. We’ll all be using iPads real soon now, at least according to what’s being implied in that article.

Now there is some reason to believe that a portion of traditional Mac users might decide the iPad is all they need. That, of course, holds true for tens of millions of current Windows users, particularly those who have embraced those cheap netbooks.

The real issue, however, is what purpose the iPad serves in the real world. Yes, Apple will offer a single productivity suite, an iPad version of the various iWork apps, sold separately for $9.99 each. However, that is but one example, and unless or until there are loads of such products available, the iPad is destined to be largely a consumption device.

So, for example, you’ll be able to read books, magazines and newspapers on it. Students will be able to ditch their textbook-laden backpacks and carry the entire semester’s literature in a tiny case. Yes, they’ll be able to do their homework on the iPad as well, but they may choose to just keep the iPad on hand as the electronic reference book and do the rest of the work on their regular Mac and Windows computers. The fly in the ointment is, of course, the lack of a suitable printer feature. Right now, all you have are those apps that require a regular computer to do the heavy lifting over your Wi-Fi network. Of course, this doesn’t stop the student from just emailing their homework assignments. It would sure reduce the paper explosion.

For the rest of us, the iPad will also be used for music and video, and to surf the Internet and play games. Yes, you’ll be able to handle your email in, one hopes, a far more agreeable fashion than on the iPhone, but I still don’t see writing long messages on one, unless you hook your iPad up to the docking station and use a standard keyboard. Suddenly you have what is largely a tiny desktop personal computer.

Now it’s quite true that netbooks are heavily oriented towards simple computing tasks, and many Mac and PC users don’t perform work that extends beyond what the iPad can handle quite easily. This being the case, I expect there is apt to be some cannibalization from low-end note-books to the iPad, a trend that will increase as the product matures.

In the next few years, there may even come a time where the home PC is largely supplanted by the iPad and its competitors. But those who require a computer at work — and that’s most of you I’m sure — aren’t going to suddenly find an iPad on your desk replacing whatever you used before. That may come in time, but not immediately.

Over the long haul, yes, I don’t dispute the possibility that the iPad is, for most of us, the personal computer of the future, but a lot of that depends on whether it truly succeeds and how well it handles your workflow compared to existing tools. In that sense, perhaps the iPad is a modern-day equivalent to the original compact Mac from 1984. Up till then, real computers used text-based operating systems, and the Mac and its trend-setting graphical user interface was more a promise than a realization. Industries developed around it, largely desktop publishing and music, before the “computer for the rest of us” became more than a cute curiosity.

Of course the iPad is a far more developed concept. It begins with that huge repository of apps developed for the iPhone and the iPod touch, most of which will run unaltered. Over time, developers will begin to build “universal” versions, with screen sizes and feature sets optimized for the iPad. If Apple’s own iWork suite is successful, you’ll see more work-related products destined for the iPad. In the end, it’s a blackboard, and users will have to pick up their pieces of chalk to fill things in and take it where it’s destined to go.

Sure, I realize Apple has their own concept of the potential of such a device. Getting it right, rather than repeating the errors of the past, is likely why the iPad’s rumored gestation period was so long. Even now, we’re talking of a version 1.0 product that may undergo loads of changes before the product category it creates is readily apparent to most of us. Apple may know already, but I expect they’ll still be surprised, just as they were surprised and overwhelmed by the huge success of the App Store.

Now if you ask me in 2015 about the iPad versus a regular Mac, I will probably have different answers. But that’s then and this is now.