On the whole, I think Apple’s tight integration among its mobile devices and the way software is sold is a good thing. There is a rich selection, somewhere in the range 140,000 and 150,000 as I write this, with billions of downloads. Some tiny developers have made boatloads of money as a result of their products, and those of you who own these gadgets can rest assured of a safe, secure environment in which to acquire the apps you want.

You know, for example, that if a particular product becomes extremely buggy, it’ll be pulled, and apps that may present security risks or contain unacceptable content will be rejected.

The other shoe, however, drops on developers who feel their app submissions are being unfairly delayed or rejected for arbitrary reasons. Apple continues to claim it’s doing the best it can considering the incredible number of submissions that need to pass muster. When a developer makes a public stink, most of the time Apple will respond in some fashion, sometimes speeding up the approval process and sometimes just explaining why the app remains under review or is being rejected.

Now as much as some people might object to Apple’s behavior, it is, after all, their store and they can pick and choose the merchandise they want to carry. If the decisions are arbitrary, that’s their right, even if some of you don’t think that approach serves the developer or the customer.

The main issue is, of course, the fact that you can’t just take your business elsewhere. The App Store is it, unless you jailbreak your iPhone. Then you can try third-party software repositories, but, of course, you take the risk that the apps in question will run properly and won’t subject your iPhone to possible malware infections.

In this week’s episode of The Tech Night Owl LIVE, noted Mac author Ted Landau suggests another possible solution, one similar to what’s offered on Android smartphones. There would be an Advanced option that allows you to exit the App Store and gain access to other suppliers of iPhone software. Now this may sound great on the surface, but it may be a little complicated to implement. Would it happen within the App Store app or would a different app appear that allowed you to browse the alternative software repositories?

There’s also the question of Apple’s liability. You see, when they post product in the App Store, as much as the Terms and Conditions might be intended to relieve them of responsibility for buggy or infected apps, their manual approval process implies that they are taking steps to make sure what you download is safe. When you exit the App Store, I would expect that Apple would provide several information screens warning you that you are leaving those safe confines and you’re on your own.

Would Apple consider such a move? How would developers react to having to deal with a potentially fragmented audience? Would they desert the App Store and take their stuff elsewhere, or would Apple allow them to have their products available from multiple vendors?

But the key issue here is whether a sufficient number people really care about being able to easily get their iPhone, iPod touch and iPad apps from other sources. I’m sure Apple has considered lots of possibilities, and even though they are surely control freaks through and through, if a different marketing approach had the potential of selling more hardware, their responsibilities to shareholders would dictate that they consider such an option. In the end, after all, it’s still all about the money.

Indeed, Apple’s closed ecosystem has been incredibly successful for them with both the iPod and iPhone lines, and no doubt the same will hold true for the iPad. One thing I suggested to Landau during my interview is that, if Apple had the chance to do it all over again, and easy Internet access was available in 1984, the original Mac may also have been tied to an App Store of some sort.

The critics will say that Apple is screwing itself big time by exerting such heavy control over its platforms. They cite the failure to license the Mac OS early on as the main reason why Microsoft gained the upper hand. But things don’t always play out so easily in the real world. When Apple did try to license the Mac OS in the 1990s, it nearly killed the company. That approach may have worked if Microsoft didn’t exist, but that’s just speculation.

In fact, Microsoft realized soon after the iPod came out that their standard scheme, licensing their proprietary software to other vendors, had failed big time. The Zune and Zune Marketplace represent their pathetic attempt to duplicate Apple’s success. There may even be an official Microsoft smartphone when version 7 of Windows Mobile appears, but right now they may fail just as badly with that initiative.

Meantime, if you really want to protest Apple’s business plan, just don’t buy their products. They’ll get the message real fast if enough of you take your business elsewhere.

In 1998, Apple killed the floppy drive. It took a few years for the rest of the industry to catch up, but the handwriting was clearly on the wall. Of course, anyone who actually lost data on a worn or defective floppy would only cheer the end of that flawed storage scheme.

Segue to 2007. Apple introduces the iPhone without support for Flash. People complain, but iPhones sell at ever-increasing rates. Today, with some 40 million of them around the world, and the iPad on the immediate horizon, Steve Jobs has made it quite clear that Flash is the floppy drive of the 21st century. It’s time for it to go.

Now there have been lots of complaints from the tech media, but you have to wonder whether some of those stories were actually fed by Adobe’s spin machine. Sure, the players are given away free, but you have to pay for the developer tools, and that’s where Adobe earns lots of money. Indeed they bought Macromedia to get Flash and — of course — kill Illustrator’s main competitor, FreeHand.

Yes, it’s true that the lack of Flash on Apple’s mobile gear means that many sites will not look right. Whether navigation menus, introductory videos or special features, you won’t be able to access all the available content.

Adobe takes the position that they are working on a version of Flash that will better support mobile platforms, with improved support for Multi-Touch, which is where the existing version fails badly. Maybe that’ll happen, but Steve Jobs is not likely to backtrack on his decision. He’s already accused Adobe’s developers of being “lazy,” and complained that Flash is the number one cause of crashes on Macs.

You’ll note that, with Snow Leopard, browser plugins are sandboxed, so if they crash, it’s not accompanied by the application itself. In fact, 90% of the very few crashes I’ve encountered since installing Snow Leopard last August were, in fact, caused by Flash.

Now as tens of millions of additional customers acquire Apple’s mobile products, the number of visitors to Flash-based sites will also decline, which pretty much forces the issue. Web developers must either build two versions of their sites to accommodate the different requirements of their potential visitors, or just set Flash aside and try to work within open Web standards.

That may be happening. Google is beta testing an alternative to YouTube without Flash, and just this week Virgin America, a small airline, decided to drop Flash from its site. In the Macworld article reporting on the change, writer Dan Moren concludes, “Because, as we know, all it really takes in the corporate world is one executive with an iPhone to ask why she can’t use the company’s site on her device.”

But that’s just the beginning. Any site that depends on attracting the highest possible number of visitors to attract ads and/or garner subscription revenue will also take notice when the potential customer base drops. One thing is certain, and that is Apple will not be easily persuaded to work out something with Adobe to ultimately support Flash. I’m not going to say never, because it’s quite possible that Adobe, seeing the loss of potential profits, will press its development team to tame Flash for the iPhone and address all or most of Apple’s concerns.

But the window of opportunity is small, and I suspect if it doesn’t happen this year, the chances that Flash will persevere despite the lack of support from Apple are slim to none. Yes, Apple still has a minority share of the smartphone market, but they also have a disproportionate share of mobile-based Web users. Maybe that disparity will even itself out some as competing devices improve their Web access, but the problems with Flash will persist.

As has already been mentioned, even if Flash runs with decent performance, and even if it doesn’t hog system resources or compromise stability, that doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to magically access all or most Flash sites on your smartphone. Flash is designed to work with regular personal computers that have conventional input devices. The Multi-Touch universe can cause loads and loads of trouble, starting with the imprecision of using your finger as a pointing device on a tiny screen. Not only will Flash have to be updated to support such issues, but many sites may have to be reprogrammed substantially to accommodate the changes. It’s not an easy process.

As a result, Web developers might begin to look for the free, open source alternatives to Flash that don’t require paying fees for Adobe’s products.

In a few years, Steve Jobs may be proven correct once again. Flash will be history, and Adobe is just going to have to adapt to the situation and let those other products keep them in business. It’s not as if Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign are going away any time soon, even without Flash support.

This week, there’s a report that Apple is suing a mobile phone handset maker, HTC, over supposed various and sundry patent infringement issues. Now in passing I should point out that HTC is also the company that builds Google’s Nexus One smartphone and a number of other devices that support the Android OS.

And, yes, I’m aware that it’s possible HTC is serving as Google’s proxy to some degree in this lawsuit.

But Apple doesn’t innovate by filing legal actions against the competition, although a quick look at their SEC filings will show a number of ongoing lawsuits. Some involve companies suing Apple, some involve Apple suing others.

In the end, the lawyers will get paid handsomely regardless of the outcome of these various filings. However, the real issue is what does a company have to gain from seeking relief from the courts? It’s not as if there will be a sudden conclusion, one way or the other. Between multiple hearings, decisions and possible appeals, an initial filing may be little more than the onset of years of legal skirmishes before a decision is reached, which can be stressful whether you’re following the case as you’re studying for your masters degree in law, or you’re one of the companies involved. When it’s big boys like Apple, Google and HMC involved in filing, things can get even more tricky.

Indeed, it’s not unusual for two companies to reach an out-of-court settlement to end the process. Innocent or guilty of the claims, it’s often cheaper just to write a check and be done with it. In cases such as this, the actual details of the settlement will often be sealed, except what’s required by law. So you never really know what actually happened behind the scenes.

Now Apple isn’t new to the intellectual property lawsuit game. They’ve been doing it for years. In the early days, Microsoft was the victim, as Apple went after them claiming that Windows contained elements allegedly stolen from the Mac OS. It’s also true that Apple licensed some portions of the Mac OS to Microsoft at one time, back in the 1980s. In any case, all that ended in 1997 when Microsoft made that notorious $150 million investment in Apple, thus closing the books on the endless legal battles.

I have to wonder, though, whether a company is just plain stupid when they do things that bring on intellectual property lawsuits, or perhaps some patents are so vague it’s not easy to know if you’re infringing on something. Unless the issue is clear-cut, there may be a large gray area where the lawyers can argue forever, but the truth will never be found.

It’s also quite possible for intellectual property rights to be abused. There are some companies, for example, that don’t actually produce a product or service. Instead, they own patent portfolios of one sort or another, and they collect royalties from companies that license the technologies they control. More often than not, if legal action is needed they’ll file them in certain portions of East Texas that appear to have become “patent mills,” because it’s easy to get favorable rulings.

As far as companies that actually build things are concerned, it’s a sure thing that they’re engaged in defensive patent filings. The slightest change in an existing technology, or anything potentially innovative, will both be detailed and patents sought. Few companies can do otherwise, because there’s no telling whether another company might come up with something similar enough to actually infringe on that intellectual property. But without a patent, how are the rights enforced?

There’s also the broad gray area about whether a patent should be granted in the first place, and revisions have been considered in the U.S. laws as the result. All these ongoing legal challenges should be sufficient to make companies take notice that something is very wrong when so many lawsuits must be filed.

I do not pretend to know the real issues regarding those 20 or so patents that Apple alleges HTC violated. By the same token, those actions involving Apple, Nokia and other companies that were filed with the U.S. International Trade Commission are also quite murky. Does anyone have a valid case here, and what of the consequences?

If Apple beats Nokia, does that mean that the latter can no longer make gear that violates those patents, or do they simply write Apple a check to cover the alleged losses? By the same token, do you really believe there’s a chance that Apple would somehow be forced by the ITC to stop selling iPhones because some of the features are in conflict with Nokia’s inventions?

None of that sounds credible to me. It may all be a power-grabbing skirmish on the part of these companies to gain competitive advantages, or somehow extort payments or other forms of settlement. I don’t pretend to have the answer, but I am troubled when supposedly responsible manufacturers claim to have cause to file complaints against respected competitors for stealing their stuff.

Of course, all of this may just be posturing, a complicated marketing scheme to make a company seem more innovative, and thus garner customer sympathy. But does that make any sense? I doubt it.

There are some reasonable certainties in the Apple universe, and one is that there will be an iPhone OS 4.0 release some time later this year, probably in July. That is, if the expected timeframe for Apple’s WWDC remains in late June.

For now, I’ll stay away from other possible product revelations, such as the prospects for an early demonstration of Snow Leopard’s successor. Instead, let’s look at the hardware Apple is using for its mobile devices and how that might impact what comes next.

In the scheme of things, today’s iPhone and the iPad might be compared in terms of processor speed and other specs to a typical 2002 Mac. That’s not a bad thing, as those computers, still tethered to the PowerPC, were actually regarded as pretty powerful for their time. On the other hand, Apple is seriously constrained in building tiny handheld personal computers. You can’t, for example, just add RAM or replace the hard drive as your needs expand. I suppose it’s possible to swap out the Flash memory if more storage is needed, but the process would not be pleasant nor make sense from a cash standpoint even if you could find someone capable of performing such a component swap.

So the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad are computing gadgets that are meant to remain from birth to death in their stock hardware configuration, minus what might have to be replaced as the result of a repair.

This state of affairs seriously constrained Apple in building an app SDK for the developer community, and it has clearly forced programmers to build fast, efficient apps that are kind to the limited available resources. No single app can clog your system as it can on a regular personal computer. The scourge of software bloat that’s affected traditional PC operating systems won’t infect Apple’s mobile platforms for a long, long time.

What this means is that Apple must be extremely careful about which features to add and which to avoid. If there isn’t sufficient RAM available, or the processor will spend too much time under heavy load, the capability in question won’t be considered. That is one key reason why multitasking has, up till now, been limited to Apple’s own apps and only within certain limitations, such as being able to make a call on a 3G network — or if Wi-Fi is present — and check your email or surf Safari at the same time. Those sandboxed third-party apps can send Push Notifications and that’s it.

Also bear in mind that most iPhone apps, other than games of course, are single-purpose utilities, perhaps somewhat in the fashion of the original Mac OS desk accessory or Dashboard widget. The iPad will attract more full-featured software, such as Apple’s own iWork and perhaps a special edition of Microsoft Office. But even here, such “frills” as multitasking will likely have to be starkly controlled so that precious battery life and system resources aren’t negatively impacted.

Now as the iPhone becomes more powerful, and more power saving features or more efficient batteries are used, you might see an expansion of the ability to run more than a single app at a time. There are predictions you might see some of this debut with iPhone 4.0, assuming Apple can get past the tradeoffs. They are extremely focused on the user experience, and I don’t think too many of you are suffering needlessly because of the lack of across-the-board multitasking.

Now one key feature lacking is a native printing app, although there are a handful of third-party alternatives. Printing also presents a difficult situation, since the typical inkjet printer, except for the ones with costly built-in PostScript interpretors, use the Mac to process jobs and manage print queues. The existing third-party print apps simply network to your Mac or PC and let them do the heavy lifting. With the iPad, that may no longer be necessary, because of its more powerful CPU, so I rather expect to see an enhanced print capability. Maybe not at the starting gate, but in iPhone 4.0.

Apple might also take the opportunity to fix a few things.

So, in earlier versions of the iPhone OS, you could navigate through your Safari bookmarks, access a site, and when you returned to the bookmarks, you would be right where you left off. With the past two major iPhone OS upgrades, you have to scroll through the entire list to return to that spot, and the list can be extremely big for some of you. Am I the only one complaining?

I also think that the cut, copy and paste feature, while welcomed, needs a bit more work. It’s too easy to just click on a page and have the copy feature enabled, rather than simply move the text entry cursor to the selected position, which may be what you really wanted to do. Such interface legerdemain is not easily handled, but I hope Apple is looking for better ways to manage the situation.

One thing I don’t expect to see in iPhone 4.0 is Flash support. I think that ship has sailed.