Recent Apple product releases have received an almost unanimous “ho hum” reaction from many members of the tech media, not to mention Mac users. Despite a tremendous amount of anticipation about the iPhone in 2007, for example, the critics maintained that it lacked key features, not to mention being a little too different from existing players in the market. And don’t forget that the first iPod wasn’t so spectacular either, but the marketplace reached a different decision.

You hear all that again with the iPad. After the constant rumors and speculation, it turned out to be, from surface appearances of course, essentially a grown up iPod touch. Not that this is a bad thing, but it appeared to disappoint far too many people.

Now in retrospect, the iPhone exceeded expectations from Day One. Steve Jobs originally announced that Apple hoped to sell some ten million by the end of 2008, and they did far better. Of course the advantage in only raising modest expectations is that a company looks heroic when projected sales are surpassed. The original sales rush came despite an awkward method of adding third-party apps via a Web interface. Remember the product arrived way ahead of the App Store, which has quite likely been far more successful than Apple expected. Imagine having 150,000 selections and over three billion downloads in less than two years.

There are now stories that some two dozen mobile carriers might be teaming up to create an alternative to the App Store. Perhaps they feel that, by ganging up on Apple, they too can attract over 100,000 apps and entice millions of you to download their offerings. Of course, there’s that thing about attracting developers to write those applications and, further, providing an environment where they can deliver products that will actually sell.

Let’s not forget that rival music stories have tried for years to supplant iTunes without any success. Apple’s main shortcoming is the lack of an extensive selection of movies, although recent titles are usually available in decent quantities. Oh well, there’s always Netflix. But wait! Netflix’s selection is mostly available in DVD and Blu-ray formats. The selection of titles available for online streaming omits most recent or high-demand titles.

With the iPad, much of the chatter is concentrated on where Apple has evidently failed. What’s most fascinating is the amount of discussion about the lack of support for Adobe’s Flash multimedia technology. Yes, it was mentioned for a while when Flash support failed to materialize on the iPhone, but the recent comments from Steve Jobs about Adobe being “lazy,” has been sufficient to fuel a veritable avalanche of coverage. Much of it, I expect, has been triggered by Adobe’s PR machine, hoping to either convince Apple to support Flash, or persuade customers to choose something else.

Now I agree with Adobe in one way, and that is that the lack of Flash is going to cripple your Internet experience, since so many sites use that tool for everything from fancy navigation menus to games and videos. With tens of millions of iPhone and iPod touch users lacking Flash, not to mention an unknown number of prospective iPad owners, there has to be some incentive for Web developers to ditch Flash if they can. But that’s not so easy, since the most likely alternative, HTML5, is mostly limited to Apple’s Safari and Google’s Chrome browsers. Don’t expect such support from Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer, which means that the vast majority of Web surfers still need Flash.

Past the lack of Flash and some features that may be added later, the possibility that Apple will reach agreements with some content providers has been greeted with skepticism. Understand that these negotiations are happening behind the scenes, so the actual details won’t be revealed until the contracts are signed. Of course, some publishers might feed a few juicy tidbits to the press in the vain hope of forcing Apple to accept their terms. But that sort of behavior tends to have a mostly negative impact on Apple, which doesn’t appreciate having its dirty linen exposed in public.

In the end, however, Apple doesn’t build products to get praise from the critics. Don’t forget the motto for the first Mac, “the computer for the rest of us.” Apple designs gear for regular people to use, focusing on an interface that is relatively simple to master, while offering a support system that frees you of most concerns about service after the sale.

The advantage of having a closed ecosystem, particularly with iTunes and the App Store, is that the customer doesn’t have to worry about getting software that works. With the latter, if the app has serious bugs, Apple simply rejects it. Sure, some people might not want Apple to have that level of authority — or any authority — over the approval and distribution process. But three billion downloads clearly demonstrate that this method works. No wonder the competition is trying their level best to imitate Apple.

Now maybe you aren’t totally knocked out by the prospects for the iPad, but a large repertoire of apps, books and magazines will help make it successful. And success for Apple is near certain these days, even if there isn’t a major promotional push. Remember that the hot-selling iMac, upgraded last October, arrived with nothing more than a simple press release and a handful of media interviews with Apple marketing and product executives.

The real source of ongoing amazement is that Apple continues to create winners, even if some hyper-critical people have their doubts.

You just know that the critics are busy comparing the iPad to other tablet computers and perhaps netbooks. If what they suggest is true, those are the chief competitors to the new Apple gadget.

But it may turn out that Apple’s biggest competitor is — Apple!

More specifically, Apple’s note-book lineup. You see, many if not all of the functions for which many Mac users buy a portable computer can be quite well served for less money by the iPad.

That may not seem terribly likely, but consider that most Mac and PC users have established a fairly modest work agenda, such as checking email, doing simple word processing, Web surfing and perhaps managing personal finances. Students will use their MacBooks and MacBook Pros to write homework and, of course, contacting their friends via instant messaging and social networks.

Pretty much all of these tasks will likely run perfectly fine on an iPad. Indeed, assuming that Apple strikes the appropriate partnerships with certain major publishers, a large portion of the textbooks students buy will be available for the iPad. So instead of lugging a backpack stuffed with thick books, a single device weighing 1.5 pounds will store everything. With an iPad and, one hopes, a decent printing feature, and they will be able to do all their homework without using another computer. They won’t be restricted to iWork, since it’s quite possible Microsoft will deliver an iPad version of Office, and third parties will soon enter the fray.

During breaks, a trip to AIM, Face-book or Twitter will be trivial, with proper parental controls one hopes.

All right, maybe writing term papers on a touch keyboard isn’t so comfortable, but don’t forget there will be a regular keyboard available as an option from Apple and other companies, not to mention the very real possibility that just about any third-party keyboard will work nicely. When you put this combo together, and take into account the iPad’s low price of entry, would there be any need for a regular note-book for this segment of the population?

Yes, I realize that there are loads of productivity apps that won’t be available for the iPad, nor are they even feasible to port. In addition, there are certainly loads of chores for which a regular computer is to be preferred. But what you’re seeing here is a huge segmentation of the market, and it’s quite possible that the iPad will, to some extent, cannibalize sales from the regular Macintosh lineup.

Then again, it’s also possible that lots of people for whom Macs are too pricey might switch from Windows because of the iPad. I mean, compare any netbook to the iPad, and see which provides a superior user experience. Of course, such a comparison is strictly theoretical right now, since the iPad is still several weeks from shipping.

Even when iPads are readily available, it will take time to really judge its real impact and potential. More to the point, even though I might suggest that certain features overlap those of a regular portable computer, that doesn’t mean customers will agree. It may well be that the iPad will serve largely as an auxiliary appliance, in addition to regular Macs or PCs. Quite possibly students will keep their iPads in their backpacks and won’t use them at home, even for homework, or keep the iPad on hand strictly for its e-book capabilities and otherwise stick with their Macs for everything else.

I would expect, however, that Apple has considered all these possibilities before giving the OK for the iPad. Maybe they feel there will be more business gained as a result, or that far more iPads will be sold compared to the number of Mac sales that are lost. I don’t pretend to have those answers.

Indeed, I expect that much of the utility of the iPad will not be known until customers actually begin to use these gadgets and find their own way. With over 150,000 apps available, no doubt the possibilities will be nearly endless, particularly as more and more iPad-specific software goes on sale.

In all this, I suppose you’re curious as to my feelings about the whole thing. Well, you know I’m an old fashioned type. I still do most of my work on a desktop Mac, presentlu a 27-inch iMac with the quad-core i7 processor. And, by the way, I have never encountered flickering or bands of yellow on the display. I suspect most of you haven’t either.

I also have a 17-inch MacBook Pro that’s in service for auxiliary tasks, such as monitoring the live stream of our two radio shows. That’s something that still can’t be done on an iPhone — and I presume the iPad as well since the operating system is essentially the same in most respects — because they don’t support RTSP streams from QuickTime or Darwin Streaming Server. Maybe that’ll come eventually, or we will switch to another streaming method.

In short, I’m still on the fence as to whether I’ll buy an iPad, though I expect I will, assuming I can find space in the budget to finance another gadget when the time arrives.

Someone once said you keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. So we have a situation where Apple’s biggest rival — not including Google of course — remains Microsoft, yet Microsoft continues to create products that run on the Mac. There’s even talk of a version of Office that will be designed specifically for the iPad, no doubt to compete with iWork.

In announcing Office 2011 for the Mac, due out before the end of the year, Microsoft once again boasted about the arrival of Outlook for the Mac platform after all these years. You have to wonder why they’re so late to the party and chose instead to saddle us with the mostly inferior Entourage.

What Microsoft doesn’t want you to remember, however, is that there was once another Mac version of Outlook, an expanded version of Outlook Express, which was available towards the end of the Classic Mac OS era. However, it doesn’t matter so much what features that app contained and what it lacked. You have to wonder why it has taken so long for Outlook to return, and why Microsoft wants us to pretend its predecessor didn’t exist.

It’s fair to say that Office has been a major cash cow for Microsoft both on the Windows and Mac platforms. Indeed, it’s reported that sales of the Mac version remain in the hundreds of millions of dollars, which is surely a huge incentive for its continued existence. At the same time, the Mac development team, known as the Mac Business Unit, is reputed to be the largest collection of Mac programmers on the planet outside of Apple.

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All right, you can be certain that, between now and the actual arrival of iPads for shipping to customers, various and sundry financial and tech pundits will be trying as hard as they can to rip Apple a new one about the product. This is, in large part, a mirror of the six month run up to the release of the iPhone, so how could it be otherwise?

This week, no less than Bill Gates, who spends most of his time in the worthy effort of giving away much of his vast fortune for charitable reasons, is complaining that the iPad can’t possibly succeed because of its touch-based interface. To his way of thinking, you need both the traditional keyboard and a stylus to fill in the missing pieces. Certainly the former will be available as an option from Apple and other companies, but he forgets the fact that the technologies for touch and for a stylus are different, and melding the two might only deliver an imperfect compromise, but that’s nothing new for Microsoft.

The dreadful truth that Gates won’t confront is the fact that tablet computers, as envisioned by Microsoft, have been abject failures except in a few vertical markets. Doctors use them in fairly decent numbers, for example, but the public has rejected tablets, at least so far. To add insult to injury, 20% of the physicians surveyed recently said they planned to buy an iPad in the coming year. Take that Bill Gates!

I’ve already covered the objections to the lack of Flash, but I do wonder, in passing, if some of those columns are in part fueled by Adobe, hoping to force Apple by dint of public opinion to accept a Flash app on the iPhone and iPad. Certainly Apple isn’t above feeding juicy tidbits to the press, and it stands to reason Adobe has a vested interest in saving their product. Sure they give away the player plugins, but they make lots of money from selling you the content creation software. Without Flash to help boost their earnings statements, they would be even worse than they are now.

What they don’t realize, of course, is that if tens of millions of devices don’t support Flash, Web developers will simply look for other solutions that do work. That in itself will ultimately kill Flash, or at least reduce its ubiquity on the Internet. It’s not as if loads of potential customers of Apple’s mobile devices will choose not to buy them because of the lack of Flash. That may impact some people, but not a lot. Most customers aren’t quite so concerned about such things.

Another rant covers the lack of content partnerships. Sure, you know that some major publishers are already present at the starting gate to deliver e-book versions of many of their titles. You also know that Apple has, singlehandedly, upset the Amazon pricing scheme and caused the latter to sign new contracts agreeing to an “agency model” that allows publishers to have more flexible pricing structures.

But why, some might ask, haven’t you heard about textbook publishers? Surely, the educational market is ripe for the picking with the iPad. Students would love to get ahold of such a gadget, and they’d be even happier not to have to lug around tons of heavy books in their backpacks. And I haven’t even covered the high costs of acquisition, since I don’t expect electronic textbooks to be necessarily cheap.

Then there is the entertainment industry. Since Steve Jobs is the largest shareholder of Disney, why isn’t there a special deal covering a subscription service or a similar value-added extra tailored to the iPad? Where is that announcement, forgetting about all the other entertainment conglomerates?

Now the answers to both are essentially the same. If Apple blows its wad during the initial announcement, how do they keep up interest in the iPad in the interval between the launching and the actual shipping date?

The answer, of course, is to fuel interest with the rumors and reality of ongoing partnerships. So there’s a story out this week, still unconfirmed, that Apple may offer downloads of TV shows in standard definition format for one dollar upon the introduction of the iPad. It keeps people talking.

Between now and the end of March, it’s a sure thing there will be yet more announcements of various and sundry content partnerships. Some of this is strategic, with the news being doled out gradually for maximum impact. Some of it is simply because the contracts have yet to be signed. Such things don’t always come easily. Even the present deals with the music industry are the result of hard-fought battles over pricing and digital rights management, and in the end both sides gave a little to cut a deal.

It may also be true that one or more of the apparent missing features will somehow turn up on the shipping iPad. Some third-party accessory makers are already claiming that there’s room in the iPad for a Web cam. That either means there will be one at the starting gate, or that such a feature will appear in a future version. Or maybe they are just blowing smoke.

Regardless, it’s a sure thing that people won’t stop talking about the iPad for quite a while yet. That’s the way Apple wants it.