When you run Safari, the search address bar will give you any search engine, so long as it’s Google. With the iPhone, you can select Yahoo! as an alternate. Sure, you might find it only slightly less convenient simply to visit the search engine of your choice, and add it to Safari’s toolbar.

However, as you know, most people tend to stick with the default settings, be it a browser, a search engine or loads of other options on a Mac or a PC. Certainly that works to Google’s advantage, since it holds such a huge share of the market. It doesn’t hurt that we “Google” something rather than search for it. Being a verb pretty much means that Google will own search for the foreseeable future, but that doesn’t mean that Apple shouldn’t give you some alternatives.

This all comes in the wake of Apple’s ongoing competitive byplay with Google. Where they were once close allies, speaking in a corporate fashion of course, these days they are at loggerheads in more and more markets, particularly smartphones. The forthcoming Google Chrome OS will initially find its way into netbooks, which are regarded as prime competition for the iPad. And let’s not forget the mockups you’ve seen of tablet computers running Chrome OS.

In any case, regardless of which search engine they support, Apple isn’t providing the links freely. No doubt they receive a cut of the income or some other form of payment to have Google on Safari, and Google and Yahoo! on the iPhone.

As you know, there’s a Bing app for the iPhone, and, of course, Bing will power Yahoo! once that deal with Microsoft is concluded. It would therefore make a lot of sense to simply offer Bing as an option for iPhone users. It’s not as if Apple and Microsoft haven’t cooperated before, even though they compete fiercely in the operating system front.

Having Bing on the iPhone as an option would be a win-win for Microsoft, which is spending huge sums of money to promote the latest revision to their search engine.

Now as an aside, I think the Bing ads run on TV are perfectly awful, perhaps even more irritating than the ones for Windows 7. But that’s not the point. The key issues involve giving you a choice without asking you to manually go to a separate site or add it as a bookmark, and also to take a little business away from Google.

When it comes to actually writing code for a new option on the iPhone or the Mac and PC versions of Safari, that’s a no-brainer, and nothing that can’t be done by a skilled programmer in a few days, assuming there isn’t already a version with that capability sitting in Apple’s test labs. I’ve even seen some hacks that promise to accomplish that task in the desktop version of Safari, but they are evidently saddled by internal blocks against adding extra search sites in the app itself.

The real issue is the nature of Apple’s contract with Google and how much wiggle room is present to allow other search engines to be included. Then again, nothing forces you to use Safari, although I wonder how many Mac users simply don’t bother to consider the alternatives that include Firefox, Google Chrome and Opera, and these are only the more popular choices.

Firefox, whose publisher, Mozilla, receives tens of millions of dollars of cash from Google each year to fund their operations, offers a number of standard search options and allows you to add even more, including Bing, if that’s what you want. The same holds true for Opera, although it’s a bit trickier to add Bing to that app’s preferences.

Certainly Microsoft’s management ought to be pushing hard to give Mac users another alternative. How Apple might treat such overtures is anyone’s guess, but Yahoo!’s presence on the iPhone ought to be sufficient incentive to go one step further.

Of course, if search engine choice makes sense, why not take this all one step further? Sure, Safari doesn’t have a lock on the browser business, although most Mac users never try anything else. Obviously Apple wants more and more people to use WebKit based browsers (and that includes Google Chrome by the way), but in the spirit of openness, maybe they should also consider a browser ballot box when you set up a new Mac.

Sure it makes a whole lot more sense on the Windows platform because of Internet Explorer’s unfair dominance of the world market, although the browser ballot box is only mandated for Europe. But it is not a difficult task to devise a similar feature for Apple’s initial Mac setup screen. Then again, Apple doesn’t want you to have to think about such choices. That goes against the grain of not just making it simple, but giving them as much control as possible over their platform and the use of their products.

So in the end, it’s highly unlikely you’ll see additional standard search engine choices on a Mac, iPhone or iPad, and a much smaller chance that you’ll have an Apple-built option to choose an alternate browser.

In the old days of CRT displays, I never, ever, got a perfect product. Except perhaps for the original 13-inch Apple RGB color display, every one of them was defective in some fashion. Now you can call me obsessive/compulsive, or just picky, but my eyes would discern the minor irregularities in screen geometry, where the supposedly rectangular picture would perhaps bend at one corner or another. From then on, my eyes would focus on that singular defect, and it would stick in the back of my mind, ever-present.

Now the era of LCD should have dealt the death-blow to such problems. For the most part, that’s true, but newer problems replaced the geometry defects. From limited viewing angles to imperfect color uniformity, LCDs have their own brand of troubles. Even if colors are right on, there may be dead pixels, but if you have too many of those, or they are in the wrong position on the display, you will usually be able to get a replacement from the dealer or manufacturer.

Now large LCD TVs and computer monitors are nothing new. Before Apple came out with a 27-inch iMac, they had (and still have) a 30-inch Cinema HD Display in their lineup, for a mere $100 above the price of the cheapest large screen iMac. It’s hardly worth the bother, since the 27-inch iMac, sporting a 16:9 aspect ratio rather than the previous 16:10 widescreen motif, offers the same number of horizontal pixels. And you get a powerful built-in computer as part of the package, so I wonder just how many 30-inch displays Apple is actually moving these days.

However, the 27-inch iMac had a somewhat troubled introduction. Some early adopters opened the shipping box, which, even though everything seemed intact and undamaged, revealed an iMac with a broken screen. Indeed, one of the first test units Macworld received arrived in a similarly damaged condition.

Although some might feel Apple has surrendered too readily to environmental activists and made shipping containers too thin and not sufficiently protective of the fragile LCD panel, that’s not actually true. I’ve seen boxes for 26-inch and 32-inch TVs that are no thicker, and they ship tens of millions of them without customer complaints about breakage.

Well, that problem, whatever the cause might have been, appears to have been resolved. But there are those troubling reports about display defects that persist to this very day. One disturbing symptom involves a yellow tinge, which is especially visible when you are viewing gray or white objects on screen. The other is even more peculiar, involving a flickering or tearing effect that appears at random.

It is fair to say that few LCDs will provide a 100% uniform color image. If you tilt your iMac, you will see minor variations in color conformity, even though the LED backlit panels Apple is using are of a higher grade than the ones most PC makers offer. If you achieve 99% perfection, that’s probably a good thing. But if a patch of discoloration is readily visible, Apple will certainly repair or replace your iMac. So far, the repairs involve swapping cables and even the LCD display. But some customers complain that they’ve had two or three repairs or replacements with little change, so you have to wonder whether they are simply unlucky or some other factor is causing those color artifacts. I don’t pretend to know the answer, but it does appear Apple is trying to do right by their customers.

The flickering is the most problematic, simply because some of the affected users say it may happen at intervals of days or weeks, not consistent enough to easily reproduce. Last December, Apple released its first fix, the 27-inch iMac Graphics Firmware Update 1.0. According to the support document on the subject, this particular update “applies to the graphics firmware on ATI Radeon HD 4670 and 4850 graphics cards to address issues that may cause image corruption or the display to flicker.”

Some customers reported that patch worked. Others didn’t. So this week, Apple came out with yet another fix, the 27-inch iMac Display Firmware Update 1.0, which is also designed to “address issues that may cause intermittent display flickering.”

Confusing? Well, they also recommend that you apply the graphics update ahead of the display update. If you’re not sure what you need, just use Software Update on your 27-inch iMac, and it will retrieve the required file. If you get the graphics fix, you’ll want to run it again after installation, to get the display patch.

If Software Update doesn’t list either of these updates for your 27-inch iMac, you probably don’t need them.

For the most part, the two fixes seem to have done the trick, although there are a few people who claim that the flickering problems have persisted after both updates, and even grown worse. For them and those who are afflicted with bands of yellow and other screen defects, Apple says “contact AppleCare or an Apple Authorized Service Provider.”

In all fairness to everyone, the number of people afflicted may be quite small. But some of them are extremely vocal, reporting the ongoing soap opera with their iMacs on various discussion boards, including Apple’s. The folks who have no problems, such as your humble editor, simply get their work done and don’t usually concern themselves with such complaints.

Contributing to the concerns is the fact that the new iMacs remain hot selling products. The 27-inch iMac delivery delays briefly extended to three weeks amid unconfirmed rumors that Apple had halted production. After Apple issued an official denial to The Wall Street Journal, delivery timeframes improved to two weeks. A coincidence? Or maybe an indication that Apple is finally getting a handle on production delays, regardless of the cause.

No, folks, this isn’t a conspiracy theory, nor do I actually believe Apple’s being especially secretive about the things they do to make you switch from one technology standard to another. But it sometimes takes a few years to comprehend their vision.

Take the decision to embrace USB in 1998 starting with the original iMac. Till then, Apple used several connectivity schemes, such as ADB for a keyboard and mouse, SCSI for such devices as external drives and scanners, and LocalTalk for printers. USB aimed to replace all three, while Ethernet ports continue to do the honors for networking. USB, in fact, was first introduced in 1996, developed by a group of companies that included Compaq, Digital, IBM, Intel, Northern Telecom, and Microsoft. But not Apple.

In any case, USB went pretty much nowhere until Apple embraced it. Within weeks, there were loads of adapters and peripherals that supported USB. Best of all, most worked on both Macs and PCs, as the latter began to support USB too. Apple saw the future and embraced it without flinching. Soon all Macs ditched the legacy ports and had USB.

Even though Apple continued to incorporate the faster FireWire ports on most Macs, that support has been lacking of late, as the basic MacBook doesn’t have FireWire, and iPods long since went USB, the better to support the Windows platform.

Oh and do you remember floppy drives? When Apple began to phase them out with that first iMac, Mac users and tech pundits complained vigorously, but it only made sense. Floppies just didn’t have the capacity and reliability to serve as removable storage mainstays.

More recently, Apple is moving to change standards yet again, though it may not be as readily obvious. But those unofficial quotes attributed to Steve Jobs at a company town meeting last week made it crystal clear what it’s all about — Apple wants to purge Flash from the online world.

This may not be something that Adobe would like very much; they were accused by Jobs of having lots of potential, but being “lazy.”

Now I don’t think any of you would disagree with me when I say that Flash is probably one of the most prominent causes of crashes on the Mac, which is precisely what Jobs says. What’s more, Flash is also credited (or blamed) for ongoing security lapses. I won’t get into the issues of whether the Mac version of Flash is worse than the Windows version or whether they are equally buggy.

When asked about the lack of Flash support on the iPhone some time ago, Jobs said that the light version was, well, too light, and the desktop version was too resource intensive. While that imply that a “just right” version might come eventually from Adobe, when they announced development of a new mobile version, support for the iPhone was notably absent from the press release.

Now the iPad is a far more powerful beast than an iPhone, but there’s still no Flash support and none promised in our lifetimes. It has become crystal clear that Apple regards Flash as just another floppy disk that needs to be discarded as a relic of the past. The question is whether the rest of the online world is ready to follow.

There are millions of sites out there with Flash-based content, and Adobe continues to evangelize the platform that it acquired several years ago when Macromedia was taken over. Indeed, one of our sites still has a Flash video and navigation bar, but I’m working on removing the last vestiges of Flash.

As more and more online surfers use devices that don’t detect Flash, there will be a growing incentive for Webmasters to give it the heave-ho. There are open source alternatives to providing multimedia on a site. Apple and, in fact, Google, are moving towards HTML5, which contains improved support for online videos. There’s already a beta version at YouTube. The HTML5 version doesn’t support ads yet, but most of you would prefer it that way.

Right now, those videos are primarily supported on browsers based on Apple’s WebKit, which includes both Safari and Chrome and a number of mobile-based alternatives. It’s a sure thing that iPhone’s popularity won’t abate any time soon, and the iPad may prove to be a bigger sales sensation than the so-called experts anticipated, particularly in light of its lower sale price. At $499, the iPad sits just above mass market netbooks and basic desktop systems. Despite the state of the economy, it doesn’t stretch logic to see customers opting for something cool rather than dull and drab for only a small amount of extra cash.

As the installed base of people who can’t view Flash content grows, it’s only a matter of time before more and more sites decide to drop it and use other methods that are compatible with all or most browsers. While I don’t want to see Adobe lose business, they will have to simply move on or show us they can deliver something better.

The other day I saw what appeared to be an ad for the iPhone, depicting a new app that allowed you to manage your auto insurance policy. But rather than segue to the telltale Apple logo, it turned out that this was actually commercial for GEICO, complete with that lizard-like puppet that serves as the company’s mascot, known as a Gecko.

Now the company that brought you talking lizards and yuppie cavemen would certainly be expected to want to use the iPhone to provide an app to service their customers, but they’re clearly not the only one. The U.S.’s two satellite TV providers, DirecTV and Dish Network, are both eagerly touting their iPhone apps, designed to allow you to schedule the shows you want to record on your DVR remotely.

Now I don’t believe for a moment that these and other companies who tout iPhone apps are doing so without Apple’s permission and, in fact, participation. It may well be that, as with those “Intel Inside” stingers on the typical PC commercial, Apple provides a cash incentive for a company to boast about having an iPhone app.

This is all part and parcel of the incredible marketing push Apple has embarked upon to make the iPhone and the App Store totally essential to your lifestyle. What’s more, you can expect the same to hold true with the iPad.

On Sunday night’s Grammy Awards show, for example, Stephen Colbert pulled out an iPad to consult when he read the nominees for song of the year. Last week, none other than comedian Paul Reubens, known to most of you as Pee-Wee Herman, was busy showing off his iPad. In all fairness, Apple is quoted as saying Colbert’s iPad was real, but Herman’s was fake.

Regardless, even though regular people won’t be able to buy an iPad until the end of March, that hasn’t stopped Apple from selectively placing them in the hands of at least one show business personality. The reason, of course, is that the media will notice and you will notice, which will simply sell more product.

As you know, Apple has been playing the product placement game for all its worth for many years. In the 1996 “Mission Impossible” movie featuring Tom Cruise, a PowerBook was featured. Of course, the big joke at the time was that this was the infamous model whose release was delayed for many months due to an outbreak of smoking batteries involving some prototype units.

Don’t forget how yet another PowerBook, a featured “character” in the science fiction disaster film “Independence Day,” was employed by star Jeff Goldblum to wirelessly infect the alien mothership’s computer with a virus. It is ironic that the computer “for the rest of us,” supposedly less susceptible to malware, was itself used to spread malware in order to save the planet. Curious indeed, but no more curious than how it would be possible for a primitive Earth computer to communicate with an advanced system from an alien world.

Over the years Apple products have played sometimes prominent roles in movies and TV shows. The telltale Apple logo is everywhere, even on Dr. House’s desk as he devises schemes to infuriate both fellow physicians and patients in the popular medical drama.

Certainly Macs are widely available in procedural dramas, where crime lab personnel are busy consulting a Mac display or portable to detect evidence against the perpetrator of the week. Sure Windows PCs are found too, sometimes with a Dell, HP r Vaio logo on them, but there is little about the design of those products that allows them to stand out. They might as well be tables and chairs for all the attention to bring to themselves.

Indeed, in situations where both Macs and PCs are used, the villains almost invariably have a PC. After all they are evil, and Microsoft is evil, thus they go together. Certainly Mac users would agree, but this is clearly part and parcel of the mindsets of many TV production companies as well.

Over the next few weeks, even before the iPad is officially available, you’ll no doubt see more and more of them providing various and sundry functions in your favorite shows. The production timeframe of movies will probably prevent them from making an appearance for many months, perhaps a year or two.

In the meantime, don’t be surprised if doctors and nurses are increasingly discovered making their rounds around hospitals with iPads in hand to consult to retrieve medical records and enter critical patient information. Of course that might be true for the real world one of these days too.

I’m sure you realize that directors, producers and even TV networks don’t just happen to go out to buy Macs with which to populate their sets. There’s quite a bit of product placement in props, which is why you’ll often see brand name beverages, such as Coke or Pepsi, being consumed by one of the performers. Indeed, if you examine the credits at the end of a show, you’ll often see a whole list of credits listing the companies who received product placement promotions.

Apple’s own editorial loan program will often put the interests of show business ahead of the tech media when it comes to getting product into the field. Clearly this marketing method continues to pay off, and no doubt you’ll now be searching for the next appearance of the iPad, perhaps in one of your favorite shows.