I have to think that the PowerPC never really attained its true potential, but that’s not Apple’s fault. First Motorola and then IBM failed to deliver the speedier chips Apple needed to keep up with the rapidly-advancing X86 platform. Both AMD and Intel kept moving ahead, whereas Apple’s chip partners languished and failed to deliver the right chips at the right time.

Take the original announcement of the G5. Steve Jobs introduced an on-screen presentation featuring IBM’s state-of-the-art processor fabrication plant, and how they had developed technology that would blow the competitors from Intel away. He even had the temerity to promise that, a year hence, there would be a 3GHz version. Outstanding!

But the G5 had some serious deficiencies, most notable of which is that they ran real hot. So the most powerful Power Mac G5 required multiple fans and liquid cooling to keep the box at a safe operating temperature. Some folks actually suffered coolant leaks, which meant that their Mac towers were “toast,” as far as repairs were concerned.

Unfortunately, IBM couldn’t tame the G5 sufficiently to reduce the massive cooling requirements, which pretty much put a serious damper on the prospects that there’d ever be a note-book version. So what was Apple to do?

Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.

So here’s the picture. Sales of the Microsoft Zune digital media player have tanked big time. Nobody cares about the thing, and the market for such gear is saturated. Apple took that segment over long ago, and even their sales are falling slightly, with more and more people moving on to the iPhone.

When it comes to search, Microsoft has revised and refreshed the interface to a fare-thee-well. Their share of the market goes up and down within a narrow range, pretty much in the same fashion as their stock price. At the end of the day, they can’t make it click with the masses, who long ago learned that Googling was the be all and end all of online searching.

Just recently, the splashy interface of Bing graced the airwaves in a new set of spots from Microsoft. The name itself is either an indicator of a brilliant result, or someone at Microsoft recalling the name Bing as in the late crooner Bing Crosby, and somehow believing it’ll miraculously gain traction in the 21st century.

Remember, that Google remains decidedly minimalist. Bing is gorged with flashy graphics that take attention away from the main search field. That’s supposed to be an improvement?

So Microsoft, in its infinite wisdom (or lack thereof) has been busy courting another failed search provider, Yahoo! Last year, Yahoo!’s board rejected Microsoft’s offer to buy the company outright for billions of dollars. That precipitated a internal revolt, and ultimately new leadership took over the venerable search company. So, desperate for a survival strategy, they decided to talk to Microsoft yet again. This time they reached a 10-year deal that will substitute Bing for Yahoo!’s search engine, but I hope without the trashy interface elements.

That’s only a part of the deal that includes Yahoo!’s advertising business as well. What’s really peculiar is that, at one time, Microsoft’s own search feature was powered by Yahoo!

In any case, all of these corporate shenanigans have to be approved by antitrust regulators. Watching the competition for search reduced from three to two major players may threaten to make this deal a non-starter. While the Bush administration would likely have allowed this deal to complete after a token review, the Obama administration is supposedly taking a far more rigid approach to matters of corporate deals of this magnitude, so all bets are off.

In the end, will any of these financial dealings mean anything to regular people? Probably not. Bing doesn’t deliver major advances to Internet searches, but works good enough I suppose. Grafting Bing into Yahoo!’s search screen probably won’t make a significant difference. In other words, at best you might expect the status quo.

When the original Microsoft/Yahoo! proposals were announced, I suggested that you can’t take two failing companies and somehow combine them to create a single success. Sure, the combined Microsoft and Yahoo! search share will probably be similar to what it is now. But Google has two thirds of the market, buttressed by AOL, which uses their search engine. Sure, it’s possible AOL, freed from its corporate ties with Time Warner, could sign a deal with Ya-Bing instead for search. A pact of that sort would put Google’s aggregate share a few points lower, but that isn’t going to make a significant impact on the industry either.

The real question here is whether Microsoft can compensate for its numerous flaws by buying companies and/or technology to fill the gaps. Over the years, Microsoft has acquired lots of companies. Sometimes the entire technology vanishes, at other times it appears in an inferior form under the Microsoft brand name.

In the end, I feel for Microsoft’s stockholders, who have endured its flatlined stock price for years, and watched the company taking the same tact as it did in the 80s and 90s, and that is to perpetuate the myth of an innovator, while at the same time struggling hard to deliver 80% perfect imitations of someone else’s product or services. I have to wonder how long it’ll take for wider numbers of customers to get off this aging freight train and embrace something that really works without all the downsides.

In any case, I doubt that Google’s executives are losing sleep over Ya-Bing. They have better fish to fry, one of which is their forthcoming Chrome operating system. I don’t expect that initiative to take the world by storm, but it has the potential to provide serious competition to Windows in the netbook space. Microsoft is already dumping Windows at sharply reduced prices to take over the market of those cheap, disposable note-book computers. How much are they willing to sacrifice with no guarantee of future returns?

Then again, the same can be said for Microsoft’s failed consumer electronics efforts. In any case, there’s no evidence whatever that their forthcoming tie-up with Yahoo! is going to turn around either company in any meaningful way.

If you have tech sites on your regular media diet, you might believe that Apple has already released a tablet computer, and you’re wondering just where you can buy one.

Rest assured, however, that no such gadget has been announced, at least not yet. Depending on whom you believe, though, there may be one this fall, or perhaps early next year. That depends on the state of product development, Apple’s priorities and factors regular people probably can’t fathom.

However, far be it for me to pose a logical alternative, but there are larger questions about such a device that have yet to be fully explored. The first is where the iTablet, MacTablet — or whatever it will be called — might be situated in Apple’s product line. Will it be based on the MacBook innards, and thus able to run the standard version of Mac OS X with the appropriate modifications to support tablet computing? Or will it be in large part a grown up iPod touch with the standard iPhone operating system, plus beefier hardware to support the fatter form factor?

One mockup photo I saw recently shows what is essentially a blown-up iPhone seated on a stand, in front of which is a regular Apple aluminum keyboard. It looks nice and all, but is hardly a practical solution for road warriors. After all, with a note-book, you only have one device to cart around. With the iTablet and its accessories, there are three, plus a mouse of course. Does that make any sense to you?

I suppose you might respond that the iTablet will normally be used as a touch-based device, same as the iPhone. It’ll just sport a much larger keyboard and Apple could, I suppose, add circuitry for tactile feedback to convey the impression that you are working with physical keys. That would be neat. It would otherwise be little different from the regular iPhone, although it’s an open question whether it will sport 3G connectivity. If it does, of course, it’s quite possible a wireless carrier would subsidize the purpose price, so a $799 product will cost, say, $499. Understand I’m only guessing here.

Now this is all well and good, but now we turn to the second, larger issue. Just what purposes it would serve?

Sure, medical professionals and other vertical markets might embrace them. I can imagine that architects might take them to a construction site to update plans based on unexpected issues confronted by the builders. All told, there are certainly a fair number of business uses for an Apple tablet computer.

The consumer picture might be murkier, though. The joy of the iPhone and the iPod touch is that they weigh just a few ounces and are easily transported. However, they are also surprisingly powerful portable computers and thus can handle a variety of tasks from email, Web surfing and amazingly robust gaming. Once you expand the screen from 3.5 inches to 10 inches, however, it’s no longer so easy to cart around. Suddenly you find yourself tossing it in a suitcase, a backpack, or a custom-configured carrying case. The form factor has morphed into that of a smaller note-book — or, shudder, shudder, netbook — and that creates complications.

Other than the larger screen size, just what advantage does an iTablet offer over an iPhone? Sure, I suppose it’ll be a better appliance for reading e-books and magazines. In that sense, the full-color screen could likely smoke the Amazon Kindle, even the larger DX version. It would also be a great way for kids to watch movies on the road, in situations where the screen of the iPhone is just too small. Tasks that involve some sort of text input would also be accomplished in a far more efficient fashion. You might even be able to comfortably write an entire blog entry or a full-fledged manuscript on the larger virtual keyboard. Neat!

However, at what point does the iTablet conflict with the market for a standard MacBook or MacBook Pro? That it’s smaller and more comfortable to cart around across large airport terminals and all? Well, Apple could also build a smaller MacBook, say with an 11-inch or 12-inch screen, keep the price in the same range and deliver all the advantages of a full-blown personal computer? Where is the line of demarcation and is the presence of a touch screen the only differentiator?

Would an iTablet cannibalize sales from the standard Mac note-book lineup, or would most customers decide they prefer the real thing and would be willing to sacrifice many of the Multi-Touch features? Besides, if Apple were to add touch screens to its note-books, while retaining the full-sized keyboard, wouldn’t that fill the bill?

I realize that I am not covering all potential usability issues of an iTablet in this article. The novelty factor alone might be sufficient to sell millions of them before customers wake up and realize that such gear just might be little more than fancy substitutes for a real note-book, with such notable downsides as the lack of an integrated physical keyboard and trackpad.

In denigrating the netbook, Apple has pointed to the known shortcomings of existing products, and broadly hinted at having better ideas should they decide to enter that market. Is an iTablet the solution or is there something else under Apple’s sleeves?

Folks, give me a break! How can anyone believe for a second that Microsoft has any valid business reason for opening retail outlets other than for the childish purpose of imitating Apple?

Consider, for example, that the vast majority of Microsoft’s sales team is focused on business-to-business direct sales. They sell OEM licenses to PC manufacturers, and software subscriptions to the enterprise. Yes, there is a consumer department that markets Windows and Office to retail stores, and even an entertainment division struggling to earn profits, without success, from the Xbox and the Zune music player.

Put all that together, then, and what is it that Microsoft intends to do with a retail chain? Where is the marketing plan, and how can they benefit from putting their storefronts near Apple’s, assuming the spaces are even available?

What’s even more troubling is that several versions of Microsoft’s store strategy have altered filtered out. Microsoft, you see, has great difficulty keeping secrets, or is that the marketing plan? Are they just hoping that media analysts will find a concept that seems to convey magic, and go for that?

They seem to forget the lessons of history. One of the reasons for the extreme skepticism of Apple’s original retail strategy was the poor experience of other PC company stores. Perhaps the most telling failure was that of Gateway. It’s not as if Gateway didn’t have decent retail products to sell, but you actually couldn’t buy most of those products at their stores. Instead, you would only receive demonstrations and place orders. Perhaps Gateway was in its poorly-conceived way trying to emulate the original Sears catalog stores.

Do you remember those huge Sears catalogs, and how you could place your orders by mail or phone, or better, go to the local store and order direct from the catalog. In a few days or weeks, you could pick up your merchandise at the store, or have the larger items, such as major appliances, shipped to your home.

That was so 1950s in its concept. It worked then, but Gateway somehow believed that same retail scheme would sustain itself in the 1990s and early 2000s before they accepted reality shut the stores down for good.

So what is it that Microsoft wants to imitate, which is their version of innovation? Obviously they can’t follow the design of the old-fashioned computer warehouse, such as CompUSA, since that chain failed. Well, yes, another company bought the name and has opened a few outlets, but that doesn’t demonstrate the idea can succeed on a large scale.

A smaller storefront, such as a Radio Shack, isn’t such a good idea either. That chain has had its problems in recent years, and I don’t know if you can bet on their long-term success. I mean, I’d like to see a Radio Shack in my neighborhood when I need an audio cable or some parts that aren’t generally available in a Best Buy or Wal-Mart. But the latter are rapidly making Radio Shack irrelevant.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is evidently going to open its first two stores this fall in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Mission Viejo, Calif.

If that’s true, I just cannot imagine people rushing to their stores to buy a $3,999 Exchange Server 2007 Enterprise package, or any of their costlier business-oriented products. You see, catering to the needs of the customer has never, ever, been a part of Microsoft’s DNA. All they could think about was selling a Windows OEM license for roughly $50 or selling it at retail for several times that price.

Did anyone think that Vista Ultimate was truly worth $399 list price, when Apple charges $129 for its standard Mac OS X user licenses? Talk about greed!

So aside from software, game players and music players, what does Microsoft expect to sell? Another company’s PC box? I hardly think they’d earn much of a profit from that, considering that margins are slim to none these days in the bottom-feeding personal computer industry.

In short, I think of all the dumb ideas Microsoft has had, emulating the Apple Store is way down at the bottom of the list. In fact, I am seriously wondering about the sanity of Microsoft’s senior executives, particularly the ones promoting this lame-brained idea. Just what are they thinking and how is a retail chain somehow going to save the company?

One thing you are seeing, and that is a more timid Microsoft struggling as their sales decline. They caved pretty quickly in agreeing to install a browser ballot box on new Windows installations in Europe, and as an update for those using previous versions. They are also apparently trying to work harder towards letting third parties build compatible products.

It’s unfortunate, in retrospect, that the U.S. government didn’t have the balls to force the proper concessions from Microsoft. That browser ballot box should be done worldwide, actually.

Then again, maybe the marketplace will ultimately decide that Windows was a sham from Day One, and it’s time to migrate to something that actually works. I certainly hope the Mac is a big part of that transition, but even Linux of any persuasion would be far better than anything Microsoft is able to offer.