We all know that Palm made the handheld concept successful, even though Apple’s Newton was there first. Sure, the Palm Pilot was cheaper and not as feature-laden, but it carved a decent niche for itself for several years. That is, until the smartphone took over and smacked it in the rear with a resounding kick.

Now a beleaguered company, Palm has tried to regain the lost luster with its latest contender, the Palm Pre, which is, as with recent BlackBerry products from RIM, considered by some to be an iPhone killer.

True past contenders haven’t done so well in times of product-to-product competition, although RIM, as a whole, with a wider range of carrier partners, is still ahead of Apple in total sales. But they’ve had extra years to get there.

So the question is whether the Palm Pre is going to be capable of hitting the iPhone head on. I suppose one reason why the company is being taken seriously nowadays is because one of its key executives, Jon Rubinstein, was also a key player at Apple during the years that Steve Jobs rescued the company with fancy new Macs and the iPod.

However, raiding a few executives from Apple — and Apple has done the reverse from time to time in recruiting employees from Palm — isn’t necessarily going to transform the company into a smartphone powerhouse overnight. But that hasn’t stopped some from praising the Pre to the skies, including its supposed superior multitasking and search capabilities.

Now where the tech media seems to regard Apple as threatened is the curious way stand-in CEO Tim Cook has responded to questions about the Pre. His hints about going after anyone attempting to heist Apple technology have been interpreted as a direct slam against Palm. In passing, Cook denies that he was referring to any particular company, but simply making a general comment about Apple protecting its legal rights.

Of course, both Apple and Palm have large patent portfolios, and I’m sure the former is examining the features of the Pre real carefully to see if there’s evidence of infringement. I suppose Rubinstein’s presence as a key executive at Palm may bring cause to wonder if he didn’t attempt to infuse the new products with ideas he gleaned during his tenure at Apple. Then again, he’s been in the tech industry for years and he understands the rules well enough, so it wouldn’t seem logical for him to allow anyone to steal Apple’s intellectual property.

Although the Pre seems attractive enough, the slide-out keyboard makes it resemble the fancier versions of the BlackBerry more than the iPhone. But the onscreen demos that Palm provides do enhance a surface resemblance to the iPhone. Even the screen text seems to be crafted in a similar typeface. How it will fare when it goes on sale, however, is another story entirely. Since I’m writing this in advance of the official release via Sprint, scheduled for June 6th, it’s quite possible the initial raves were written by preselected reviewers whom Palm felt would be sympathetic to the company.

In addition, partnering with Sprint, regarded as one of the worst mobile phone carriers in the U.S., would seem to be a curious choice. Then again, one beleaguered company trying to prop up another might have been a smart decision for both, as Palm might receive a more sharply-focused marketing campaign as a result.

As for Sprint, yes, I’ve had experience with the company. My two years as a customer seemed endless, as I encountered frequent disconnects and utterly horrible customer service. Sprint’s later merger with Nextel was clearly not a match made in heaven, as the combined company’s fortunes only seemed to worsen. As market leaders AT&T and Verizon Wireless routinely report subscriber increases, Sprint has continued to lose customers quarter after quarter. Not good.

What it means, however, is that the competition between the iPhone and the Pre isn’t quite direct. When you consider either option, your decision may depend on which carrier you have now, and it’s a huge question whether large numbers of potential customers would be willing to ditch other companies in favor of Sprint, even if the Pre is every bit as compelling as the early press suggests it might be.

In addition, Apple’s ace in the hole is the fabulous Apps Store, where tens of thousands of iPhone apps are available. By dint of its experience with iTunes, Apple knew how to craft a compelling online marketplace for developers both big and small. Palm’s experience is limited to selling overpriced and limited function apps for its handhelds. Even if the Pre is in some ways superior to the iPhone, not having all that extra stuff to download may be the biggest shortcoming in this head-to-head battle to the death. Or whatever you want to call it.

The June 6th release date is also fascinating, as it will fall two days ahead of the start of Apple’s annual WWDC gathering in San Francisco. During the keynote, to be delivered by marketing VP Philip Schiller, you just know they’ll be talking not just about the new iPhone software but will very likely be introducing the newest model, and perhaps even doing some direct comparisons to the Pre.

Then we’ll be able to separate the men from the boys or the women from the girls, if you prefer.

As I’ve said in these columns on more than a few occasions, the media is desperate to convince Apple to build a netbook. They see the apparent success on the Windows side of the computing universe, and they feel Apple is losing big time not to have their own contender.

Well, maybe so, except I think the jury is out as to whether netbooks are going to prove to be major successes or passing fads. Indeed, that’s a question that may not be fully answered until later this year, when a hopefully improving economy and the holiday season allows the public to demonstrate its real preferences.

The other model being talked up is the so-called tablet computer. Now a common iteration of a tablet is a note-book with a swivel screen and the ability to write on the display courtesy of a stylus. In that sense, you might consider it a grown up version of a Palm Pilot.

If you can believe the published reports, Apple has already selected one or more companies to build such a beast, which indicates that development must be at an advanced stage, and the official release may be just a few months way. One report says everything is confirmed, but not till 2010.

What they forget, of course, is that if a contract manufacturer dared to reveal that they are building something previously announced for Apple, you can bet they’d be violating a carefully-worded confidentiality clause and would be in danger of botching the deal big time.

Now the fact of the matter is that tablets haven’t demonstrated acceptability to the masses so far. They generally serve strictly vertical markets. In fact, our family doctor uses them in his practice. Both he and his assistants take their Fijitsu tablet note-books with them when examining patients. They are all connected via Wi-Fi, and are able to consult records, including lab tests, as the doctor begins his consultation on the state of our health.

Indeed, when the Steinberg family needs prescription renewals, the doctor simply selects the appropriate checkboxes to email the renewal to our preferred pharmacy. He can just as easily provide a printed copy via one of the office laser printers.

Now all this “magic” is accomplished by a dedicated software package that can clearly cater strictly to the Windows market, since the closest thing to a Mac tablet is produced in limited quantities by a third party manufacturer.

While a tablet is certainly suitable for a medical practice and a number of other businesses, can they truly be considered mass-market products — or a rousing success for that mattter? That’s the question that the media isn’t answering, but it is certainly a factor Apple would have to seriously consider if they were to seriously entertain the idea of building a product of this sort.

True some regard the Mac tablet as Apple’s ultimate answer to the netbook equation. This proposed product would possibly be roughly the size of the Amazon Kindle DX, which sports a 9.7-inch display and is about a third of an inch thick. However, rather than use a stylus, you’d let your fingers do the writing in the same fashion as the iPhone and iPod touch. It could have a specialized e-book function, an optimized screen display to emphasize crisp text in color and black and white, but would perhaps otherwise be a grown-up iPhone. In other words, more netbook than tablet.

What about a keyboard? Well, quite possibly, this Apple netbook or whatever you call it would support Bluetooth input devices, and maybe even have a snap-out stand so it could be propped up on your desktop and serve as a miniature personal computer.

Let’s face it, I’m mostly shooting from the hip here. I have no idea whether this is the sort of gadget that the tech media is salivating about. What I am convinced of, however, is that you can’t really consider it the Mac equivalent of the tablet computer that has carved out a niche in PC land. That just doesn’t make sense to me, since that form factor, as I’ve said, simply doesn’t appeal to most PC users.

Then again, this isn’t the first time Apple has been told what to do, rather logical or not.

For example, how often have folks clamored for an Apple media center, the better to compete with the ones on the Windows platform? However, the concept of putting a DVR in a PC has not been a resounding success. It’s largely redundant, since the one you get from your cable or satellite provider is quite serviceable, and you can always consider a genuine TiVO if you feel the interface advantage is worth the cost (I don’t think it is!).

In the end, maybe I’m just quibbling about semantics here. A main reason is simply that we may not yet have a precise term for the sort of product Apple may or may not be contemplating. Regardless, if you look at the words being bandied about not as a strict development direction but as a rough concept, maybe there could be something to all of this speculation But don’t accept anything you hear about such a thing as a fact — unless it comes directly from Apple!

I often get the feeling that some so-called tech writers would love to trade places with Steve Jobs. That way, they could direct the affairs of Apple and have it build the products they really want.

Unfortunately, though it is real easy to be an armchair critic, actually running a multibillion dollar global corporation is another thing entirely. It takes real special skills, and you can see that Apple has had trouble filling the top spot over the years. From John Scully to Gil Amelio, all were tragic failures in one way or another, perhaps because they couldn’t see the long-term impact of their decisions.

That, more than anything, may be the biggest advantage Steve Jobs holds over the other CEOs who have run Apple over the years — and some say almost into the ground. He and his fellow executives don’t look only as far as the next quarter in plotting their strategy for Apple. So a temporarily falloff in sales or a temporary craze won’t interest them, because they don’t believe that serves the long-term success of the company.

In contrast, it appears most of the other PC makers on the planet are so busy fighting tooth and nail for every possible sale that they are often missing the big picture.

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

When you look at the latest ad campaign from Microsoft, the ones featuring an actor pretending to be a regular person, whose given a sum of money to buy a personal computer that suits their specific needs, what do they want you to believe?

Well, the common assumption is that there’s a real Apple Tax, the extortion allegedly charged for buying a Mac instead of a Windows PC. But there’s more involved, and the conclusions some viewers are apt to reach is quite different from the one Microsoft wants to convey.

You see, for example, their fake customers entering a consumer electronics store with the most modest of requirements. One wants a note-book with a 17-inch screen, another requires a minimum of 4GB of RAM, while a third seeks the ability to edit video. In each case, the Macs are disparaged as being too expensive, not having the features they want, or, worst, that the buyer just isn’t cool enough to own an Apple product.

So what is Microsoft striving to tell us in what is surely an expensive campaign, since it appears frequently on highly-rated TV shows? That’s a good question, and maybe Microsoft would rather not face the answers.

When it comes to that 17-inch note-book, well you just know it was a foolish scheme, since the budget was a mere $1,000. Yes, the would-be buyer went to an Apple Store, even though anyone who spent five minutes checking the Mac lineup would realize they offered no such model. Microsoft doesn’t want to explain to us that screen size is just one of many important hardware specs to consider.

The ad in which the Apple product, a MacBook Pro, is dismissed because it doesn’t have enough memory, results in the customer buying a computer for essentially the same price with a slower processor. Does Microsoft want us to weigh the amount of RAM against processor speed in making purchase decisions? Well, clearly the RAM of the MacBook Pro can be upgraded, and the selected note-book can get a faster processor. More than likely the upgrade costs would be quite similar, which would mean, naturally, that both computers cost about the same when comparably equipped.

Of course, that’s not a message that Microsoft wants to convey within a mere 30 seconds. Worse, the issue left on the table is the one they are clearly afraid to touch, even though that’s the product with which they actually compete with Apple. That, my friends, is the operating system.

They don’t even bother to tell you that these new note-books ship with Windows Vista, which is generally regarded as a failure in the business market. Consumers will just take what they get, while a few power users might do what businesses do, which is to downgrade to the devil they are comfortable with, which is Windows XP.

In a sense, these ads are not so different from the way Consumer Reports handles PC reviews. They do compare Macs and PCs, but coverage of the operating systems tends to be absurdly brief. CR seems afraid — or unwilling — to compare the usability and reliability of Windows and Mac OS X, side by side. Microsoft’s ads won’t even broach the subject of a Mac OS. Instead, it’s all about the computer hardware, and these are products they don’t even sell.

As many in the media realize — even though most won’t admit it — Microsoft earns the lion’s share of profits hawking software licenses to PC makers and the enterprise. The PC company, such as Dell, or HP, will pay a reduced price for millions of Windows licenses. Businesses will order up software license subscriptions with loads of seats or users for both client and server products.

In PC land, it’s the hardware makers who deal, for the most part, with individual consumers, just as Apple does.

Now it may well be that the hardware companies mentioned in those Microsoft ads, such as HP and Sony, actually contribute a portion of the advertising expense. This might be similar to what the PC companies themselves have worked out with Intel, when they close out their ads by mentioning the kind of processor they use in their products. There, Intel is subsidizing the campaign for their customers. That is, of course, except for Apple which doesn’t care to mention another company’s names in their ads, and thus pays for everything.

In Microsoft’s corner of the universe, the PC is a commodity product. The brand name is meaningless. You simply choose the model you want based on specs alone, take it home, or have it delivered to your home or office. They cannot grasp the reasons why former Windows users prefer to choose from the rather restricted model lineup provided by Apple. And, because there are no really cheap Macs, they may end up paying a somewhat higher price too.

But the worst part of it all is that Apple has grabbed a heavy share of the medium- and high-end of the PC market. The rest of the PC makers are busy fighting for market share and slim profits with ever-cheaper hardware. The netbook is but the latest example, but I just wonder if the industry hopes, over time, to add upgrades to those shrunken note-books so they’ll eventually cost the same as the full-sized versions.

Apple, as we all know, has other ideas, and it’ll be fascinating to see how things continue to play out. But I wonder if Microsoft even understands what they’re missing.