You’d think a company that’s been in the public eye since the 1970s would be pretty well known as far as products and strategy are concerned. But that doesn’t stop the myths and the FUD (short for Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) from being spread by people who may have vested interests that prevent fair treatment of Apple Inc.

These days, the few media pundits who believe anything Microsoft says continue to repeat the claims without taking the time for critical thinking. The one that persists is the alleged “Apple Tax,” the supposedly higher price you pay for the privilege of owning a Mac.

Now in the past, Apple really did charge excessive prices to get as much profit as they could for their gear. Certainly perceptions are slow to change. These days, Apple does exist at the higher end of the PC universe, but not because their products are overpriced. They simply provide a full-featured product, and avoid stripped down gear.

Comparing the Mac versus the PC actually requires careful matching. First you have to make sure, as much as you can, that all the hardware is the same, from processor speed, to RAM speed and amount, to the size of the hard drive. The operating system is more troublesome, because Microsoft sells a load of versions of Windows Vista — and that greedy approach will continue with Windows 7.

Apple sells but one full featured client version of Leopard. So you’d naturally want the full-featured version of Vista, which is called “Ultimate.” Now some of the folks who try to argue around this choice will tell us that you don’t need all the features of the highest priced version of Vista, so why buy it? Well, it’s a question of comparing Leopard with a non-crippled Vista, pure and simple! What you need for your particular purposes is besides the point. This is just a price comparison and nothing more, and we’re trying to be as fair as possible to both sides of the equation.

Now I’ve done this sort of match-up on a number of occasions in recent years. When all is said and done, the price difference is usually very slight. I remember configuring the cheapest Dell desktop recently against the $799 Mac mini. The Dell reached $709 before I hit a brick wall. There was no available suite of applications to approach the quality and features of iLife ’09, nor could I add the 802.11n draft Wi-Fi capability to the Dell. My conclusion is that the cheaper Dell was a poorer value and that if it did came with the extras I couldn’t order, it would end up real close to the Mac mini.

On the high-end, a Dell workstation that is equivalent, more or less, to a Mac Pro is often more expensive, and even Dell admitted that to me once, although they could not explain why.

Unfortunately, once Apple developed the reputation for selling overpriced gear, it was hard to lose it. Since Microsoft seems to be living in the 1990s with their marketing schemes, you can imagine that Steve Ballmer never forgot the fact that Macs were once expensive, and so he continues to do his best to exploit something that is, as a matter of fact, simply not true.

The other fallacy being perpetrated by the fear merchants is that malware will shortly overwhelm Mac OS X users. They’ve been saying that for over eight years now, ever since the initial release, 10.0. Yes, there have been proofs of concept, meaning stuff created in a test setting, and some limited outbreaks. But nothing that’s overwhelmed the Mac community and caused lots of damage, financial and otherwise. That compares to the Windows platform, where malware infections still cause losses estimated in the billions of dollars each and every year.

In passing, you wonder how many people have lost their jobs and, worse, how many companies have gone out of business because issues with Windows have overwhelmed their system administrators and caused huge losses.

Of course that hasn’t stopped some companies from releasing Mac-specific security software. Some of it may be useful, such as expanded firewall protection and enhanced methods to protect your kids from getting exploited online. However, I think it’s premature to recommend that you try out any anti-virus software — at least not yet.

I’m not so foolish as to claim that Macs are invulnerable to malware, and that a major epidemic won’t come at some time in the future. The problem will be, of course, that the programs that protect you against such things will probably have to be updated before they can help. That, and watching the news as it develops, is one way to protect yourself. Another is to, as one security software developer said some years back, practice safe hex.” Don’t download a fils attached to an email message unless you expected it, even if it comes from someone you know. It doesn’t hurt to check, in case their system (particularly if that person is a Windows user) got compromised. If you get a letter purporting to be from one of a financial institution you deal with, asking you to reset your credentials by clicking a link, open your browser directly to check your account. Don’t assume anything.

Of course, the myths about Macs will keep on coming. As The Night Owl nears its tenth anniversary, we’ll definitely be here to continue to set the record straight.

The last Leopard update arrived in December, 10.5.6, and after lots of forewarning from the Mac rumor sites, 10.5.7 appeared Tuesday afternoon. Claims by Mac|Life magazine that it would definitely arrive last Friday, with no evidence to support that assertion, thus enter the growing realm of abject tech media failures.

Although 10.5.7 only appears to have a handful of mostly-obscure fixes, there are actually a slew of security-related issues that were dealt with. Unfortunately, whenever Apple strives to address potential security leaks in their own software and in the open source apps that a part of the system, ignorant media scribes will proclaim the end result as proof that malware is ready to strike the Mac big time at any moment. That assumption is clearly false, since none of those issues appear to have resulted in any widescale exploits.

However, I’m not at all surprised. After all, they are only following in the footsteps of Microsoft, which seems to have seldom released a product or service that doesn’t, to a large extent, imitate that of a competitor, yet they proclaim it as evidence of “innovation.”

There was also a revised version of the Safari 4.0 beta, one that seemed a tad more stable than the original release, but it’s not good enough for me to use it full-time. You see, display incompatibilities remain with my bank’s account services page, vBulletin’s admin page, and some features of the WordPress Dashboard. We use the latter to write these articles, and Safari 4 choked on the “Insert/Edit Link” dialog and other essential pop-up screens. So I’m back to Safari 3.2.3 for now, and since the people over at the WordPress company, Automattic, are heavy-duty Mac aficionados, I’m sure they are making their views known to Apple about such matters.

In any case, 10.5.7, by itself, has been well behaved so far. But if you’re skeptical, give it a few days for the early adopters to put it through its paces. You’ll already see some complaints on some of the Mac troubleshooting sites, but pay them no heed unless a large number of users encounter the same difficulties. Alas, the troubleshooting community has,  by dint of ongoing irresponsibility in their approach to covering these topics, lost a lot of its credibility. That’s a sad development.

Assuming there are no show-stoppers, I wouldn’t hesitate to install 10.5.7. I rather expect, barring any unforeseen problems, that it may indeed by the last Leopard update before Snow Leopard arrives.

As to Snow Leopard, the latest news from Apple, that Mac developers will get the final beta during next month’s WWDC, is only further evidence pointing to a late summer release. I’m suggesting the last Friday in August, and I stick by that prediction, even though I may be dead wrong. You see it’s not based on inside information; it’s simply an educated guess.

Now while rummaging through the tech news stories in recent days, I found yet another example of amateur journalism. It happened on the eWeek site, but I regard the author of this piece as not deserving of a link, or hits. If you want to Google the article, fine, but I will not identify the article or author any further.

The article recounts the writer’s efforts to migrate to the Mac. The remaining impediment appears to be Microsoft Entourage, part of the Mac Office suite. We’re never told precisely which version was actually tried, and whether all the updates from Microsoft were run, but the article concludes that “Entourage is a second-class e-mail client.”

Well, perhaps, but precisely why isn’t terribly clear, except that it is downgraded in comparison with Outlook for Windows, which is supposed to be a roughly equivalent product. It appears the only problems, or at least the ones revealed in the article, involve obstacles in trying to set up mail handling rules in Entourage to match those in Outlook.

Now without a clear picture of precisely what actions were required, it’s impossible to know if a solution exists. It may simply require altering the rules to properly shunt messages to a handful of special folders. Alas, there’s no indication as to what remedies, if any, were tried, or even if the author attempted to contact Microsoft or the support people at his company for assistance.

All we know is that Entourage is no good, and that, as they say, is that.

Now I should mention that I use Apple Mail. I prefer the way it handles my IMAP messages, even though the setup routine can be a trifle awkward. Typical of a Microsoft product, Entourage offers far more choices, including a more robust rule feature, but that can also present obstacles to the average user. If something goes wrong, which of the many options do you need to change to set things right? Alas, the poorly-written and designed Help panel sometimes gets in your way when you seek a solution.

But I also know lots of people who swear by Entourage as their favorite email client, so there you go. Maybe the person who wrote the article in question will take a few journalism courses, and learn how to properly present key details in articles of this sort.

Enough of my rants for today. I’ll probably have more tomorrow.

As you know, Apple sells far more note-books than desktops these days. That’s just the trend in the industry, accelerated on the PC side by the rise of netbooks. Certainly, this transition makes a lot of sense, since you don’t have to fret over synchronizing two computers. You can do everything with just one — you can also save lots of money, and that may be the biggest advantage of all!

I have one client, a graphic designer, who uses his Mac note-book for most everything. Whether at home or at the office, he attaches it to a large display and external input devices and he is content. For him, there appears to be no compromise whatsoever.

This is a trend that I have resisted so far, because I require the performance of my Mac Pro, something that my 17-inch MacBook Pro cannot quite approach, at least not yet. While the note-book’s Core 2 Duo processor is certainly well equipped for a variety of tasks, it would be absurd to think it comes close to the Mac Pro in all performance parameters.

That disparity will probably increase when Snow Leopard arrives, since it provides superior multithreading, which means that those four-core processors will finally stop sitting idle most of the time and will be better deployed when the need arises. The twin four-core Xeons on my Mac Pro will really make the difference; I can’t wait.

Now I realize most Mac users probably don’t need all the extra performance, but for those who do, today’s Mac note-books aren’t quite there yet. The slower hard drives one finds in a portable computer can also compromise many functions that require constant access to the data on the drive, and it makes everything proceed slower than you’d otherwise prefer.

In addition to Snow Leopard, several developments are converging that will, one day, make it possible to go all portable and not sacrifice one whit of performance. That may mean that the Mac Pro will become an endangered species, except for the small number of users who require its stellar expansion capabilities. Then again, perhaps a pair of ExpressCard slots on a MacBook Pro would address many of those needs.

When it comes to processors, lower power quad cores are coming for Intel’s mobile platform in the next few months. They will demand no more juice than today’s dual cores and, assuming their costs are reasonable, it’s likely your next MacBook or MacBook Pro may have them, at least in some configurations. Indeed, the future calls for eight cores and more, meaning that you might be able to equip a Mac portable with the same processor power as the Mac Pro on a single chip.

Today’s MacBook Pro can be equipped with up to 8GB of RAM, which may seem like an awful lot, until you consider that the MacPro’s memory slots will contain four times that amount. As higher-density chips arrive and become available for sane prices, having 32GB and more in a portable computer will no longer seem a pipedream.

As to hard drives, well the future is already here, if you can afford it, in the form of SSDs, short for solid state drives. They are extremely fast in most respects, but  they remain costly. For example, the 256GB SSD option for a MacBook Pro is still $750 extra as I write this article. It will take several years and a lot of engineering savvy to be able to deliver pricing that’s more in line with a traditional mechanical hard drive. When that day arrives, however, it will mean far greater resiliency and longevity for note-books subjected to a near-abusive lifestyle.

All these developments will converge over the next few years. My five-year estimate might, in fact, be a little pessimistic. As more and more Mac and PC owners go portable, companies will invest additional money in developing the components needed to make them sing and dance as well as a desktop.

Understand that I work in a home office. I cherish large screen displays, but the MacBook Pro in my future will be simply replace the desktop and connect to the same accessories I’m using now (or their successors). At night, it will accompany me to the bedroom and be stored in a robust laptop case for travel.

Then again, that future also means that the iPhone of 2014 will be powerful enough that it will certainly replace larger computers for most routine chores. Then the pundits might be eagerly touting the eventual demise of the traditional Mac portable, to be replaced by the iPhone Pro.

It would take us one step closer to the legendary Star Trek Tricorder, I suppose.

But for now, that is my five year plan. What’s yours?

As we close in on the WWDC and Apple’s expected new product announcements, there are a number of expectations from both Apple customers and the media. Some will happen, simply because they have already been revealed and it would be foolish to expect otherwise. Some won’t, not because they haven’t been revealed, but because they don’t make much sense.

Look, for example, at Snow Leopard. Apple made it quite clear it will be largely a streamlining and performance upgrade, without a lot of new features. Yet that hasn’t stopped some of the rumor sites from suggesting there are going to be unannounced features thrown in at the last possible moment, thus giving developers little or no time to check them for compatibility with their products prior to 10.6’s release.

Now if you believe this claim, and it does have a romantic ring to it, you have to realize that developers have been seeded with Leopard prereleases since last year. During that time, they have no doubt been working hard to enable their software to harness such features as enhanced multithreading support and the ability to offload some processor tasks to the graphic chips.

While it is nonetheless true that any major project such as an operating system is a work in progress, what does Apple gain by misleading its loyal developers in this fashion? Does it make them more inclined to build Mac products? How does it help the public, when they are stuck waiting extra months for their favorite applications to fully support those new features?

As Mr. Spock is apt to say, “That, sir, is not logical!”

My feeling is that there may be a few new capabilities announced for Snow Leopard, but they are not going to represent a major interface redesign or anything close to that in scope and purpose. The real issue is whether Apple will charge you a full upgrade price for a copy, or will reduce it drastically, as many have suggested. The major issue is strictly one of marketing impact. I think Apple will benefit by keeping the price exceptionally low, particularly in comparison with Microsoft, which will no doubt charge an arm and a leg for the top-of-the-line edition of Windows 7.

Another rumor has it that Apple is poised to make major cuts in Mac pricing. Why? Because the netbooks and new Microsoft ad campaign are driving home the alleged fact that Macs cost more! The fact is, of course, that they don’t when the hardware and software are directly and accurately compared with Windows PCs. Even those jumbled Microsoft ads show little more than the fact that someone can get an inferior computer for less money; nothing more, nothing less. That’s the equivalent of telling people that users of Windows PCs are absolute morons!

Now that’s not Microsoft’s intention, but that’s the end result.

This is not to say that Apple can’t find ways to reduce pricing. They could, for example, offer a 17-inch iMac for the consumer market at, say, $899. It may not seem cheap in a world where a full-sized Windows desktop is $399, but it would hold far more value, and still deliver a decent profit for Apple.

I’d also like to see the Mac mini return to $499 (the original price of the PowerPC version), but I don’t know if they can build and sell enough at that price to justify such a move. Maybe they can, and that would also help Apple grab the budget end of the PC market without having to compromise any of their principles.

The other rumor has it that Apple must deliver a cheaper version of the iPhone, simply because there’s price resistance for costly smartphones. Of course, if you compare the alleged equivalent models from RIM and other companies, their subsidized pricing is quite similar to that of the iPhone 3G.

Would Apple consider a nano version with a smaller screen? I suppose it sounds romantic enough, but the existing screen strikes me as sufficiently small already. Some people have troubles with it, and I admit that I’m sometimes compelled to take out my reading glasses to assist. So how could a tinier version possibly succeed?

I suppose that Apple could reduce the size of the iPhone by making the Home button and other features smaller, but not by a whole lot. I’m more inclined to believe that there will be a grown up iPhone with a much larger screen and more powerful components, one that would truly serve the function of the Apple netbook.

As I’ve said before, this sort of skepticism doesn’t mean I don’t expect to be amazed by Apple as I consider their possible new product announcements for the rest of the year. But I also try to be a realist about such things. Too bad some members of the media have other ideas.