I remember a silly demonstration on an old TV talk show. In that segment, one person told a joke and that person, in turn, would repeat the joke to someone else. After going through several generations of this behavior, the story that emerged from the final person in this group had little or no resemblance to the original. It was, in fact, hardly a joke at all.

Indeed, it’s also true that a rumor or gossip spread verbally is apt to lose quite a bit in the translation as it passes from one source to the next. Thank heavens we have the Internet, where we can instantly link to the original story, true or otherwise, before we amplify upon it.

What ends up happening, of course, is that one rumor can buttress another rumor, even though everyone is simply pointing back to the same source. At least the information is transmitted accurately; well most of the time anyway. The problem is that you look at the story and come to believe that it has substance, because so many sites are talking about it. At the end of the day, it’s just many sites repeating the same story and rarely with any amplification or confirmation.

It’s also true that these sites would rather have you remember the rumors that proved accurate, and not the ones that were less so. That makes it all the more difficult to actually figure out precisely how much of their material is authentic and how much is hardly worth the bandwidth it consumes.

Now I won’t dismiss the thought that rumor sites do have access to information that mainstream members of the press don’t ordinarily consider. One reason is that their standards are lower. Since traditional reporters would expect to have two or more sources confirm a story, the rumor won’t get serious consideration, or shouldn’t assuming standard journalistic ethics are followed.

More to the point, you sometimes wonder how many of those rumors are really nothing more than guesses, educated and otherwise, about what Apple Inc. might do at some point in time.

Another technique used might be produce more accurate results, and that is to comb through the recesses of some beta software, such as the iPhone 3.0 SDK, in search of references to new models and individual components. That, and a little research might unearth details about possible model upgrades.

A recent example is Apple’s impending use of chipsets that support the speedier 802.11n Wi-Fi draft standard. This could certainly improve broadband performance on the next generation iPhone and iPod touch.

Another way to figure out what Apple is up to is to examine their frequent patent filings. That’s a slippery slope, you see, because it’s very possible that a technology described in those documents won’t see its way into an actual product for some years, and maybe never. The patent is simply intended to preserve Apple’s intellectual property rights, and there are no doubt lots of prototypes under development behind closed doors that you will never hear about.

Now at one time I was a member of Apple’s since-discontinued CQF (Customer Quality Feedback) program, where I had access to prerelease operating system software and occasional hardware prototypes. On one of those occasions, I actually had one of the early iMacs in my hands for several months, at least until a firmware update turned it into a brick.

On another occasion, I had a new minitower design for several months until, one day, I was instructed to return it immediately. I later learned that the model in question would never be produced, although its existence did show up on the Mac rumor sites at the time. This all happened during the time Steve Jobs was slimming down the Mac product line, and perhaps he felt this model, another beige box sporting a G3 processor as I recall, wouldn’t offer a distinct advantage over the other Mac desktops. This all preceded the introduction of the Blue & White version, with a new form factor that sustained itself through the G4 era.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay attention to Apple rumors. From time to time the sites that publish that sort of material do get their facts right, and whether a lucky guess or something they actually investigated and confirmed, it’s nice to see where Apple might be heading.

What’s more, Apple is also known to favor a few mainstream publications, such as The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek and Time. In each case, key tech reporters are given an early look at the new product in question ahead of the rest of the media. In exchange they agree not to write anything on the subject until its actual release date.

That works best when the product in question is a trendsetter, such as the iPhone. It may not present that much of an advantage if the reporters aren’t so favorably inclined towards the new gadget, but it’s surely a valid method of marketing, particularly for a company as secretive as Apple.

Indeed, with or without Steve Jobs, it’s a sure thing they won’t change a winning strategy, and that’s certainly what’ll keep the Mac rumor sites alive.

Fourteen years ago, when Microsoft unleashed Windows 95 upon the world and cemented its position as the developer of the number one PC operating system on the planet, they presented a set of smart TV ads featuring The Rolling Stones.

But that was then and this is now, and things haven’t gone so well for the former 800-pound gorilla.

First, they attempted to sell the failed Windows Vista by running spots depicting a silly survey where some apparently ignorant people where shown a relabeled version of Vista on souped up PCs, to demonstrate it really wasn’t so bad after all. Well in plain fact, that’s probably true. But it didn’t revolutionize PC computing either, and its tremendous resource needs and early incompatibilities made it a difficult sell in the upgrade segment.

In any case, not achieving miracles, Microsoft hoped that the star of a popular 1990’s TV show about nothing would somehow — with Bill Gates in tow — do something to help Vista gain some traction. But as most of you know, that campaign failed after just two spots, and Microsoft decided to somehow satirize Apple’s Mac versus PC spots instead.

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

When Apple first delivered its low-key introduction to Mac OS 10.6 last year, they said it would be out in “about a year.” Nothing has changed since then, although speculation about Snow Leopard’s possible release date ebbs and flows on a fairly regular basis, no doubt when there’s not a lot of Apple Inc. news to write about.

So late last year, it was suggested that there would be a major demonstration of Snow Leopard during the keynote address at January’s Macworld Expo. It didn’t help, of course, when Steve Jobs declined to participate and sent Philip Schiller as his replacement.

This is not to say that Schiller couldn’t give a credible demonstration of Snow Leopard, but a presentation of this sort wouldn’t be terribly graphic After all, most of the new operating system’s changes are supposed to be below the surface, and just showing how easy it will be to connect to a Microsoft Exchange server wouldn’t be visually appealing.

Regardless of the reason, Snow Leopard wasn’t mentioned during that keynote, one regarded as lackluster not because of the quality of Schiller’s performance, but because of the lack of compelling new products to discuss.

So maybe 10.6 isn’t visually appealing, at least compared to previous versions of Mac OS X. Indeed, it may also be true that Snow Leopard’s official debut was still far in the future as of the beginning of the year and there was no real need to show the work in progress when there’s lots of work left to be done. If the rumor sites are correct — and that’s not always a given — a new user interface, known as “marble,” will make its debut in Snow Leopard.

Based on what we have been told, it would appear to be mostly a smoothing and perhaps a darkening of the look and feel of Mac OS X, more in line with iTunes and such. Perhaps Apple wants to add some visual fluff to make Snow Leopard more salable, a more compelling upgrade for you.

If that’s the case, I can understand the logic behind a decision of that sort. You see, just saying Snow Leopard will be faster, use less RAM and take less hard drive space isn’t sexy. How many of you really care about such arcane features as improved 64-bit support, better support for multicore processors, and the ability to offload work to the graphics chips?

Sure, maybe all this stuff will make for a more efficient, more reliable Macintosh. But it’s also going to be a hard sell to explain the value of all these advancements to the average customer. To be sure, except for those of you who stretch your Macs to the limits with such tasks as high-energy gaming and 3D rendering, Snow Leopard’s improvements may not prove all that significant.

So it comes down to this: Does Snow Leopard’s debut make any difference? Not that it won’t be a good product. Personally, I have great hopes for it, whether it has a user interface refresh or not. Some of my work could benefit from better support of my Mac Pro’s twin eight-core processors, and I would hope that developers will take advantage of the enhanced tools to make that possible. However, does Apple stand to suffer if that “about a year” promise means September instead of — say — June?

I realize that there is a potential competitive threat on the horizon, in the form of Windows 7. Indeed, Microsoft, a company that has rarely seen a successful product they don’t want to imitate, is touting Vista’s successor as being faster, less bloated. Sound familiar? All right, there will also be a little more eye candy, such as a revised Windows taskbar that resembles Mac OS X’s long-controversial Dock. There will — or at least that’s the promise so far — be support for Multi-Touch. That’s hardly original either.

Should Windows 7 get an official release before the holidays at the end of the year, I suppose some will hope that Apple will have a worthy competitor, assuming that the regular version of Leopard isn’t up to the task. I think it is, but a two-year-old operating system may seem like yesterday’s news, which is unfortunate.

In any case, none of the analyst predictions or rumors pinpoint Snow Leopard as being late in any respect. If it’s going to be fall, so be it. That won’t make a significant difference in Apple’s ability to compete with Microsoft.

What might be more interesting is the upgrade policy. With Windows 7, Microsoft is going to resort to the same multiple-SKU confusion as Vista, and I expect upgrade pricing will continue to be excessive. Apple could really pull a coup here and make Snow Leopard free — or almost free — for Leopard users. Of course, those who still have Tiger would have to buy a standard upgrade package for $129 for the single user version.

I don’t see a decision of that sort as seriously hurting Apple’s profitability, since most of their earnings for new operating system upgrades disappear after the first few months of release. After that, the new system just sells the hardware on which its preloaded. End of story.

On the heels of having to post a $250,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the person or persons responsible for the Conficker worm, it’s beginning to look as if there are more major threats to the dominance of Windows in the personal computer universe.

Consider reports now that HP is seriously considering whether to adopt the open source Google Android platform, based on Linux, for its netbooks. Before I take this a step further, I realize that some of you might dispute my statement that a netbook is a personal computer. But I regard them as basically low-power version of a regular note-books. Indeed, not too many years ago, the typical 2009 netbook might have been regarded as a pretty powerful beast. I mean, it uses standard, if low-end, PC hardware and all, and can run any application that can function efficiently within its modest resource limits.

Today’s netbooks typically run either Linux or Windows XP. Windows Vista is just too resource hungry. Sure, Microsoft promises that they will provide a tamed version of Windows 7 for a netbook, but it’s really hard to take anything they say all that seriously until it really happens. If it does, that’s fine for Microsoft, assuming folks can accept its limitations, such as running, say, three apps at a time.

Now, I should put this all in perspective. As stated in a recent article over at Ars Technica, the Android operating system was not originally conceived for the PC world, but for smartphones. So it would probably require a fair amount of expense and development time to make it function in a different environment. On the other hand, perhaps HP is just sending up a trial balloon, perhaps firing a warning shot across the bow of Microsoft that they need to provide something workable for netbooks or other alternatives will be sought.

However, as is ably pointed out in that article, there are already Linux systems tailored for the netbook, and they are, when carefully configured, sufficiently user friendly to serve as serious competitors to Windows XP. That has to also weigh heavily on the minds of Microsoft’s executives as they ponder the potential of making Windows 7 reasonably functional on a netbook.

Another alternative, of course, would be to use Windows Mobile. That might, in turn, follow the concept of using operating systems for tailored for mobile platforms on netbooks. Indeed, a lot of knowledgeable folks believe that Apple’s entry into the netbook arena — should that product segment sustain itself for the long haul — would involve a grown-up iPhone, perhaps something in the tradition of the eMate 300, the Newton-based mobile device of the mid-1990s.

Apple, however, has demonstrated that they can take the basic OS X platform and deploy it far more extensively than Microsoft can with its core Windows products. So this sort of expansion of the iPhone line wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Take that Microsoft!

Meantime, it’s been reported that Firefox has now overtaken the most popular version of Internet Explorer, version 7, in the European market. Yes, Internet Explorer 8 is catching on to some degree, but whether it’ll slow the growth of Firefox is anyone’s guess. You see, Firefox came out of the starting gate with an obviously severe disadvantage, since Internet Explorer is part and parcel of the Windows operating system. Unless the PC vendor bundles Firefox on a new computer’s desktop, you have to go out and download a copy. Indeed, if PC users actually had an equal choice of different browsers, all preloaded or easily installed by clicking on desktop icons on a new machine, I wonder if Internet Explorer might have fared far worse.

I suppose the next huge test for Microsoft — and Apple for that matter — is the financials from the past quarter. Yes, there were reports of a fairly large decline in retail U.S.-based Mac sales in February. But sales for March haven’t been revealed yet, so it’s not clear how the new Mac desktop lineup might have helped, although there are unofficial indications that things did turn around.

I should also point out once again that Apple is a global company, and lower sales in one country may be compensated for by higher sales elsewhere. The point is that we really don’t know yet.

Meantime, just how did the overall PC market fare? Will Microsoft recover enough not to be forced to continue its first layoffs ever? Or did the decision to reduce their staffing by some 5,000 employees come after anticipating how the market would fare for the coming year rather than a single quarter?

Indeed are those new online ads, featuring someone who doesn’t want to be regarded as cool, trying to find a cheap note-book with a large screen, representative of more desperation on Microsoft’s part? Consider, instead, the one ad campaign they’ve presented that does attract favorable attention, in which a small child is observed doing fancy things on a PC. The kid is cute, the ad catches and keeps your attention. Microsoft has, for once, done something smart, but I don’t think that represents a trend.