I suspect some of you don’t always get Apple’s method of innovation. It doesn’t necessarily mean they were first with everything they’ve done. I am sure, for example, that you will locate prior attempts at graphical user interfaces before the Lisa and later the Mac arrived.

Only Apple (and Microsoft) managed to survive, while many other attempts at more advanced — and friendlier — computer operating systems did not stand the test of time, or sustain sufficient sales to keep their creators in business. Of course, some of you might remind me that Microsoft’s anti-competitive tactics didn’t exactly help the growth of a number of graphical operating system alternatives.

These days, Linux provides a few of its own, and some are reasonably usable, as folks who have acquired netbooks can attest. It’s also true that Microsoft can’t get away with some of the nasty stunts they pulled in the past.

In any case, when it came to the iPod, you know it wasn’t the first portable digital music player on the market. Indeed, I recall testing a few for an online publication some years back, and most were downright unusable. They were slow when it come to downloading tracks to the device, and interfaces depended on standard software that wasn’t always user friendly. No, I’m not talking about the early versions of iTunes.

Apple’s contribution to the market was to provide a simple-to-use product, and a much faster way to transfer your stuff. As you recall, the original iPods used FireWire, which delivered many times the performance of USB 1.0. But when moving to the PC platform — and most iPod owners are actually Windows users nowadays — they embraced the speedier USB 2.0 standard. Removing FireWire was probably a matter of not just convenience but keeping manufacturing costs as low as possible.

There were places to buy music online before iTunes as well, but most were illegal. Apple not only made it simpler, they kept the DRM restrictions mandated by the music industry reasonably basic. In fact, I dare say most of you probably never hit the limits in the normal course of using iPods for yourself and family members. Now that we have DRM-free options for music — though not for videos and movies — you can even put your stuff on a Microsoft Zune player if you want without any file translations or other trickery. But why?

So here we see, so far, that Apple’s method of innovating was to take something that already existed and make it work better. That, and extremely clever advertising, resulted in making the iPod number one in its market segment by a huge margin. That also helped Mac sales, benefitting, in part, from the so-called “halo” effect, and the simple fact that more and more Windows users decided they were fed up with the complexities and security lapses that resulted from Microsoft’s abject failures.

Indeed, I rather suspect that many people consider Microsoft’s best days in the past, and I am actually convinced that they are on the long road downhill, an inexorable path to ultimate irrelevance.

With the iPhone, Apple used the same design strategy that made them prosperous. You already had feature phones and smartphones. They all had totally pathetic user interfaces, though certainly the BlackBerry was better than most. Despite the massed skepticism from the media and so-called financial analysts, Apple turned the iPhone from a promise until a huge success that appears to be continuing almost unabated.

Now it’s true that the first two major releases of iPhone software were lacking in some critical features. Chief among the was, of course, cut, copy and paste. You may ask why it took Apple’s developers two years to craft a feature that was introduced on the Mac in the 1980s, and was already present on other smartphones.

Apple’s reason — or excuse if you will — is that they wanted to make the central data repository, the iPhone’s clipboard, more secure so that third-party applications would only have limited access. Indeed, that access wouldn’t be automatic, since I gather apps have to be updated to support the new features.

Now I don’t pretend to know if that is the real reason why it took so long. I suppose just finding a convenient, intuitive and simple method to make it happen was also a consideration. I haven’t played with this feature on other phones, so I’m not the one to give a comparison, at least not yet. When the iPhone 3.0 firmware is officialy released, I will compare it to the versions offered on other products just to see how well Apple did. No, I’m not going to report on the beta version, since that wouldn’t be fair, nor do I wish to violate any of the confidentiality terms that Apple imposes on its iPhone developers.

If, indeed, it is a superior solution, then it’ll be clear once again why Apple may not always be first on the block with something new, but they seem to always find a better way to make things work.

It seems that the flash in the pan du jour sometimes overwhelms common sense. Take the netbook, which has reportedly exhibited sharply increased sales of late.

Now the concept of a netbook is simple enough. You take a standard note-book computer, shrink it down, use a low-power processor, smaller hard drive, wireless adapter and a reduced amount of RAM. Load onto it an operating system without serious resource requirements, such as Windows XP or Linux, and you have a relatively crippled personal computer that can surf the Internet, handle email and perform simple word processing and checkbook management tasks.

These days, the tech media is busy clamoring for Apple to jump onto this bandwagon, but you have to wonder just where this technology is apt to go. Some folks evidently think that the netbook can assume a large portion of the personal computer marketplace, stealing sales from regular note-books and desktops alike.

That has to take us back to the reason why people buy netbooks in the first place and what purpose they fill. In the current shaky economic climate, maybe it’s all about cheap. Consider that you can buy netbooks for several hundred dollars less than even the least expensive regular note-book, and they do offer the convenience of easy transport. Looking at the meta picture, we all know that traditional note-books have begun to surpass desktops in sales. Apple leads the pack with 71% of Macs sold in the last quarter of 2008 being MacBooks or MacBook Pros.

This state of affairs has, unfortunately, gotten some to thinking that maybe the era of traditional personal computers is over and done with and that we’ll all soon be doing everything on tinier computing devices. The netbook is cited as a prime example.

However, there are lots of people who demand more of their computers than email, browsing and word processing. Millions of people actually create things on their computer, and not just book manuscripts. They don’t just use the simple image editing tools in, say, Apple’s iPhoto, but utilize many of the powerful features of Adobe Photoshop. Perhaps they build publications, such as books and magazines, in Adobe InDesign or QuarkXPress.

Rest assured that no netbook would fulfill even the minimum system requirements of these applications, let alone those involved in doing 3D rendering for movie special effects, or if they did, you wouldn’t find the creative experience terribly pleasant.

But these are but a few examples of using personal computers to make something, not just serve the needs of passive observers. Even in the latter situation, there are certainly times when you’ll want to explore the frontiers of your computer’s power. Living a minimalist existence won’t cut it.

Indeed, the best note-books available today are clearly meant to be desktop replacements. The MacBook Pro, for example, shares parts with the iMac so you can bet that it’s capable of matching the latter in many respects in the normal run of benchmarks. Many content creators use Mac note-books on the road to build things. They are critical work tools. No netbook would fulfill this function.

This doesn’t mean that netbooks can’t carve out a significant niche in the marketplace, and if they do, there are surely ways that Apple can profit from entering the fray. But I highly doubt they’d get involved simply by coming up with a cheapened MacBook. Yes, there may be a purpose for an Apple note-book with a smaller display, but it may end up being largely a junior version of the MacBook Air, with a price to match.

Instead, if you examine the possibilities inherent in the iPhone 3.0 software that Apple introduced this week, you might see a possible springboard for the Apple variant of the netbook theme. While it’s true that Apple executives have already said — correctly — that the iPhone may serve many of the functions of a netbook, you will quickly run up against its limitations in screen and keyboard size.

However, Apple has already built and sold a netbook, only it occurred many years ago. It was called the eMate 300, essentially a grown up version of the Newton handheld with a larger screen and a miniaturized physical keyboard. In those days, my son actually had one, loaned to him for a few months by the elementary school he attended at the time.

I have to admit that I regarded it then as a product without a purpose, simply because there wasn’t a whole lot of software available to explore its possibilities. But that was then and this is now.

Apple circa 2009 has built a gigantic ecosystem around the iPhone and iPod touch. There are over 25,000 applications available, and the 1,000 additional APIs present in iPhone 3.0 will provide developers with many more possibilities to build software for both entertainment and business use.

You can certainly imagine a doctor making his rounds in a hospital with iPhone in hand, plugging it into various and sundry instruments to check patients. But even more fascinating is the possibility of using an enlarged iPhone for those purposes. Like its smaller bother it would be connected via Bluetooth or perhaps Wi-Fi with the main record system. As medications are prescribed, the information would be compared with existing data, and the doctor would be able to determine instantly whether the dosage is suitable or whether other medications or a patient’s condition would possibly cause adverse effects. The data interface used might remind you of the system they employ to check the condition of your car at the dealer’s service area, except that it would plug into the iPhone or Apple netbook to report the patient’s condition instantaneously and, once again, compare the readings to the ones previously recorded. And of course, an iPhone could be used by car dealers as well in place of the systems they use now.

So many possibilities, and I can’t begin to consider them all. But I bet you can and you will quickly see where an Apple netbook would have a useful existence. But not at the expense of the traditional personal computer.

After reading all the wish lists for the next major release if iPhone software — and checking some of my own — it appears that Apple has surprisingly exceeded most everyone’s expectations, with one notable exception that I’ll mention shortly. Indeed, as Tuesday morning’s session with the media progressed at Apple’s corporate campus, the stock price actually edged upward. That’s a rarity!

Starting with the long-awaited cut, copy and paste, the actual implementation appears to come close to that suggested in early reports, but only for the first part of the operation. Double tap to select a word, which brings up a pair of icons that allow you to extend your selection in either direction. A double tap in another location in the same app or another places the selected text in the location you choose. To Undo — and get this — just shake the iPhone or iPod touch! That goes beyond what those reports suggested!

Another long-awaited feature is multimedia messaging (MMS), which lets you send such content as photos in the same fashion as a text message. This is a feature long available even on the cheapest feature phones. There will also be support for stereo Bluetooth headphones and Mac OS X’s famous Spotlight search feature.

Alas, although there’s a neat Voice Memo feature, voice dialing wasn’t mentioned among what Apple estimates to be 100 new features debuting in iPhone 3.0. That remains a serious shortcoming, though one can always hope it’ll show up either in more detailed descriptions or as a later addition. For now, I’m just curious why the tech media isn’t making a bigger deal about this.

And, of yes, there was no word whatever of when or if Flash will make its debut on the iPhone. So far, we’ve managed to remove Flash content from all but one of our sites, and we’ll be working on the last over the next few months. However, with millions of active sites remaining in the clouds using Flash for one reason or another, it’s doubtful that things will ever really change. I still think Apple needs to find a way to work with Adobe to implement this feature instead of ignoring the way things are.

As to other new iPhone 3.0 capabilities, one that pleases me is the forthcoming ability to compose and read text messages in landscape mode outside of Safari. That, to me, is extremely important, as I occasionally receive email that doesn’t neatly format into the narrow portrait screen and reading then becomes a horizontal scrolling nightmare. Indeed, I’m often tempted to postpone a careful read of such material until I can get to one of my regular Macs and seem properly formatted.

Developers will, in turn, have over 1,000 new APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to play with, including the long delayed Push Notification feature, which lets applications work in the background, using minimal extra battery standby power (an estimated 23%), to send such things as text messages and alert notifications. Clearly AIM will be a huge beneficiary for this new capability.

Another key improvement will allow developers to connect directly to custom peripherals via the Dock port. This would mean, for example, that an iPhone or iPod touch could function in a doctor’s office to provide diagnostic information, such as your blood pressure and other readings. It would also extend the capabilities for playing games on these gadgets.

App Store developers will also be able to sell subscription-based services from within their apps. This will, for example, allow publishers to exact monthly fees from subscribers, and as usual, Apple gets 30% of the take, with the rest going to the developers.

The new firmware is set to debut this summer. All features will function on the iPhone 3G, and we presume its successors. Some features, no doubt those depending on 3G capability, such as MMS, won’t work on the original iPhone. However, with millions of two-year pacts ending this summer, perhaps owners of the first-generation model will be ready to upgrade.

Users of the iPod touch will again have to pay $9.95, the standard fee for such things. As of Tuesday, iPhone developers are now able to download the version 3.0 SDK so they can bring their apps in conformity with all the new features.

Meantime, according to Apple, some 30 million iPhone and iPod touches have been sold since these products first sent on sale in mid-2007. With 17 million iPhones included in these figures, it appears sales are moving at a pretty good clip despite the state of the economy. There are also some 25,000 apps available from the App Store now, with about 800 million downloads recorded . They didn’t break down the ratio of paid to free, however.

What’s more, despite claims about Apple taking an undue amount of time to approve apps, they claim to be approving up to 98% of the submissions within seven days. The few exceptions, however, result in those loud complaints and adverse publicity.

And, unfortunately for conspiracy theorists, no mention whatever was made about Steve Jobs, the state of his health or any changes in his plans to return to Apple in late June. A date for the next WWDC wasn’t discussed either, although it is widely expected to occur the second week of June, at which time all eyes will probably be pointed to revelations about Mac OS 10.6, also known as Snow Leopard.

Once upon a time, Apple courted the Mac press big time, particularly the major magazines. When a new product was being readied, editors would receive an early preview under a confidentiality agreement, so they could get a full feature story on the new product that would be published around the time of the actual release date.

Of course, that’s long ago and far away, except for a handful of “favored” mainstream outlets. These days, the Internet has taken over, and you can read Apple’s official press release and interviews with their product people within moments after a new product announcement. If there’s an actual media event of some sort, you may even have a chance to see a QuickTime video of the presentation shortly thereafter.

The other resource for new product information is the Mac rumor sites, which are nowadays often quoted in the mainstream media. Indeed, the the traditional outlets frequently have their own stories about such things, and I do suspect some of them are actually fed by Apple to raise interest in the possibilities of a new product to a fever pitch.

But Apple clearly doesn’t like the rumor sites, and has been known to send legal cease and desist orders with demands they remove a piece of artwork, for example, which they feel comes too close to the actual product. Of course, such behavior only reinforces the impression that the report was accurate.

Normally the letter is sufficient, because the sites, not having sufficient legal resources, will simply take down the material and that, as they say, is that. If they actually refused, it would present an interesting legal situation, with no certain outcome.

Now when a major paper such as The New York Times publishes a rumor, Apple will stay silent, or perhaps communicate their displeasure quietly to the appropriate executives. They don’t want to get into a legal skirmish with such a significant resource, even if that resource is not doing as well as it used to do financially.

A few years back, in the wake of one fairly consistent set of stories from the rumor sites, Apple filed legal action, demanding email records and other documents from the sites and their Web hosts in their quest to smoke out the real offender. These rumors were all about plans to build a FireWire audio breakout box, code-named “Asteroid.”

Now as you might notice, no such product ever appeared. In fact, I am of the opinion that it was meant as a Trojan Horse designed to expose the name or names of the people who are really feeding information to the rumor outlets. I presume they felt someone at Apple was guilty, although it doesn’t appear they made a forthright effort to unearth that person’s real identity. Evidently giving their legal department some work was more productive, or they felt it would be a way to destroy the rumor sites once and for all.

After winning in a lower court runing, Apple lost during the appeal process, and they gave up. Well, not completely. They managed to ink a settlement with one rumor site, ThinkSecret, which shut down a few months thereafter. The other sites are still around.

These days, rumors about forthcoming Apple products still come fast and thick. Occasionally, there’s a request from Apple’s legal eagles to remove something and those requests are complied with. So maybe it’s an uneasy truce. Perhaps Apple didn’t relish the torrent of negative publicity they received when they decided to pursue a lawsuit from beginning to end. So be it.

However, it’s clear to me that these self-same rumor sites don’t have carte blanche to expose Apple’s secrets. Sure, they might reprint information from the “seed notes” of a prerelease version of Mac OS X. They might even get away with a few screen shots, though that behavior will generally bring a prompt response from Apple to pull the illustrations, but usually too late to prevent them from being moved offshore to some mirror site.

Now in light of the fact that Microsoft can be forthcoming — sometimes a little too forthcoming — about its future product plans, you have to wonder why their biggest competitor has taken the secrecy route. But consider that Microsoft will often never deliver a product they demonstrate, and when they do, it may not be quite what was originally represented. That’s generally postponed to the distant future, where the “real” version will appear, but usually it never does.

The exception would be the betas of future versions of Windows, Office or Internet Explorer. They get plenty of exposure, but not always to Microsoft’s benefit. As I mentioned in this week’s newsletter, for example, prerelease versions of Internet Explorer 8 have been shown to be inferior to every single major browser on the planet. Windows 7 seems to have gotten acceptable reviews, but Microsoft has already claimed they are tinkering with the interface yet again, hoping to do better.

Perhaps they are hoping to come up with something that more closely matches the Mac OS perhaps?

In any case, even if Steve Jobs were never to return to the helm at Apple, don’t expect their methods of handling information about future products to change.