On quite a number of occasions, Steve Jobs has said that Apple listens to its customers. In fact, he’s mentioned some examples when it comes to new product features and changes. Surely, when he made some unbelievably flippant remarks about last year’s major price cut to the iPhone, that it was the price early adopters pay for technology, he got an earful. It was such an earful, in fact, that Apple decided then and there to give a $100 credit to those most impacted by the price reduction.

As a result of such thoughtless behavior, it didn’t come as a surprise to see Apple referred to as “opaque” in a recent commentary about their inscrutable nature by columnist Rob Pegoraro in the Washington Post.

When Rob appeared as a guest on The Tech Night Owl LIVE recently, I found myself pretty much in agreement with everything he had to say. Apple’s typical public relations approach is notoriously secretive, even in situations where they need to be forthcoming about an important matter.

Certainly, the health of Steve Jobs is a matter of critical importance to the success of the company. Sure, there are thousands of smart people working at Apple developing and supporting their insanely great products. But it’s the vision of Steve Jobs that provides fuel to the company’s huge creative engine, right? How would they survive without him.

Well, supposedly, after some health issues earlier this year, he’s healthy, despite his gaunt appearance. However, when a fake report appeared on a CNN citizens blog that Jobs had suffered a major heart attack, the stock took a huge beating. The story turned out to be false, and some conspiracy theories suggested it was planted by nefarious hedge fund people who wanted to manipulate the stock price.

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

So I saw an article in BusinessWeek, entitled “Apple: A Product Plateau?,” which suggests that maybe our favorite fruit company is running out of bright ideas. Of course, the media used to claim that Apple was about to go out of business, and you saw what happened to those predictions.

Of course, a lot of years have passed since the tech pundits regarded Apple as a one-trick pony. In passing, I wonder why Microsoft didn’t earn that title, since the products and services they’ve tried to deliver outside of their core application and operating system software categories have failed to earn big profits. Or any profits for that matter.

But I never said that Apple and Microsoft are regarded as being on equal playing fields, even though some call Apple the Microsoft of the digital media player business.

Well, now that Apple has, as Steve Jobs put it, created three legs of the stool — the Mac, iPod and iPhone — where do they go from here? As far as BusinessWeek is concerned, just enhancing the existing product lines ought to be sufficient. There’s no need to introduce a totally new product initiative for Apple to continue to show tremendous sales growth and lots and lots of profits.

Of course, figuring out what Apple is up to can be a frustrating endeavor. When the iPod was still doubling sales each and every year, the pundits felt that it would ultimately be supplanted by cheap imitations. The scenario was meant to mimic the way Windows triumphed in the operating system market. Apple was the closed system, and all the other companies were licensed by the Microsoft format du jour to deliver compatible products.

Then again, when all those pretenders failed to make much of a dent in the iPod’s market share, Microsoft took it upon itself to double-cross its partners, take a rebadged Toshiba media player and turn it into the Zune. Not that the Zune has done any better as an integrated platform, but you can’t say that Apple had the wrong idea in dedicating itself to that vision.

Just as the media player segment seemed to be heading towards a saturation point, Apple demonstrated yet again that it wasn’t out of ideas. Thus arrived the iPhone, and again the critics suggested that Apple was making a foolish move. After all, there were hundreds and hundreds of millions of wireless handsets out there already. They were largely commodity devices, often sold at very cheap prices to entice you to sign up to a long-term contract with a wireless carrier. When the contract was up, they’d let you buy another phone, and you’d take the old one, which probably barely worked at that point, and consign it to the recycle bin.

Certainly selling the iPhone for $599 seemed to be a boneheaded move. Combine that with even the cheapest AT&T wireless contract, for example, and you’d be out a couple of grand over the next two years. Well, of course, Apple dropped the price by $200, and then, with the second generation model, succumbed to the standard carrier marketing approach. Sell it cheap, and let your wireless service subsidize the remainder of the money over the contract period.

That’s what gives the telecoms the questionable right to charge you those exorbitant early termination fees, although they are mostly pro-rated now in the U.S.

But now that the iPhone 3G is available virtually all over the planet, what does Apple do for an encore? If you believe BusinessWeek, it doesn’t matter. Just refine the products they have, and live long and prosper.

However, Apple doesn’t always adhere to conventional wisdom. You see there is a fourth leg on that stool that isn’t talked about all that much, and that’s the Apple TV.

True, it hasn’t caught fire thus far. Steve Jobs has called it a “hobby,” which hasn’t stopped Apple from revising the software and dropping the price. They appear to be in search of a strategy that works, and you shouldn’t expect them to just give up and discontinue the product.

Where might they go? Well, some talk of adding TiVO-style features to integrate Apple TV with your high definition set to record your cable or satellite shows, but there are already lots of set top boxes that do that pretty well already, right? Even the ones without the TiVO brand name may even get TiVO software in the near future. Comcast is rolling out those updates now, and Cox Communications is right behind them.

Other suggestions have Apple not just integrating the DVR features, but a DVD player as well, perhaps even Blu-ray. Suddenly it becomes more of a fully-featured media center device, but it may not be that simple.

You see, the so-called media center PC, which such a loaded Apple TV might begin to resemble, hasn’t done all that well in the marketplace. So where’s the incentive for Apple?

Where indeed!

You see, seven years ago, there were lots of portable media players out there. They didn’t make a big splash in the market. But then a certain company in Cupertino, CA felt they had a better idea, and they created the iPod.

Don’t think that history can’t repeat itself, even though BusinessWeek would apparently prefer to see Apple rest on its laurels.

Consider that thousands of applications are available for you to download from the App Store. Many are free, and most others fairly cheap. In fact, a surprising number of titles can be had for less than $5.00, but lots of new developers are prospering despite the questionable state of the world economy.

However, there are clouds circling and Apple’s methods of evaluating new applications are coming in for sharp criticism, especially after a couple of recent high-profile rejection slips.

Now understand that any retailer has the right to approve and reject the products they sell. Fledgling manufacturers will work long and hard to get their products into various stores, whether it’s a supermarket or a consumer electronics outlet. You know the competition is fierce when it comes to placement at an Apple Store, for example.

Forgetting the obvious limitations at franchises, such as a car dealer, where only the company’s own brand and perhaps a few third-party accessories are for sale, you have to realize the limitations.

On the positive side of the ledger, Apple is making it real easy for a new developer to build a volume business and operate on an equal footing with the larger companies. When they approve an application, the developer gets 70% of the action for products with a price tag, and Apple keeps 30% to cover its costs, including keeping the store available on a 24/7 basis, and that’s no easy task.

Consider, if you will, iTunes, which has trounced all competitors, including such discount retailers as Wal-Mart, when it comes to selling music. Obviously, Apple’s way of doing business has proven to be successful, and iTunes forms the technology underpinnings of the App Store.

However, as with any retailer, Apple is the gatekeeper when it comes to deciding which products to sell. They have the right to reject anything for any reason, although their agreements with developers are pretty specific about some common sense factors, such as porn and potential security threats.

There are also gray areas that are subject to interpretation, and one person may come to a different conclusion than another.

Now I don’t pretend to know what percentage of apps submitted to Apple are rejected, or just sent back for minor revisions to the interface, or to improve compatibility. However, Podcaster, an application to provide an alternate route to managing Podcasts, recently failed to make the grade, in part because it duplicated functions already available on the iPhone and might cause customer confusion.

Now without examining the application in question, consider if you’re a regular listener to a show and just happen to subscribe with both iTunes and Podcaster. This is very easy to do, if only for comparing the two alternatives. You download an episode on iTunes, but Podcaster doesn’t know that, so it thinks you haven’t retrieved the episode yet. Can you see the potential for confusion?

Before you tell me that you keep close tabs on such matters, bear in mind that there are tens of thousands of shows and some have hundreds of separate episodes. Now do you see my point?

The second application was designed to better support your Gmail accounts, and I gather it was rejected, in part anyway, because of interface issues. The developer, however, chose to go public rather than find a way to work with Apple and perhaps get a second hearing. You can bet that sort of behavior that isn’t going to help persuade Apple to alter its decision.

In all fairness, the App Store has been in business less than three months, and there are probably plenty of technological issues still to be resolved. The iPhone SDK only appeared last spring, and the controversial NDA, which covered even released software, is only now being revised. The new version will evidently only cover the product before it goes on sale, which will no doubt allow developers to talk to one another and share war stories and tips to building better products.

Then there is Apple’s own business interest, which you cannot ignore. An app may be submitted that will somehow duplicate or at least unduly compete with a product they are in the process of building for a future version of the iPhone. Obviously, Apple isn’t going to tell you what that app might be, but that would give them strong reason to want to reject the third-party entrant.

Lest we forget, Apple is not your friend. Despite an extremely loyal fan base, Apple Inc. is a multinational corporation that exists to make a profit. So even of some applications fall by the wayside, a successful Apple means a successful avenue for iPhone products to live long and prosper.

It might be a good idea, though, for Apple to institute some sort of formal preliminary review process of the plans for an application before a developer spends hundreds or thousands of hours of time, and lots of money, to create a product that, in the end, won’t see the light of day. With proper terms and conditions, that, for example, Apple isn’t guaranteeing that an application that passes the pre-approval stage gets a free pass, it would certainly give developers some important guidance about what they can do and what they can’t do.

That won’t stop the complaints, of course, but it might just help.

One thing is sure: Nothing Apple can or would do to enhance the iPhone’s capabilities will satisfy everyone. Whenever a new feature appears, people will complain that it’s not being implemented properly. If Apple doesn’t add a feature, many of you will complain that they’re being boneheaded about it. And that may only be one of the more complimentary responses.

Certainly, deciding how to enhance a product is a huge juggling match. Some companies will simply add a capability without considering how it integrates with the rest of the product’s functions, whether it’s easy to use, and whether it actually does something that really makes an improvement.

One of my biggest complaints about the Windows platform is that Microsoft doesn’t consider such matters seriously. Just add the feature and figure out the rest later, and I suspect a large portion of the consumer electronics industry approaches the issue with the same lack of foresight.

But as you use the iPhone, you will quickly appreciate what it does well, and ache for those missing functions. Certainly a workable cut, copy and paste solution seems to be foremost among the concerns of many of you. I realize Apple knows this, but they apparently believe that other features rise higher in the pecking order. True or not, I don’t pretend to know.

You see, it’s not just adding a feature, but considering the inevitable tradeoffs. The iPhone is especially limited by usable memory, processor performance and storage space. But the impact to battery life is a significant factor too. Although published tests indicate that the iPhone does appear to be meeting its specs with a reasonable margin for error, would you accept the loss of even a few minutes in the interval between charge and discharge?

Beyond the lack of core text placement functions, there are other significant misses, to my way of thinking. Right now, you can update your WordPress blog on an iPhone, using a free app. You can view Microsoft Office documents on your iPhone, but there’s no edit function in sight. Talk about frustration.

The other day, for example, Gil Bavel, our ad rep, send me a proposed update to our rate card while I was on the road. I spent a few moments in front of a convenience store downing a cup of coffee, while reading his document. Fortunately, I didn’t have to make any changes. If I did, I would have to insert them into an email message and request that he edit the source document. Talk about wasting time.

Here’s another blatant example of having to cope with a missing feature: In the evening, while relaxing with Mrs. Steinberg in the bedroom watching TV, I keep my iPhone 3G on the end table. During commercials, I’ll often check for important email or visit a few Web sites to look for updated content. From time to time, I want to print out a message or a document, but I’m at a standstill here. The only thing I can do is get up, walk over to the office, open the document and print.

Now I am using the iPhone on the regular home AirPort network, so there’s no security issue here, so why is there no print function? I understand that there is some resource overhead involved, such as creating a temporary print file that is fed to the printer. You see, with a standard inkjet, the iPhone would have to become the print server that manages document processing. During that period, I suppose battery life might be impacted somewhat. But unless you’re printing lots of documents, that’s surely a tradeoff that wouldn’t substantially speed up your trip to the charger.

Alas, it seems a print feature is way off the radar. I don’t recall reading much or anything about it, yet it’s something that I regard is extremely critical to making my iPhone as complete a portable computing device as possible.

Of course, the list of missing features are legion, and I’d like to just cover a few more.

Consider the Junk filter. Mail has a pretty good one, perhaps the best free spam blocking capability you can find. Even Consumer Reports, which doesn’t really give Macs a fair shake, has praised it. So why don’t you have it on the iPhone? While I’m at it, what about mail rules? I have, for example, several simple actions that will move email with certain headers — indicating orders or site donations — to a specific mailbox. Doesn’t anyone care?

While I’m at it, how about an integrated Inbox? I prefer to keep my accounts separate, of course, but not everyone agrees with that choice. Maybe you prefer to put everything in one place.

None of these Mail enhancements should seriously impair the use of iPhone resources or storage space. They are already tested and proven on the desktop version, so where are they?

The final request ought to be simple to implement. Apple has good voice capability under Mac OS X Leopard. Any basic Bluetooth-enabled wireless handset can handle voice dialing, but not the iPhone. What am I missing? I bet you readers can come up with extremely large lists of features that are even more compelling, so let the comments begin.