One of the alleged hallmarks of the Apple consumer experience is a product or service that just works. That was the promise of the original Mac back in 1984, and it’s one that instills their marketing spin day in and day out. Would that the reality conformed to the claim.

Take the service that was formerly known as .Mac. One of the most telling irritants was not the user interface — which wasn’t all that bad — but the fact that one or more services would be down for extended periods. Just a few weeks before the troubled MobileMe launch, I ran into increasing difficulties sending and receiving .Mac email from my desktop client, Apple’s own Mail app.

Other than the doubled bandwidth and storage, and those online interface tweaks, I’m not at all certain that MobileMe represents a real improvement over its predecessor. Sure, it got a new marketing push, and is now regarded as both a Mac & PC service, but what really changed? Oh right, push capability for the iPhone, but that’s half a push, since the feature doesn’t work on regular computers; at least for now.

The most significant feature is the email, and if you can’t depend on it day in and day out, the service has failed at its core function. Sure Apple has apologized for the difficult transition, which took days rather than hours. MobileMe members will soon get a 30-day membership extension. But can you really say things have improved?

In recent days, an alleged one percent of members are still without email. That number is highly disputed by some, but there’s no independent confirmation of the actual figures. A quote from an Apple support person attributed the problem to a server failure, but that doesn’t ring true. While I’m sure a single loaded Xserve could handle one percent of MobileMe’s email, I can’t believe there’s no backup or redundancy in the system. If one server fails, another ought to be ready to be deployed online within minutes.

So what’s really wrong here?

Alas, Apple only speaks grudgingly about service problems, so don’t expect to get any responses with any additional detail. That’s just not Apple’s way. But I’m also certain they want to fix the ongoing migration issues, and that this, too, shall pass. At the same time, the remark that MobileMe is “Exchange for the rest of us” may have more truth in it than you might expect.

Certainly, there’s little doubt that Microsoft’s products can be difficult to configure and downright temperamental, although they eventually will work pretty well most of the time. So maybe that claim is little more than a self-fulfilling prophecy, although I’m sure that wasn’t Apple’s original intention.

At the same time, even a consumer shouldn’t have to endure email outages for days on end. A basic ISP can do better than that, and with improved Webmail features and spam filtering from many of these companies, Apple is rapidly losing its arguments in favor of its own Web services, other than the mac.com or me.com email addresses. The ability to make it possible for your family, friends or customers to receive large files from you? Well, other services are quite capable of providing similar capabilities.

Moreover, you can even set yourself up with a custom (or vanity) domain and a basic hosting package with such firms as GoDaddy, Namecheap, 1&1 Internet, and HostGator that will provide more storage and more bandwidth for less money than Apple charges. With any of these service plans, you can configure your own mailboxes and allocate a custom amount of storage to each.

You’ll also want to check out Google Apps some time. Yes, there’s a paid version, which is $50 per user. But the free version will suffice for most.

Calendars? Online syncing? Well, I suppose there are arguments in their favor, although both have their limits. You can’t, for example, sync your Firefox bookmarks among your various computers with MobileMe. You need a dedicated Firefox plugin.

This doesn’t mean MobileMe is a lost cause. I’m sure Apple is fully aware of the bad press they’ve received over their ongoing service outages and that they’re working hard to set things right. And, no, I don’t think they’re necessarily related to the early activation problems that afflicted the iPhone 3G rollout. That’s history.

More to the point, Apple would do well to deliver a MobileMe SDK to allow third-party software to take advantage of its features. That would benefit not just Firefox users, but folks who don’t use Address Book, iCal and the rest of Apple’s native software repository or the Microsoft Windows equivalents.

Indeed, the ideal MobileMe setup would be platform and application agnostic. It would be up to third parties to deliver compatibility, of course, and maybe that’s in the cards. It wouldn’t make a lot of sense for Apple to restrict access, particularly now that they’ve made the big push to get Windows users onboard.

Or is MobileMe just another grand experiment, to afford Apple some breathing room until they finalize a real strategy? I hope that’s true, and for now I will retain my membership, at least for another year. After that, I’m just not sure.

All right, so Apple can’t even sit back and celebrate its record 3rd fiscal quarter profits without seeing its stock price plummet again. As usual, the reasons are complicated, and probably only related in part to the company’s actual performance or their immediate expectations for the current financial quarter.

Although one press report erroneously stated that Apple missed Wall Street expectations for the past quarter, that just isn’t true. For the most part, they did better. Although analysts pegged Mac sales pretty close to the mark, iPod sales were expected to be flat or decline slightly not edge up in the low double digits. So that market isn’t quite dead yet.

So what’s bothering the Street? As usual Apple’s guidance for the current quarter is extremely conservative, so they can end up boasting how well they exceeded their predictions. But I guess the Street doesn’t like that sort of behavior, even though Apple and other companies almost always take this approach.

Anything else?

Well, Apple also says its profit margins will be lower this quarter. They are also making broad hints at some revolutionary new product transition, so that raises more than a few possibilities, but they shouldn’t sound any alarm bells. Certainly a new line of iPods or major revisions to the note-book line, for example, would mean upfront development and production ramp expenses. So they won’t make quite as much money early on, until the product has been out for a while. Nothing special about that.

But there is one more factor that might contribute to the jitters, and that’s the possibility that Apple is going to go in for more aggressive pricing to move more product, so as to take advantage of their recent growth when pitted against other PC makers. If this is the case, they might suffer somewhat in the short term, with the hope they’ll make it up on the long haul as larger quantities allow them to get better pricing on raw materials and benefit from other savings from higher production levels.

Of course, when it comes to cutting prices at Apple, you probably won’t see a $799 MacBook equipped in the same fashion as the current model. But a $999 price point during the remainder of the back to school season could definitely excite the cash registers. Putting the MacBook Pro at, say, $1,799 would also light some fires under the derrieres of people who claim Apple’s hardware is overpriced. Or maybe not. Some people still believe that a $599 note-book is all the need, and anything that carries a higher price tag is a luxury.

As I said, this should be really good news, although I may be totally wrong in attributing that transition to upgraded note-books or iPods. Maybe Apple is going to enter another product category, or refine their existing ones in a major fashion, perhaps by adding active touch screens to both note-books and the ever-popular iMac. Certainly they have already tested and proven such technology on the iPhone.

Also imagine the prospects of a major upgrade to the now languishing line of Apple displays with the same MultiTouch capability. Now we’re getting somewhere, because this would allow Mac Pro users to take advantage of this feature. Tempted yet?

Extending beyond the basics is Apple’s so far meager attempts at living room convergence. Despite the software upgrades and the lower price of admission, Apple TV still seems a non-starter. But what if Apple were to deliver an all-new flat panel TV, LCD, plasma or both, with built-in Apple TV and perhaps the full-blown Mac experience thrown in?

While the television set market may seem saturated already, there’s always room for a better idea. As I’ve said previously, the user interface of the typical TV, as exemplified by their onscreen menus, remind me of pathetic imitations of the Windows interface, and not all of the adjustments, aside from the basics, are clear or clearly explained in the usually bare bones user guides.

No doubt there is plenty of room for Apple to put some intelligence in a traditional product category and somehow revolutionize the industry. Of course, Apple would have to price aggressively here too, because there are tens of millions of flat panel TVs available at lower and lower prices. For example, a typical 50-inch plasma TV from a name-brand manufacturer can be had for less than $1,500. Add a few hundred dollars if you want true 1080p picture resolution, a difference that will be barely detectible unless you look real close.

Then there is that additional troubling factor that festers unabated, and that’s the state of the CEO’s health. Yes, I agree with Apple that much of that information is a private matter, except where it might impact on Apple’s performance. If Steve Jobs goes, just the psychological impact behind his departure, forced or otherwise, could have a major effect on Apple’s stock price. Whether it would hurt sales is another story, as many of his new product initiatives are probably well along in the development stage and they don’t require his presence to be successful.

Indeed, Steve Jobs could disappear tomorrow and it would take Apple several years to reach the point where his departure would have a significant impact, one way or the other. The rest depends, of course, on his successor, but that’s another story entirely.

Just ahead of the news of Apple’s stellar quarterly financials, their stock price increased a trickle, which seems at wide variance with the results.

In brief, Apple beat the street, as is typical, with record sales of $7.46 billion for the quarter ending June 28, 2008. Profits came in at $1.07 billion, or $1.19 per diluted share, an increase of more than 30 percent compared to last year. As usual, I’ll be brief about the numbers. You can check Apple’s site directly for the specifics.

What’s most significant is the record sales of the Mac, with 2.496,000 units sold, a unit increase of 41 percent compared to last year, and the best in the history of the platform. They also confounded the tech and financial pundits all over again, by moving 11,011,000 iPods, an increase of 12 percent in units, and seven percent in revenue compared to last year. So iPod growth may be leveling off somewhat, but it’s clear there’s lots of room to grow.

As far as the iPhone is concerned, 717,000 were sold before stocks were depleted several weeks ago. Apple claims they sold a million iPhone 3Gs the first weekend the new model went on sale. Although this figure has been disputed by some analysts, who claim the figure represents the number of units shipped, not the number sold. Apple, however, maintains they sold that number, and I’ll grant them a little slack here, since the critics have few facts — make that no facts — to demonstrate that the information may be misleading.

Besides, it’s also true that iPhone shortages are now widespread. Even Apple’s own retail outlets have difficulty getting enough stock to fill the pent-up demand. It does seem to me that Apple either severely miscalculated demand for the product, or is having difficulty ramping up production. The latter would seem questionable, though, since Apple executives claim they are pleased with the production situation, and they are “confident with the ability to supply,” yet they can’t say when supplies will catch up with demand.

In case you’re wondering, some 25 million applications have been downloaded so far from the App Store.

During its conference call with financial analysts after the financials were announced, Apple also said they were “very excited” about the forthcoming product pipeline but, as usual, gave no specifics about what you might expect even in the near future. Later in the conference they spoke of “start-of-the-art new products that deliver incredible value to our customers,” and several times mentioned that one of those products may indicate a major transition of some sort, but your guess about it is as good as mine.

As far as those guesses are concerned, I’d be willing to suggest that Apple’s display line is going to be reworked soon, if only because it’s been so long since the last revisions. On the other hand, are displays all that important, since they are so plentiful? Or is Apple prepping something revolutionary, such as their first entry into the flat-panel TV market?

It’s also possible that major revisions in the MacBook and MacBook Pro line, including spectacular new case designs, are in the offing. That’s what the rumor sites say, but with Apple how can you tell?

But perhaps the most significant issue that’s clouding Apple’s great financials is no doubt represented in a somewhat lurid story in Monday’s issue of the New York Post suggesting that the state of Steve Jobs’ health is a main factor contributing to ongoing concerns about Apple and the generally lower stock price.

Some of that speculation can be attributed to the gaunt appearance of Apple’s mercurial CEO during his WWDC keynote, particularly when you examine some of the photos that supposedly demonstrate that he has lost weight. At the time, Apple said Jobs was suffering from a “bug,” which required treatment with antibiotics. They did not, however, explain the nature of the illness, how long it might persist, or even if he has since been cured of the ailment.

Certainly ever since his apparently successful bout with pancreatic cancer, chatter about how long he might remain as head of Apple has taken on a macabre aspect. Has his cancer returned? Is he suffering other illnesses that might impact his ability to continue to his devote full energy to running the affairs of the company he co-founded?

According to Apple executives during the analyst meeting, “Steve loves Apple. He serves as CEO at the pleasure of Apple’s board. He has no plans to leave Apple.” They added that any questions about his health constitute a “private matter.”

While the departure of Bill Gates as a full-time employee of Microsoft was met with collective yawns, Jobs and Apple are tightly connected. Many feel the company could not possibly have escaped the jaws of death and emerged as a builder of iconic products without the leadership of Steve Jobs and the supremely talented people with whom he has surrounded himself.

Sure, Apple’s board claims it has a succession plan in the event of Jobs’ departure, and that they have a roster of talented executives from which to choose. That may be true from a business standpoint, but few believe another “rock star” can be located to take Apple on the next stage of its journey.

For now, though, Apple isn’t saying anything about any immediate changes. One hopes they’re not withholding anything.

The good news is that Apple is either third or tied for third in the U.S. PC retail market. This is one terrific piece of news for a company that has been given up for dead or eternal irrelevance on dozens of occasions over the years.

At the same time, all the good press that accompanies Apple’s exalted status in the media doesn’t mean that misconceptions still don’t abound. I suppose getting one’s facts correct takes a lower priority, or maybe it’s just a matter of doing a little research, and they do teach research in journalism school.

Or at least that’s what my son, a recent college graduate, tells me.

Of course, it’s easy to assume that publishing erroneous or at least misleading information is part of a grand conspiracy to cast fear, uncertainty and doubt about Apple. We all know about the alleged liberal media, or is that the conservative media?

No matter. I suppose it’s time to play the reality check game again, although my reality may not be quite the same as your reality. But since this is my playground, I’ll express my point of view, and leave plenty of space, as usual, for comments from my gentle readers.

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