From time to time, Steve Jobs has said that certain product features were added because of lots of customer requests. Notice he never mentions the press as being the source of such changes, but wouldn’t that still make sense?

Wouldn’t you think that long-time journalists who have covered the technology industry for years ought to have some semblance of an understanding of what features might be salable and significant and what features simply won’t work in the real world?

Maybe, maybe not. I’m kind of leaning towards the latter, and I don’t regard myself as an example of the typical Mac user, for example, that Apple ought to listen to. Having been exposed to all this gear for so many years, I’m probably more of an elitist — make that a financially-poor elitist — and my tastes don’t necessarily reflect the mass market.

So let’s look over the years, particularly during the time when Apple was an allegedly beleaguered company, and what the pundits were telling the company to do. And, worse, when Apple actually listened to them once upon a time.

After years and years of enduring demands from the likes of Bill Gates and the press, Apple relented and decided to license the Mac OS and hardware reference designs. Existing companies such as DayStar, Motorola, Radius and Umax got onboard, as did a startup, Power Computing.

Now Apple had hopes and dreams that these companies would greatly expand the relatively narrow Mac OS market. Instead, they went for the jugular and competed directly against Apple to capture a large segment of business from graphic artists and other content creators that kept the company afloat.

You can imagine what happened then. You see, tinier companies such as Power Computing, which used cheap PC parts with an Apple-designed logic board, were able to cobble together new models faster than Apple and at a lower price. The end result is that lots of Mac users — and I put myself in that category — ended up buying the Power Computing product instead of an Apple.

Clearly there was something wrong with this turn of events, and no doubt the contract was to be faulted for allowing such invasive marketing behavior. Steve Jobs put a stop to it when he took control of Apple, and you can see why he’d be loathe to try it again.

Some pundits suggest Apple should just license certain hardware configurations to other PC makers that would target markets they don’t reach, but this would cause a litany of problems, such as quality control and the possibility that, even then, the third-party boxes would somehow cannibalize the mother ship’s sales in many respects.

Did I mention quality control?

You see, Apple has succeeded in the 21st century to a large extent because they control the entire widget from design to execution and sales. More and more of their products are bought direct from the company, no middleman, no retailer other than Apple’s own. They say Steve Jobs is a control freak, and no doubt he is, but in this case that is a good thing.

It’s also a good thing that Apple has ignored the press about licensing Mac designs or the Mac OS, because either or both threaten to kill the company. Just use elementary school math and you’ll see what I mean, and, yes, they also teach math in college these days, even to budding journalists.

The critics, who imagine the iPhone is a failure, and the iPod will soon be supplanted by the Zune and millions of commodity music players, have also demanded Apple open up iTunes to third-party gear, such as those that support the various Microsoft protocols.

Why?

You see, nobody stops you from adding content on your iPod that you didn’t get from Apple. All the companies that deliver DRM-free content, such as Amazon, provide files you can import into iTunes and sync with your iPod or iPhone. Apple doesn’t have to do anything. Besides, they make most of the profit from the hardware. The store is largely an accommodation to deliver and manage content in as seamless a fashion as possible, but the largest share of the income goes direct to the movie and music companies.

In the end, though, even if Apple won’t listen to me and won’t listen to the press, they will listen to the regular people who pay good money for their products. So none of this should stop you from writing to Steve Jobs or filling out Feedback forms and making your views known. If enough of you demand a product or a feature, don’t be surprised if Apple listens.

As I was listening to some talking heads debate Apple’s financial prospects on a 24-hour cable TV show this weekend, I had the vain hope that they would provide a needed dose of reality upon the bad tidings surrounding Apple Inc. these days.

In the end, it was a mixed bag. One financial analyst said Apple was doing just dandy, thank you, while another said Apple’s stock has long been overpriced, and was a better buy at $125 per share. My conclusion is that they really don’t know, but they got on that show because they can provide instant pithy comments on a variety of financial matters that sounded great on TV. It doesn’t matter if they know what they are talking about or not.

It never does, sad to say.

But after it became clear that you can’t fault a company for having record sales, despite a basically gloomy economic outlook, the nasty, noisy negatives of the financial and tech press decided to embark in the incredibly wrong-headed search for the missing iPhones.

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

I know. You are going to think that I’m just playing my own game here, to get lots of hits with a lurid title, but I’m perfectly serious. If you examine Apple’s usual public relations ploys in handling new product announcements and other matters, you might even agree with me.

Let’s go back to last year, when Apple rolled out the new iPods and Steve Jobs announced that notorious $200 reduction in the price of an iPhone. In various interviews, he had rather a cavalier attitude about this unexpected maneuver, saying that customers have to expect the price of technology to change rapidly.

Yes, he was being brutally honest there, no doubt, but the reaction was quick and furious. How dare Apple cut the price of the iPhone so quickly without taking care of the early adopters? Well, one day later, Apple caved in, so to speak, by offering a $100 rebate to those who bought the iPhone too early to be eligible for dealer price protection.

So what happened here? Was Apple caught napping, and did Steve Jobs and the marketing team have to go back to the drawing boards to come up with a workable plan to fight off public condemnation, class action lawsuits and certainly negative press?

Quite possibly they simply miscalculated the public’s reaction, or forgot, for the moment, how much people have invested their hopes and dreams in Apple. Maybe Apple betrayed them accidentally, or was the price cut and the unfeeling comments from Jobs part of a calculated maneuver to get plenty of press, and even more when the policy was quickly changed?

Certainly, the iPhone reached its one million sales milestone within just a few days. Did all this extra publicity serve to boost sales over that magic threshold? Well, some marketing experts say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, just so long as they spell your name right.

In any case, Apple lived down that accidental or deliberate misadventure.

Then there is the issue of the iPhone SDK. Now if you look way back, Steve Jobs did say that Apple was working on a solution that would provide proper security protection. But that was lost in the pile as more and more independent programmers devised ways to install their own software without Apple’s official approval. Others managed to unlock the phone, so you can use it on another wireless carrier.

Now Apple’s cat-and-mouse game with the software crackers may have seemed to be an unfortunate activity, but you also have to remember that, by closing up security loopholes in the various iPhone updates, they were protecting you from exploitation. So what if it also had the side-effect of disabling third-party software. That’s just an expected if unfortunate development, and it is true that they were exploiting the security leaks to make their special installers function.

When Jobs announced during his WWDC keynote that Apple would let you build applications for the iPhone that opened within the Safari browser, many developers concluded “is that all there is” and were justifiably disappointed. Yes, there are such applications, but that’s not the point of this exercise.

Forgotten was Apple’s earlier promise about a software development solution that implied something more elaborate than a simple browser-based tool.

So when Apple finally announced the official iPhone SDK, many believed that this was done in response to the public’s clamoring for something better. Maybe that’s, in part, true. But that’s also the fulfillment of the promise Jobs made early on, the promise that was waylaid when a different scheme was presented at the WWDC keynote.

On the surface, it would seem as if the iPhone SDK was forced upon Apple, or maybe they put it on the backburner to see gauge public reaction and see what to do. You responded, and they reluctantly delivered the answer you wanted. But maybe it was all planned long, long ago.

Then there’s the new Time Capsule, a combo AirPort Extreme router and storage device, which will appear next month. It seems like a pretty simple product, which basically bundles two components and an internal power supply in one box. It’s designed for wireless backup for Macs running Leopard, but isn’t that something Apple previously promised to deliver for the AirPort itself?

That feature disappeared before Leopard was released, and there’s already chatter that maybe Apple did that so they could force you to buy their own storage device, even if you already have the router part. Does that conspiracy theory hold true? Apple isn’t saying.

I think, however, that they just wanted to keep you talking about it. In the end, there will quite likely be a software or firmware solution that will deliver that feature to the AirPort Extreme, so Apple can make good on its original promise.

And all of this, indeed, may be part of the great game to keep you talking about Apple and its products. If that’s true, they have succeeded admirably, as the mere existence of this commentary confirms.

Now that Wall Street has, as usual, run off half-cocked over apparent flattening of iPod sales, the pundits are at it again. Has Apple’s luster begun to fate? Are iPod sales destined to tank? What’s Apple’s next great thing and will it arrive in time to halt the renewed  atmosphere of gloom and doom for the company?

Or is that “thing” already here?

Understand all this fear, uncertainty and doubt remained even after Apple reported record earnings that exceeded Wall Street estimates. You’d think they’d be rewarded for doing so well, but that’s not the way things are. Apple is, to all intents and purposes, a show business figure as personified by Steve Jobs. So the same rules apply. Today you adore them, tomorrow they are the objects of derision, whether they deserve it or not.

Indeed, one question raised these days is whether the iPod’s existence as a cultural icon is coming to a close. Surely it was a fad, and that it sustained itself so long seems to be almost a miracle. It’s also clear from Apple’s own product enhancements that they knew this would happen and they are ready for the inevitable transition. A part of that is, of course, the iPod touch, its new “Wi-fi mobile platform” that is, in all likelihood, the true successor to the Newton. With the coming software update, the touch and the iPhone will be identical products, except for the phone features in the latter.

Today, the iPod touch comes at a premium price, largely because Flash memory remains costly. But this is the true next-generation iPod, and it won’t be so long before you’ll be able to get one for less than $200. It will probably take a few years before the iPod classic is out of the picture, however, so long as high amounts of storage are most efficiently delivered on a hard drive, but don’t be surprised if Apple develops a touch version of this model too. That also appears to be in the cards.

Indeed, it’s clear to me that the day of the standalone MP3 player is rapidly coming to a close, even as Microsoft attempts to gain traction in this space with the Zune. Apple’s executives know this full well, and that’s an important message analysts have largely missed from Tuesday’s conference call on the last quarter’s financial results.

Another issue not getting the attention it deserves is the incredible resurgence of the Mac. When Apple removed “Computer” from its corporate name and delayed Leopard several months, it was felt that they didn’t care so much about selling personal computers anymore.

However, if you look at the sales figures, you’ll see that’s just not so. More and more Windows users, sick and tired of Vista and its chronic performance and compatibility irritants, are crossing to the other side of the tracks where thing are far more predictable. Apple continues to claim that 50% of the computers sold at their retail stores are to customers new to the Mac.

I do wonder, of course, why the analysts don’t seem to want to ask Apple how it arrives at those figures. I suppose there might be spot surveys and such, but do you know anyone who was ever asked? Then again, they don’t ask me who I want to vote for as president either.

The final issue is far more important, however, and that’s the touchy issue of succession. Ever since Steve Jobs dodged the cancer bullet a while back, you have to wonder if Apple’s board of directors has made any effort to line up his replacement. Sure, Jobs seems to have recovered nicely, and despite claims at one time that he seemed a little out of it at one or two keynote addresses, I haven’t heard any such claims after this month’s Macworld Expo. Sure, the product announcements may not have been as trendsetting as the introduction of the iPhone last year, but Jobs seemed perfectly on target.

But nothing is forever. It is possible Jobs will continue to savor the CEO experience for many years, well into his 70s perhaps. But that would mean that health and other tragedies don’t intervene to change the situation in a terrible way with little warning. A responsible company would plan for the eventual departure of its leader, and I have little doubt that a replacement is being groomed within the hallowed halls of One Infinite Loop.

How would that play out? Well, as a first step towards his departure, Jobs could split his duties, remain Chairman while having someone else become the CEO and fulfill day-to-day functions. That would retain his position as the company’s main visionary, almost in the fashion of Bill Gates becoming Microsoft’s “Chief Software Architect” in his final days as a full-time employee of the company he co-founded.

The other question is whether the well-known executives at Apple, such as Tim Cook, Jonathan Ive or Phil Schiller could, separately, fill the shoes of a Steve Jobs. Or would it require two people, sharing the leadership position?

So who do you think can truly replace Steve Jobs? Is it possible that replacement might have to come from outside Apple?