When I used to make regular pilgrimages to the Apple campus in Cupertino, CA for a press briefing, Steve Jobs would, on occasion, take questions from the media. Now the personable salesman with the famous “reality distortion field” can sometimes take on a hostile demeanor when he’s asked a tough question.

Take the time, several years ago, when Jobs was asked about plans to discontinue the poor-selling Cube. He shot back: “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” and went on to proclaim that Apple was pleased with the sales of its diminutive computer with fashionable molded plastic exterior.

As the press expected, however, the Cube was cut from Apple’s product list within a matter of weeks.

Now it may well be that Jobs really hoped that the Cube could sustain itself in the product line, but, in the end, he had to accept the bad news from his sales department that it just wasn’t successful. This may have represented an internal battle between his emotional need to replicate the original NeXT Cube and make a go of it in its second incarnation as a Mac. Regardless, Jobs is also a responsible businessman and had to accept the inevitable in the end.

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

Over the years, some eager-beaver would-be tech writers have been busy proclaiming the imminent death of Apple. Now it’s fair to say that they came close to being correct a time or two, because Apple did some pretty foolish things during the late 1980s and early 1990s that nearly did the company in.

However, through a combination of luck, perseverance, and building lots of great products, Apple managed to confound the doomsayers and keep the company alive. Today, more people have Macs on their radar for near-future purchases than ever, and the figures are equal to or higher than those of most of the biggest-selling PC boxes.

Forget about the Zune, where most of the sales are apparently being rung up on last year’s model, with lots of leftovers being sold at fire sale prices. This season, it’s still all about the iPod, with the iPhone being the icing on the cake.

Yes, there are still a number of alleged tech pundits who trash Apple’s products, all-too-often with misleading and downright erroneous information.

Now if only Microsoft were held to the same standard. What would happen then?

Well, this week I read a fascinating commentary from my friend Daniel Eran Dilger at his RoughlyDrafted site, comparing Microsoft’s efforts at operating system and browser hegemony to the old Soviet Union. The article, along with others Daniel has written over the years, paints a frightening picture as to just how Microsoft used deception and illegal marketing tactics, and just plain financial muscle, to win dominance in the personal computing marketplace.

But just as the Soviet Union ultimately collapsed of its own accord due to the failed communist infrastructure, Daniel says Microsoft will face the same ultimate fate over time.

Of course, such things aren’t going to happen quickly, and you won’t wake up one morning to find all the major businesses around the world embracing Macs. If Microsoft does succumb to market desertion, the process will be slow, and erosion will take years before the effects become meaningful. And certainly Microsoft’s legion of online and print apologists will write lots and lots of verbiage in the meantime, explaining why nothing is really wrong with the company, it’s only temporary, and they’ll come out on top all over again in the end.

You might wonder, though, just how anyone can predict Microsoft’s demise, impending or long-term. Well, maybe not their demise so much as their slow, halting decline into eventual irrelevance. Regardless, it’s perfectly true the company is making huge profits, and it’s also true that they are still building products that people depend on to get their work done. What’s more, you can’t rightly say that Microsoft always delivers bad merchandise. I think, for example, that their Mac Business Unit, despite being constrained by misguided corporate policies, is filled with dedicated Mac-heads who are absolutely dedicated to building the best software they can, and I look forward with great anticipation to the forthcoming Office 2008 for the Mac.

At the same time, the vultures are not just circling Apple these days. Consider Web browsers, where Internet Explorer remains the standard, true, but not nearly by as much of a margin as before. Take the rise of Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari, now on both the Mac and Windows platforms, Opera and a few others, and Internet Explorer has declined to 75% and the trend is continuing. This despite the fact that Internet Explorer 7 was pushed even to users of Windows XP.

Speaking of Windows, Microsoft has to feel embarrassed over how many of its customers have continued to say no to Vista. In fact, enterprises continue to cut back on their plans to upgrade from Windows 2000 and XP. Sure, it’s possible the forthcoming SP1 maintenance update will fix many of Vista’s ills. At the same time, preliminary reports indicate that Vista’s pathetic performance has not improved to any measurable degree.

Of course, on the long haul, Vista will undoubtedly deliver more huge profits for Microsoft. Just from the sale of new PCs, millions of OEM licenses will be sold, and most people, frankly, aren’t requesting Windows XP downgrades. The same is true for Office 2007 and the upcoming Mac version. Lots of businesses deploy these office suites on their personal computers, and they have yet to fully consider alternatives, such as the online collaboration applications from Google.

But just look at the fast-track growth of Macs. More and more people are seriously considering them, particularly in the note-book segment. Sure, some people will continue to buy retail copies of Windows to install under Boot Camp, Parallels Desktop or VMWare Fusion. But to many, it’s a crutch, a way to use legacy software until they find comparable products on the Mac.

Over time, as more and more Macs move into homes and businesses, you’ll even see developers far more inclined to deliver Mac versions of their key applications. And then things will really take off.

But the most important obstacle ensuring the potential end of Microsoft’s dominance, aside from inferior products, is the fact that more and more companies no longer fear their wrath for outright defiance. With government agencies, particularly in Europe, watching over Microsoft’s every single move, they can’t run roughshod over competitors as easily as they used to.

This trend may not play out in a year or two, but, over time, things are going to change. That is, unless Microsoft sees the handwriting on the wall and becomes a responsible corporate citizen that strives to compete fairly in the marketplace.

You have probably heard and read all sorts of Apple-bashing over the years. Some of it is subtle, some of it outrageous. While there are plenty of real things you can say to criticize Apple for the things it doesn’t do properly, some of these “professional critics” prefer to concentrate on myths and half-truths to ramp up their hit counts.

Now you’d expect Network World to be a responsible publication. It’s one that caters to the enterprise, and when they evaluate Leopard Server, this ought to be the last word in evaluating Apple’s business server solution.

But it’s not.

While I’m not necessarily an expert on Mac OS X Server — although I did co-write a book about it once — a little common sense is all you need to feel the sharpness of ones hatchet when they decide to trash a product with innuendo and misdirection.

In the case of the review in question, Apple’s Leopard is Spotty, written by Tom Henderson and Rand Dvorak (don’t know if he’s related to the notorious John Dvorak) of the Network World Lab Alliance, they trash Leopard Server as “buggy,” lacking flexibility and performance gains. The article, however, fails to support the title or the blurb.

Take the complaint about bugs. They admit that “most if not all are cured” with the 10.5.1 updater? So why call the product buggy if the problems have already been resolved?

All right, maybe the folks who write headlines and blurbs don’t actually read the copy, so let’s continue.

Leopard Server is also lambasted for lacking significant new features, and continuing to use such legacy applications as Apache, MySQL and so on and so forth. Understand that these opens source products are widely supported online and receive regular updates from developers and contributors. They are certainly not old fashioned or obsolete in any sense. In fact this site is run using the latest version of these and other popular Web tools.

So what’s the point? Do the reviewers feel Apple should somehow be embracing proprietary server tools from Microsoft instead?

It’s not that Leopard is bereft of useful new features. In praising the new Podcast Producer package, for example they found it “stunningly simple to use.” Time Machine, the new iCal and Wiki tools and the new, highly simplified setup routines were also found to be laudable additions to Leopard Server’s feature set. The new read-only support for Sun’s ZFS file system — which may some day replace HFS+ — was found to be “easy and trivial” to operate.

Despite these new features, Leopard Server was found to perform pretty much the same as Tiger Server which, itself, is a notable achievement, and something Microsoft cannot duplicate with its own operating system upgrades. Besides, I don’t see any momentous claims by Apple that Leopard Server would somehow knock your socks off with performance improvements. In addition to the known feature enhancements, just making it simpler to setup will appeal to smaller businesses that don’t have, and probably can’t afford, dedicated IT people.

To be fair, Apple is praised for opening up Leopard Server licensing to allow you to install multiple instances — virtual machines — on the same Mac. They correctly mention that virtualization software is not available, but didn’t do their homework. You see, a Parallels Server is in the final stages of development now, and VMWare is hinting at a similar solution in the near future. None of these developments are secret and this information is already part of the public record.

Although the reviewers admit the improvements are real, they complain that they “are incremental, with no earth-shattering single compelling reason to upgrade.” What about the sum total of the parts? It’s hard to know, because they don’t say.

Understand that the actual article doesn’t contain notable factual errors that I can see. It’s just the organization of the piece and the questionable conclusions that muddy the waters. Indeed, it’s all too easy to take a good product and cast aspersions with a some careful or perhaps careless editing.

So who is at fault for this travesty? Is it the reviewers who, actually, seem to have done credible work in terms of gathering and reporting facts? I don’t pretend to know, and it’s likely they wouldn’t dare criticize their editors for possibly slanting what may otherwise have been quite a favorable review. In the end, let’s stick with their scorecard, which grants Leopard Sever a 4.25 out of 5 rating, with lies just above “very good” and on track to the “excellent” category.

I do wonder, though, if there’s an ulterior motive behind all this or if the editors of Network World are trying to emulate CNET in finding questionable or non-existent faults with products in order to show they are being objective in their reviews.

Or can we apply the conspiracy theory that they crave all those advertising dollars from Microsoft and just don’t want to make Apple’s products look good? No, I won’t go there, because sloppy editing may be the culprit here, or just a misguided attempt not to be characterized as Apple fanboys if they happen to heap too many compliments on Apple’s server software.

It’s got to be a strange world out there, with some folks reporting that Leopard has driven them crazy, while most of you appear to have had great experiences with Apple’s latest operating system.

Include me in the latter camp.

In recent articles, I’ve tried to put this confusing picture into perspective. I know there are Mac troubleshooting sites that are designed to keep tabs on such matters, and you can certainly find lots to chew over, such as unexpected crashes, and Wi-Fi connection problems and printing issues. Any one of these items ought to be sufficient to cause deep concern, particularly if your Mac was working just great prior to the Leopard upgrade.

Now, to be perfectly fair, the furore has died down quite a bit since the 10.5.1 update came out last month. Little has been said about the immediate requirement for a 10.5.2, and some of the latest reported bugs appear to be downright eccentric. One calls for Command- or right-clicking on a blank column in a Finder window, and selecting Get Info from the popup menu. This particular act will usually cause the Finder to crash and relaunch. Big deal! Since it doesn’t represent an action one might take in the real world to perform a real function, it’s not a bug that ought to rank high on Apple’s list of problems that need to be fixed.

On the other hand, crashes are serious, and it’s important to find out what’s going on. Without having had any to speak of myself on my various Leopard installations, I might suggest that it’s probably an interaction with third-party software in most cases. The solution would be to look out for an update to the offending application. Unfortunately, such matters are quite normal in the early days of a new system release, and not just from Apple.

In saying that, however, Apple isn’t innocent of having incompatible software. For example, I ran into problems with their sprawling Logic Studio suite until a recent update was installed.  Certainly, Adobe had to address a few problems with Leopard, and QuarkXPress received its own 10.5 updater recently.

But I am troubled by published reports that Apple didn’t provide the Golden Master version of Leopard to developers until after it officially went on sale, even though it was evidently completed a week or two earlier. If true, it means that developers weren’t able to test their code with the release build of 10.5 until it was too late to come out with timely updates.

So why would Apple act in such a paranoid fashion to the developers it reportedly courts so enthusiastically? One possible reason is rampant piracy. Within hours after Leopard officially went on sale, peer-to-peer sites were already posting copies of the DVD disc image. Now I understand that an awful lot of people have financial difficulties these days, but I don’t think pirating a $129 product is necessarily a solution. Besides, you can get Leopard at a discount if you shop around. Regardless, I think it’s clear that BitTorrent versions would somehow appear regardless, so Apple ought to concentrate its attention on taking care of developers and getting them new product as quickly as possible.

As to those reports of Wi-Fi connection problems, I’m in a quandary about that. If anything, the AirPort system in my 17-inch MacBook Pro — which was upgraded by a third-party to provide 802.11n support — worked fine with Tiger and with Leopard. Yes, I have always had occasional connection issues, but fine-tuning the settings in my AirPort Express base station, by selecting an individual channel rather than using the “Automatic” setting, has alleviated most of those symptoms.

Then again, Wi-Fi is never 100% dependable unless you are real close to the router, or are situated within a hot spot. Otherwise, connections can vary all over the place. In part, it depends on the construction of the building you’re in, obstacles in an open space, and even whether the signals are competing with other radio waves in your vicinity. It doesn’t necessarily have to be due to some soft of Leopard defect.

It’s also apparent that Apple did lots of tweaking with their AirPort systems, so it may well be that what worked before doesn’t work now in some situations, whereas the signals are more reliable in other installations. If you check the Mac troubleshooting reports for the last few years, you’ll find that there have always been Wi-Fi issues of one sort or another. That, my friends, may not change until a better standard is achieved — and maybe not even then.

In my own case, the one connection issue I’ve yet to completely overcome is the “Back to My Mac” scenario, which allows you to use your .Mac service to screen share between two Macs even over the Internet. It usually works if you are using an AirPort system or wired Ethernet for both systems. But when it comes to other brands of wireless routers, all bets are off. Different companies use different chipsets, and software may differ sufficiently to make something that works in one place fail in another. Even Apple has admitted they have work to do, but this isn’t a Leopard-killer by any means, because you needed to install special software for screen sharing up till now. From here it’ll only get better.

As to printing, the only issue I’ve seen involves Microsoft Word 2004, where page margins are reported by the printer driver as out of range. I’m not terribly concerned about this conflict, since Word 2008 is just around the corner, now that it has been released to manufacturing, so I’ll be seeing a copy soon. I suspect, without having checked anything in particular, that Microsoft has resolved all or most lingering Leopard issues.

With other output devices, it may just be the state of the drivers, another common side-effect of a new operating system release. In fact, Apple includes hundreds and hundreds of built-in printer drivers for many popular products as part of the standard Leopard installation. Updates for some makers, such as HP, will actually appear in Leopard’s Software Update application when they are available. For the rest of you, keep tabs on the maker’s site.

There is, of course, that ATI Radeon XT1900 graphic card I bought for my Power Mac G5 Quad some months back. The drivers are a year old, and AMD, ATI’s parent company, says that I have to ask Apple about compatible drivers. But the ones provided with Leopard don’t work. So I’m back to square one, although one reader told me that he got his ATI card to function reliably in Leopard with the old drivers that shipped with his card. Perhaps I should try that as a last resort, one of these days.