But I’ve got terrible news for all those companies: there is only one Apple. Tempting as it may be to start up your own ecosystem of apps and content, you need something truly compelling to make people sign up to it in the same way that tens of millions of people have signed their lives away to Apple.

Apple customers sign up to a brand with values they believe in, to a name that they will be happy to associate themselves with.

For a start, you need trust. Apple customers sign up to a brand with values they believe in, to a name that they will be happy to associate themselves with. You also need staggering amounts of content: from apps to movies to TV shows to music, Apple has this sewn up.

You need sexiness: if I’m going to buy your phone, it needs to look damn good. Finally, you need phenomenal ease of use. If you have to spend a minute explaining what your service does, or how you connect to it using your devices, then you’ve lost three-quarters of your potential customers.

Like them or loathe them, no other company can match Apple in these areas.

So when I look back at CES, despite all the excellent technology on show, I do so with a mix of fear and despondency.

The issue is typified by the likes of Samsung and Sony. Both made big plays at CES that suggest they think they could be an all-encompassing rival to Apple, whether it’s Samsung talking about the fact you can play Angry Birds on their TVs or Sony pointing out that its customers can watch movies a month earlier on their movie-download service. Sorry Sony, sorry Samsung: but it’s not enough.

Instead, we need either open standards or a compelling play by a company that can work with different partners. Obvious examples of the latter are Microsoft and Google, but even this has hints of idealism: think how difficult Microsoft has found it to make anyone else sign up to services such as Passport.

Nevertheless, I can’t see any alternative. Sony and Samsung both produce great hardware, and Sony – through its subsidiaries such as Sony Entertainment – own some phenomenal content. But they are light years away from the position where a critical mass of consumers sign up to the Sony or Samsung ecosystem in the same way that Apple customers do.

So, please, stop trying and start working with Google, Microsoft and Amazon to ensure that the products we buy from you work with all the different content providers. Focus on what your company is good at, not what Apple is good at.

Apple’s Final Cut Pro X was received with derision in some circles when it launched last year. Ostensibly it replaced the old version – Final Cut Pro 7 – but in fact it had been rewritten from the ground up. And there were gaping holes.

Erstwhile fans of the application moaned so hard I felt moved to write about the backlash, proponents of which complained about the lack of multicam features, as well as support for previous projects, XML and broadcast monitoring.

Now, Apple says, the free 10.0.3 update has filled in those gaps, fixed what was until now broken, and generally brought the new version up to the same level as before.

In a briefing, Apple spent a long time demonstrating the swish new multicam editing system, which looked suitably impressive, with support for up to 64 simultaneous angles, the ability to mix and match codecs and resolutions within multicam edits, and multiple synchronisation options. Editors can choose to synchronise clips based on analysis of the audio wave form, by marker or by keyword.

It also announced that, finally, there was a way of importing old projects from Studio 7 to Pro X – albeit via the $10 plugin 7toX for Final Cut Pro, from third-party developer Intelligent Assistance.

Apple was also keen to highlight burgeoning third-party support elsewhere – via effects plugins from the likes of GenArts, Red Giant and Sapphire Edge.

Also on the list of upgrades and improvements is a tweaked chroma key tool that allows editors more hands-on fine-tuning; updated XML support; the ability to import and handle multi-layered Photoshop PSD files; and Media Relink, a new tool for tracking down and re-integrating media into projects that may have been moved or modified.

Finally, Apple announced hardware support for external I/O devices such as colour-calibrated broadcast monitors (a feature still in beta while performance is being tuned). It demonstrated this by outputting its preview stream via a Thunderbolt-connected AJA Io XT to a Sony broadcast monitor.

There are still some areas that haven’t been addressed (there are issues with the import from and export to tape, for instance), yet for the most part this is an update that fixes many of the complaints when the software was originally launched. The fact that Apple has acted a mere seven months after launch is commendable; whether it will bring those disgruntled professionals back into the fold remains to be seen.

From iconic machines like the IBM PC to the silliness of Sony’s £1,190 netbook, we’ve scoured the darkest corners and blown dust off some of the oldest, oddest and rarest kit we can find – starting with a true icon of the industry.

IBM PC

Introduced on August 12 1981, IBM’s Personal Computer was the first machine to popularise the now-ubiquitous term – and one of these antiques sits at the back of the PC Pro Lab.

Processing grunt was provided by the single-core, 4.77MHz Intel 8088, and floppy disks and cassettes are both supported. There’s a mighty 256KB of RAM, with 64KB of that soldered onto the motherboard. The IBM PC didn’t come cheap, either: a barebones model without any drives cost $1,565 and the top-end model came with bells, whistles and a monitor for $20,000.

The motherboard includes five eight-bit Industry Standard Architecture slots, with three of ours occupied: there’s a floppy disk drive controller card a SixPakPlus memory expansion board packed with 64KB chips, and a multidisplay adapter that’s actually two slabs of PCB stuck together. In the middle of the machine is an IBM 5 ¼in Diskette Drive.

Only one question remains, though, once we’ve blown the dust off this venerable old machine – can it run Crysis?

Apple Macintosh Plus

The Macintosh Plus might be a disturbing shade of yellow but that’s hardly surprising – it first saw the light of day in 1986. Released for £2,599, it was produced until October 1990 – the longest production run of any Macintosh – and was supported by Mac OS up to 1996.

It broke ground in other ways, too. As the first Macintosh to include a SCSI port it paved the way for external devices such as hard disks, tape drives, printers and CD-ROM drives, and this was also the first Macintosh to use SIMMs for its memory – with a massive 1MB of the stuff included as standard across four 256KB sticks.

Our particular model bears the familiar Cupertino, California label on its rear, but the sticker also reveals that this machine was “Assembled in Ireland” – a far cry from today, where most technology seems to be produced in Asia.

Apple Macintosh Colour Classic

Fast forward a few years – and look under a different test-bench – and you’ll find another piece of Apple history. It’s the first compact Macintosh computer to come with a colour display, and we wouldn’t have the iMac – the world’s finest all-in-one PC – without the Colour Classic paving the way.

Originally priced at $1,400 in February 1993, it ran on Mac OS 7.6.1 – the first version of the OS to drop the “System” from its name so the more distinctive moniker could be trademarked and the OS licensed to third-party Macintosh manufacturers.

This ancient all-in-one was more upgradeable than most of today’s models, too. The Processor Direct Slot was used with the Apple IIe Card, and ran software designed for the older Apple II. This backwards compatibility was supposed to entice the education market to upgrade from Apple II machines to fully-fledged Macintoshes, but other upgrades were also available, from CPU accelerators to Ethernet and video cards.

This versatility means the Colour Classic enjoys a cult following today: users have modded the machine with Power Mac parts so its screen runs at 640 x 480 rather than 560 x 384, and others have fitted motherboards from more powerful models.

Casio Cassiopeia E-115

Technical editor Darien Graham-Smith found the Casio Cassiopeia E-115 hiding at the back of his cupboard, but it first arrived back in October 2000 when PDAs, rather than smartphones, were big news.

So, what did you get for £422? There’s the sturdy exterior, which we described as “dull-grey silver” and “resting on its laurels”, alongside a cradle that “feels cheap and doesn’t engage with the Cassiopeia as solidly as we’d like” in its full review.

It wasn’t all bad news, with a 240 x 320 LCD screen that was better than its rivals, and a 131MHz StrongARM processor that was “fast enough to ensure instantaneous contact searches and speedy application switching”, according to us. It also had 16MB of ROM and 32MB of RAM memory – “about as much as you currently need”, at least back then.

Oh, and the software? Microsoft Windows CE 3.0 PocketPC Edition. Our model is old and, presumably, scarred by Darien’s cupboard, so it wouldn’t turn on – although that’s probably for the best, given that we concluded that the Casio simply couldn’t “match the standard” set by Compaq’s iPAQ.

Apple iMac G4

The G4 marked the first major redesign of the iMac, but the forlorn model found in the PC Pro Lab has clearly seen better days. It’s missing its monitor bezel, the distinctive round base is looking grubby, and it wouldn’t turn on – although that chrome, cantilevered arm is as smooth as it was when the G4 was eased from its box in 2002.

We described the G4 as “smooth and elegant design that puts other computer makes to shame”. Even now it stands out in a sea of modern all-in-ones that all look a little too familiar.

Our review also highlighted Apple’s concentration on “excellent design and ease of use”, but that has downsides – a specification we described as “Paleolithic”. It’s the first time we’ve seen computers compared to dinosaurs, but the SDRAM was slow and the GeForce 2 MX graphics chip was a generation behind the curve. It might look nice – as Apple devices are wont to do – but PCs ran our Photoshop 7 benchmark almost twice as quickly.

Dell Latitude

The oldest laptop we managed to find demonstrates the changing of technology. This Dell Latitude isn’t quite as backward as we first thought. It’s either a C540 or C640 – we’re not sure which, as it’s been hidden on a high shelf for far too long – and it’s a mix of old problems and forgotten boons.

It’s running a Pentium 4 chip with Windows XP, but the most striking thing about this machine is its design – or lack of it. Plain plastic is the order of the day, and the lid features the familiar Dell logo, along with the kind of build quality that we’d slate if this machine were reviewed today.

The base doesn’t cover itself in glory, either, with stickers, flaps, screws, feet and even some exposed fans. It’s also obvious where laptops have fallen backwards as companies rush to build slim, snazzy Ultrabooks: we rarely see keyboards with the kind of comfort, responsiveness and travel as this Latitude offers, and the 4:3 screen has a native resolution of 1,600 x 1,200 – a huge amount of desktop real estate compared to the 1,366 x 768 and 1,600 x 900 screens that now seem to be the norm.

Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT, 7600 GS and AMD Radeon HD 2600 XT

We’ve a big plastic tub full of graphics cards in the Labs and, while most of them are recent, a trio of PCBs lurking amid the anti-static bags and DVI to D-SUB adapters come from decidedly older stock. Two Nvidia cards, the GeForce 7300 GT and 7600 GS, are joined by AMD’s Radeon HD 2600 XT.

They were launched in 2006 and 2007, and they handily illustrate the impressive speed at which technology is pushed forward. The first 28nm GPU has just arrived but, back then, Nvidia and AMD were using 90nm and 65nm processes – and the 390 million transistors in the AMD card pales when compared to the 4.3 billion in AMD’s latest.

The bandwidth statistics are telling, too: the Radeon card churns through 35.2GB/sec in its 512MB incarnation, with the 7300 GT and 7600 GS offering 10.67GB/sec and 12.8GB/sec respectively. The latest high-end card, the Radeon HD 7970, chews through 264GB/sec – and even modest boards, such as Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 550 Ti, handle 98.5GB/sec.

Oh, and our benchmarks? The 7600 GS played Call of Duty 2 at 18fps when run at 1,280 x 1,024. Bless.

Sony VAIO P-series

Sony senior vice president Mike Abary famously said his company would never join the “race to the bottom” when netbooks hit the big time, and he wasn’t joking – Sony’s VAIO P-series cost £1,190 inc VAT for the top-end model.

That money paid for radical design, with a base occupied entirely by the keyboard,  that’s still so small and fiddly that you have to peck at the keys, prod at the trackpoint and squint at the 8in 1,600 x 900 screen. The Z-series Atom was decidedly Z-list, too, thanks to performance that couldn’t match £350 rivals.

Steve Jobs isn’t here to enjoy his triumph, but this week’s announcement that Adobe has stopped developing the mobile version of the Flash player would undoubtedly have delighted him. The title of yesterday’s Guardian story says it all: “Adobe kills mobile Flash, giving Steve Jobs the last laugh”. The first comment is even starker: “Flash – good riddance!”

So why has Adobe taken the decision? Is this really the end of the road for Flash? And is it really good news?

Inevitably most commentators are presenting the move as a vindication of Steve Jobs’ argument that Flash was inherently unsuited for lightweight mobile delivery.

Regular readers will know that I’ve never bought this argument,  largely because it’s untrue and ignores the fact that Flash was specifically developed to deliver the richest possible experience down narrow web pipelines and on everyday systems – and that it has kept to this strict mission throughout its life.

Retrospectively banning an established web technology – in use on an astonishing 62% of the top 97,000 sites according to Microsoft figures – was an extraordinary coup

As such, the lightweight rich Flash player and the new generation of lightweight rich handheld devices should have been the perfect match. If Apple had wanted to make Flash work on mobiles, it could have. I think that the existence and success of the Android player shows this is true (and performance would only get better) and that Jobs’ carefully crafted list of objections to Flash were entirely bogus.

My view, as I’ve argued before, is that Steve Jobs’ real motivation was entirely business driven. What is truly revolutionary about the new iOS platform is its business model, in which rich content and applications are delivered exclusively through native apps and through the App Store with its 30% commission. Seen in this light, the threat that Flash poses is clear: enabling the same rich content/apps to be delivered efficiently and securely, direct from producer to consumer, across all platforms, within the browser, and without commission.

You have to admire the man. Retrospectively banning an established web technology – in use on an astonishing 62% of the top 97,000 sites according to Microsoft figures – was an extraordinary coup. Somehow Steve Jobs pulled it off and even managed to make it seem that denying his users functionality, freedom of choice and competition was doing them a favour. Imagine what would have happened if Microsoft had tried to pull off the same trick.

Crucially Jobs’ action and success also made it possible – perhaps even inevitable – that Microsoft would follow suit. I think that the final straw for Adobe came with the recent announcement that Windows 8’s IE10 would only support the Flash player in its desktop mode and not under the new iOS-style, tablet-oriented Metro front end.

Of course that still left Android and the other Open Screen Project (OSP) partners  - who, incidentally, remain free to develop their own future mobile players (a possible USP for Google?). However, with both Apple and now Microsoft lined up against it, the writing on the wall was clear.

Flash could never become universal in the mobile space as it is on the desktop, not because it couldn’t deliver the goods and build the audience – it could – but because it wasn’t going to be allowed to. There was nothing Adobe could do about it; the mobile Flash player’s fate was entirely out of its hands. Adobe’s decision isn’t a vindication of Steve Jobs’ position, it’s just a direct consequence.

The future for Flash and HTML5 – in practice

That said, it’s the reality to be faced and, with even Adobe now turning its back on its mobile player in favour of HTML5, is this the end of the road for Flash?

It’s important not to get carried away and to stress that Adobe is only stopping development of the mobile player. The Flash player will still be developed for the desktop where it remains ubiquitous and reigns supreme and indeed unchallenged, now that Microsoft has effectively ditched Silverlight.

If Flash can no longer deliver to all users then developers and designers are going to look for a solution that can

However, to pretend that Flash on the desktop is unaffected is wishful thinking. Ultimately it comes down to the same argument: the web is all about universality. If Flash can no longer deliver to all users then developers and designers are going to look for a solution that can.

As soon as Steve Jobs banned cross-platform web extensions (Silverlight and Java as well as Flash) and established the iOS platform, then HTML5 became the only viable universal web solution for the long term. If you can do what you want to do in HTML5 then there’s little question that that’s the best way to do it. The fundamental shift from Flash to HTML5 in the browser is unavoidable, and now even Adobe is fully and clearly on board.

However while “doing Flash in HTML5” sounds simple and desirable, that doesn’t mean it is. Take the easiest example: the ubiquitous Flash-based animated vector ad. Now it’s certainly possible that this can be delivered via HTML5 rather than Flash (as the Flash blockers are now discovering). However what does this actually mean in practice?

Are you really going to code the vectors of the SVG objects by hand? And then the keyframes of the animation? And then what about the output? HTML5 browser support isn’t simple and varying HTML5 capabilities and implementations will likely need specialised handling. Again theoretically you could learn all the foibles and test against all the platforms and browsers, or then again, you might have better things to do.

The bottom line is that open coding is all very well in principle but Notepad isn’t going to cut it – to produce rich Flash-style results you’re going to need a dedicated Flash-style tool for design and output. And the most likely provider will be Adobe. No doubt the next version of Dreamweaver will add canvas tag capabilities while for more complex scenarios you will be able to use the all-new, dedicated, HTML5-native Adobe Edge.

Ironically, using Flash tools in this way will actually be the only option if you want to remain truly universal

Alternatively, Adobe has made it clear that it plans to graft HTML5 output onto its existing Flash tools whenever that’s possible, so why not stick with what you know?

Ironically, using Flash tools in this way will actually be the only option if you want to remain truly universal as it means that you will be able to cater for the HTML5-only tablet audience, including iOS and Metro, as well as the Flash-based desktop audience using pre-HTML5 browsers such as IE6, 7 and 8.

Sticking with Flash for authoring has other advantages. HTML5 has just about caught up with Flash-style banner ads circa 1995, but nowadays Flash Professional, Builder and Catalyst are powerful all-round rich internet authoring applications. Again, as I’ve written before it’s important to realise that HTML5 is not a direct and wholesale Flash replacement. There are plenty of scenarios – starting with simple and secure video streaming and stretching all the way to line-of-business applications – where HTML5/JavaScript simply isn’t up to the job.

The widespread assumption is that HTML5 will quickly close the gap, but is this realistic? For the foreseeable future all efforts will rightly be focused on getting browser support and compliance for HTML5’s existing features (with the official W3C HTML5 Recommendation not expected to be finalised for another three years). In the meantime Adobe is free to add more advanced capabilities, which is exactly what it is doing with the new 3D games engine in its new Flash player. If anything the gap is widening.

Flash goes native – and under cover

But what on earth is the point of adding such cutting-edge new features if you can’t deliver them on the future of computing, the cutting-edge new mobile devices?

Who said you can’t? Most commentators are assuming that Adobe is effectively throwing in the towel when it comes to Flash for the mobile market, but again this is a mistake. Yes the Flash player has been ruled out, but, as I discuss in my current RWC column in the January edition of PC Pro, the Flash tools remain as relevant as ever. In fact even more so.

In particular it’s important to note that Adobe’s recent announcement says:

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores

Which makes it pretty clear that Adobe is planning to build on its existing Android and iOS native output with new support for Metro.

In other words, the mobile market isn’t a no-go area for Flash – quite the reverse. In fact if you want to produce work for all major desktop platforms – Windows, OS X, Linux and Chrome – and for all the major mobile platforms – Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Metro – Flash is the only way to go. When Adobe says that Flash/AIR is reaching more devices and more users than ever, it’s not just hype.

It turns out (again) that the rumours of the death of Flash are greatly exaggerated in both the desktop and mobile arenas. In fact the technology and platform is arguably healthier and more relevant than it has ever been, just in the new guise of AIR. Certainly the opening up of the new mobile form factor and of the new mobile app stores is an incredibly exciting opportunity for Flash developers.

In fact if Flash developers were given the choice between the app stores and the browser, I’m sure that most would choose the former. Likewise with end users. But the point is why should they have to choose? Why not have both? Or rather all three: universal HTML5, native code and Flash in between.

Web Flash: good riddance to bad rubbish?

Let’s stand back and think about what we’re losing as Flash is driven out of the browser.

Flash is a fundamentally different technology to HTML that seamlessly extends what the browser can do into new territory based upon vectors, animation, media, interactivity and advanced programmability. It’s a single, robust, actively and rapidly developed runtime running alongside and in partnership with the HTML-focused browser.

Crucially designers and developers can confidently target this single Flash runtime knowing that it will work on all supported platforms and browsers including, amazingly and uniquely, all curent versions of all browsers. Create and upload your single SWF and you can be confident that it will work as expected for all web users.

Apple and now Microsoft have conspired to drive an entirely legitimate and useful web standard with near ubiquitous support out of the mobile browser and into their app stores

Or rather you could. In its place, we have the promise of “just-do-it-in-HTML5”. As we’ve seen this is far more complicated than it sounds. To begin with it puts the onus on the HTML/SVG/CSS/JavaScript standards to deliver results way beyond their comfort zone (another assumption is that HTML5 is somehow going to be less flakey than Flash).

At the same time the shift to HTML5 is going to put the future of the rich web back in the hands of the multiple browser developers, meaning that the single Flash runtime is replaced by a mish-mash of competing capabilities. Does anyone else remember the Browser Wars?

And to top it all, how is the brave new world of HTML5 most likely to be implemented? Using the existing Adobe Flash platform and tools but outputting cut-down capabilities targeted at the multiple, less efficient HTML5 browser runtimes and with Flash fallback for the older desktop browsers!

What’s most depressing of all is the realisation that this entire mess is completely unnecessary. The obvious and overwhelmingly simpler alternative would be for Apple and Microsoft to remove their bans and to work with Adobe to make sure that the Flash player worked brilliantly on their new mobile platforms.

Instead, to further their own business interests, Apple and now Microsoft have conspired to drive an entirely legitimate and useful web standard with near ubiquitous support out of the mobile browser and into their app stores. In the process they have shattered the universal, write-once-view-anywhere rich web dream, added huge and unnecessary complexity to the process of web design and development and ensured that the future of the web for everyone on all devices and all platforms will be far poorer.

Yes Steve Jobs’ extraordinary decision to ban the Flash player has been entirely vindicated from his business-determined point of view. From the perspective of the web developer and the web user, this last laugh is anything but funny.

(Steve Jobs photo taken by Jon Snyder, c/o Wired.com Creative Commons Library)

Fast forward, and I spot my first iPad: on the Tube, its user oblivious to the envious gawping of fellow travellers. For me, it had a similar effect, heralding the arrival of another exciting, innovative type of product.

That’s not the only parallel between netbooks and tablets but, as far as I can see, others aren’t nearly so positive. The netbook’s story has been a sad one: that initial flurry of excitement withered by staid products, precious little evolution and a stagnant market.

Look beneath the iPad – which is still a premium product – and the tablet market could suffer from many of the same problems.

The signs are already there: the market is flooded with a host of shoddy, near-identical products from established tech brands, no-name newcomers and bandwagon-riding outsiders, and innovation is hard to find.

Look under the hood of almost every tablet and you’ll find similar components, with cheaper models boasting obsolete hardware that’s not good enough to run Angry Birds, let alone the more demanding software currently being churned out by eager developers. Uninspiring design dominates the exterior, with cheap iPhone and iPad ripoffs dominating the market.

Almost all of them run Android and, in almost all cases, they disappoint the user with a litany of problems: build quality is often poor, screens are grainy or, even worse, made with unresponsive resistive technology. Plenty don’t have access to the Android Market, instead using an awful third-party store or making do without any legitimate way to install new software.

It’s a familiar story for those who’ve followed the netbook market: shoddy build quality and screens were found across dozens of devices, and a lack of hardware innovation meant they were also of limited use – and soon overshadowed by low-powered laptops.

There’s still hope for tablets. Apple’s forging its own wildly successful path but, away from iOS, only a handful of manufacturers, such as Sony and Samsung, are forging ahead with innovative products. Microsoft, meanwhile, is placing plenty of stock in Windows 8.

Will that be enough to help tablets avoid the same fate of netbooks? It’s still a growing market – tablets have just overtaken netbook sales for the first time – but there’s a big chance it could head in the wrong direction if more people buy, and are disappointed by, sub-standard products. Perhaps Sony exec Mike Abary was right back in 2008: a “race to the bottom” might seem tempting but, in the long run, it does more harm than good.

Poor old Tim Cook didn’t get off to brightest start as Apple CEO. He let other people do much of the talking, and his big moment brought us what is little more than a hardware refresh of the hugely successful iPhone 4. But while I’ll freely admit to leaving work last night feeling like Cook personally owes me two hours of my life back, some of the gleeful venom being spat in Apple’s direction makes no sense.

So I’m going to play devil’s advocate and ask you this: if the iPhone 4S has let you down in some deeply personal way, what exactly were you expecting yesterday evening?

The Samsung Galaxy S II tops our A-List these days, but the iPhone 4 is still the second best phone out there – a full 14 months after its launch. It has a faultless high-resolution screen, a design that remains more stylish than anything HTC has produced, and an app catalogue Android can only dream of. Plus – and this really does need to be emphasised – it’s none the worse off for still being single-core. Having owned one for a year I’d argue a second core isn’t particularly necessary given the efficiency of iOS.

But it’s getting one. And faster graphics, putting it on a par with the iPad 2. And an 8-megapixel camera. And voice recognition.

Perhaps the people still speculating that there simply must be an iPhone 5 round the corner could tell me what else they think Apple can add right now. A bigger or sharper screen? Size maybe, but the resolution will be difficult to raise without borking a lot of apps. 4G support? Useless in the UK right now. A 3D gimmick? I’m not even going to answer that one.

The simple truth is that, yes, the iPhone 4S is a mere update, but it’s about as good as Apple can make it with current technology. If any other manufacturer had produced a phone like this, we’d say it’s very good and carry on with our lives. No, Cook shouldn’t have wasted two hours of our time to unveil it, but if some people are disappointed with what they got, just imagine the furore had Apple given in to the pressure and called this thing the iPhone 5.

Apple and Samsung’s recent spat over patents and design has made plenty of headlines, but a new arrival in the PC Pro Labs has reminded us that some devices take more “inspiration” from the iPhone than others.

Pictured above and below is Apple’s iPhone 4, sat atop of Pierre Cardin’s 7in tablet. Need I say any more.

So, what do you think – will Apple attack this rival with the sort of vigour that’s normally reserved for Samsung, or will the lawyers let this one go?

In amongst the flood of details emerging about Windows 8 is the news that the IE 10 browser in the lightweight Metro front-end won’t support plugins. In the scheme of things this might sound pretty small beer, but it’s hugely significant for the long term future of Rich Internet Application (RIA) development and for the web in general.

Most immediately it’s another kick in the teeth for Flash, still reeling from Apple’s iOS ban. It’s not exactly a death blow, as the Windows 8 desktop version of IE will still support the player, but it’s clearly another major disincentive for developers who believed Flash was as universal as HTML.

Understandably all the focus has been on Flash, but even more telling and extraordinary is the realisation that the new no-plugin policy means that the Metro browser won’t even support Microsoft’s own cross-platform RIA technology, Silverlight!

So just what is going on?

Why has Microsoft changed course so dramatically, betraying its Silverlight vision and shafting its developers in the process?

Details on such a major announcement are disappointingly thin on the ground and largely based on an MSDN blog post (Metro style browsing and plug-in free HTML5). However the few reasons given to justify the decision such as they are – “the experience that plugins provide today is not a good match with Metro style browsing and the modern HTML5 web” – are very familiar. Essentially it’s the same argument Steve Jobs gave – “leaving the past behind” – when he outlawed plugins for iOS some 18 months ago. In short, it’s time for the web to move on from old-fashioned “legacy plugins”.

Regular readers will know that I have never bought this argument. More to the point, I know that Microsoft doesn’t either. After all, the company has spent the past five years arguing the exact opposite: namely that page-based HTML is great but that there are certain things that it just isn’t well suited to deliver: little things like high quality media streaming, digital rights management, interactive vector animations, device-based capabilities such as camera and microphone handling and, more generally, the richest possible, desktop-style web experience.

XAML & Silverlight

It’s precisely because Microsoft recognised the limitations of HTML – which remain true for HTML5/ CSS3/JavaScript/SVG – that the company has spent millions rethinking and entirely reworking its application development tools around XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language). XAML is an open, XML-based markup language for building the user-facing front-end for both full-blown WPF-based desktop applications and, crucially, Silverlight-based lightweight RIAs ready for delivery via its own Flash-style cross-platform in-browser plugin.

So why has Microsoft changed course so dramatically, betraying its Silverlight vision and shafting its developers in the process?

Well of course Microsoft would say that it hasn’t. After all, the beautiful XAML-based technology lives on and thrives in Windows 8, it’s just that the end product won’t be delivered in the browser via Silverlight, but rather as standalone Metro apps. Moreover, with the promised Metro App Store, Microsoft is offering its developers a simple way to get their work out to users and to make real money from it based on the now well-established Apple model.

There’s a lot of truth to this and Metro is undoubtedly an exciting opportunity for XAML-based developers – but why not support Silverlight browser delivery too? How can Microsoft possibly argue that it can’t support its own existing lightweight Silverlight player within its own lightweight Metro front-end? In fact, if you really wanted to help Silverlight deliver on its potential, gain market share and reward your long-suffering developers, why not build Silverlight support into the Metro version of IE10 while relegating Flash to the desktop version?

It’s business – as usual

I think that the real answer to this question is also the real answer behind Steve Jobs’ decision to ban Flash: follow the money. Cross-platform, in-browser RIAs extending the universal browser to deliver rich and protected apps and content directly between producer and consumer aren’t a legacy problem to be solved; rather, they are a leading-edge, cloud-based threat to the platform-dependent empires that Microsoft and Apple have built up, and to the App Store and in-app content empires that they are currently building.

Keep the lid on the universal, browser-based user experience by killing off the in-browser RIA technologies and restricting the web to HTML5 and you get to deliver the full RIA experience outside the browser via your iOS and Metro apps, and via your platform-specific App Stores and in-app subscriptions. Not only is your all-important operating system and software ecosystem protected from third-party, cloud-based, cross-platform alternatives; you also get to take 30% of all paid-for app content, with no possibility of competition within your platform.

Look at it like this and Microsoft’s decision to effectively sacrifice its in-browser Silverlight vision makes absolute sense. The RIA vision behind Flash and Silverlight in which the web delivers on its full potential as a cross-platform, universal, open and truly rich connection direct between producer and consumer is a wonderful dream, but this is business.

I was lucky. Using a barrage of open browser windows I managed to order one of the £89 bargains via Best Buy. I didn’t fully believe I’d succeeded until it turned up on my doorstep two days later.

I’m not the first to say that the TouchPad itself is a lovely piece of hardware and, following the immediate over-the-air update, webOS is stable, capable, reasonably fast and well-thought out. Indeed, looking at the package as a whole, whilst the hardware is not quite as luxurious as the iPad 2, I would place webOS well ahead of iOS4 largely due to its effortless multitasking. It’s a technological tragedy that this device and its OS are now a thing of the past.

According to isuppli.com, the TouchPad costs £200 in materials and labour to build, almost exactly the same as the iPad 2. Conventional logic is to take the build cost and add a margin to come to your retail price, aligning yourself to comparable hardware. This lead to a release price of £399 for the 16GB model which is on a par with the iPad 2.

The problem with this is that it gives potential buyers no good reason to choose the newcomer over the established giant. I estimate that Apple makes around £150-£200 profit on each iPad sold and uses the AppStore to drive hardware sales (although their 30% share of the projected £2 billion pound of revenue the AppStore will earn in 2011 is hardly to be sniffed at).

HP couldn’t hope to do the same with such a limited app store, so the only way it could have made an impact would have been to reverse the logic – make its long term money from apps rather than the hardware. Had the TouchPad been launched at £250 it could easily have been a massive success, which would have created an audience for app developers to target. Particularly the work-related apps that HP’s business image would suit. HP could then have taken a cut of its app store revenue.

The problem is that this approach takes time, with HP barely breaking even on the hardware, let alone the associated R&D and marketing costs. Looked at this way, the TouchPad was doomed as soon as HP chose the webOS route – however good the OS is, it has only limited developer support.

Android-based tablets have more chance because developers can target more than one device with a single app. But the real challenger to Apple is likely to be Amazon. It’s already demonstrated with the latest version of the Kindle that it’s prepared to sell hardware at a market-breakingly low price in order to make money on downloads. As an example, I paid £109 for my Kindle in October last year but I reckon I’ve spent around £300 on books in less than a year since. A £250 Android-based Amazon tablet locked to its app store would blow the market apart.

The lesson for small businesses is to never lose sight of where the money really is. Apple is, as usual, the exception to the rule in that it’s able to make profit from every part of the process – the mistake HP made was to imagine it could duplicate Apple’s success. Bill and Dave, you’re no Apple.

Google’s motto may be “don’t be evil” — but when it comes to confronting Apple, it seems “see no evil” is the rule.

For while Apple has been unleashing a patent war against manufacturers of Android devices such as HTC and Samsung, Google has – publicly at least – turned a blind eye, appearing less keen to rock the boat than the captain of the QE2.

Apple has hardly qualified for the George Cross either, picking its fights with licensees rather than Google itself, even though many of the disputed patents appear to relate directly to Android.

Now it seems Google is actively urging its partners to do its dirty work. HTC has this morning launched a new lawsuit against Apple – using nine patents quietly slipped to the handset maker by none other than Google. Those patents include four acquired during the recent takeover of Motorola, according to Bloomberg. Google won’t reveal how much HTC paid for them, but I suspect the loose change in my pocket would have covered it.

Is this the most cowardly “battle” in legal history? Apple has a problem with Android, but won’t tackle its maker head-on; while Google relies on its mates to tackle the playground bully instead of standing up for itself.

This is one of those rare cases where I hope both sides lose.