You’ve got to feel great. Apple is on a roll, and Wall Street is predicting a doubling of market share in the next year and then some. It’s been a long time since Macs held more than 5% of the market, but the erosion ended for the most part last year, but the pace is quickening.

For most of you who have used Macs for a while, being recognized as being on the right side of the argument for once may seem a relief. No more excuses. Everyone loves the Mac mini, and Apple is still finding it difficult to keep the things in stock. On average, you can expect to wait a week to get one into your sweaty hands, although some dealers might actually have a few ready to go. You only hope that prospective buyers won’t give up in frustration because they have to get on the waiting list, although a waiting list is, itself, a reason to jump aboard. Why let others have all the fun?

The logic about Apple’s resurgence sure makes plenty of sense. iPod owners who use Windows are fed up with malware. Having to clean up a computer every few weeks is a chore you look upon with dread. Some home users just shove the things into the closest and forget about it, until the kids want to exchange instant messages with their friends of course. Everyone has to play IT manager when a Windows box malfunctions, and there must be a better way.

But there’s only one problem when you try to take Wall Street estimates seriously. For years, they said that Apple was essentially dead and buried, and it just needed to recognize the inevitable and go away. Macs were irrelevant. Microsoft won the operating system wars years ago, and there can be only one. Of course, the public thought otherwise, for Apple, after nearly self-destructing in the mid-1990s, recovered and no longer needed life support. It took a while for sales to get off dead center, but you could see a trend.

Sure, I’d like to see market share figures of 10%, 20% and even more. How could people use Windows when such a superior product is available? It’s not as if it’s a secret. Nearly every technology writer who has put his or her hands on a Mac mini praises it to the skies. This is, at last, an affordable way to ditch Windows and discover the joys of the Mac OS and all those great digital life applications.

It’s also nice to see Wall Street on the right side of the argument at last, although market estimates are usually no better than today’s closing stock prices. And those financial analysts are downright fickle. It’s like this: Virtually every time a new music player appears from a major company, such as Dell or Sony, it is pronounced the “iPod killer.” Of course, the use of the word killer is, itself, often a death knell. The products fail to gain a foothold, and Wall Street retreats, at least until the next iPod killer appears.

Ditto for music services. Napster To Go might be the one to unseat Apple, because it is the only subscription service, at least for now, that allows you to download your tracks to a music player. Of course there aren’t many players to choose from, and none, of course, have the Apple logo on them. But this has to be the way to go. Besides, isn’t Napster a famous name? Can’t miss, even if the TV ads are just plain awful. It’s the substance, not the form.

Of course, they usually don’t tell you that not all of the songs are available to subscribers. Because of licensing constraints, some songs can only be bought, not rented. And you won’t know in advance which is which until you try to download the wrong song. Pity.

In any case, the sad fact is that these Wall Street analysts quite often get it wrong. Do you recall when they were telling you to buy stocks when dot.com companies were failing left and right, and a recession was in progress. How many of you lost the bulk of your retirement savings as a result? A member of my family faced just this situation.

So if you can’t depend on those analysts when they say Apple is going to fail, how can you believe them when they say Apple is going to succeed? The information comes from the very same sources, and you can’t judge reliability on whether the predictions fulfill your hopes and dreams.

Of course, you need someone to examine technology companies and pronounce them fit or otherwise. But it would be nice to see a disclaimer when these market analysis reports appear, such as the fact that they are usually only 45% accurate or whatever. You expect a publicly traded company to follow the straight and narrow when it comes to handling its finances, but what is the standard by which a Wall Street analyst is judged? Do they, like baseball players, list a batting average, how often they get it right? No, they don’t, but it sounds like a plan to me.

Now as an observer of the computing industry for far too long, I can tell you that I don’t take any of my predictions seriously, not a one. Sure, I got it right, more or less, when I said it would be good for Apple to make a cheap Mac. But Apple didn’t listen to me; never has, never will. Instead, their bean counters said the time had arrived to go for the mass market. The idea didn’t come from Wall Street.

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It’s a known fact that new computers from Apple are often riddled with irritating defects of one sort or another that require trips to the repair shop. You can’t forget the noisy fans found on some of the Mirror Drive Doors or “Wind Tunnel” Power Macs or the iBook logic board repair “extension program,” which addresses problems with models sold between 2001 and 2003.

Understand that Apple still has the best product reliability rating in that Consumer Reports reader survey, which means Dell, Gateway, HP and all the rest are worse; sometimes much worse. Are we immersed in a sea of product defects?

No, I won’t go there. I’m encouraged, though, by the fact that there haven’t been too many reports of issues with the Mac mini. This is the computer that Apple can’t afford to get wrong, because it will serve as the initial introduction to the Mac for many people. First impressions mean a lot. Fortunately, issues reported with the Mac mini, except for an occasional problem involving clicking hard drives, have been relatively few. Of course it’s only two months since the first products hit the store shelves. It’s always possible that some unexpected defects will rear their ugly heads in the near future, but I prefer to take an optimistic approach.

But this is only the beginning, Apple’s first foray into a low-priced headless computer market since the days of the LC (which stood for Low Cost to most of us way back when). And Apple had a far bigger share of the PC market in those days.

There will be an inevitable upgrade to the Mac mini. Whether it comes this summer, this fall or next year, Apple will learn from the experience and will consider what needs to be changed. In addition, as production levels increase, there will be more opportunity to add features without bumping up the retail price.

First and foremost, I think, despite words to the contrary from some folks, that the process of opening the case is all too clumsy. Yes, I realize that, once you become adept at handling putty knives, you can crack open the case in five minutes with little or no damage. Yes, I realize that you might have to redesign the logic board to allow for making it possible to use screws, at the bottom of the case, to take things apart. But that doesn’t matter. The fact that Apple could put the guts of a personal computer in a box just two inches high, six-and-a-half inches square, weighing less than three pounds, would have seemed unheard of even three months ago. The rumor sites, or at least some of them, had it right that Apple would release a sub-$500 computer. But nobody predicted how small and light it would be; or at least nobody I know about.

So it makes sense that Apple’s clever engineers will find a way to put more stuff into the same case, and that would make it possible to use screws instead of plastic tabs.

Then there’s the memory slot. Yes, I know you have to allow space for a second slot, and additional circuitry, if that’s the choice you make. But it isn’t fair to stick you with an unused memory chip when you want to add memory (except, of course, if you buy it from Apple that way). So putting more stuff in the same case means an extra memory slot. Don’t say there’s no room. Apple will find a way to do it, no doubt about it. That, and the easier method to open the case, would simply make it far more user friendly. Till then, I suppose dealers could set up a rebate program, allowing you to get a discount if you let them keep your old RAM.

The mainstream technology press also suggests that two USB slots isn’t enough. If you’re using an Apple keyboard, or a keyboard designed by a third party company for Macs, there will usually be an extra USB port or two on the keyboard itself. But not on the Dell keyboard or many other PC keyboards. There isn’t even a port on those keyboards for a mouse. So you are stuck if you want to add a printer. It will help sales of USB hubs, but Apple needs to find a way to squeeze three or four into the tight rear surroundings. It may seem things are too close together now, but a little redesigning will certainly allow for an extra USB port or two. Remember: Think small, think less space between the ports.

Anything else? Yes, the time has come for Apple to find a way to stuff 512MB into every box. The trend has begun with the current PowerBooks, and it ought to spread. Sure, the extra memory, the extra USB slots and all will increase Apple’s costs, but higher production rates will take care of that, not to mention ways to combine components and other efficiencies to reduce the price of raw materials.

While I realize that it is possible to get adequate performance with 256MB, there’s not much headroom in case you want to open a large document or launch some extra programs.

Finally, there’s the hard drive. Apple doesn’t make a big deal in its specs that the Mac mini has 4200 rpm drives, same as the iBook. But as the PowerBook moves to 5400 rpm devices, and the cost of raw drives continues to decrease, I think Apple would do well to consider a speed upgrade. A faster hard drive can make a huge difference in perceived performance. Not that the Mac mini is bad now, and it probably see,s mighty fast for folks who are upgrading from computers that are two or three years old. But you can get faster drives on the low-end PC boxes, and Apple has to stay competitive, especially since it’s now going for the mass market.

Anything else? Well, a graphics chip with 64MB RAM, a faster processor perhaps. But I don’t expect we’ll see a Mac mini G5 for at least a year or two. We’ll probably have to wait for the iBook to lead the way.

Past the internal workings, Apple might do well to consider a low-cost mini inspired line of LCD displays, with 15-inch and 17-inch widescreens. Why give the profits away to other companies? Why indeed!

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To some extent, it appears to be business as usual at your favorite Mac rumor sites, despite the legal skirmishing over Apple’s lawsuits. But is the information becoming less reliable? It’s not as if you could always depend on what you read about future Apple products. Some of the stories have been shown to be downright wrong. But you have to wonder why those alleged anonymous sources would continue to feed information knowing Apple was breathing down their backs.

If you read the articles at AppleInsider and Think Secret on a fairly regular basis, you’d think nothing has changed. For example, it correctly reported that Apple would acquire a small Canadian software publisher, Schema Software, several days before the transaction was officially announced. There are also stories about possible updates to Apple’s professional audio and video applications and the state of development of Tiger.

Some of the stories at AppleInsider, though, would give you the impression it’s just an ordinary news site, such as news that Apple is now taking orders for its forthcoming iPod Camera Connector. That’s not a rumor, but something you can check for yourself just by visiting Apple’s online store. The news that investment banker Morgan Stanley estimates that the iPod halo effect would have twice the impact as previously predicted also fits into the news rather than rumor category. A story about an unannounced update for Panther is still there, but a status report on Tiger’s development carries the dire warning: “Article removed at the request of Apple Legal.” A similar notice appears beneath a Tiger story at still another rumor site, macosXrumors, where most of the recent stories consist of just plain news reports that you can learn about almost anywhere.

Clearly those lawsuits, which raise the possibility of further action, have taken their toll. These two sites caved quickly when Apple turned on the legal screws.

I also did a casual check at PowerPage and found that rumor reporting had been dialed down. In fact, all of the stories on its front page consisted of information that clearly fits within the category of news.

Another site, Mac OS Rumors, seems to march to the beat of a different drummer, since it is more inclined to engage in far-out speculation than the rest. It’s batting average is usually much lower, which means it doesn’t appear to have sources as good as AppleInsider and Think Secret and thus isn’t facing legal consequences for publishing the wrong thing.

So is this the beginning of the end of the world of Mac gossip? Clearly Apple has demonstrated it means business when its legal department makes a demand. Take an offending story down or risk a lawsuit, no ifs, ands or buts.

Meanwhile, last week’s ruling by a Superior Court judge in California in favor of Apple’s right to subpoena the records of Mac rumor sites to find the identity of those anonymous sources is being appealed. This had been expected, as these lawsuits will ultimately create important case law, and you can bet the appeals process will take far longer than it did in the Terri Schiavo, since the courts are not being forced to decide whether someone lives or dies.

In fact, I’ve known of civil cases that have dragged on for years, assuming both sides have the will and resources to keep things going. But, win or lose, Apple has definitely made its point. If you don’t abide by a request to remove a story about an unannounced Apple product, watch out. You may be the next to face the mother ship’s legal wrath. And the sources of such information? No, Apple isn’t going to send some goons to their homes to teach them a few lessons; the message is plain as day.

If Apple loses, however, and those online journalists are truly protected by shield laws, then it will be open season on rumors. Now back in the early days at Apple, before Steve Jobs returned, it actually seemed that news leaked down from the top. You didn’t need a rumor site to find out what was going on, but the decision to clamp down and carefully control the information emanating from the company no doubt paid a huge role encouraging those sites to live long and prosper.

I’m curious to see how this all plays out, but the answer may be a long time in coming. For now, if you want to get an historical perspective on Apple’s relationships with the media, you’ll want to listen to this weeks episode of The Tech Night Owl LIVE, where we’ll feature Owen Linzmayer, author of Apple Confidential 2.0.

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