On Wednesday morning, I learned about a new release of the world-famous peer-to-peer telephony application, Skype, and promptly downloaded a copy. The key new feature was native support for Intel-based Macs. Without thinking about it, I launched the application, saw it bounce in the Dock a time or two and then it stopped dead. I tried it on my Power Mac G5 and an iMac with Intel-inside. Same symptoms, and, within hours, it had been withdrawn.

You will probably never learn just what went wrong, but you wonder whether anyone, anywhere, could get that failed application to run and how it possibly passed quality control testing. Surely it would have been obvious from the get-go that something was wrong. Now it may be a simple matter to fix, and the new version will be out shortly, perhaps by the time you read this commentary. I also wonder whether the employees responsible for what may have been an innocent error will be appropriately chastised.

Of course, you don’t pay for Skype, unless you buy buckets of minutes to call people outside of the network, so what you may have lost is just some convenience. The previous version was quickly restored, and all should be well in the world, except for the price of gas. But that’s something way beyond the province of this column.

Alas, this is nothing unusual in this climate of fatter, feature-packed software. Companies seem so busy giving you what they say you want, that they forget about basics, such as making sure everything works well together. To be sure, the Skype division of eBay is just one of many, and the major software companies are among the chronic offenders.

I’m sure you might regard Microsoft as number one with a bullet when it comes to bloated, bug-ridden products, but Apple Computer often has to try a few times to get things right. Take Tiger. Mac OS 10.4 hit the starting gate faster than many expected, and it seems obvious, as you ponder the possibilities of 10.4.6, that it should have cooked in the testing labs just a few weeks longer. Key new features, such as improved connectivity to corporate networks, didn’t quite work as advertised. Now maybe it was, to some extent anyway, the fault of third parties that had to adapt their software to changes inside Tiger. But it clearly caused some serious disruptions.

Today, Tiger is far more stable, and has realized its true potential for most of you. But some are still reporting serious problems, which are still being cataloged on MacFixIt. Will it take a 10.4.7 or a 10.4.8 to set things right? Understand that I have no complaints to voice. Things seem to work properly for me in just about every respect. Sure, I can see where improvements can be made, but that’s a different matter entirely. On the other hand, many others see things differently.

Last fall, when Apple made a big splash with Aperture, an application designed for professional photographers, reviewers weren’t quite so pleased with the results. Serious bugs in handling Raw images and the lack of key features vexed some. The newly-released version 1.1, which also adds Universal support, supposedly addressed many of the performance and feature complaints. Time will tell whether things are in good order now, or whether it will take a few more updates to reach its potential. There is also a rumor that Apple has reassigned Aperture’s development team, which raises the specter that they might be pulling the plug in the near term. Or maybe they weren’t satisfied with the way things were going, and decided a little shake-up with some new personnel would help in the repair process.

Of course, the prevailing warning over the years has it that you should never buy the initial release of anything. Wait for the point-one version before you test the waters. In the larger scheme of things, you have to wonder how some products are rushed to market long before they are ready. No doubt it’s the eternal battle between marketers and developers. A company may earn income from advance orders, but eventually something has to ship. I can see where even the most dedicated members of a programming team are forced to get something out the door, with the promise that “we’ll fix those problems later in an update.”

No problem, except for the people impacted by the bugs in that initial release. Must it always be that way?

If you are contemplating the purchase of a MacIntel in the near future, you’ll be pleased to know that they seem to be pretty solid. There were some reports of problems with early deliveries of the MacBook Pro, which have largely been addressed by Apple. But the demand has only risen for key Universal applications. Adobe Photoshop is a main example. The next upgrade now isn’t due until the first half of next year. I know the pressure is on to get it out the door as quickly as possible, and I wouldn’t be surprised of Steve Jobs has been applying heavy-handed pressure to move things along.

But, in light of the way things usually work, I’d rather see Adobe take a little extra time to complete its huge task properly. The creative people who depend on applications such as Photoshop to earn a living deserve the best.

I also hope that now that Apple has expanded the time between operating systems, it’ll try harder to make Leopard as solid as possible before you and I become their unpaid beta testers.

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One thing is certain and that is that Apple maintains tight-fisted control over information about the company. When it comes to new products, the entire marketing process from press release, to contacts with media and ads, is carefully orchestrated. And the results have usually been highly successful. Product announcements that would be routine at other companies garner big headlines in major online and print publications around the world.

In this environment, members of the press are treated equally, but some are treated more equally than others. This means that a precious few favored reporters, generally from such publications as The Wall Street Journal and Time magazine, will get stories about new products and review samples ahead of the rest of the pack. It’s not so much a case of discrimination, but wanting to get the maximum impact as the marketing machine spins into action.

Of course, Apple doesn’t always control when those publications appear in print with their news about the product in question. When the so-called flower pot iPod appeared, for example, its release had to be moved up one day to coincide with Time’s Monday publishing schedule. This may not be such a big issue, except for the fact that the usual Tuesday morning keynote at a certain Macworld Expo had to be rescheduled to Monday. I imagine that hotel and plane schedules were seriously disrupted as a result, but remember this is Steve Jobs and Apple.

In such a heavily-controlled environment, Apple grudgingly tolerates reports that speculate about its new products. In fact, when Steve Jobs demonstrated the GarageBand component of iLife ‘06 in otherwise somewhat tepid performance during the Macworld Expo keynote in January, he created his own Podcast containing some “silly” Apple rumors. He was making fun of something that often vexes the company and has brought out the legal eagles on a number of occasions.

Several Mac sites have been honored with cease and desist letters from Apple’s legal department when they publish the wrong photos or other information that discloses information that’s too close to the truth about a new product. As part of a lawsuit against unknown defendants bearing the collective name of “John Doe,” they even subpoenaed records from several sites that present rumors about future products, which has caused a furor that has not died down.

Suddenly sites formerly known only to rabid readers of Mac-related information, such as AppleInsider, PowerPage and Think Secret, garnered worldwide attention. As a result, Harvard undergraduate Nick Ciarelli, known to fans of Think Secret as Nick de Plume, suddenly found his real identity and his photo published around the world. All this for allegedly publishing what Apple regarded as “trade secrets” about new products.

Now the real goal of Apple’s legal quest was the identity or identities of the people who supplied the information, and it has resulted in major legal skirmishes. A lower court’s ruling that these sites have to produce email records that may disclose the names of people who broke Apple’s confidentiality agreements is under appeal right now, and the matter may drag on for months or years before it is finally settled.

There are several issues, one of which is whether the online writers in question are really journalists, or live in another realm known these days as bloggers. That issue, however, has begun to fall by the wayside, as even the anchors of network TV’s nightly newscasts are now encouraged to present their reviews online. The remaining issue is how far a company can go to unearth information about leaks of what it claims are trade secrets.

The product in question, given the code-name “Asteroid,” was supposedly a breakout box for Apple’s GarageBand, which would allow you to connect different instruments and other gear, using a Mac’s FireWire port. One of the stories even presented supposed illustrations of Asteroid, even bearing a telltale confidential-type label, which indicates that the source of the information may well have been someone who does or at least did work at Apple.

One of the key questions is whether Apple is asking those sites to serve as its investigative arm in finding the snitch. The company claimed that some 25 employees were under the microscope, but stopped short of deposing them under oath or giving them lie detector tests to discover the truth. Understand that lie detector test results are not admissible in court, and some people boast they can defeat such examinations. Even if not totally reliable, however, perhaps they would have helped Apple hone in on potentially deceptive personnel, and, in presenting the incriminating evidence, would have gotten some confessions. It would have been strictly an in-house inquiry, and the outside world wouldn’t be involved.

During that session before an appellate court earlier this month, Apple claimed they’d act the same even if the story had appeared in a major publication, such as, perhaps, The New York Times. Maybe, but I rather think that the Times, despite its lapses in recent years, would not have reproduced the actual plans for the proposed product, a product that, to date, has not even been released.

That indeed may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back. Regardless, I feel some sympathy for both sides. In today’s competitive environment, premature disclosure of a new product or service could unleash a rash of low-cost knock-off products before Apple can get the real thing out. That could hurt its bottom line. At the same time, reporters have a right to report the news. But they shouldn’t be encouraging company employees to break the law and deliver secret information about new products.

There is an exception, of course, and that’s the whistle blower who reveals the truth about something that can affect our health and welfare. However, a connection device for music recording software doesn’t fit into that category except, perhaps in the unlikely event that it would, under some circumstances, emit a foul odor that can make people sick. But in the real world, nothing of that sort is happening at Apple and it is entitled to protect its information.

Just as much as reporters have the right to attempt to find out what it might be developing. But they still have to be careful about how they receive the information and take a little care about how it is published.

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Unlike the release of the original 15.4-inch MacBook Pro, the announcement of a 17-inch version Monday morning seemed almost an afterthought. The announcement came in a press release, and the appropriate updates at Apple’s online store. The $2,799 price is also consistent with the model it replaces, and if you don’t look at the specs closely, you can accept the situation and get on with your life. Or prepare to place your order, since they’re going to be shipping next week, and there are no long waits. At least not yet.

But you have to look at the smaller model, and you wonder. You don’t have to examine the specs all that closely to realize the new model’s pricing represents a much better value, at least for the time being. What do I mean? Well, take the 2.16GHz Intel Core Duo processor, which is standard on the 17-inch version. In order to add that option to the smaller MacBook Pro, you have to add $300, which makes the list price identical. And that’s before you add the larger hard drive to the package. No doubt that portends an upcoming price reduction or processor enhancement for the original model, but it does seem strange right now.

When the MacBook Pro originally appeared, professional users were concerned about the missing FireWire 800 port. Well, maybe a lot of people didn’t use them, and you should be able to get an add-on card to satisfy that need. Well, eventually, because there isn’t much available to fill the new ExpressCard/34 slot. There will be, of course, but Apple is at the beginning of the curve in supporting the higher-speed replacement for PC cards. They’ll come if enough people want to buy them.

But the 17-inch model answers that call, because it, like its predecessor, does contain FireWire 800 and even adds a third USB 2.0 port. This may just be the consequence of having more space to add parts, or it may portend that near-term update to the 15.4-inch version with similar choices.

Another complaint was the use of a slower SuperDrive, lacking dual-layer support. The speed hit may not matter, unless you make lots of DVDs, although dual layers are nice, but Apple claimed there wasn’t room to put in the speedier optical drive. Again, the 17-inch version does have the heftier SuperDrive. A consequence of a larger chassis, or does Apple plan to update the 15.4-inch model to reflect this change too?

If you’re intending to order the smaller MacBook Pro, I’d recommend that you wait for a while, just to see if there aren’t any modifications that might result in a price reduction and the return of those missing features.

In the scheme of things, however, the introduction of the 17-inch MacBook Pro merely fleshes out the line, as Apple continues its onward rush towards Intel-inside. But it raises still another question, which is the fate of the 12-inch model, cherished by those who like small laptops, or in situations where space is at a premium. Some are suggesting it’ll just be supplanted by the iBook replacement that many expect to arrive in the next few weeks. But that also raises the question of whether there’s room for a small professional laptop in Apple’s product line, and I think that there is.

That leaves the Power Mac and the Xserve. Apple says it’s on track to complete the Intel transition before the end of the year, but will professional desktops ship that quickly? That’s a question yet to be answered, because the processor family that might grace a future Mac Pro’s interior isn’t due till early in 2007. Unless Apple plans on simply announcing the product and not shipping for a few weeks, this would create the unfavorable specter of not meeting its deadline. That is, unless an interim model is announced, perhaps at the WWDC in August, at the higher-speed version is held back until Macworld San Francisco in January 2007. The deadline will still be met.

Or perhaps Apple knows something we don’t, which is that Intel’s processor timetable might proceed faster than expected.

On the other hand, maybe there’s no rush, except for the tepid sales of the existing Power Mac. After all, it’s not that all of the critical professional applications that are staples of Power Mac owners will be available in Universal form. Photoshop, for example, is on top for the first half of 2007, according to Adobe. Not good news, unless you’re willing to run the existing version at half-speed for a few months.

But if the Power Mac replacement affords a huge speed bump, maybe it won’t matter. Maybe Photoshop, even in emulation, will speed past existing models, even the G5 Quad. If that’s the case, things will be good at first, and great later on.

In any case, I welcome the arrival of the 17-inch MacBook Pro, and I’m going to seriously consider whether to buy one and retire my two-year old PowerBook G4.

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