With all the pretenders to the iPod throne clearly failing, and the Zune may join the list unless sales pick up big time real soon, you wonder if Apple can continue to float along as it has, resting on its laurels.

To be sure, the latest updates to the iPod line were mostly cosmetic and incremental. The shuffle is tiny and cute, the nano echoes the iPod mini with the aluminum case and color choices, but none of that is revolutionary. No major new features to shout about, at least for now.

It’s not that Apple has lost its mojo, and is unable to deliver any creative enhancements in the way the iPod works or the features it contains. But if you compare the original model with the current 5G version, not a whole lot has changed. Sure, there are refinements to the scrolling, much more storage space, a larger screen and the ability to play videos, but those are changes that are incremental and not revolutionary. The fundamental form factor isn’t all that different, despite the smaller size.

It’s fair to say that the iPod’s similar elegance may be something that works so beautifully that it shouldn’t be changed without a lot of thought and testing. You can’t argue with success.

On the other hand, consumer products that become cultural icons are always in danger of becoming irrelevant faster than you can possibly imagine. It is not impossible for another company to build a better music player. Sure, the first iteration of the Microsoft Zune may not be that product, but it didn’t sell so badly the first week, where it gained the number two slot in the marketplace. Besides, even if it doesn’t wrack up more than a few hundred thousand sales this holiday season, that’s pretty good for a version 1.0. What about 2007?

Indeed, just what is Apple planning to do for an encore? Will they try to deliver more of the same thing next year, or wow us all with a new and different approach? Should it be a marriage of a music player and the mobile phone, something that hasn’t worked all that well so far? Clearly, folks are clamoring for the rumored iPhone, even though it’s still not certain it’ll show up anytime soon.

Will Apple decide that some sort of wireless capability is important in light of the fact that Zune has Wi-Fi? Why just be able to “squirt” a song to another player — and at least with the iPod there will be people to send it to — when you can mate with your PC or just get your songs directly over the air?

Regardless of how Apple responds to its competitors, it’s a sure thing that the most powerful incentive of all is a strong pretender to the throne. If iPod sales slow, and another product begins to really gain a growing segment of the market on a long-term basis and not just the first week, Apple would have to work hard to make sure it retains an advantage.

In the end, you get a better music player, be it the iPod or something else. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it is a good thing.

In the computer wars, you can be certain that the Mac’s resurgence influenced Microsoft to crib some of Mac OS X’s features for Windows Vista. Certainly, Internet Explorer languished until that upstart Firefox recorded millions and millions of downloads. Suddenly, Microsoft realized it hadn’t upgraded Internet Explorer in years and it was time to add tabbing, improved security and other features.

Sure, Microsoft might not lose more than a little bit of its overwhelming dominance in the short term, but that may be sufficient to force it to try to do better. If, after Vista is released, it is perceived is pretty close to Mac OS X, that will, one hopes, compel Apple to make Leopard that much better. You can say they’d do it anyway, but that’s not always a certainty.

Regardless, I can’t wait to see how it all plays out.

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It’s easy to be lazy in the news business, and hard to be fair. Consider how tech writers treated Apple over the years; well, most of them at any rate. Apple was “beleaguered,”  only had a tiny percentage of the PC market, and couldn’t possibly survive. When the name Microsoft came up, you were told repeatedly how over 90% of the world’s desktops used Windows. You couldn’t forget any of these facts, because the same words and phrases would be trotted out time and time again.

Even when Apple managed to overcome the negativism and build market share again, you were constantly reminded how temporary it might be, how another company would surely come up with an iPod killer, how Apple made a fatal mistake with its FairPlay iTunes DRM, which isn’t shared with any other company.

The Mac OS? Well, they would tell you that Apple sells to consumers, not to businesses, and isn’t there a lot more software available to Windows users? A lot more viruses, too, but who’s counting? Besides, you know that any day now, some real virus infections will erupt on the Mac. After all, Apple issues periodic security updates, and there have been several proofs-of-concept. But how much money have folks lost in the past few years from Mac viruses? Zip, zilch, zero.

Then there are all those people over the years who predicted Apple’s failure. Not yet? Not to worry, it’ll happen soon enough. You can’t remain a niche player for very long without suffering the consequences of having only a few percent of the market. Of course, McDonalds is still the number one restaurant on the planet, but do you see all the other eating establishments going under? Tell the fellow who opened a new Indian restaurant in my neighborhood that he doesn’t stand a chance, despite big crowds at lunch and dinner. He’s got to face music and start carrying hamburgers and fries or his establishment will soon kick the bucket.

As a Mac user, it’s easy to get a chip on your shoulder. You can say that the computer press and tech journalists in general don’t like Macs, that they are on Microsoft’s payroll. Even when journalists present themselves as fair-minded, don’t criticize Apple, for avid Mac users will flood their Inboxes with nasty letters and throw tomatoes at them when they make public appearances.

You just can’t win.

Of course, everyone thinks the press is biased these days. If you’re a Democrat, you’re apt to rant about how far-right Republicans dominate the media. A Republican? Just reverse the bias, and you can tell everyone how the opposition is out to get you.

No doubt you can show a personal bias on the part of every journalist. Nobody can be completely objective about everything, and your experiences and mine are filtered through an imperfect data processing system with various and sundry unique experiences.

So there is an imperfect system. Certainly a writer who has cut his or her teeth on Windows would no doubt be inclined to be less-than-fair when the news arrives about a certain scrappy company in Cupertino, California controlling the MP3 music player market. How’d that happen? Surely it’s all a huge mistake, and Microsoft will soon set things right.

In the real world, however, more and more tech journalists are extolling the virtues of switching from a PC to a Mac. Very few gave Microsoft’s Zune music player anything better than a tepid review, and even then there was lots to criticize. So where did their biases lie?

If you’re a commentator, of course, you are expected to express an opinion one way or the other. In fact, I rather suspect a few unleash criticisms not to debate the issues, but to spike the hit count on their sites (or their publisher’s sites) and get lots and lots of hate mail to revel in. Keep people talking and they’ll come back again and again for more abuse.

So do I really believe there has been a long-time bias against Apple? Not necessarily. It’s probably a little laziness in part, and it’s easy to just repeat what’s been said before than provide a new perspective, even if the old stuff is no longer true.

The fact is that Apple has, in the past, squandered golden opportunities, and they deserve their lumps because of it. How long did they languish before buying NeXT and submitting to a takeover from Steve Jobs and crew? And even then, it wasn’t roses and moonlight overnight. In fact, it took years for Mac OS X to appear, and additional years before it got good enough to recommend to people using other operating systems.

When Apple does something that I consider to be wrong, I’ll write about it. I also realize that when I trash Microsoft, I’ll be considered a Microsoft basher. Of course, that doesn’t stop me from using a Microsoft Comfort Keyboard with my desktop Mac, or Office for the Mac for all or most of my word processing work. But that won’t stop some people from making wrong assumptions about my particular media bias.

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Over the many years I’ve used Macs, I’ve often wondered how many people really choose a PC because the prefer the product, find it easier to setup and use. While some power users might be able to make that claim, if only for the built-it-yourself concept, where you have full control over configuring the parts you want and making them perform to your personal specs.

Clearly the Mac isn’t designed that way. It’s meant to be a complete, functional product that’s ready to turn on and use, with minimal options to expand the hardware. Yes, I know how there are lots of ways to customize the Mac Pro. But you still can’t build one from scratch, although I suppose you can assemble something that would function from a bunch of parts from old Macs.

Now businesses don’t necessarily buy personal computers because they like them, but because they need them as tools to get work done. This is hardly different from choosing one screwdriver over another, although I’m certain some hobbyists will tell me that certain parts are the only ones they’ll use to build a cabinet or fix a car.

However, that shouldn’t apply to home users looking for a PC, however. You have choices when it comes to which product to buy, and not just among Dell, HP or Gateway, obviously. For the most part, your needs in terms of applications ought to be well met whether it’s a Mac or a PC. Even for a home business where you might require software that’s only available in Windows form, you should be able to fare quite nicely with Apple’s Boot Camp or Parallels Desktop.

Many people, however, don’t buy a PC because they like it, but because the price fits their budget. If all they can afford is $399, there are models that fit into that category. This isn’t to say you get very much for that price in the way of computing power, features, or software. But if that’s the best you can do, who am I to complain?

Clearly, Apple won’t play in that arena, and no wonder. There’s not much profit in it, and the companies who have tried hope, often in vain, for sufficient volume to make up the difference. Or they use them as loss leaders, hoping that you’ll buy something more expensive by clicking a Customize option or depending on a salesperson to sell you up to costlier choices.

On the other hand, I have to wonder whether the folks who buy those products really dig their computers, or just put up with them. Certainly Microsoft’s infamous setup process is usually more complicated than it should be, even if the color-coded hookup steps go well. In fact, some years back, I read an article that indicated that many of those home PC boxes ended up in closets because their owners could not overcome one problem or another. It may well all right out of the box, but perhaps a problem is encountered in installing a new printer, or a scanner, or spyware slows things down to a standstill.

Of course, Microsoft doesn’t care in the scheme of things, as they are only selling user licenses to operating systems. Aside from providing support for Windows and their various software products, what you do with the hardware is your business from there on.

When it comes to a consumer electronics product, folks may not adore their iPods as much as their Macs, but that doesn’t stop millions of the former from flying off the store shelves. With lots of failures under its belt in licensing third party products, I really wonder if Microsoft’s marketing people truly expect lots of people to become excited about their Zunes in the same fashion.

The conventional wisdom is that Zune is already a failure, and Microsoft is going to have to wait for the latter part of 2007 to try again. The big question is whether they really believed that such lame marketing slogans as “Welcome to the social” and “squirt” — the latter sending songs via Wi-Fi to another Zune — would somehow reverberate with young people. You can’t be cool simply by inventing silly words or resurrecting a phrase that dates back to the 1950s.

You see, Microsoft can’t depend on the IT person to make you buy a Zune, and you shouldn’t necessarily depend on them at the office either when they recommend you purchase a Windows-based PC. Do they tell you, for example, that a Mac is, in the long run, cheaper to operate? Or that maybe you would need fewer people in the support department as a result? I suppose not.

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