Apple’s message to publishers has been clear. If you want to play in our sandbox, you’ll have to pay. That’s requiring painful change on the part of publishers, but as part of that change, broader technical issues are at stake.

So far, I’ve been relatively silent on the Apple subscription tempest in a teapot. Now I’m going to unload. Few will be spared.

Apple’s business model has changed.  It has gone from being a Mac hardware and boutique UNIX company to an ecommerce giant, taxing everything that passes through its portals.  How will this affect Apple and its executives and what future is in store for Apple?

We all hope that this leave of absence by Mr. Jobs will be a short one and that he’ll spend many more years at the helm of Apple. If not, and Mr. Jobs retires, Apple will still be in good hands.  The idea that Apple cannot function without him is a media myth, and, in fact, Apple has very capable people ready to lead the company.

There are many public pronouncements by Steve Jobs that are strategic to Apple, but don’t always apply to everyone. Yet they are often given too much weight, almost the force of kingdom law. Sometimes they just have to be ignored.  

A Danish newspaper is greatly annoyed with Apple’s App Store policies. Apple has even been accused of censorship in several protest articles because the newspaper app, which contains a nude photo feature, was rejected. Why is Apple doing this, why is the discussion so heated, and what can Apple do about it?

Here’s a holiday-minded list of things we wish Apple could give us starting in 2011. Some are easily doable, some are hard, and some will never happen.  That’s the way it goes with wish lists.

There has been endless speculation about which company Apple should buy with its US$51B, and growing, cash hoard.  Most involve companies that are either failing by Apple’s standards or wouldn’t be a good cultural fit.  However, over time, Apple will be forced to acquire a large and very specific kind of company to insure its survival. It will be expensive.

From time to time, someone suggests that Apple license Mac OS X (client) to PC makers for mass market customers. That doesn’t make sense because Apple is a hardware company, and that would undermine Mac sales.  However, licensing Mac OS X Server on non-Apple hardware makes sense now, and only now, and here’s why.

The recent decision by Apple to deprecate Java on Mac OS X seems, at first, like a disaster for the science and enterprise communities. Upon further reflection, that may not be the case.