Here’s Apple’s slide from WWDC 2011 that explains how iCloud works:

Now compare this to Acer’s graphic explaining how AcerCloud works:

You’ve got to be kidding me.

It doesn’t stop there. Like Photo Stream on iCloud? Acer’s version is PicStream, complete with the same 30-day retention of photos across devices save for your home computer. Documents in the cloud a la iWork? AcerCloud’s got that (I’m surprised they didn’t call it AcerWork.) Clear.fi copies what Apple has been doing with music and entertainment content in the cloud and brings it to Acer’s own cloud service.

There’s no “Find My Acer” yet, but just you wait.

Let’s be clear: by no means am I suggesting that iCloud is the end-all-be-all when it comes to the cloud. What I am saying is that Acer really should have been a little more smart with the branding, and a little more original. When you put out something that is so close to an already existing product, you run the risk of getting angry calls from the lawyers of that existing product’s creator, not to mention  well-deserved criticism from the tech blogosphere.

I love this comment that Apple blogger Craig Grannell posted to Twitter last night, because it shows the power Apple has in the industry today:

From what I've seen, Apple might not be at CES, but lots of its ideas (from last year) are, as 'reinterpreted' by rival companies.—
Craig Grannell (@CraigGrannell) January 09, 2012

To companies considering copying Apple or anybody else’s work: please at least try to cover your tracks rather than making it so blatantly obvious.

Here are the ratings for 2011, on a scale of 100. (Unfortunately, there are some major players that it doesn’t have specific data for, such as Lenovo, Sony, and Toshiba–they’re part of “All Others.”)

Trends are more interesting than any one point in time, so here are the ACSI’s PC scores from 1995 to the present.

The chart shows everyone edging up a skosh compared to 2010, but the ACSI folks say that statistically, it’s a wash: Everybody did about as well as they did last year. That still amounts to an all-time high, which is better than a meaningful decline–and it leaves Apple with a clear lead, and everyone else squeezed together.

I can’t look at these numbers without thinking back to the ten years or so that I helped put together PC World’s Reliability and Service study, another project that involves ranking PC companies based on data collected from real people. The data-collection and analysis techniques are different, as are some of the broad pieces of takeaway. But the historical trend has been very comparable: Back in the 1990s, Dell was a leader and Apple was an also-ran. Along the way, Dell lost its reputation for great customer service and Apple earned one.

In the case of the ACSI, I don’t know a lot about the methodology, so I can’t say what specifically accounts for Apple’s rise. But I’d tend to think it reflects everything–the return of Steve Jobs, the growing popularity of iMacs and MacBooks, the introduction of the Apple Stores and their Genius Bars, and the general halo effect that almost everything Apple does has these days.

Over the past year or so, there seems to be less talk out there about the dreaded Apple Tax–the pointless extra dollars that Mac users supposedly line Apple’s pockets with compared to their friends and neighbors who buy Windows PCs. The “tax” is usually calculated based on a comparison of specs–how much you pay for a machine with a particular CPU, quantity of RAM, hard drive size, and so forth. Sometimes (but not by any means always) a similar-sounding Windows PC costs a lot less than a Mac.

I am, of course, a fan of beefy specs. But I’d love seeing proponents of the Apple Tax theory try to defend it in the wake of studies like this. If Mac owners are meaningfully happier overall than Windows PC ones, mightn’t it be a sign that you can’t compare computers on specs alone–and that the price you pay for a Mac is not unreasonable given the overall experience that you get in return? If Macs and Windows PCs are essentially identical, someone needs to tell Dell, HP, and Acer owners to start enjoying their systems more. And the rest of the industry needs to get to work building MacBook Air -like Windows laptops that cost no more than the Air does.

(Here I must pause to acknowledge the fact that some people will believe that happy Mac owners are brainwashed cult members who have been tricked by a wily Apple into believing themselves to be contented customers. The saps!)

So how can the rest of the industry narrow Apple’s lead, short of building nationwide chains of Acer, Dell, and HP stores?

(Note: I’ve only used HTC’s 7″ Flyer briefly.Engadget’s Vlad Savov is reasonably impressed with it, and so is This is My Next’s Joanna Stern. But it  still uses the Gingerbread version of Android and therefore can’t run real Android tablet apps; a Honeycomb upgrade has been promised since April, but it isn’t here yet.)

Acer’s new Iconia A100, which is now available for $330, starts out with one great big advantage over the Galaxy Tab and Flyer: it already has Android 3.2 Honeycomb, the version of the OS meant for tablets. It even has a feature that’s designed to scale phone apps so they look good and work well on a larger screen.

PCMag.com’s Sascha Segan likes the scaling feature, but says that the Iconia’s battery couldn’t even run for four hours before it conked it, a dismal showing. And Joanna finds the tablet to be sluggish and crashy.Both Sascha and Joanna say it looks kind of cheesy, too.

Looks like the Iconia isn’t the 7″ tablet that will justify the existence of 7″ tablets. But there’s no law that says that 7″ tablets have to have poor battery life–the PlayBook’s seems to be reasonably decent, for example. I also refuse to believe that tablets that aren’t iPads are necessarily sluggish and crashy, even though most of the ones I’ve tried have been. Once again, it looks like we have a 7″ tablet with problems that have nothing to do with it being a 7″ tablet.

I’m even willing to settle for a 7″ tablet that’s merely decent–say, as good as Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1–while I wait for a great one. In fact, Samsung might be the strongest contender to get it right, assuming that “7-inch iPad” remains an oxymoron.

No surprise: Acer has announced a tablet running Google’s Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system. The Iconia Tab A500′s specs are what is starting to become standard fare: a 10.1″ display, a dual-core 1-GHz Nvidia processor with integrated GeForce graphics and 1GB of RAM, and 16GB of storage. The Iconia weighs 1.69 pounds and is .52″ thick, specs which indicate that it’s a product of the pre-iPad 2 era. Battery life is quoted as “eight hours of playback for casual games, eight hours of HD video playback and 10 hours of WiFi Internet browsing,” which, I’m guessing, translates into “decent but not quite as good as the iPad 2.”

Unlike some preannounced Honeycomb tablets (coughSamsung), the Iconia will be available soon: it’s a Best Buy exclusive, and Acer says it’ll be available for preorder on April 14th and will go on sale on April 24th. It’s also got the sort of pricetag you’d expect from Acer–one that’s a tad cheaper than the competition, at $449.99.

Oh, and while Acer is saying that it will run Flash, it’s not going to come with it at first. Judging from my experience with Honeycomb Flash in its current form, that isn’t a tragedy.

(The Acer folks shot this video record of their win.) Also seen in the clip: LGS creator Robin Raskin, celebrity cohosts Jon Hein and Gary Dell’Abate, Laptop Magazine’s Avram Piltch, and…me.

Here’s a bit of a statement the company released today, under the title “Acer NOT phasing out netbooks in favor of tablet:”

Mobility, which has always been part of Acer’s DNA, finds a new form of expression in the range of tablets on offer, which feature various display sizes and models designed to fit different kinds of usage scenarios. Acer recognizes that the computer market is changing. As PCs are no longer only used to create content but are more and more becoming consumption tools, new devices and new form factors are appearing.

This means the range of devices available to users is getting wider and tablets are just another piece of the mosaic. Therefore, they will find their space next to netbooks and notebooks.

One of the things I like about Acer is that its executives are sometimes startlingly honest (when it came to the fiasco known as Windows Vista, CEO Gianfranco Lanci didn’t mince words). So I suspect that the Acer honcho quoted in the original stories wasn’t misquoted–and that if his point was that tablets will cut into netbook sales, he’s right.

But I can’t see tablets killing netbooks–which are, let’s remind ourselves, nothing more than a type of notebook that happens to be small, cheap, and (usually) not exactly bursting with high-performance components. There’s a place for them, just as there’s a place for cars that are small, cheap, and not exactly bursting with high-performance components. And even if netbooks are no longer sexy–and hey, they lost their luster a long time ago–I suspect they’ll be on the market for years to come. Maybe even after some companies which are currently jumping into the tablet market decide to jump back out of it again.

Pundits and industry types love to predict the demise of netbooks; pundits and industry types keep underestimating their appeal. I’m pleased with my iPad, but if I were required by law to own only one computing device, and was forced to choose between an iPad and an Acer netbook, I’d go with the Acer–at least until Apple introduces an iPad with a keyboard. Which it won’t.

How about you?

Our finalists include:
Acer’s Iconia two-screen notebook…

Barnes & Noble’s Nookcolor e-reader..

Fujifilm’s Finepix Real 3D W3 camera…

Google and Samsung’s Nexus S smartphone…

Looxcie’s wearable camcorder…

Sifteo Cubes digital blocks…

…and Sonomax’s Soundcage headphones.

Three products that will be officially announced at CES also made the final cut:

• A never-before-seen product from Fujitsu
• A new technology from Intel
• An undisclosed special surprise

The winner will be chosen using an applause meter at the CES event, which will be held on Saturday, January 8 at 10:30 a.m. in Room N257-258 of the Las Vegas Convention Center, North Hall. But even if you won’t be in Vegas, you can participate: We’ll also hold online voting starting January 5th at LastGadgetStanding.com, and the winner of that poll will be named as People’s Choice.

Here’s the official press release, with some more details; follow @lastgadget2011 on Twitter for more news. If you were choosing a winner from the above candidates right now, which one would you pick?

We do, however, have two Windows portables. There’s Acer’s Iconia, which ditches a physical keyboard in favor of a second screen that can display information or serve as a ten-finger multitouch keyboard. And there’s Asus’s U36Jc, which looks far more conventional than the Iconia but packs components–an Intel i5 CPU and discrete Nvidia graphics–which you might not expect to find in a thin-and-light laptop with a 13″ display.

Two interesting-but-very-different machines. Your take, please: