There are hands-down fiascos: MobileMe, Ping and Maps. And there are works in progress: Game Center, iTunes Match and iCloud. And all of them speak to a troubling deficiency that Apple just can’t seem to overcome. One that’s garnering increasingly more public scrutiny. One that, at its worst — say with the disastrous Maps debacle — shows up the company that prides itself on building the “magical and revolutionary” as fallible.

So, as the 2013 Apple rumor mill ramps up, and the prognosticators wonder whether the company’s product pipeline includes a television, a watch, or both, consider this: While Apple could likely use another disruptive innovation on which to build its continued success, what it really needs — crucially — is to do Web services well.

Because to do them poorly is to weaken the hardware and software on which Apple prides itself. These days, our experiences of Web services are part and parcel of our experience of the devices on which they run. When Maps for iOS fails, the iPhone fails with it. Certainly that was the view taken by investors, who whacked $30 billion from Apple’s market cap in the days following the Maps fiasco.

As Barclays analyst Ben Reitzes recently observed, “The Maps debacle showed investors how valuable Google’s technology was — how hard it was to replicate — and how Apple may struggle as the world moves beyond iTunes toward cloud-based services.”

In other words, it showcased Apple’s deficiency in such a way that it actually shook investors’ confidence in the company. It showed them that great Web services are as critical to Apple’s success as great hardware.

Apple, of course, already knows this. That’s why it undertook audacious initiatives like Maps and iTunes Match in the first place. But the company clearly underestimated the effort and skill needed to pull them off with excellence. And now, with all the world watching, it can’t afford to do so again. Maps, iTunes Match, iCloud … they all must “just work.” That’s what consumers expect. And that’s what Apple has promised.

In that sense, Web services are likely to be Apple’s next big battleground. Premium hardware and software aren’t enough anymore. The market wants services, as well. And it wants services that work.

What with Hurricane Sandy here in the East and the management upheaval swirling around Apple in the West — complete with the ouster of its mobile software head Scott Forstall and retail chief John Browett — excuse us for taking so long to get up this latest adorkable video from John Elerick.

It came out earlier today and is the second of the “Banned” mockumentaries, which spoof the slick Apple commercials using top execs chattering on about its products.

Also below is one Conan O’Brien’s TeamCoco just put out that will air tonight about the many sizes of the iPad mini.

Forstall was one of those Apple execs, though he was not featured in these videos. But he was ousted earlier today from the tech giant for a range of problems, including refusing to sign a company apology letter about how bad the new mapping software that Apple recently released to replace Google’s maps was.

Here’s the new one on the recently released iPad mini and the first on the iPhone 5, as well as the TemCoco one:

Then Pandora bounced back a bit. But it’s still down 12 percent.

Time to buy, says J.P. Morgan’s Doug Anmuth. He figures Pandora is worth $17 a share. It’s currently trading at $8.20.

I’m not terribly interested in stock prices, but I do think Anmuth’s logic is worth following. My translation of his most recent note here:

If the thought of watching Pandora go head to head with Apple freaks you out, then you should have sold two months ago. Bloomberg’s report advances the story, as we news types like to say. But it doesn’t change it: The market knew Apple was headed in this direction back in early September, when The Wall Street Journal first told us about it.

And, as I explained back then, it’s relatively simple for Apple to launch a streaming music service, using whatever model they want. Unlike the TV industry, the music guys are happy to do business with Apple, and are quite amenable to playing around with different business models. Because their existing business is awful.

So, whether Apple’s iRadio, or whatever they’re calling it, launches in January of next year, or March, or whenever, it doesn’t matter. Pandora is likely to face Tim Cook head-on here, and acting surprised about that doesn’t make sense.

Which brings us to the second point …

Apple can launch a Pandora-killer, but Pandora can do just fine, anyway. Apple makes awesome hardware, and does a great job of integrating that hardware with software. But that doesn’t mean it will do a great job of making a streaming music service people will love.

For starters, this is supposed to be an ad-supported service, and selling Internet ads turns out to be a difficult, labor-intensive process — maybe even more so for Internet radio ads, which require lots of face time with local buyers. Pandora has been plodding away at this for years, with some success. But it seems hard to imagine Apple expending the same kind of effort.

And, while Apple revolutionized the digital music business with its iTunes store back in 2003, that doesn’t mean it succeeds at digital services every time it tries.

The obvious examples here are MobileMe and Ping (R.I.P.). But notice that Cook didn’t mention iTunes Match, Apple’s most recent digital music gambit, even once during his last keynote.

Maybe he’s saving that for a future pitch. Or maybe that one didn’t go anywhere.

Finally, remember that while Apple owned the music player market, and it owns the iPad market, it doesn’t own the phone market. So, even if Apple comes out with a killer streaming music service, it’s unlikely that it’s going to make that one available for Android users. Which means Pandora will still have plenty of room to play.

P.S.: By the way? Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy will join us onstage at our D: Dive into Mobile conference in New York next week. Pretty good bet we will talk about this then. We’re sold out, but if you want to get on the wait list, head over here.

As of Monday, the iOS app is no longer available from the App Store, and those with it already on their devices are greeted with a message informing them of the service’s end. Clicking OK takes one to the App Store.

That’s Apple’s way of letting customers know that it has taken what it wants from Chomp and built it into its own storefront.

Apple discontinued the Android app for Chomp back in April.

Chomp isn’t the only Apple service that won’t live to see the holidays. The ill-fated Ping music social network is also digital dust and ashes as of today.

The App Store is due for an upgrade later this month as part of iTunes 11. Better app discovery and Facebook integration are among the new features.

Like we told you back in June: Ping, Apple’s attempt to merge music and social chatter, is going away Sept. 30.

Apple officially announced the death of the service today,  and if you’re one of service’s remaining users, you’ll see for yourself if you click on the Ping link on the iTunes client. Don’t bother trying to find Ping on the Web, because Apple has already vanished the service’s tracks there.

You don’t need hindsight to figure out why Ping didn’t work — the most obvious problem with the service was that it didn’t sync up with the world’s most popular social network. But now Facebook and Apple have worked out their differences, and there’s no need to keep Ping on life support anymore.

Here’s Tim Cook’s obituary for the service, delivered this spring at All Things Digital’s D10 conference: “We tried Ping, and I think the customer voted and said ‘This isn’t something that I want to put a lot of energy into.’”

And rather than continue to maintain Ping, the company is abandoning it and using its partnerships with Twitter and Facebook to make its various software and service offerings social in a way that consumers actually care about.

Sources close to the company say that Ping, which still exists today in iTunes 10.6.3 and the iOS 6 beta — where it doesn’t work, will be gone with the software’s next major release, likely scheduled for this fall. And at that point Apple’s social networking offerings will shift to Twitter and new partner Facebook entirely.

Which makes perfect sense.

At this point, years into the social networking phenomenon, why not leave the social stuff to the social people who are good at it? Apple might be great at software and hardware, but its skills in creating a social network are sorely lacking. So much so that it’s not even bothering to salvage Ping with the help of the folks at Facebook, a company that might have improved the service’s chances of success had it been on board for its launch.

In the end, Ping was a social network that was focused far too much on enabling commerce, and far too little on enabling social interaction. It wasn’t easy to find and connect with people on Ping. And that didn’t resonate with Apple’s customers all. Apple CEO Tim Cook said as much at D10.

“We tried Ping, and I think the customer voted and said ‘This isn’t something that I want to put a lot of energy into,’” Cook said.

Apple now seems to have come to the same conclusion. And it’s not putting any further effort into the service either.

A less talked-about issue is the fact that many smartphone apps are constantly pinging the network, like a kid asking his or her parents every few seconds, “Are we there yet?”

Only smartphone apps are even more annoying. Some ping the network as often as 2,400 times an hour. The result is network congestion and signal loss, as well as a far more rapid drain on battery life.

“Wireless signaling is a tricky topic because oftentimes it’s hidden, happening in the background without any user knowledge. But it’s growing bigger by the minute, as more users download more connected applications” said Isabelle Dumont, head of marketing at Seven Networks, which pitches a solution to help reduce the issue.

If current trends continue, the constant pinging of the network could eventually amount to 25 trillion signaling events per hour, Seven says.

The company, which has a product designed to reduce some of the noise, has put together a handy infographic on the issue, a portion of which is included below.

Update: One of the the things we were wondering was just how much difference there is among platforms, since much of Seven’s graphic seems to relate to Android.

“Whether it’s Android, iOS, or Windows Phone, they tend to be always-on, checking for content updates on a frequent basis, even if there is no content update to be delivered,” Seven said. However, there are some important things that make over-pinging a bigger issue on Android.

One, lots of apps operate all the time on Android. Also, Seven notes, “Many more apps on Android monetize through advertising, which by itself can be one cause of additional data and signaling traffic.”

Also, Google’s store allows all apps to be published, regardless of how “noisy” they are.

“By contrast, there appears to be much tighter control on the iOS side,” Seven said. “Any app on Android can operate in the background and take advantage of all services and APIs available on the operating system and the device. iOS comes with a much tighter control over which app can operate in the background and be ‘always-on.’”

As for Windows Phone, Seven said, “These devices are still in the early stage of adoption, and because of the relative low volume of applications available for Windows Phone, the signaling storm related to Windows Phone has mostly been ignored if there is one.”

In addition, as a developer reminded me in an e-mail, Windows Phone today just does a whole lot less in the background and has a different means for getting updates (pushed down vs. polling).

In some cases, such as with Skype, there are some downsides to the way apps can live in the background, but it does make them potentially far less noisy.