Now despite the fact that Mac sales are stable, and the iPhone is growing again, the iPad has remained a drag on Apple’s numbers. Profits are surely high, but sales keep dropping, quarter after quarter, after reaching a peak in 2013.

The main question is why? Were iPads disappointing to all those millions of people who bought them? Or did they just decide that it made no sense to upgrade every year or two, so we have many keeping them three or four years before choosing to upgrade.

But if there’s going to be an upgrade cycle, it’s not here yet, or maybe tablets are yesterday’s news.

From time to time, Microsoft puts up an ad meant to show why a Surface is better than a Mac or iPad.

Well, appears Apple has decided to return the favor with short ads extolling the virtues of an iPad Pro. So in demonstrating the advantages over a Windows machine, the ads explain that you can get them with LTE data access. Another advantage, that the iPad doesn’t get viruses.

The ads reportedly take actual Tweets from PC users that evidently express a falsehood about the iPad, and use the ad to disprove the claim. One ad deals with Apple’s famous, or infamous, walled garden, illustrating how easy it is to download Microsoft Word from the iOS App Store.

Now the ads are clearly targeted towards social media, a way to reach younger people who might be potential iPad Pro buyers. If successful, and it is likely part of a larger campaign, it may help boost sales to new customers. Remember that Apple depends heavily on people migrating from other platforms. Half the 5,4 million Macs sold in the holiday quarter went to Windows switchers, according to Apple.

Apple is helped by the fact that Microsoft can sometimes be misleading in its Surface ads, and there are enough Tweets out there from people who buy the fake news about Apple to fuel iPad ads for a long time to come.

Promoting iPads is a good thing, but it leaves open a big question, which is what Apple plans to do with future product upgrades.

Other than the iPad Pro, the lineup has remained stagnant. There are published reports of new iPads this year, headlined by a model with a 10.5-inch display and little or no screen bezel. So the physical size of the tablet may be no larger than today’s 9.7-inch models, which are also slated to be updated. The 12.9-inch iPad Pro will probably come along for the ride.

But speedier chips and a new form factor don’t really change how you use the iPad, and that’s where there I continue to have concerns.

So is Apple going to seriously consider fixing the iPad’s limitations as a productivity platform? I’ve been vocal about the problems that keep me from using one except to help Barbara address an occasional glitch with hers. I’ve tried, mind you. I’ve had the opportunity to review several iPads over the years, including the recent “Pro” editions. Each has been used with a keyboard; the Smart Keyboard for Apple’s recent models.

In each case, I’ve found the setup lacking. While some tech writers somehow manage to create their stuff on an iPad, I find it inhibiting. Maybe if those keyboards had some sort of navigation capability that kept my fingers from touching the screen. Maybe if they actually had a feel similar to a regular keyboard. The watchword with the Smart Keyboards is, to me, mush. Why can’t Apple build an iPad keyboard that is fast, fluid and productive? If it’s going to serve duty as a possible notebook replacement, even if only a part-time replacement, it should not be inferior to a real one in the ways that count.

My other argument is about multitasking, and whether the split screen and picture-in-picture schemes are up to the task. I’m not saying Apple needs to emulate the more flexible multitasking methods of a Mac or a Windows box, but if you want to be able to run several apps with multiple documents, you are highly restricted right now on an iPad. It seems curious that Apple expects you to use such apps as Microsoft Office for iOS and be thus inhibited.

Is there a better way? Well, Apple is expert at operating systems, so I expect they can come up with a solution that would open new possibilities of dealing with such matters in a more flexible, comfortable way. Maybe it’ll show up in iOS 11. But that depends on Apple’s priorities.

The other problem I have remains the same. The App Store’s security protections don’t allow for the kind of app I need to record my radio shows. You can’t get one of those apps from the Mac App Store either, but at least you can buy software from third-party developers. I do respect the reason for maintaining a walled garden for iOS, but Apple should consider expanding the types of apps that are allowed. Maybe they could work directly with developers to bring the equivalent of Audio Hijack to the platform.

In the meantime, the new iPad Pro campaign is a promising development. I hope it signifies a renewed emphasis on the platform, and portends great things in future models and the next iOS.

Over the years, Apple’s critics have been busy claiming that the company should do this, that and the other thing. When the requests — or demands — aren’t acknowledged, or are shown to lack logic, they are just repeated ad infinitum. In fact, you hear the stories so often that you wonder whether they are just copying from one another, or living in a vacuum.

A common complaint is that Apple needs to bite the bullet and cut prices. How dare they make big profits from the sale of their gear? Wouldn’t they sell more units if they just sacrificed some profit?

I suppose they would, to some degree. But would sales increase enough to compensate for the loss of profits? I suspect not, because other tech companies are not nearly as profitable with hardware. Apple earns more than 90% of the profits in the smartphone industry, and Samsung receives most of the rest. That means that loads of smartphones, many sold at lower prices than the iPhone, aren’t generating profits for their manufacturers. You wonder why they are even making those things, since a company lives and dies by cash flow and profit.

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A few years ago, a certain industry analyst firm suggested that Windows Phone, or whatever Microsoft intended to call it, would be the second most popular mobile platform on the planet by now. Seriously. Obviously somebody spent a little too much time reading Microsoft’s press releases of hope and change and didn’t consider the reality.

In its various implementations of Windows Phone, Microsoft moved to making it possible to use Windows 10 on both regular PCs and mobile gear. I’m not at all sure if anyone cared, but Microsoft has long believed in this Windows-anywhere scheme. Unfortunately, the world has moved on.

Part of the argument was that Apple must inevitably fail, just as they failed to take control of the PC market, and were reduced to a single percentage market share. That was supposed to make them irrelevant, but not to 75 million or so Mac users. Apple has continued to sell millions of Macs  and, in the December 2016 quarter, sales even climbed a bit compared to a PC sales slowdown.

When it comes to mobile gear, there was this illusion that Android would take over completely, which is not quite true, with Microsoft knocking Apple out of runner up status.

Only the public didn’t embrace Microsoft’s attempts to be relevant in the mobile handset space. The purchase of Nokia, coming at a time when the venerable cell phone maker wasn’t doing so well with Windows Phone, was supposed to jumpstart Microsoft’s efforts to move more product. It was one of the last acts of Steve Ballmer before he ceded the CEO spot to Satya Nadella, who has increased the company’s focus on services.

According to smartphone numbers from Gartner for the December 2016 quarter, the predictions of Microsoft’s success have been shown to be so far off the mark that one should question the competence of the people who made those predictions.

So in 2011, IDC, Gartner’s main competitor in industry analysis, predicted that Windows Phone would occupy the number two spot by 2015. The following year they said, in essence, no wait, it’s going to be 2016. So let’s take 2016 as IDC’s best prediction.

Now the numbers from Gartner and IDC may be different, but not that different. So Gartner reported that Android held an 81.7% share of the market, while Apple had 17.9% in the holiday quarter. At the same time, the iPhone outsold Samsung’s smartphones — but not their entire handset lineup — by a small number. Part of that was due to the abject failure of the Galaxy Note 7 phablet due to battery problems. But don’t forget that no single Samsung smartphone comes near to the iPhone in sales. It’s the combination of many models, most cheaper than Apple’s contender, which brings the numbers so close. Samsung also still sells loads of cheap feature phones that yield little in the way of profit.

Windows Phone? How about 0.3% of the market, which is just ahead of a rounding error. Talk about near-irrelevance. Microsoft hasn’t just been defeated, but nearly obliterated. I have to feel bad for the thousands of Nokia employees who received pink slips as a result of Microsoft’s unfortunate move.

At this point, it’s hardly likely that Microsoft has any hope of ever returning to the mobile market with decent numbers. It’s a two-horse race, and there’s no room for any competitors. Sure, Windows still has a huge advantage in the PC market, but OEM license sales were down 5% in the last quarter, and Surface revenue was down 2% despite the arrival of the costly Surface Studio.

Apple’s critics will suggest that they are destined to be consigned to niche status as the market moves more towards commodity gear. It is true that several China-based smartphone makers are doing well, largely in the Asian market. But Apple continues to bring in over 90% of the profits from smartphone sales. It’s clear the iPhone isn’t going away, and that Samsung has issues to consider, which is why the Galaxy S8 has been delayed.

I won’t consider the implications of the criminal charges that Samsung CEO Jay Y. Lee is facing. While that is certainly going to harm the company going forward, Samsung has many divisions and other executives to manage the fate of the mobile division. It’s not equivalent to any situation that would cause Tim Cook to be sidelined, since Apple only builds a small number of products. Even then, there are other executives to keep things running should something happen to the CEO. Apple didn’t stop doing business when the late Steve Jobs took sick leaves.

Now about that rounding error: The real “honor” falls to BlackBerry, which no longer makes mobile handsets. But before they stopped, they sold a little over 200,000 units in the last quarter, resulting on a 0.0% market share. BlackBerry at one time held an over 20% share of the smartphone market, and that was two years after the iPhone’s debut. What a tragic fall from grace.

Some might expect — or hope — that Apple will meet a similar fate. But right now it’s Microsoft that’s destined to descend to rounding error status real soon now.

So let’s consider this: For years, Apple has sold premium-priced gear. With few exceptions, sales are high and profits are high. Even when sales fall, as they did for the iPhone over several quarters, and the iPad since 2014, Apple doesn’t lose money.

But the critics have other ideas. You can see it implicit in their ongoing demands about Apple, every single year. So there is the long-term demand that Apple license its operating system. It was made even before the first really useful version of Windows came out, Windows 95. So in that year, you could buy an official Mac OS clone from several third-party companies, such as Power Computing.

Before then, some companies unofficially built Mac clones by using the ROMs from an older Mac to assemble a computer that sort of worked, although they tended to be buggy.

Well, the official clone program was a disaster. Not just because Apple charged a mere $50 for each clone license. It was due to the fact that Apple is a hardware company, and every sale lost to another company is a lost sale. They probably believed they’d be expanding the market in ways they couldn’t manage themselves, but it ended up that the cloners merely went after Apple’s high-end corner of the market with a vengeance.

With Apple on the ropes, the new iCEO, Steve Jobs, found ways to short circuit the deal. That’s a key reason why Mac OS 8 arrived, since the cloners were mostly licensed to distribute computers with Mac OS 7. Apple also bought out Power Computing for $100 million, effectively killing that company.

Unfortunately, some people continue to demand that Apple license macOS, and even iOS. They labor under the delusion that Apple needs to focus more on market share, and it’s all about having more devices with an Apple OS on them, rather than selling more hardware. Don’t forget, Apple gives away the OS, which is designed to be tightly integrated to their own hardware. Even if third party products were supported, it would create additional problems for techs to manage a wider range of configurations. That’s a chronic issue that Microsoft has had to deal with over the years.

All this while Apple’s stock price has hit record levels. Obviously, investors like what Apple is doing.

Specifically, Apple has, in recent years, earned over 90% of the profits in the smartphone industry. The critics want them to sell cheaper gear, so they earn less money per unit. Customers clearly love their iPhones, and while I’m sure they’d like to get them cheaper, Apple has managed to carve out a sizable market for itself. Samsung may sell more copies, but Apple dominates in the high-end smartphone space.

Why change?

Over the years, the critics have also demanded that Apple sell cheap Macs, but how much in the way of profits are the other companies making anyway with their low-end machines? Apple dominates in high-end desktops and notebooks. There are legitimate reasons to suggest ways to improve the Mac lineup, and there are also legitimate reasons to be concerned over the small number of product refreshes.

But some of that, a lot of that, doesn’t even appear to be Apple’s fault. Don’t forget that Intel hasn’t been exactly speedy in getting new processors out. Year-over-year improvements are usually slight, even as the critics complain that Apple is cheating its customers by using older silicon.

But then there’s the Mac Pro.

So what, if anything, does Apple plan to do to upgrade its flagship workstation? The last model refresh, a whole new design, arrived in 2013. It’s still being sold at the same price, mostly, except for a $200 reduction in the price of a 1TB SSD upgrade. There are faster Xeon processors, and faster graphics chips. It would have been fairly trivial to offer models with upgraded parts, so what’s going on here?

At its price, the Mac Pro is, I am sure, quite profitable even if sales aren’t very high. There is also a segment of the market willing to pay maximum dollar for a computing workstation. If it doesn’t come from Apple, it’ll come from the likes of Dell or HP. Does it make sense to let it slide? Remember that if a company gives up on buying the most powerful Mac, they are likely to switch an entire company to Windows too, which can mean plenty of lost sales.

Such concerns aren’t going to be addressed by selling cheap Macs, cheap iPhones or cheap iPads. Apple’s product positioning has been shown to be successful. Many of the people making complaints about pricing and cloning have no knowledge about running multinational companies, and thus are way out of their league.

In case you’re wondering, I have plenty of criticisms about Apple. There are things I’d like to see changed. But I do not pretend to know how to design tech gear or run a multinational business. I have to assume Apple does based on the degree of their success. It’s also unfortunately true that many of the people who claim to know better usually end up being wrong.