While recording this weekend’s episode of The Tech Night Owl LIVE, I had to wonder just how long it would be feasible for Apple to build Macs. As it stands, sales are down, but in large part that may be due to the fact that there were very few upgrades through the September quarter. Indeed just one, the MacBook. The MacBook Pro and the Touch Bar didn’t make their debut until late October, and didn’t start to ship in quantity until the following month.

True, it does appear Apple may be right in saying that sales are high. That was confirmed by Stephen Baker of the NPD Group in his recent appearance on the show. We’ll know more at the end of January, or when IDC and other industry analysts have their say. While their numbers aren’t perfect, they are usually in the ballpark, more or less, so you can see the trends.

So it may well be that Mac sales will improve somewhat over last year. If there are, as expected, some Mac updates early next year — and even the conservative estimates mention the iMac — sales could hold up for a while. But the overall trend will be the same, the regular erosion of PC sales.

True, Apple looks back at the history of the PowerBook over 25 years, and sees a similar form factor 25 years hence. That may be possible, but I can also see where such “pickup truck” computers will continue to fall into disuse. Maybe not for me, but for many people.

Already younger people appear to be untethering themselves from use of a personal computer. My son Grayson is a millennial who has worked on Macs since before kindergarten. Well, then it was more about dragging his dad’s files to the trash. For years, he worked side by side with me on Macs as we wrote books together. But when cell phones were brought into the home, he soon learned how to text flexibly on the old fashioned numeric telephone keypad. With his iPhone 5c, his thumbs move real fast across the touchscreen and he does a lot of things on it.

He has a tablet — a small-screened Amazon Kindle — for watching Netflix videos and other stuff. But he still has a Mac, a 2015 13-inch MacBook Air that he uses for heavy-duty work. When he came home for his annual 2.5-week visit, he didn’t take the computer, but he did use my 2010 17-inch MacBook Pro to handle the heavy-duty chores, such as preparing material for his students in Madrid in Microsoft Word. He also asked me to print a load of documents that he needed for the first day of class.

Now as a practical matter, nothing he did couldn’t be accomplished fairly well with an iPad with Microsoft Word; it would be too much for an iPhone. But he also has tons of files he’s built up for nearly half his life that he needs to access, and that still requires a Mac.

But he’s not terribly far away from being able to do most of his work, and manage most of his files, on a properly equipped iPad, and there’s the rub.

Now the only reason I keep that MacBook Pro around is to be able to duplicate my workflow, more or less, on the road. I cannot do that yet on an iPad for several reasons.

The first is the inability to get iOS versions of the apps I require for recording my shows. I rely heavily on Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack to capture audio from Skype, and combine it with my studio mic which is connected to an outboard mixer. Audio Hijack can be set up to manage that task, with a few preprocessing filters activated, in minutes. It never misses a beat, week after week, and each update only makes it better.

While there are audio editing apps on the iPad, there’s nothing comparable to Audio Hijack. It’s not that a publisher isn’t willing to build one. It’s the result of Apple’s sandboxing limitations that make it impossible for one app to capture audio from other apps and input sources. This is my key workflow scheme and I need my Mac to make it happen. During the editing process, I use Sound Studio and Amadeus Pro, plus ready access to large audio files that are deposited in different folders.

The biggest limitation of the iPad is the limit imposed by Apple in iOS. Some day, I expect Apple will make a greater push to make the iPad more of an indispensable tool for business, and that would mean that audio capture apps and other software that’s currently prohibited will be allowed in some form. There would also have to be a flexible way to manage large numbers of assets for editing, and perhaps more storage, though 256GB ought to be enough for remote work.

When it comes to long text, such as this column, I am totally disappointed by the present-day crop of iPad keyboards. I’ve tried a few, including Apple’s Smart Keyboard, and I cannot type at the same speed or as comfortably as I can on my iMac with a Magic Keyboard and Magic Mouse 2. Just docking that keyboard via Bluetooth would require a way to prop up the iPad on a stand or in a case, but it would be an awkward setup.

All this will be resolved someday, and perhaps I will be able to give up the pickup truck. But that’s still a few years away, and I hope I’m not too old to move on to the next great thing.

Do I think a MacBook Pro or its successor will retain the same general form factor 25 years from now? I’m a sci-fi writer, so I enjoy projecting our future. My answer: No way!

I’m not traveling as much as I used to, so I don’t use my vintage 2010 17-inch MacBook Pro all that much. I do take it out to recharge the battery and run OS updates from time to time when I’m not otherwise using it. My son, on his annual trek home from Madrid, now says I should just sell it. It has been updated with a 500GB SSD and an extra 4GB of RAM, and it runs about as well as a recent MacBook Air. At least that’s what Grayson says. So it should command a decent sum on eBay.

However, when I am on the road, I need to be able to essentially duplicate my home office environment, which means being able to record and edit two radio shows. I have the USB mic to carry along. I’m all set. But without a Mac notebook — or something from Windows that can do the same sort of work — I would be in trouble. The iPad is no substitute, since there is no apps that can replace some of the ones I need, such as Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack to capture sound from Skype and other apps.

So the MacBook Pro stays until I’m ready to replace it. True, it could use a new battery, but most of the time, there’s an AC socket nearby.

During his visit, Grayson spent a lot of time on it, so I decided spend a little more time making sure everything was current. and that started with the OS. Since I hadn’t installed any updates on it in months, I noticed a 10.11.6 update or El Capitan in the App Store, plus a very big plug for macOS Sierra. Apple even put a convenient button in there to download and install the upgrade.

Now the 2010 MacBook Pro is one of the oldest models that still supports Sierra. I suspect 10.13 won’t support this computer, and that may be the time it needs to go. Still, I expected — or at least hoped for — decent performance from that upgrade, so I dutifully started the download and went about my business.

A while later, I returned to see the Sierra installer ready to roll. But I never made it past the prompts to accept the terms and conditions before I hit a roadblock.

Whenever I tried to select the MacBook Pro’s internal drive for the install, I found that it wouldn’t work. The drive icon was grayed out, and a tiny tip-stye message appeared about needing to upgrade to macOS Server 5.2 first. Only thing, I have never installed any server software on that notebook — ever. So why the message?

I went through a couple of diagnostics, consisting of restarting, resetting NVRAM and the SMC, not that I expected anything would happen. I even tried restarting in Safe Mode, with the Shift key held down, and it didn’t make a difference.

Sure, I could have backed up and restored the computer in the hopes that would cure the problem, but I decided to try something that would be less time-consuming, and that was to use the macOS Recovery feature, which involves restarting with a Command-R.

But it didn’t work. For some reason, there was no Recovery partition on that drive, so I had to use the more drastic solution, macOS Internet Recovery. The startup command is Command-Option-R, and as the title applies, it downloads the recovery partition from Apple’s support servers.

The setup complete, I ran the First Aid function from Disk Utility, which found nothing wrong, I choose Reinstall macOS from the macOS Utilities menu. But even though I was using OS X El Capitan, the only available option was to upgrade to macOS Sierra. Was Apple pulling a stunt similar to what Microsoft did with Windows 10, to force Mac users to switch to the new OS? Or was this a peculiarity of the curious problem that made it otherwise impossible to install that upgrade?

Oh well, might as well go with the flow.

I had no expectations of what might happen during the reinstall process. I half expected to have to backup and restore the MacBook Pro, and I had only delayed the inevitable.

Or maybe not.

So I started the setup. Within a short time, I saw the standard Sierra installation screen. This time, the internal drive was available to select, and I began the install. This time, the entire installer has to be downloaded as part of the process, which can take a while.

The rest was anticlimactic. macOS Sierra 10.12.2 is now running on that MacBook Pro. Performance in all respects that I have tested appears to be about the same as its predecessor. So if that’s the last operating system upgrade for that Mac — aside from maintenance updates — so be it.

As I write this, I’m following the usual steps to attempt to recondition the battery, which essentially involves charging the unit, leaving it connected to the charger for a couple of hours, and letting the battery run down till it goes to Sleep mode. After it shuts off, you give it a full charge. These steps are supposed to optimize battery life, and I’m not eager to put any more money into this computer. But selling it with a nearly-new battery should command a better price.

The wish lists for the next version of macOS are beginning to appear, but it’s a small list so far. After all these years, you even wonder how many bright ideas Apple might come up with. Before you even go that far, I wonder if it isn’t time for Apple’s Mac developers to be tasked with fixing things old bugs, making things work better, before wondering what features look impressive in a demonstration at the next WWDC.

Take the Finder. The Finder is the core of the Mac user experience dating back to 1984. With the advent of what is now known as macOS, first released in 2001 as a version intended for developers and power users, there was a new Finder. While it inherited the features of the old Finder, it had more of the look of a traditional browser.

Over the years, Apple took the hint and added such features as tabs and backward and forward buttons to cement the deal. For the most part, it works pretty well. I use tabs to setup folders for my radio shows. Once a show has been broadcast, it goes in an “Archives” folder, another tab in the same Finder window, and please don’t tell me about the lack of creativity in my titles. I set up folders when I need them, and enter the first name that occurs to me. So long as I know what it means, that’s all I need.

Now one of the age-old criticisms of the macOS Finder is that it’s flaky and fails to remember size and positioning from window to window. In theory you should be able to set things up, close the Finder window, and when you open that or a new window, it’ll be positioned and shaped identically. More or less.

As you probably know, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. There’s no way to predict what choices the Finder will make in terms of positioning. It reminds me in a way of the Imperial Droid in “Star Wars: Rogue One,”which had a mind of its own. Believe it or not, watching that movie — and it’s one of the better flicks in the franchise — led me to write this column.

So I regard size and position as fundamental features. The Finder should be correct 99.9% of the time, not come up with a window that’s half the size of the one it replaced.

But when it comes to positions, I have the same view of apps. I like my app windows in the center of the screen, not stretched to the edges unless the content dictates it. But it seems that Safari has the same memory problem as the Finder. I open a new browser window and it’ll usually be placed in another spot, sometimes just to the right of the window below it, sometimes elsewhere. Pages has its own flakiness, as a new document window is off center to the right. I fix the window, close it, open a new document and it’s in the wrong position. But Pages seems to remember the placement of an existing document once I’ve positioned it where I want and saved it.

Yes, I know such concerns might be interpreted as symptoms of being a little obsessive. But I like to think that the supercomputer on my desktop ought to manage the simple things perfectly every time.

Microsoft Word, notorious for its flakiness, has its own document window positioning irregularity. except that it’s off-center towards the left. Closing the new document window, after fixing its predecessor, produces the same symptom.

I am never surprised at what a Microsoft app might do, but the most recent version of Office for Mac works all right in many respects. There are feature shortcomings with Outlook, but that’s not relevant to this column.

With Apple, fit and finish are supposed to be paramount. Even when Apple more or less duplicates — or imitates — a feature from another platform, you expect it to work better, more reliably. Apple didn’t build the first personal computer with a graphical user interface, the first digital music player, the first smartphone, the first tablet, or the first smartwatch.

You get the picture.

So as Apple’s developers continue to craft what is expected to be known as macOS “something-or-other” 10.13, I wonder how much attention will be paid towards just rummaging through the source code and fixing the things that need to be fixed.

Now it may just be that most of you don’t care if the Finder or an Apple app loses its memory. It’s minor in the scheme of things, and unless you want things to be just so, you probably won’t care all that much. Well, maybe if the Finder window doesn’t remember the size you set.

As you know, I began to use Macs in the 1980s. Even though the OS in those days was extremely prone to freeze or crash at inopportune moments, PCs were all very much worse. True, Windows 10 is regarded by some — well Consumer Reports at any rate — as two sides of a coin, but I disagree.

But Apple has to fight harder to keep Mac sales at a decent level in the post-PC era. The little things do count, even if it’s just a document window forgetting where it ought to be.

Over the past week or two, I’ve read a number of articles suggesting what Apple may or may not do with the Mac platform this year. Most take a lean approach, that several models will get minor processor/graphics/drive refreshes, and that’s about it. There have been scattered mentions of a price adjustment for the MacBook and MacBook Pro, but question marks remain about Apple’s commitment to the platform.

Now one recent story from a major financial publication claimed that Apple is giving short shrift to the Mac division, particularly when it comes to the frequency of meetings with design chef Sir Jonathan Ive. Of course, the insider corporate maneuvering within Apple is usually a secret, and the facts, assuming they are facts, usually come from former employees. Even then, if the news isn’t favorable, you may worry whether it’s a case of sour grapes.

Clearly CEO Tim Cook took such reports seriously enough to reaffirm the company’s commitment to Mac desktops in a message to Apple employees. But he talked about the future roadmap in vague terms without specifically promising that any particular model would receive an upgrade.

I think it would have gone better if Cook said something during the October media event. Just leaving Mac users hanging was bad form, and it only helped fuel speculation that it was the last gasp for some models.

But the wish lists I’ve seen are predictable and not terribly exciting. Or it may just be that there are only so many things Apple can do to keep the Mac platform current. The entire PC universe is too mature after all these years, and save for eccentric configurations, such as the Microsoft Surface Studio, these machines very much follow similar playbooks.

Sure, you may read rabid proclamations from avid Windows fans that Microsoft is doing just wonderful things by entering a segment of the market where prices are as high or higher than Apple’s. All that’s doing, assuming there’s any sales volume at all, is cannibalizing PC sales from Windows licensees in the few areas where they can earn decent profits.

But this behavior also puts Microsoft in the same place as Google with Pixel smartphones. Licensees may just groan and bear it. Of course, the limited distribution of the Pixel may seem less threatening, but I’m not altogether convinced it represents more than an expensive Nexus with extra fluff and new branding. Here, the company is following Microsoft’s knack of renaming failed products and pretending they’re something altogether new. They aren’t.

So what should we expect from Apple in the desktop space? Obviously you won’t see iMacs with displays that can be contorted into different positions. I think that practice went away when the model with articulated arms — the iMac G4 — was discontinued.

Aside from eccentric designs, just what should Apple do to make Macs more compelling? It’s an important question, and not readily answered. In large part, Apple is constrained by Intel’s processor roadmap, which has focused more on power efficiency than number crunching in recent years.

I do not expect to see much change in design excesses. So the iMac, super thin at the edges, bulbous in the back, and near-impossible to fix, probably won’t be changed for a while. Well, except to make it less bulbous as parts become smaller. Since you can consider the 5K model to be a major change, I wouldn’t expect to see much in the near term. Faster, and probably outfitted with those USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports that debuted on the MacBook Pro. There is some hope for a conventional port or two, but once Apple makes a move, they rarely backtrack. So maybe Apple’s sale on dongles will continue for a while.

Other than minor refreshes and possible price cuts, there’s no reason to expect much change in the MacBook and the MacBook Pro. The MacBook Air might still sit at the bottom of the lineup — unchanged — for a while before it goes away.

But what about the Mac mini or the Mac Pro? Jason Snell had some good ideas in his recent Macworld piece. I was particularly interested in how the Mac mini might morph into a somewhat beefier computer with different performance levels depending on the options you check off on the configuration page. This is not dissimilar to an approach taken with the HP Z2, where a small and cheap PC can grow to become a mini workstation depending on how it’s outfitted. That would serve the needs of both entry-level users and those for whom a Mac Pro is a bit much.

Speaking of the Mac Pro, it makes little sense to keep a three-year-old model in the lineup unless there are plans to refresh or modify it in some fashion. Maybe a little movement towards those who’d like to see more internal expansion, with capacity for two SSDs and perhaps two Xeon processors and more RAM slots. How much larger would it have to be anyway?

Jason’s suggestion about optimizing the macOS for more efficient network management when piggybacked onto a cellular network might make sense. But anything iOS does that is matched in macOS ought to be comparable, and that includes Messages.

None of these suggestions, however, truly advances the state of the art in any new way that I can see. It’s just playing around some with existing form factors. And, oh yes, I do expect to see a new Magic Keyboard 2 with Touch Bar later this year. I’ll be disappointed if I’m proven wrong.