Apple made a point of reminding us that the first Apple laptop arrived 25 years ago, but it was not the first portable Mac. Ignored by CEO Tim Cook in his presentation at Thursday’s media event, there was once something called the Macintosh Portable, released two years earlier; it was hardly portable. But if you’re referring to a device that is the direct ancestor of today’s notebook computers, choose the PowerBook 100 from 1991.

Clearly Apple intends the 2016 MacBook Pro to be revolutionary — and it is. But the cost of all this nifty engineering is high, and those who might have been able to eke out enough money for previous Apple notebooks might think twice. You have to make a major decision.

So let’s do the basic comparison: The 2015 MacBook Pro started at $1,499 for the 13.3-inch version, and $1,999 for the 15.4-inch version. That’s lower than it had been in the past, but still relatively expensive for a notebook computer, if only because you can buy a PC notebook for half that amount. Obviously, the configurations wouldn’t match, but some only care about pricing.

Compare that to the 2016. MacBook Pro, particularly the models with the Touch Bar. Now if you want to buy the smaller model without the Touch Bar, it’s still $1,499. But the basic configuration with Touch Bar and Touch ID starts at $1,799. The larger model starts at $2,399, and it isn’t available without those two hardware additions. If there’s any consolation, it appears the jump from a 256GB SSD to 1TB SSD is a “mere” $600.00. That’s higher than you’d pay for that SSD all by its lonesome from third-party dealers. But the truly expensive update is a 2TB SSD for $1,400. Ouch.

In making the MacBook Pro thinner than a MacBook Air, Apple clearly did some heavy-duty engineering. It appears every key element of the new design has changed. The keyboard descends from the one in the MacBook, with the hint at more traditional keyboard travel. The trackpad is larger, and there are four Thunderbolt 3 ports that come in USB-C dress. Any can be used for charging purposes, but the MagSafe charging scheme is history. Both models use sixth generation Intel processors, known as Skylake. There is a successor, Kaby Lake, but it is probably not yet available in quantities sufficient for Apple’s purposes. With Intel Iris graphics on the 13-inch model, and AMD Polaris graphics on the 15-inch version, there are huge performance increases.

Apple also boasts that the larger MacBook Pro can drive two external 5K displays. But they won’t come from Apple just yet, since a new LG display, supposedly designed with Apple’s assistance, was mentioned. If you’re hoping for an upgraded Thunderbolt display, it may happen, but it’s clearly not a priority.

Now weighing three and four pounds, a half pound lighter than before, is quite meaningful if you need to lug one of these babies across the airport in a case armed with other stuff, such as a backup drive and assorted connectivity gear.

Adding Touch ID is just to be expected. The real improvement — and it’s major — is the Touch Bar. It’s also a whole lot more sophisticated than I could have imagined based on the rumors. So much so that it creates an impressive new way to manage your workflow. It also destroys the argument for a convertible PC with a touchscreen. Considering all the things you can do with Touch Bar with your hands comfortably on the keyboard, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would have considered a different alternative for a PC.

Clearly the MacBook Pro separates the concept of notebooks considerably from the tablet, though both may roughly be in the same category.

As the rumors stated, the Touch Bar is context sensitive, not just changing from app to app but from function to function. It replaces menus, buttons and sliders in clever ways that depend on the imagination of the app developer. I had expected Adobe and Microsoft to take their sweet time to become Touch Bar aware, but it appears they are already working on updates that ought to be out before year’s end.

So many of the things you did by mousing around suddenly appear in the Touch Bar, at your beck and call. Apple demonstrated how the Finder and other system features are managed in Touch Bar, not to mention Mail, Safari, iWork and other Apple apps.

The Touch Bar versions of such apps as Final Cut Pro X, GarageBand, iMovie, and iWork are already out. A new version of Xcode will arm developers with the tools to support Touch Bar. The new MacBook Pros aren’t shipping for another two or three weeks, but still in plenty of time to catch fire during the holiday season.

If you can afford the price of admission.

But Apple executives are already saying that they do not design to a price, and I have little doubt the cost of engineering and building Touch Bar is high, and so paying $300-400 more may make perfect sense. Over the next few years, that price will no doubt come down as Apple perfects this flashy invention. Do you remember the debut of the 27-inch iMac with 5K Retina display?

What it does indicate is that there’s life left in what many felt to be a moribund product category. Apple has demonstrated a way to become more productive, and if you’re a graphic designer who charges for your labors by the hour, it may not take so long to make up for the price increase. After that, it’s gravy.

But when it comes to other Macs sadly in need of updates, it’s just crickets, unless something shows up via a press release in the next week or two. The MacBook Air is pared down to one model, the 13-inch version, still $999, but it’s being sold unchanged. The 11-inch MacBook Air is destined for the closeout bins. As to the fate of the Mac mini and Mac Pro, well both are still for sale, older but at the same price. An update for the iMac may not arrive until early next year.

So, yes, Apple has made a huge commitment to the Mac platform. But whether potential buyers can get past the higher prices is an open question that may not be answered until the December quarter is in the rearview mirror.

As I write this article, Apple stock price has dropped over two percent. This comes in the wake of Tuesday’s announcement that sales were down again, as expected, in the September quarter.

Now you expect Wall Street to treat such news negatively. Companies are supposed to grow sales, but one would think the falling sales would already be built into the price, since Apple routinely delivers a conservative guidance for an upcoming quarter. Even more important, Apple promises to earn a profit for the current quarter, ending this downturn, at least for a while.

Shouldn’t the stock price go up at least a little?

All right, I am not about to suggest I am remotely capable of predicting stock market trends, and how investors might react to a company’s individual announcements. I do believe that there ought to be a little logic behind those moves, however. After all, the signs are positive for Apple.

So the iPhone 7 Plus remains backordered, and if you want a Jet Black version of any iPhone 7, also prepare to wait. Last I checked, it can take up to a month to get one, if that’s what you want, but if I were in the market, this is the last color I’d get. After all, my iPhones are always protected with a case, which covers the back and sides. So the color doesn’t matter, and I suspect that applies to most of you. Better to have an iPhone that’s reasonably well protected from damage.

And isn’t a shiny naked black iPhone 7 prone to scratching? Just asking.

If anything, tech pundits who downplayed the value of the iPhone 7 as a pretty tepid update have to do some explaining. It does appear that customers realized that having a case that’s just a little different doesn’t reveal the real advantages, which are mostly found inside. What about being waterproof, having longer battery life, a better camera — all that stuff?

Well, maybe some are still freaked out about the loss of the headphone jack, but I think Apple has done its homework here. The vast majority of users probably won’t care. They almost always use Apple’s own ear buds. But since Apple provides an adapter, I don’t think it matters so much. Where it will matter is when you listen and charge the unit at the same time (I rarely do), and there’s an adapter for that.

In fact, it does appear that all the carping and complaining about the loss of the headphone jack is largely a non-issue for most iPhone 7 owners. I also wonder, considering demand, whether any sales have been lost as a result, though I suppose it’s possible some of those people bought an iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus to have the last model with the jack.

While the question — or any hard question — wasn’t asked during Apple’s quarterly conference call with financial analysts on Tuesday, Apple did forecast revenue of between $76 billion and $78 billion for the current quarter. This includes the holiday season, of course, but it also means that Apple’s = negative growth cycle is about to end with a slight increase.

With new Macs coming, and iPad sales that are beginning to flatten, there may be hope for Apple’s other product lines to show some growth as well. I’m not at all certain whether the dearth of new Macs was primarily responsible for the sales slowdown. But, after many quarters of running ahead of the curve compared to PCs, Apple didn’t do so well the past quarter. That continues a recent trend.

So are people less inclined to buy Macs because of the perceived higher cost? Prices really hasn’t changed. If anything, Macs have become a little cheaper in recent years, and I suppose it’s always possible that there will be more price reductions at Thursday’s media event. If that’s the case — and don’t forget the new models — prospects may improve.

But there’s yet another factor to Mac ownership that is so often overlooked, and it took the recent announcement about the cost of ownership from none other than IBM to bring it home. You see, IBM saves hundreds of dollars on Macs over a four-year period of ownership compared to a PC. So the lower price for the latter is only a temporary advantage. Compare that to buying a less reliable car for a lower price. Once the warranty has expired, the cost of ownership may soar beyond that of the reliable car, thus erasing the savings.

In any case, I do not expect large jumps or decreases in Apple’s stock price other than what’s occurred in recent months; that is, unless there’s the perception that sales are running higher than expected. Samsung’s problems with the Galaxy Note 7 have put things in an uncertain state. How many of their customers will go elsewhere when they want new gear, and how many of them will choose Apple.

So it was claimed that the number of Android switchers to the iPhone was higher than ever in the September quarter, but it’s not as if Apple is giving us solid numbers. But that has to spook the competition, and it’s hard to believe that the new kid on the block, Pixel, Phone by Google, will change matters very much. It’s only available from Verizon Wireless and direct from Google. That’s not going to help it earn large sales, even if demand is high. But the previous Google phones, dubbed Nexus, didn’t do so well either.

At a time where anything less than dreadful from Apple might have seemed a huge positive, Apple released its financials for its fourth fiscal quarter. So revenues came in at $46.9 billion, which was down from $51.5 billion in the year-ago quarter. Earnings per share were reported as $1.67. Both numbers were a tad ahead of what Wall Street expected, $46.89 billion and $1.65 per share.

While that news might not be enough to fuel optimism on the stock market, consider the guidance for the current quarter, which signals the end, for now, to Apple’s down cycle. So revenue is estimated to run between $76 billion and $78 billion for the December quarter, compared to $75.9 billion for the year-ago quarter. It’s not much of an increase, but it’s an increase nonetheless. Add that to beating analyst estimates, for the most part, and you can see the upside.

So total iPhone sales were 45.9 million, some 1.1 million units ahead of Wall Street expectations. Apple said that 2.7 million iPhones were “in transit” at the end of the quarter, which I assume meant they were shipping but hadn’t arrived. Higher-than-expected sales of the iPhone 7 were no doubt partly responsible, not to mention the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 debacle, which may have pushed more customers to iPhones.

Predictably, there were no questions about the matter during the quarterly conference call with financial analysts, and, in fact, there wasn’t a whole lot of interesting news. Indeed, some of the press reports I read ahead of writing this column were shorter than usual as a result.

In any case. people are paying a little more for iPhones these days, with ASPs remaining above $600, and those ASPs should increase by a lot due to high demand the iPhone 7 and the iPhone 7 Plus. Remember they start at $649. One survey cited claims that 79% of consumers planning to buy a smartphone this quarter want an iPhone, and don’t forget that Apple sells more high-end smartphones than any other company. Samsung sells more units overall due to high sales of cheaper models. But with the Galaxy Note 7 scandal, it’s hard to know just how sales will be impacted, and how many customers will just choose another Android handset, such as the Pixel, Phone by Google. With claims that more customers are switching to the iPhone than ever before, it’s clearly a message that Apple sees a clearer path to growth.

If you actually want to buy an iPhone, you won’t wait long for a regular iPhone 7; that is unless you really must have Jet Black. So both that color, and the iPhone 7 Plus remain back ordered. When I did a casual check of shipping times, I saw AT&T quoting just a couple of days to ship me an iPhone 7. Apple quoted “tomorrow,” but listed 3-4 weeks for the iPhone 7. You can probably expect to find the smaller iPhone readily available direct from dealers in your city.

Now let’s talk about Macs.

Amid reports from industry analysts that Mac sales were down 13% compared to last year, running behind the rest of the PC industry, Apple actually confirmed the report by announcing that 4.9 million units were sold, compared to Wall Street expectations of 5.1 million. This is down 14% over last year. But hopes are high that Thursday’s media event will launch a Mac resurgence, with reports of fairly major updates for the MacBook Pro. There may also be a revised MacBook, or a revised 13-inch MacBook Air.

The key development is expected to be a thinner and lighter MacBook Pro with the usual faster components, plus an OLED “Magic Toolbar”, Touch ID, and support for USB-C. Does that mean the famous MagSafe power adapter will be history, joining the MacBook, or will Apple find a way to modify the design so that it provides a similar level of safety?

Launching just before November 1st will only mean two months of sales for the new Macs, but since holiday buyers will be getting theirs until after Thanksgiving, or Black Friday, maybe it’ll account for something. But how many people have actually held off buying a new Mac hoping for something new and different? Are the expected features for the MacBook Pro sufficient to actually boost sales? Is the 14% drop the result of lots of people waiting on the sidelines? This is one of those questions that is difficult to answer, and it’s not that Apple would be willing to explain such niceties, although I’m sure they have a pretty good idea what’s going on.

iPad sales evidently did somewhat better than expected, with 9.2 million units sold, compared to analyst estimate of 8.5 million. That didn’t stop one site from claiming they were “simply terrible,” but that’s a hit bait headline. Sales were actually down a “mere” 6% compared to the year-ago quarter. That would appear to indicate that the floor in iPad sales will soon be reached. If that’s the case, unless things change for the worse, sales may in fact begin to improve, particularly as people finally decide to upgrade older models.

Once again, services revenue was a standout, reportedly growing 24% to a record $6.3 billion. These numbers include such services as Apple Music, iTunes, the App Store and Apple Pay. But Apple doesn’t actually break down these figures, nor does it break down the “Other” category that includes the Apple Watch.

And, as you might expect, Apple ended the quarter with more cash on hand than ever, some $237 billion, and most of that remains overseas.

It almost seems as if a growing number of my columns are very much about comparing the present with the past, or just remembering something I did or observed years ago and how it relates to a current event.

So I read an article about the iPod’s 15th birthday. But this is something Apple won’t make a big deal about, even though it’s a product that, building upon its modest beginnings, literally changed the direction of the company. Only we didn’t realize it then.

Now as a long-time audio fan, I had the pleasure of reviewing computer speaker systems and other gear over the years. Around 2000 or so, after becoming a feature writer for CNET, I wrote a few reviews for its companion site, ZDNet, mostly covering digital music players. A number of manufacturers tried to build something new loosely based on the concept of the original Sony Walkman, a way to carry music in your pocket, and listen to it with a set of headphones.

Only those early players were bad, real bad. They didn’t have user interfaces to die for, but interfaces that died. Just downloading music to the device was awkward and slow. If the market were to succeed, someone needed to come up with a better idea — and that someone was Apple, but I’m not going to recount the legend of Tony Fadell finding a way to convince Steve Jobs to build the iPod.

Instead. I remember Jobs delivering a modest presentation about the original iPod in 2001. The marketing push was, “1,000 songs in your pocket.” That seemed an awful lot when you consider that most music players of the time hardly managed a few dozen or a few hundred. The huge difference was a tiny 5GB hard drive. To deal with the slow transfer problem, Apple used a FireWire interface; it became USB after Apple decided to spread the joy to Windows users.

Armed with a relatively simple, straightforward user interface, higher capacity, and faster file transfer speeds, the iPod had it all over the competition — at a price. All this joy set you back $399, and I suspect most tech journalists believed it was just a novelty, and wouldn’t go anywhere. The real action began when, in 2003, Apple delivered iTunes for Windows and launched the iTunes Music Store.

The music store portal was the magic bullet. Stung by lost sales from music piracy sites, such as Napster, the music industry was persuaded to negotiate a deal with Apple. You could buy and download legal songs for 99 cents a track, or even a full album. At first your music was protected via DRM, which meant you could only play your music on an Apple device or iTunes for Mac or PC.

Microsoft and other companies made their own deals with the music industry, but Apple got there first on both platforms, and nobody ever caught up. Even after music became DRM-free, Apple continued to dominate.

Microsoft tried with the Zune music player which, if nothing else, represented the debut of the user interface formerly known as Metro. That formed the basis of Windows 8/8.1, and only in Windows 10 has Microsoft backed off a bit, though the tiles and the stick pin artwork are still there for better or worse.

What really helped boost iPod sales was Apple’s decision to build cheaper models with flash memory. Without a hard drive, they were more reliable — I can’t tell you how many iPods I encountered over the years with bad drives. In those days, though, solid state storage was expensive and capacity was relatively low. But it became cheap enough to manage capacities similar to the original iPod at much lower prices.

As sales soared, it was clear that Apple was onto something. Indeed, the greatest iPod ever, introduced in 2007, was only partly iPod. It was actually a miniature personal computer that could manage email and online access with a mobile OS derived from OS X, and it included a telephone. The iPhone arrived and, eventually, supplanted the larger portion of iPod sales. But the iPod is still available, with the lineup starting with the 2GB iPod shuffle at $49. As you recall, the original $399 iPod had a 5GB drive, so that means the shuffle ought to hold up to 400 songs.

Apple continued to sell a hard drive version until 2014, when the iPod Classic was put to rest. Apple still sells iPods, with the shuffle and the nano evidently managing the volume sales. There’s also an iPod touch, with is essentially an iPhone without the phone.

The iPod is still officially available from Apple — for now. But it’s hard to say for how much longer. Although an iPod shuffle with a wristband serves the needs of joggers, the Apple Watch does it far better to justify its much higher purchase price. Those seeking a no frills fitness band will probably consider a Fitbit anyway. But it’s hard to argue with a genuine Apple gadget for just $49, and that might, indeed, be the last iPod to be discontinued.

Now I’ve used many iPods over the years for testing. My son has owned a few, but I never got into portable music players, although I tried. I just don’t like sticking things in my ears, and even when I record my radio shows, I just run the speakers real low.

Still, the iPod demonstrated Apple’s potential as a consumer electronics company that, eventually, led to the iPhone, the iPad and the Apple Watch. And to Apple becoming the most powerful tech company on the planet.