Certain tech pundits — people I don’t actually regard as terribly well informed — will tell you that the iPhone 6s is now way behind the curve because of newer Android gear, such as the Samsung Galaxy S7. They will list chapter and verse of specs that appear to overpower Apple, and features you cannot find on an iPhone. They don’t bother to explain whether those features work very well, or even if they are needed.

Whenever the argument is raised, I merely cite the Samsung Galaxies that offered a feature called Tilt to Scroll, which supposedly did what the name implied. You tilted the device to engage an automatic scrolling feature. When it worked, it was dead slow, and when it didn’t, you just sat there looking foolish.

For me, it always seemed to work when I set the scrolling speed, but never when I tried to actually use the feature. This hasn’t stopped such publications as Consumer Reports from rating the Samsung superior to the iPhone mostly on the basis of features. CR also suffers from the careless or deliberate inability to evaluate operating systems as to responsiveness, reliability, and security.

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Before the merger between AT&T and the largest satellite service, DirecTV, was approved by the U.S. Department of Justice and the FCC, they added the usual terms and conditions that would cover the deal. Most probably won’t concern you. Unfortunately, I don’t think any of those terms and conditions covered customer support and phone menus. Or at least if it did, something is very wrong here.

That leads me to a long and annoying encounter with DirecTV support that consumed two hours of my time; time that I hoped to mostly devote to editing one of my radio shows.

Let me back up a bit. As many of you know, I moved into a new home this week. One of the advantages of this place is free entry-level broadband Internet (15 megabits down, 3 megabits up) and a midrange Dish Network package that is provided to all residents courtesy of a firm known as accessmedia3. But let me amend that: You still have to pay for the cable box, with extra charges for DVR and HD and, if you want the option, premium channels such as Showtime.

The downside of the bundled service is that they use an older Dish Network DVR to cut costs. It’s a predecessor to the Hopper, which means it doesn’t automatically record some shows without commercials, and you’re limited to two simultaneous streams plus DVR playback. There’s no support for 4K either, but that’s nothing I have to worry about for now.

Well, DirecTV has some fairly cheap packages that, with a 24-month deal, are in the same range as the bundled TV service when you pay for the equipment and options. As a long-time customer, I thought I’d see if they could meet or match the price with a far superior DVR, and they jumped at the opportunity to keep my business even though it would hardly be profitable. It didn’t hurt that I was an AT&T customer, and I could save another $10 per month for bundling the two.

So where’s this going?

I’m a renter, but part of the rent goes to a Homeowners Association that manages the property, and they must approve your plans for installing anything outside the home. A dish cannot be installed on the roof or the siding, but that’s nothing new. Unfortunately, it also requires approval at the scheduled board meeting, meaning that I’m still waiting.

While I’d still prefer DirecTV, they are really trying hard to lose a customer.

So I tried to postpone the installation appointment when the HOA’s representative was unable to give me an exact date when they’d consider my installation request. I suspect they’d rather not bother.

In recent weeks, DirecTV has set up a fancy new — well new at any rate — phone menu system. It uses voice recognition to manage your basic requests, and it’s almost always getting something wrong. So whenever I announce my phone number, which is used to look up the account, the voice assistant system responds that it couldn’t understand me. Speaking as someone with nearly 25 years of broadcast experience, I assume most of what I say is understandable, though I suspect Barbara would disagree.

The system doesn’t really want to connect you to a support agent. Instead, it attempts to push your requests to an automated response, but my situation required someone’s personal intervention, so I relentlessly tapped the “0” key on my phone to force the issue.

The first time I actually got someone on the line, they claimed that I had reached the wrong department. Why was I not surprised, but they promised to connect me to the right party. Here the situation became even more convoluted, and I was soon disconnected. So I had to go through the same annoying routine all over again. This time, when I was reconnected, I was given the option to have a DirecTV support person call me back in “12 minutes.”

Now when this option is offered, normally they give you the chance to speak your name, so they know how to identify you when the robocall system calls you back. This time they didn’t. So, 12 minutes later, when the phone rang, the voice assistant asked to speak to [silence]. Talk about brain dead!

Now when Apple or Amazon calls you back, you are connected to a support person almost immediately. Not so with DirecTV. I had to wait several minutes before someone picked up the call, and that’s where the situation quickly deteriorated. As if it could possibly get any worse.

So as I started talking, I heard an annoying sound on the line as if someone was juggling around with their headset. For a moment, I thought they may have even dropped the headset and quickly retrieved it. I asked her the source of the noise, and she denied anything had happened

I went through my simple update on the situation, that I was still waiting for the HOA to decide on my installation request, and merely wanted to postpone it for another day or two. But the support person clearly didn’t appreciate my taking her to task for dropping or playing with her headset, for as I was talking, the connection abruptly ended.

Despite its limitations, perhaps I should just stick with the bundled Dish Network service. DirecTV’s broken system is making me despair of wanting to go through all that nonsense again just to change an appointment. Perhaps I should just cancel it and go about my business.

UPDATE! On Friday morning, I received conditional approval from the HOA, so I scheduled the DirecTV install for the nearest available date. Now let’s see if they can even set it up given the limitations on placement.

People outside of Apple frequently criticize the company and what it’s doing. That’s perfectly acceptable. Whatever Apple does is ripe for the picking, even if the brickbats are totally unfair. That’s to be expected.

Some of those criticisms come from people that gain credibility because of a past association with Apple. A key example is the other co-founder, Steve Wozniak. So if the Woz says something, anything, it gets headlines as if it’s something credible. After all, here’s someone who was there at the beginning, who evidently still derives a paycheck from Apple, and evidently doesn’t set off alarm bells for violating confidentiality requirements.

Now to put things in perspective, the Woz basically left Apple in 1981, after he sustained serious injuries in a plane crash. A rich man, he decided it was time to go.

However, that means the Woz departed Apple before the release of the Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad and the Apple Watch. There was no App Store, Apple Pay or iTunes. While what he says may be interesting from the perspective of his past involvement, would it otherwise have any more credibility than statements from other former executives? That’s a good question.

So consider that when you read his latest statements, where he expects a potential consumer backlash if Apple releases an iPhone 7 without the headphone jack. As rumored, Apple reportedly plans to rely on the Lightning digital connector instead, possibly supplying free adapters in the box. So in an interview with The Australian Financial Review, Woz said, “If it’s missing the 3.5mm earphone jack, that’s going to tick off a lot of people.”

I would not disagree, and Woz is probably right to denigrate the audio quality from a Bluetooth earphone, although I suspect that situation continues to improve.

Understand that Apple has never confirmed how the next iPhone would be configured, or whether it would lack a port that first debuted in the 1950s, in those early transistor radios. In turn, the earphone jack is based on technology first invented in the 19th century, so that would be reason enough to suggest that it’s time for a change.

Certainly, Apple has been proactive about ditching peripheral ports that are considered to be out of date. However, that means that millions of devices will suddenly require adaptors. Consider the move to Lighting as a replacement for the dock connector. If you spent a bundle on chargers and accessories using the older connection scheme, certainly you had good reason to be upset over having to buy another adapter. And what if you want to charge your iPhone 7 while listening to music? I assume it’ll work simultaneously, same as the USB-C connector in the MacBook, but it means you’ll need yet another adaptor, another dongle to take with you.

I’m also sure that, if the removal of the earphone jack is a given — and remember we are talking of unconfirmed rumors here — Apple will offer very specific reasons why. But having one fewer port means more space inside, which would allow Apple to make it thinner if that’s what they want. Or use a slightly larger battery or add other parts that are needed to leverage new technology.

While Apple goes overboard sometimes on thinness, I think the iPhone is perfectly fine as it is. There’s hardly the need to go much thinner, although I suppose it doesn’t make so much of a difference so long as the unit remains sturdy, not easily bendable. Although BendGate was way overblown, there’s no sensible reason to make the unit less sturdy.

I’m also a little concerned about the fact that this rumor is taken so credibly, although leaks from the supply chain seem to indicate it’s a lock. It’s unfortunate, too, that the reaction appears to be negative, that Apple is all about style versus function, and will therefore do things that may not make sense from the standpoint of product quality and usability in order to meet a specific fashion sense. Even if there are lapses, I think Apple undertakes some of these impossible engineering projects with the best of intentions. Besides, people are concerned about the looks, and if a new product appears different, that may fuel extra sales even if the technology isn’t a whole lot better.

So, the next iPhone, based on the present-day rumors, appears little different from the iPhone 6 series. That fueled perceptions that the iPhone 7 wouldn’t be altogether different from the current model regardless of what’s changed inside. When you add that to the sales headwinds Apple confronted with the current iPhone, you can well understand why one critics suggest the upgrade will be modest. Add to that the expected loss of the earphone jack, and it would appear to make sense.

But that’s not necessarily the case. Apple will surely package the iPhone 7 as something very different, and new features will be touted to the skies as the greatest things ever. Whatever it contains, Apple will make sure it’s presented as something major — and it just might be in some respects. But smartphone technology has reached the point where it is becoming more and more difficult to devise compelling new features.

Let’s put this in perspective; In July of 2015, Microsoft made a solid effort to rid itself of the stench of Windows 8 and 8.1. Windows 10 was meant to embrace all the cool new technologies, including convertible notebooks and smartphones. Smartphones? Well, yes, after everything else failed, Windows 10 was meant to work on all computing devices.

Microsoft also hoped to establish a huge online Windows Store in the spirit of the App Store. But Microsoft no doubt realized customers would be skeptical, so they made Windows 10 free for customers to build a large user base. Businesses who paid annual support contacts, which include all Windows updates, would continue to pay.

In any case, after a short flurry of early adopters, the upgrade pace slowed as the fall and winter of 2015 approached. Now I can’t say that I have any deep insights into Microsoft’s corporate decision-making process. But somewhere something stupid happened. Maybe it was part of the desperation to move things along, and so a few shortcuts were taken, shortcuts that stretched the bounds of legality.

Indeed, if you wanted to be technical and all, I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that a few regulations were stretched and broken. In short, it seems that Microsoft attempted to take a hint or two from the less legal elements of the computing community. The first was to send you an unwanted download of the entire Windows 10 installer, in the background. That way, if you really wanted to upgrade, there it was just a few clicks away.

Now how did Microsoft get away with that foolish stunt? Maybe because you specified that you wanted to receive Windows upgrades, so here was one all ready for you. But upgrading to a new version is not the same as receiving some patches to fix bugs and combat security lapses. It’s not the same thing at all.

Now consider the plight of someone who has a PC with a small SSD. A few gigabytes can mean the difference between having enough space for your stuff, or hitting the breaking point. This is the height of irresponsible behavior, and maybe some people were encouraged — or coerced — into migrating to Windows 10.

But the worst sort of behavior was to quietly change an well-known interface convention; make that reverse it. So under normal circumstances, you’d click an “X” to close a dialog and just say no. But the ever-so-subtle change allowed for an insidious alternative, that if you chose to exit a dialog about instilling Windows 10, Microsoft would take that as a “yes,” meaning the installation would commence against your wishes.

Even worse, the installation would sometimes begin without any action on your part. This happened to one Windows user that confronted havoc running a business when the unwanted upgrade was installed. According to published reports, Microsoft ending up settling a court case for $10,000 for this unwanted behavior. Serves them right.

Talk show host Thom Hartmann confronted a unwanted Windows 10 installation while he was on the air. His PC was used to manage scheduling and listener call-ins. But not while that confounded installation was happening. He vowed never to use Windows again, and even talked of switching to a Mac. To be fair, one of his listeners suggested he consider Linux, though I suspect he wouldn’t be able to use the proprietary software his show requires. Indeed, there may not even be a Mac version, forcing him to use a virtual machine, such as Parallels Desktop, with which to run Windows.

While all of this untoward behavior received coverage, it didn’t become a major scandal. This is where Apple exists in an unequal world, for if they pulled a stunt of this sort, it would make worldwide headlines of months. TV talking heads of all political persuasions would be complaining, and they’d be right. Some might even demand the FTC consider some sort of action. Lawyers around the world would be looking into class-action lawsuits.

Yes, a double standard! But Apple has long had to confront this lack of fairness.

After a year, Windows 10 became a typical paid upgrade, with different versions costing $119 and $199, depending on the version. Predictably, the upgrade rate has tanked. Why should a PC user buy something that used to be free? As people buy new PCs, however, they will receive Windows 10 as part of the process.

As to that unified Windows OS, well, mobile market share continues to tumble. Thousands of Nokia employees have lost their jobs, and Microsoft is clearly engaged in winding down the operation. I suppose Microsoft could keep the mobile platform going of a while to save face, but it has little impact on the industry. The last market share report I read gave Android and iOS 99% of the market. BlackBerry appears to be embracing Android more and more and Microsoft is the outsider. What a change from the way it used to be!

Understand, I do not dislike Windows 10. It had a shaky rollout, but has become a pretty decent OS overall. It’s certainly the best Windows OS I’ve ever used, and if you must exist in that other platform from time to time, it’s a fine place to go. With Parallels 12, just released, Windows 10 launches in seconds on my iMac. It’s fast, reasonably stable, and some of you might actually like the Cortana personal assistant. Clearly Apple did if you take Siri’s arrival on macOS Sierra as an example.