There’s a decent market out there for add-on battery cases that extend the life of your iPhone’s battery. One example is a Mophie Juice Pack. So for an extra $99.95, you can essentially get twice as much. Instead of managing 10-12 hours of Internet use on the iPhone 6s, you can get up to 24 hours. Even the latter may not be enough, since you’d have to recharge both batteries to start over ready to go for another day.

Now comparing battery life with other smartphones may be difficult. Some manufacturers use the specs that seem most favorable. So Samsung claims up to 22 hours of 3G talk time for the Galaxy S7, which may really happen if you do nothing else while talking, and that includes such tasks as checking your email and using Safari. In contrast, Apple claims up to 14 hours of 3G talk time on the iPhone 6s and up to 24 hours of 3G talk time on the iPhone 6s Plus. Apple is also better about actually meeting specs in real world tests than Samsung.

But it’s not uncommon for iPhone users to consult Apple support information about extending battery life, and a lot of it requires doing less to get more time if there’s no access to a charger nearby. I keep a USB connector and a lightning cable in my car to help on the rare extended trip.

Other than the iPhone 6s Plus phablet, however, Apple has kept battery life mostly within a similar range over the years. Unlike some competitors, however, Apple has never allowed you to easily pop the case to add a replacement battery. Instead you need to rely on an accessory power case, or access to a power cord.

Now there are rumors that Apple might include a slightly larger battery in the iPhone 7. This hasn’t been confirmed, but if we assume that the alleged A10 processor and other components will also be more power efficient, it’s possible Apple might extend the battery life of the forthcoming models by several hours. It may not be great shakes, but if you charge the battery less, it will last longer before it needs replacement, and not having to charge as often will certainly make longer trips away from charging facilities less stressful. It doesn’t mean that Mophie and other makers of powered cases have anything to worry about, but even a little more is helpful.

In the real world, when I go out for the day, my iPhone 6 often needs recharging before I return home, which is why the charging gear in my car is essential. If I plan an overnight stay, I will always bring a charging cable with me.

In passing, it’s troubling how tethered we are to our mobile gear, and how crippled we feel when the battery runs dry.

Apple, however, is more interested in selling the thinnest gear on the planet, which means slimmer batteries. In order to extract the most battery life from the ultra slim MacBook, they provide a unique stepped battery that makes it that much more difficult — and costly — to replace. Apple charges $199, same as the MacBook Pro, for that replacement. But you can save $50 or more if you want to go through the drudgery of doing it yourself. It’s $79 on an iPhone, and I would recommend letting the dealer do it for you, although iFixit offers instructions and tools. But the iPhone 6 battery swap instructions contain 27 steps. If you survive the disassembly and assembly processes without incident, maybe you should go into business for yourself. A retail chain, Batteries+Bulbs, advertises $59 for the replacement with, as of the time I wrote this, a $10 discount if you schedule the repair online.

The main problem, however, is that battery technology hasn’t improved all that much over the years. Gadget makers still have to rely on thicker, heavier batteries and more power efficient parts to eke out more life. While I’ve read reports of new developments in battery technology that might improve things substantially, none of that technology has yet filtered down to the retail market.

So Apple, Samsung and other companies may improve the situation slightly, but not significantly. I mean, it would be nice for your iPhone to last a week of moderate use before that battery needs to connect to a charging cable. It would also be nice to get a week from an Apple Watch. I say that as the owner of a $12.88 Walmart stainless steel watch that gives me a full year between battery replacements, and no way to recharge. Of course, a simple calendar watch is doing a whole lot less than a smartwatch replete with health sensors, systems on a chip and other electronics.

Meantime, one can hope that lithium-air, nanowire and other nascent battery inventions will, in the next few years, be perfected enough and affordable enough to make a difference. Meantime, whatever Apple can do to improve battery life would be helpful. Being less obsessive about thin and thinner would help.

The iOS refresh has been an annual event since the beginning. You can depend on learning about the next version a WWDC keynote and now, with an active public beta program, access to the new iOS within a month or so thereafter. While Apple had settled on longer cycles for the operating system formerly known as OS X, it became annual in 2011 with Lion, and free beginning in 2013 with Mavericks and mostly in sync with iOS releases.

While it’s true that Google’s Android also receives annual updates, it doesn’t matter so much. It usually takes a year or two for any decent number of users to receive that update, and usually it involves buying new gear with the older system. Also, Apple tends to add more goodies than Google, which, some suggest, may create the climate for more problems. So it usually takes a few updates for most things to settle down.

In saying that, Google, and Microsoft for that matter, have been known to release buggy updates too. Windows 10, which Microsoft has spent nearly a year forcing on PC users, sometimes uninvited, was shaky out of the starting gate and received frequent updates. Last I checked, it was in pretty decent shape as far as a Windows OS goes, but nothing excuses Microsoft’s shady practice of pushing unwanted background downloads, and launching unexpected installers in the middle of someone’s workday. No wonder the authorities are looking into such questionable practices.

When it comes to Apple, the obvious question is whether the company is doing too much. Right now, four operating system upgrades — macOS Sierra, iOS 10, watchOS 3 and tvOS 10 — are arriving this fall. Google has Android and Chrome OS, Microsoft has Windows 10 for desktop, 2-in-1 and mobile. But all based on the same code.

So is Apple taking on too much too quickly? While I suppose a new iOS might fuel sales of the next iPhone, how many people buy new Macs because of annual macOS upgrades?

I suppose recent updates make sense for watchOS, since it’s  a new platform with lots of room to grow, and tvOS is also in the early stages, even though the Apple TV is in its fourth generation.

To some, however, it may seem that Apple might be a little more deliberate in upgrading the OS on Macs and iOS gear. Take a little time to make sure that all the pieces are in place with new features, and that they are less flaky by release time. Sure, Apple has public betas for these two, and one hopes that the feedback is making them more robust. But I can’t help feeling that the program is more about product marketing than about improved Q&A.

It’s not that the last couple of iOS and Mac upgrades have been more stable as the result of public betas. They still arrive with the traditional point-zero defects that require several months to straighten out. In one notorious case, I can almost believe that Apple’s Mac development team was asleep at the wheel when Yosemite was released in 2014. The original and most bug fix updates contained serious Wi-Fi bugs that resulted in inconsistent connectivity and performance. It was such an obvious problem that it’s hard to believe it went unnoticed during the testing cycle. And what about all those public beta testers who go online via Wi-Fi and not a hard-wired Ethernet connection? How many of them dutifully submitted feedback about their problems?

Why were they ignored?

Finally, Apple ditched a new network resource and replaced it with an old network resource, and the problem apparently went away, months after Yosemite was first released.

Things fared better with El Capitan. Other than performance issues on older gear, of course. And don’t forget that Mail stalling bug I’ve described a few dozen times in these columns. But it still earns no more than a three-star rating at the App Store. All right, I suppose that might be due to the fact that people without problems are less apt to write reviews than those who encounter trouble. I wouldn’t care to make assumptions, but perhaps it might earn another star if the negative leanings were considered. But Apple is not going to do that — it will just post the numbers unaltered.

So while it may be a good idea for Apple to slow down, that’s not going to happen. Maybe some day, when the Apple Watch and Apple TV have matured. But iOS has been around since 2007, and it’s in pretty decent shape, so it’s not likely that Apple will change release schedules anytime soon. Even if a new macOS doesn’t necessarily accompany new models, the pattern has been established, and I suppose people expect to see these annual exercises.

Or maybe Apple should be throwing more money and people at the problem. But that is no guarantee of success. Microsoft has far larger programming teams, and it doesn’t seem as if things are more efficient over there. Apple has been successful with smaller groups of developers, and even if the results aren’t perfect, that may just be par for the course right now. Mac operating systems were always flaky at the starting gate even when major upgrades arrived several years apart.

So as much as some might hope that Apple will slow down, I expect things will move in the other direction.

The bad news comes from Gartner. The Mac reportedly shed market share during the June quarter. At a 4.9% decline, it’s not much, but it stands in contrast to the rest of the PC industry where four of the major players, HP, Dell, Asus and Acer, reported slight increases. Other PC makers fared about the same as Apple or worse. Overall, it’s mostly a few percent one way or the other, but Apple slipped to fifth place, which is considered significant.

Now Gartner’s numbers are estimates. Apple won’t report actual sales until later this month, and both Gartner and IDC have been known to underestimate Mac sales. At best, though, Apple might report a positive result for Macs, but only by a few percent.

Flat sales may mostly be due to the fact that people aren’t as quick to buy new PCs as before, or they are using smartphones or tablets instead. The annual refreshes are minor and, with Macs, models that are six to seven years old will still be able to run macOS Sierra. So if what you have is good enough, why upgrade? What is there in the current hardware that most people care about anyway?

Yes, I understand the newer Mac may be more capable of managing high-energy games, and the use of SSDs makes everything so much snappier. So even if the raw benchmarks don’t seem altogether different, real world use may present a huge improvement. In the scheme of things, though, it may not matter so much if all you do is manage email, online surfing and word processing.

One excuse trotted out by some critics is that Apple needs to do more to improve its products. Last year’s addition of Force Touch to some notebooks is a cute feature, but not something you can’t live without. Other than the minimalist MacBook, which may be an acquired taste, Apple’s notebooks haven’t advanced all that much in recent years.

That’s not the case for the iMac, where the 5K display, introduced in 2014, is truly amazing, made all the more compelling with last year’s addition of a wider color gamut. This is the sort of improvement that is reasonably affordable too, thus putting Apple’s mainstream desktop ahead of most PC equivalents. But it’s last year’s news, and the expected fall update might not be involve more than faster parts.

So is it true that Macs are not improving fast enough, which is why people are resisting upgrades? Is that the reason?

I read such articles all the time. But they are usually unrealistic, because they do not consider the people who are likely to upgrade. They don’t buy new gear each and every year as some tech pundits and rich people might. They are apt to keep their Macs for several years before buying a new one, and thus the minor differences year-over-year aren’t considered.

A reason for buying a new Mac may include the fact that they won’t be able to update to a new OS, or take advantage of new features. Maybe a storage device is failing, and, rather than pay to fix it, they’d rather start over. There are a number of reasons, and it’s also true that people keep their gear longer than they used to.

The latter is considered a main reason why iPad sales are down. People have gear that’s several years old, and it still works well for them. When iOS 10 arrives, however, a fair amount of older models will no longer be supported. People with an iPad 3 or older, the original iPad mini or an iPhone 4s or older, are going to have to survive with the OS they have, and that could be a key incentive to get to the nearest Apple Store come this fall.

One survey I read the other day concluded that two thirds of the iPhones out there are two years old or older, and there’s plenty of potential demand for the next iPhone, presumably an iPhone 7. In fact, yet another sales estimate has it that growth will return this fall when the new model arrives. But that doesn’t mean the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus were not satisfactory. The people who bought them usually had an iPhone 5s or older, not an iPhone 6, so it still represented a huge improvement.

What’s more, suggesting that the next iPhone will not be a satisfactory upgrade is not a serious claim. The suggestion that the iPhone 6s was not compelling enough is also questionable. There are other reasons why sales weren’t as good. One is the slowdown in demand in China, another is that people are just keeping their gear longer, same as with iPads and Macs. Apple may be able to add more stuff to a future upgrade, but that may not be enough to attract people who are happy with what they have. Electronics gear lasts longer these days, economic conditions are difficult around the world. So it may not be the fault of the manufacturer if sales decrease.

Of course, if the next iPhone, iPad or Mac can walk on water, maybe things will change. Maybe Apple should follow Microsoft’s lead with Windows 10, and just ship them out unrequested. Of course, users would have the right to send them back unopened if they were asked to pay for unordered merchandise. But this is just as absurd as the logic behind the complaints about the next iPhone two months before it’s expected to be launched.

Let me get this out of the way: Windows 10 has proven to be a pretty decent upgrade as Microsoft’s OS goes. It fixes some of the worst ills of Windows 8 and Windows 8.1, particularly when it comes to using a traditional Windows desktop interface and a working Start menu. For the previous versions, people often ended up adding third-party Start menu modifiers to restore what Microsoft’s developers should never have taken away.

Even better, Microsoft appeared to be apologizing for the Windows 8/8.1 debacle by making the new OS free for consumers for one year. All right, businesses with traditional Microsoft support contracts would continue to pay, but this move seemed destined to entice lots of people to upgrade in large numbers. That would help encourage developers to build stuff for the Windows Store. Having more apps would, in turn, convince customers that the upgrade was the right thing to do.

In addition to a working Start menu, and a way to more or less use Windows in the traditional way, Microsoft included support for the Cortana virtual assistant. In that, they had a one-year advantage over Apple, which isn’t installing Siri on the newly rebranded macOS until Sierra arrives this fall. There’s also the ability to automatically switch from keyboard/mouse to touchscreen mode for a Windows 2-in-1 notebook, and a virtual desktops feature that is similar to Spaces on a Mac.

On the negative side, Microsoft persists in using that immature stickpin artwork and thin lettering from the interface formerly known as Metro. But it’s not a huge impediment to being productive, and perhaps you’ll get used to it. Obviously I tolerate it.

Windows 10 is also supposed to be snappier and more secure. Switching from Windows 8/8.1 should be a no brainer if your apps are compatible. But if you’re already accustomed to Windows 7, and don’t want to risk app or driver conflicts, there’s little here to drive you to move to Windows 10. Worse, some customers have evidently felt compelled to turn off updates altogether to keep Windows 10 off their machines. That, however, puts them at risk in the event Microsoft needs to push a critical security or stability update. But these are desperate times.

Why? It seems that Microsoft, in its eagerness to entice you to upgrade to Windows 10, hasn’t just flooded the airwaves with silly lifestyle ads. They’ve taken questionable steps to force the issue, and that maneuver may be putting them in the crosshairs of state attorneys general in the U.S. I also wonder how the EU is going to take this questionable strategy.

So offering a Windows 10 upgrade free ought to be enough. Users should have choices, and if they don’t want this upgrade, so be it. That’s the way it’s always worked. But Microsoft has gone way too far, by secretly downloading Windows 10 in the background on many PCs, so it would be ready to install as soon as you gave the OK. Aside from the propriety of pushing an installer file to you without your approval, consider the plight of PC users with small SSDs installed on their machines. Where they had enough space before, a few gigabytes unexpectedly removed could cause trouble.

But the worst move is to actually install Windows 10 without warning. Isn’t that a classic definition of malware? You see, that unfortunate move resulted in disabling the work computer of one California resident who decided she wouldn’t put up with this abuse. So she took legal action against Microsoft and was awarded $10,000 for her time and trouble. One expects that just removing Windows 10 is likely to require restoring from a backup or clearing your PC’s drive and starting over. Not good.

Indeed, I was sort of a witness to this behavior, as I listened to radio talk show host Thom Hartmann, who uses a Windows PC to manage the show’s scheduling and call-in guests, complain on the air that the Windows 10 was, unwanted, installing itself right then and there. Even if he wanted Windows 10, he’d obviously wait till the show was over, or leave it in the hands of a system admin to sort things out. As it was, it temporarily disabled key management features for his show.

I wasn’t surprised to hear him vow to consider switching to the Mac, and one listener called in and tried to convince him to give Linux a try.

Obviously this wasn’t the sort of publicity Microsoft expected.

Even when Windows 10 wasn’t forcing itself onto a PC, Microsoft tried another questionable move, to change a long-standing interface convention to fool you into installing the upgrade. So the traditional interface element on a prompt or dialog is an “X” in the upper right corner. Whether Mac or PC, clicking or tapping the X would dismiss the prompt without any further action.

In its desperation to force Windows 10 on as many PCs as possible, Microsoft made a stealth change, which meant that the usual dismiss command would, in fact, OK the upgrade. The mind boggles!

Now according to published reports, activist New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is looking into the situation to determine how Microsoft customers might have been harmed by being deceived or forced into instilling Windows 10.

You might have heard of Schneiderman, since he is taking legal action against presumptive Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump as the result of al those complaints about Trump University and its sales and marketing practices.

Now typical of most software companies, Microsoft’s software agreement contains a supposedly binding arbitration clause and a waiver of class action lawsuits to protect itself against dissatisfied customers. Would it apply to installing an OS against the wishes of a customer? I suppose we’ll find out if Schneiderman and his colleagues can successfully bring such actions.

If Microsoft is meant to suffer for its overaggressive approach to Windows 10 upgrades, so be it. While Apple has, in recent years, made macOS upgrades free, you are never forced to accept them. There are options to control how updaters are managed in the App Store preference pane. You don’t have to accept software you don’t want, or weren’t ready to consider.