It’s clear that Apple doesn’t like lots of different ports. Over the years, PC makers put everything that would fit and then some, legacy and current, without regard to how it impacted a product’s weight or form factor. Starting with the first iMac in mid-1998, Apple eliminated several ports, such as ADB, for a mouse and keyboard, LocalTalk, for printers, and SCSI, a nightmarish and temperamental protocol for storage devices.

Even floppy drives were history.

Now it took a year or two for people to realize that the venerable floppy was obsolete, not just because of the stingy amount of storage, but the abysmal lack of reliability. I can’t tell you how many times I confronted corrupted floppies on different Macs. Had I not had a backup, I would have lost plenty of data. Once Apple ejected floppy drives, people still bought external floppies and other floppy-based systems, at least the first two or three years.

The iMac introduced USB, a standard covering a number of different types of peripheral devices that had premiered on PC hardware but hadn’t gone anywhere. But once the iMac arrived, it didn’t take too many months before an avalanche of products appeared. And since the USB standard, unlike some that were Mac-only, worked just fine on a PC, more peripheral makers were able to build cross-platform products so long as they included Mac drivers.

So, yes, there was some level of pain until Mac users get accustomed to the new way of doing things, but it all worked out in the end. More recently, Apple has ditched FireWire from new Macs, although there are Thunderbolt to FireWire adapters, which means that one of my old backup drives still works.

Predictably, when Apple killed the 30-pin dock connector on iOS gear, there were loads of complaints. What about all those accessories people bought? Aside from being reversible, what advantage did Lightning offer, other than to sell adaptors? However, the digital connection supposedly has advantages going forward in the features Apple and its partner scan add to its devices.

The latest rumored episode of port ditching has not actually been confined by Apple. But it’s based on reports that prototypes of the next iPhone — presumably an iPhone 7 — will ship without a headphone port. Now the 3.5 mm jack has been in use since the 1950s, beginning on the first transistor radios, but it’s actually a miniatured version of the standard ¼-inch jack that dates back to the late 19th century. In other words, it’s very, very old.

So it stands to reason that it has to go.

Now other than being based on old technology, ditching the headphone jack may make it easier to waterproof the iPhone. All things being equal, that’s a huge positive, but I can see the pain. There’s a rumor to the effect that Apple will provide the same ear buds on the next iPhone, with a lightning adaptor. I suppose there will also be adaptors that will allow you to multitask the port, by connecting your ear bugs and charge your device at the same time. This advantage is similar to USB-C, which Apple can use for simultaneous charging and other functions on the MacBook.

As you might imagine, fear-mongering is in full force. One report has it that Apple wants to kill the port to increase profits, forgetting what it will cost to supply an adaptor. Besides, dumping a jack to add a dollar or two to the profit margins is absurd, but I read an article from someone who actually believes that to be true.

That person, who shall go named, also claimed that Apple doesn’t care about quality sound, which is why they are moving to all all-digital connector. But he seems to forget an inconvenient truth, which is that the audio on an iPhone, iPad and iPod touch is digital. The interface puts a DAC ahead of the analog headphone jack. It doesn’t make a practical difference if there’s an adaptor to a digital Lightning port, since you achieve the same result.

Does that mean Apple can’t improve audio? That’s a good question, but most of the people who complain of night and day differences when attempting to bypass Apple’s DAC, via a direct connection to an outboard digital processor from an iTunes AirPlay stream, usually can’t prove the claims. Double-blind listening tests seldom reveal these miraculous audible differences, or any audile differences. Even if slight differences can be verified, it has nothing to do with using a direct-to-Lightning connection instead of a headphone jack. Well, except that the digital port will be less breakable, and, as I said, easier to protect from moisture.

On the other hand, until Apple actually announces a feature, or the loss of a feature, you shouldn’t jump to conclusions. Even if those prototype iPhones are the real thing, they might not be final prototypes. Things might change before it’s released to manufacturing, but even if it’s not, get over it. It may really be time to ditch the 19th and 20th century technology and get with the 21st century.

For years, Apple has been attacked for selling luxury, overpriced gear. Year in and year out, the same arguments are made, that you can buy an Android smartphone and a PC running Windows for far less than anything from Apple. Therefore, greedy Apple is being predatory about pricing. You are paying too much to immerse yourself in Apple’s walled garden.

For years, I’ve made the argument that, by and large, Apple gear is priced in the same league as comparable gear from other companies. Sometimes the same price, sometimes cheaper, sometimes more. But it’s very important to make sure the products match up as closely as possible. As soon is the components change, all bets are off.

Now when you visit a Walmart and see desktop PCs for less than $400, and notebooks for not so much more, the argument in favor of an $899 MacBook Air — the cheapest Mac in the current lineup — doesn’t appear to make a whole lot of sense. How does Apple justify such a high price?

So let’s look at a fairly typical Windows notebook from Walmart, an HP ProBook 645 G1 H7L95EC. Typical of PC makers, the model designation is totally inscrutable. What you get for $393.49 is a notebook equipped with an AMD A8-4500M 1.9GHz quad-core processor, with 4GB RAM, a 320GB drive, and Windows 7. Yes, Windows 7, not Windows 10. So much for major PC makers supporting Microsoft’s “free” operating system, or is it possible this computer was left unsold and taken from remainder stock?

Now AMD may make great graphics cards, but their processors are notable for being cheap. A PassMark CPU benchmark rated the AMD chip as slower than an Intel Core i5 from 2011. In other words, really slow, though I suppose it’ll be all right for email, Internet access and simple word processing. The 320GB storage device is an old fashioned mechanical hard drive, and 4GB is barely enough as notebooks go, but it’s the same as Apple supplies in the basic MacBook Air.

According to HP’s product sheet, the 14-inch display has a resolution of 1366 x 768, hardly Retina level, and WI-Fi is limited to 802.11n — yesterday’s news. It weighs a hefty 4.4 lbs. The product sheet is dated 2013, and it’s possible HP was saddled with remainder stock that it sold off to Walmart and other dealers for a really low price.

In contrast, the 11-inch MacBook Air, at $899, has the same resolution, which, on a smaller display, will appear sharper. Without putting the two together, however, I wouldn’t presume to evaluate the quality of the HP’s display compared to Apple’s. But I’m sure cheap is cheap.

The MacBook’s processor is a 1.6GHz Intel Core i5 from the Skylake family, which means it’ll be way faster than the AMD chip on the HP. While a 128GB SSD may seem inadequate compared to 320GB, being solid state means that performance speeds up considerably even before the CPU’s capabilities enter the picture. The MacBook Air has 10 hours battery life; I doubt you’ll get half that on the HP.

I won’t suggest that it’s even a fair comparison, but you can see where cheap PCs seem better than they are. They will come with slower processors, slower graphics hardware, older Wi-Fi chipsets, regular hard drives and other old or subpar hardware. Remember, this notebook also has an OS that’s nearly seven years old, though I grant many of you wouldn’t care. Besides, if you buy one before July 29, I’m sure Microsoft will find a way to force Windows 10 on to you.

In short, you get what you pay for. I can waste lots of space listing PC hardware that made seem less expensive than Apple’s, until you actually compare the nuts and the bolts. PC makers also tend to take lower profits than Apple — sometimes no profit at all — and thus they might still produce a PC that’s cheaper than the comparable Mac. In saying that, last time I did a comparison with a Mac Pro, the closest PC equivalents were actually thousands of dollars more expensive.

When it comes to smartphones and tablets, the high-end models from Samsung are usually priced within the range of iPhones and iPads. Yes, Samsung sells a lot of cheaper stuff, and that’s where the volume is for them. It means lower profits, and if you feel you can live with entry-level gear, all well and good. But the $399 iPhone SE improves the Apple value proposition, which is why it still remains backordered.

The other part of the comparison is the operating system. If you believe Android is better than iOS, no argument. If you don’t care, and your needs are modest — you want to make phone calls and send email, for example — perhaps a low-cost Android handset is for you. Apple’s approach is stay within the medium to high-price range. That doesn’t make those gadgets overpriced by any means.

So you can argue about cheap PCs and Android gear as long as you want. You’ll find examples to prove your point, more or less, though it’s not so easy when you do a fair comparison.

But what value do you attach to macOS and iOS? Or the advantages these operating systems offer compared to Windows and Android? What about the software bundles, and can Google’s online apps match up to iWork? If you’re invested in Google’s apps, though, you can run them on iPhones and iPads.

All right! I’ve made these points a number of times. When I do, someone inevitably says, “what about this one?” Do me a favor: Don’t bother!

As some of you might recall, Windows 10 debuted last July as a free update for many Windows users; well, mostly except for businesses that paid for support contracts. The theory went, in part, that since Microsoft didn’t really pull a whole lot of revenue from OS upgrades, getting hundreds of millions of users up to date with Windows 10 would have an ancillary effect, which would be to make it more profitable for developers to put their stuff in the Windows Apps Store. As people bought apps, Microsoft would get a piece of the action.

Many Windows 8/8.1 users would be delighted to get an OS that was actually usable, if they hadn’t already downgraded to Windows 7. With Windows 10, you had a proper Start menu, and a pretty decent and well-performing environment. Security was surely better than that of Windows 7, which was released nearly seven years ago. That would be a given.

The argument for Windows 10 might still be less compelling to a Windows 7 user, unless you plan to buy a convertible PC that operates either in standard desktop mode or tablet mode. Indeed, Windows 10 is supposed to sense that configuration change, so you get an optimized user environment. Unfortunately, Microsoft has attempted to make some interface elements a little too simple, being unable to lose the stick-pin graphics and too-thin text of the interface formerly known as Metro that make it appear as an OS designed for kids than adults. Some apps, such as Mail, lack the power user capabilities of a proper email app, but perhaps Microsoft would prefer you get a paid email app, particularly Outlook.

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Some time before the acquisition sayf NeXT returned Steve Jobs to Apple in 1996, he was asked to comment on the state of the company. He mentioned something about milking the Mac for all its worth until it was time to move on the next great thing. I can’t cite the article so many years later, but it’s buried in a search request somewhere.

Well, if Jobs hadn’t returned to Apple, it is quite likely the Mac — and the entire company — would have gone kaput. But through thick and thin, the Mac has remained a constant. During the latter part of the 1990s, the platform hung on with tape and string, because the core of the Mac OS had become older and buggier. Although the final versions, starting with Mac OS 9, were pretty decent and snappy overall, it wasn’t what you’d call a modern operating system.

When Apple went to Unix-based OS, built upon the guts of NeXTStep, it arrived several years late and was only slightly useful at first. It was slow, somewhat buggy, despite being based on an industrial-strength core, and was very underdeveloped. The printing system was barely functional until Apple adopted CUPS in 2002.

Now Mac OS X, which became OS X and is poised to become macOS this fall, proved to be far more difficult to perfect that many expected. I suspect many Mac users assumed they’d see it a year or two after the NeXT acquisition. The first attempt, code-named Rhapsody, was largely a somewhat Mac-like NeXT alternative, with no easy way for Mac developers to port their apps. Thus came Aqua, the eye-candy Mac theme, and Carbon, to simplify the porting process. It took nearly four years to arrive at the original Public Beta.

But the OS overhaul didn’t come into its own until 10.4 Tiger arrived in 2005. When Apple dumped the PowerPC and moved to Intel in 2006, a version of Tiger for the new CPU was ready to roll.

With macOS Sierra waiting in the wings — and developers are already playing with the very first beta — one might wonder where the Mac will go. Hardware updates are not showing up as frequently. A lot of that is due to the fact that Moore’s Law, the theory that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles every two years, is hitting a wall. Intel and other processor makers are finding it more and more difficult to make them smaller, more power efficient, and more powerful. So there may come a time where simple processor refreshes will be few and far between.

Without major processor advancements to count on, other ways for Apple to make the Mac better would be to create a fancier case, maybe slimmer and lighter, and to add extra hardware features to make the computers more useful. So perhaps there will be a fingerprint sensor — which Apple could probably do now since it owns the technology. A move to OLED displays might provide richer colors, wider viewing angles, and the ability to actually use one in bright sunlight if you’re so inclined. SSDs are growing larger and cheaper, meaning that you will be able to buy a Mac with more storage for the same price, or less.

I realize that the Optimized Storage feature of Sierra will help do some spring cleaning of your Mac, freeing wasted space, thus letting you continue to use the smaller SSD. But it will arrive at the expense of having to buy extra iCloud Drive storage unless Apple becomes extremely generous.

Some suggest that Apple plans to move the Mac to ARM, a more powerful variation of existing A-series mobile chips. The iPad Pro is capable of real desktop performance, based on published benchmarks, although the fastest Macs still do far better. Parity may indeed be possible, but an Intel-based Mac can also run Windows with great performance via Boot Camp or a virtual machine. And what about tens of thousands of Intel-savvy apps out there? If Apple builds a hardware emulator for ARM — perhaps using Metal to make it more efficient — would that provide acceptable performance till developers port their apps? And how would it mange Intel virtual machines? Don’t forget how badly the PowerPC fared.

More to the point, is there any real advantage — beyond chip cost — to investing in another processor switch? Will there come a time where a future iPad, or a successor product, replaces all or most of the functions of the Mac in a new form factor?

I do not for a moment believe the Mac is forever, although at my age it might be for me. The personal computer of today is, more or less, quite similar to its 1986 counterpart — or 1984 if you want to go back to the first Mac — in the way you interact with it. You are still using a mouse and keyboard to run apps; a trackpad is simply an extension of the mouse concept. The basic user interface may be refined with more features, but at its core the lessons learned on the first Mac can be applied quite successfully to its 2016 counterpart.

Does the PC of the future abstract the user interface and deliver results via voice command? As Scotty said in a certain Star Trek movie, upon being confronted with the 1986 Mac with its mouse and keyboard, “how quaint!” Perhaps it won’t be long until we all feel the same.