In the world of politics, there’s such a thing as fact-checking. When a politician says something that’s clearly false, or at least misleading, there are reporters who will pounce on those statements and correct them. Despite the corrections, most political figures usually don’t bother to change their stories, or if they do, the change is filled with excuses.

Well, perhaps the same applies to Apple’s critics. No matter how often their opinions or conclusions are shown to be erroneous, they just repeat them. When it comes to click bait, facts just do not matter.

So there are continued complaints about Apple’s alleged walled garden, the decision not to license operating systems to other companies, and, in general, Apple after Steve Jobs.

One of the more foolish claims you see is that Steve Jobs would never have done thus and so. Most of these people only knew Jobs on the basis of what they read; they probably never met him, and if they did, they didn’t spend much in the way of quality time with him. I can tell you that I met Steve Jobs twice over the years. I talked to him for a few minutes, casual conversations, and that was it. I had no greater insight into his personality except to agree with those who said he could be abrupt, particularly with people he didn’t know.

On the other hand, Jobs reportedly made a big deal of telling his chosen successor never to ask what he might do in any particular situation. Besides, what Jobs might have done in 2010 might not at all apply in 2016, where the issues at hand, the company’s standing and that of the industry, might be totally different.

Now when it comes to a WWDC, far too many alleged tech and financial pundits just don’t get it! Consider the letter “D” in that acronym. It stands for “Developers,” which obviously refers to people who are creating software for one of Apple’s platforms. Despite the implicit purpose of the conference, there are constant complaints whenever new hardware isn’t announced.

It is true that new hardware is sometimes demonstrated. Some new Macs, such as  Mac Pro, that workstation that caters to power users, scientists and content creators, have been launched at a WWDC. But hardware is not a normal part of the agenda.

That takes us to the software. So one prominent alleged tech pundit complained there wasn’t anything significant, focusing the main part of his complaints on Siri. It’s easy to take the simplistic approach and complain that Microsoft got there first, in 2015, when Cortana debuted on Windows 10. But that doesn’t reflect on voice recognition features and accuracy. Clearly loads of improvements are promised for Siri on all Apple platforms, and part of that appears due to the technology the company acquired when it bought out VocalIQ last year.

When macOS Sierra, iOS 10 and the other OS are released, it will be perfectly fair to pit the Siri update against Google Now, Cortana and Amazon Echo. May the best voice assistant win, but certainly not now. Any comparison that includes beta versions will be quite unfair, since they likely have bugs and performance glitches.

But what about all those improvements to watchOS 3, and how they overhaul the user experience? You didn’t know that? I’m not an Apple Watch user, but Apple’s site and media outlets that cover Apple have detailed the changes and improvements. Many of the complaints about performance and usability appear to have been addressed. Articles about the beta are promising. The third time does appear to be a charm.

iOS 10 also appears to benefit from a large number of significant changes, more than you’d find in any Android OS upgrade. Of course, it doesn’t matter so much with Android, since only a small number of users will have a chance to upgrade, at least in the first or second year. From Notifications to the fancier Messages, there’s a lot of meat to digest. To just ignore them doesn’t make any sense, unless the writer didn’t bother checking.

With macOS Sierra, I find the arrival of Siri to be of less importance, because I’m not much of a Siri user on my iPhone. For me, it’s mostly about setting alarms, but I will try some of the other features and see if I can take to them. Not so far the Mac, where I did spend a few moments with the beta trying it out. Let’s just say that I will wait for it to be fine-tuned a little bit more.

For some, Sierra’s Optimized Storage feature might be a revolution. If you’re Mac’s drive is running out of space, this new feature can move unused stuff to your iCloud Drive. Of course, you’ll need enough storage to accommodate all those files, and that means, for most of you, buying extra storage will be essential. If you want to share your Desktop and Documents folder too, expect to require even more storage. I’d like to see Apple enlarge the free space from 5GB to 25GB or 50GB, and lower the prices for additional storage. As it is, nobody will be able to use these features without an iCloud Drive upgrade.

For the Mac, Apple is focusing on productivity and convenience. Yes, a fancier Messages will be just what the doctor ordered for some; ditto for the enhanced facial recognition and other new Photos features.

The real hope is that all the new OS enhancements will arrive this fall without lots of glitches. That’s a tall order, and Apple has a mediocre record with initial releases. But that record, such as it is, is still far better than Google or Microsoft can claim. So I remain ever hopeful.

Instead of the usual silly argument about how Android has mauled Apple into irrelevance by having a larger market share, a recent piece at ZDNet actually discusses the real problem with Google’s platform.

No, it’s not the fact that lots of mobile handset makers release cheap junk running Android. It’s more about the open source nature of the OS and the serious downsides that make it work against the interests of customers. It comes into play whenever Google releases an OS upgrade, or even a critical security fix.

It’s all about fragmentation.

Apple made a smart move early on, which was to take full responsibility for pushing OS updates to customers. That way, the carrier never gets involved, and thus Apple can ensure that all customers are getting a fair shake. The very moment an update is available, you can download it for yourself.

What this means is that, three months before iOS 10 is set to be released, over 85% of iOS users, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch, are running some version of iOS 9. That percentage varies by a few percent each year, but it’s pretty consistent. Assuming your hardware is compatible, you will probably be running the newest OS before long. That’s true even though some of you might wait for a few releases and bug fixes before diving in.

At each Android I/O conference, Google will demonstrate a forthcoming Android upgrade. But after a year, the number of people who have installed that update barely reaches 10% of the user base, sometimes less. The most popular version of Android, version 5 Lollipop, with a 38.17% share (according to Mixpanel Trends), was released on November 12, 2014. The next most popular version is 4.4 KitKat, released in 2013, with a 26.64% share. Last year’s release, version 6 Marshmallow, remains in the “Other” category.

Worse, most Android users will never, ever, have the chance to download such an upgrade on their device. The main reason is the flawed method of pushing those updates. Unless you have a pure Nexus device, and few do, you don’t receive upgrades direct from Google, except for apps in the Google Play store. Instead, the handset maker receives the updates. It’s up to them to merge the release with their own customizations and junkware before sending it on to the carrier, who might add its own changes.

By being open source and ceding responsibility to its partners to manage updates, Google is ignoring the needs of customers. Customers should have a right to upgrade their mobile handsets to the latest supported version, especially when a security problem needs to be fixed. So there are existing problems with existing handsets, vulnerabilities that could cause havoc for Android users.

So ZDNet is suggesting that Google follow Apple’s lead and give up on the open source nonsense, and make Android proprietary. They can then arrange to feed updates directly. Handset makers might still be able to add customizations strictly by apps and not with operating system modifications, and thus not interfere with the process. I suppose they’d have to make new agreements with Google, and if they are still committed to the platform, that shouldn’t be so big a deal.

Besides, how many Android smartphone makers actually contribute anything valuable to the platform? Well, perhaps Samsung’s Split Screen multitasking feature, which has been adapted by Apple to provide Split View on the most powerful iPhones and iPads. Much of Samsung’s additions are junk. Consider the Tilt to Scroll feature that debuted on Galaxy handsets a couple of years back. It doesn’t even work most of the time, or didn’t when I tried it on a Galaxy S5.

Google has been promising to resolve the fragmentation problem for several years without any success. Unless something drastic is done, it will probably never happen. Maybe that’s all right in the current state of the market, but aside from Apple and, to a lesser extent Samsung, handset makers aren’t making much in the way of profits. Why even bother?

I suppose that making Android proprietary might convince some companies to focus on forking an OS from the open source version. Some Asian handset makers have already taken that route. In addition, Samsung has been making efforts to move to another open source mobile OS, Tizen, but not so enthusiastically. Other than Galaxy Gear smartwatches and a handful of cheaper handsets, Samsung continues to support Android. If you take a casual look, Tizen doesn’t seem all that different from Android, or at least it seems to have a similar inspiration.

The iPhone.

Of course, if each handset maker used its own OS, customers would be less inclined to switch, in part because their investment in apps would be wasted. They’d have to start from scratch, hoping to find similar software. As it stands, there are actually more Android apps than iOS, but developers don’t do near as well financially. Many of those apps are knock-offs, or free ad-laden junk that is barely usable. With handset makers giving up on Android, the situation would only get worse — for all of them.

Of course, if Google convinces Samsung, it’s largest partner, to accept a proprietary version of Android that they cannot modify, other manufacturers will, for the most part, fall into line. The situation as it stands remains largely unworkable, and I’m surprised more people aren’t just giving up and moving to iOS, or at least someone else’s proprietary platform, such as the rapidly failing Windows 10 Phone.

Apple is often accused of being late to the party. Other companies come out with a feature that appears to be a great fit for Apple. But no Apple gadget has it, and thus the criticisms are endless. Why can’t they do it too? Have they lost their edge?

But one of the key differences between Apple and the competition is a matter of trying to first prepare the new features for public consumption. So it may appear that Apple is late to the party in some ways, while ahead of the curve for others.

Obviously Apple didn’t make the first personal computer, nor the first digital music player, nor the first smartphone or tablet. But what they did create changed industries.

Take the Macintosh which, as most of you know, debuted in 1984. At the time most PCs used a text-based OS,  PC-DOS and MS-DOS. Indeed, when Apple delivered a graphical user interface to the masses, the typical PC user laughed it off. Real PC users were expected to know the command line to get work done. Thus, Macs were toys.

Well, until Microsoft improved Windows sufficiently to make it usable, and that was no mean achievement.

It’s fair to say the first Mac still wasn’t quite the finished product. A lot of that was due to an immature operating system and a lack of apps. But it did resemble current models because it couldn’t be upgraded, and perhaps the best feature added by Steve Jobs’ successors was the ability to upgrade RAM and other components. But today’s Mac returns to the concept of the computer as an appliance.

It may seem strange in retrospect, but the iPod was far from the first digital music player. Having tested a few at the time for ZDNet, I can tell you these other companies shouldn’t have bothered. Those gadgets were difficult to configure, and download speeds, moving music to the device, were pathetic. All right, the first iPod used FireWire; later USB 2.0 proved up to the task of downloading your music from your Mac or PC.

Supposed iPod killers were legion. One, the Zune, came from Microsoft, but Apple got it right and kept doing it right until it was time to move on.

When the iPhone was introduced, the critics insisted Apple had no clue about building mobile handsets and, besides, it didn’t even support 3G networking. Apple also seemed to take its sweet time to add LTE, but a lot of that was because the early chipsets were power hungry and buggy. How much were you willing to give up to get faster throughput? Did it make sense to have to charge it more frequently?

Microsoft made a big deal of tablets for years. The initial concept was a PC notebook with a touchscreen, which you might be able to swivel or remove. But they mostly found their way into vertical markets, such as manufacturing facilities and physician’s offices. The iPad scaled up the concept of the iPhone. But Microsoft’s sole success with tablets, such as it is, involves a convertible PC, the Surface Pro, which employs standard PC parts, including Intel processors. Sales are in the low millions, way below even declining iPad sales.

Now with tablets, Apple is still finding its way. The case for productivity hasn’t been fully realized. Some of that is the lack of support for entire app categories, and the other is the still-clumsy multitasking and the lack of accessory attachable keyboards that feel like keyboards and not mush. Regular readers will recall my criticisms of Apple’s Smart Keyboard for the iPad Pro. I could barely use the one for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro, because the spacebar was awkward and I kept losing wordspaces. I never could get the knack; the keyboard for the 9.7-inch version was noticeably better in that regard, but still didn’t quite make it as a keyboard.

Still, Apple rose to the top of the heap with tablets, and, as iOS and hardware features and accessories improve, some day it may come into its own. It’s still a big profit center for Apple, and as users begin to upgrade in decent numbers, perhaps sales will improve to former levels.

But it’s not that there’s a unique and powerful feature offered by competing tablets that put them way ahead of of the iPad.

With the impending arrival of Siri on the Mac, the critics will remind you the Cortana voice assistant debuted last year on Windows 10. So what’s up with Apple? But a recent column from a noted Windows evangelist revealed the sad truth that the mics shipping with some PCs weren’t up to the task, and Cortana frequently crashed. This is yet another example of adding a new feature before it’s ready.

Don’t forget that Siri debuted on the 2011 iPhone 4s as a beta. It took a couple of years to lose the beta label, and some of you will insist it still has trouble recognizing some commands. I manage well enough with wake-up alarms, but sometimes I have to repeat the command twice. And I’m a radio broadcaster with 25 years experience.

Siri for macOS Sierra will arrive about a year after Apple acquired advanced voice recognition technology from VocalIQ. So it took something extra for Apple to feel Siri was set to move to a desktop personal computer. Microsoft didn’t sweat the details with Cortana, and Windows users suffered as a result.

I think the point is clear. Sure, Apple sometimes is too early to release a product or service. Think MobileMe and the first release of Apple Maps. But they do better overall than most of the competition.

This is a weird story and, as the result of the fact that I host a popular paranormal radio show, you might think weird is my middle name. Forget for the moment that my parents, in their infinite wisdom, opted not to give me a middle name; they didn’t have one either. But after many years following the personal computing world, lots of things have happened.

But few match what happened twice in recent weeks.

Let me explain: My copy of Mail for El Capitan has eight active email accounts. This may seem to be overkill, but there is method in my madness. You see, I want to compartmentalize my various projects, such as the two radio shows. By having separate Inboxes, Sent boxes, and so forth and so on, I can be assured my responses, often rushed, are in the proper context. I realize some of you might prefer to throw it all into a single iCloud or Gmail account, but with 250,000 messages going back to 1999, I’d quickly exceed their storage limits and then some.

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