So we know that Apple’s numbers for the March quarter were, in large part, worse than so-called financial analysts predict. Apple’s stock price was down more than 6% as I wrote this column, and that’s to be expected. It’s an unfortunate fact that, even though Apple remains a highly profitable company, only a single quarter’s revenue is generally compared in relation to year-ago quarters, along with recent quarters if there’s a significant change. Long-term trends are often overlooked.

This means that it’s almost certain that the stock price will continue to fall, since Apple’s guidance reveals another revenue drop this quarter.

To be sure, Tim Cook and crew are doing their best to set make excuses for lower sales of iPhones and Macs — few expected much out of the iPad — and point to products and services that are doing well. So Apple Watch sales are supposedly exceeding the company’s expectations. But who knows what those expectations are anyway?

The biggest concern for the future is the iPhone. After steadily growing sales for nine years, it plateaued, more or less, in the December quarter with just a slight increase, and fell in the March quarter. That trend is expected to continue in the current quarter despite reports of higher-than-expected demand for the iPhone SE.

Some suggest the main reason is that the iPhone 6s upgrade wasn’t compelling enough. But that doesn’t quite pass the logic test. Most people aren’t upgrading from an iPhone 6. They might have an iPhone 5s, something older, or an Android smartphone. Compared to these, the latest iPhone is a compelling product. Regardless, would doing some fancy stuff with the iPhone 7 — which is what it is expected to be called — be sufficient to boost sales?

Honestly, I have no idea. True, sales of Samsung’s Galaxy S7 are, so far, higher than its predecessor. But that may have been due to the fact that the Galaxy S6 wasn’t a very good product. You can’t say the iPhone 6s is a poor product. Besides, Apple is still selling far more high-end smartphones than Samsung.

It could be that, as some suggest, the smartphone market is saturated and there will no longer be double-digit gains, even though it’ll remain a profitable business. Remember, Apple is still earning higher profits than anyone else in the mobile handset business.

So where does that leave the Mac? Well, suffering from a double-digit sales drop, with results far below what analysts expected, wasn’t so encouraging. Even though the entire PC market is contracting, March was a rare quarter where Apple’s decline was more than the average for the industry. So is this a fluke, did customers opt for iPads or PCs instead? I suppose Apple has the marketing information, but they still claim that more than 50% of new Mac purchases are to customers new to the platform. It’s a claim that’s been repeated for years, and I’ll take it as true simply because there has been no evidence to dispute it.

What is certain is that Apple’s critics are wondering what the next great thing might be? Will services revenue continue to soar? That will help, but what about the Apple Watch? Can it eventually achieve sales in the iPad or iPhone range? That doesn’t quite seem possible, but time will tell. Certainly if the Apple Watch develops cellular connectivity — perhaps as an alternate version — it might boost sales substantially.

But what else is there on the horizon that might replace the iPhone as a fast-growing money-making machine?

There is ongoing speculation about the Apple Car, and the rumors do present a credible case that something’s afoot. But that doesn’t mean Apple will actually sell a car. It could be a test bed to evaluate technologies for future versions of CarPlay. But even if Apple were to go whole hog on such a project, would profits appear out of the starting gate, as with other products, or would it take years? Bear in mind that the industry average is 8%.

So if Apple can deliver margins above 8% with a car, it would be pretty good, but how long would it take to get there?

Another possibility is for Apple to buy a large company to provide a product or service to add to its portfolio. So far, most acquisitions have been relatively small, mainly to add technology to existing product lines. A notable example is Siri. But with the $3 billion purchase of Beats Electronics, Apple acquired a major manufacturer of premium headphones.

While Apple never tells us anything in advance about an acquisition, and even after it’s done, they aren’t apt to admit it except in a general way. Well, except for Beats. But during the quarterly conference call with financial analysts earlier this week, Cook was a tad more informative about Apple’s plans: “We’re always looking in the market about things that could complement things that we do today, become features in something we do, or allow us to accelerate entry into a category that we’re excited about.”

Later on, he dropped a broad hint: “We could definitely buy something larger than we bought thus far.”

Of course, that statement has fueled speculation about what Apple might have in mind, and some companies are already being mentioned. So would Apple jump into the car business in a big way and acquire Tesla — or is that a bridge too far? Besides, at twice the current market cap, roughly $66 billion, it would be a huge stretch for Apple. Would it be worth jump starting its entry into the car business? Would Elon Musk even consider such an acquisition?

Wouldn’t it be far cheaper for Apple to do it their way?

Challenges, challenges. It appears that the tech industry isn’t getting the love this quarter when it comes to revenue. So we know that Alphabet, Google’s holding company, and Microsoft had somewhat disappointing earnings. Once again, Twitter had disappointing earnings because advertisers aren’t buying enough space, but the social network has long had problems figuring out the best ways to monetize.

In this climate of lowered expectations, Apple reported its March quarterly earnings. It didn’t help that they missed the pessimistic expectations of industry analysts. But those projections aren’t real things. They are guesses that may or may not reflect the real world.

The big headline is that iPhone sales declined year-over-year. This is the first time that happened since the product debuted in 2007. But the final numbers, 51.2 million units sold, were above the consensus of 50.3 million. Last year, Apple managed to move 61.17 million iPhones, so the sales falloff is pretty significant as such things go, though it’s not as if the company didn’t predict it would happen.

Still, the sales drop is a headline story at the major news outlets — huge.

In all, second quarter revenue totaled $50.56 billion, with earnings of $1.90 per share. This compares with sales of $58.01 billion and earnings of $2.33 per share in the year-ago quarter. According to published reports, Wall Street freaked at the revenue miss, and the stock price dropped more than 6% as a result in after-hours trading. One expects that unfortunate trend will continue for a while until reality sets in.

And this is one I didn’t expect. Mac sales also disappointed, with sales of four million units compared to analyst expectations of 4.53 million. iPad sales came in at 10.2 million, compared to industry predictions of 9.95 million. Mac sales last year were 4.56 million, and iPad sales totaled 12.62 million. At least iPad sales aren’t decreasing as fast as some expected.

But the Mac! Is there a reason other than the general slowdown in the PC industry? Well, there were no new or refreshed models during the March quarter. The first update came last week with the launch of a refreshed MacBook. More new Macs are expected to arrive between now and June’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference. Will there be a major change to the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro?

While Mac sales didn’t do as well as expected, Apple is once again boasting that over half of Mac buyers are, again, new to the platform. So clearly PC users are still switching in decent quantities. Indeed, if I were saddled with Windows 10 — and wasn’t already a long-time Mac user — I’d join them.

As one would expect when a corporate executive has to respond to bad news, Apple CEO Tim Cook put his best foot forward on the situation, saying, “Our team executed extremely well in the face of strong macroeconomic headwinds. We are very happy with the continued strong growth in revenue from Services, thanks to the incredible strength of the Apple ecosystem and our growing base of over one billion active devices.”

In case you’re wondering, this is Apple’s first revenue decline since 2003. The company’s guidance for the current quarter is also somewhat disappointing, with revenues expected to land between $41 billion and $43 billion.

During the quarterly conference call with financial analysts, Cook and crew attempted to highlight the most favorable aspects of a situation that would normally be regarded as bad news. So, he said that a “very high percentage” of iPhone customers are switching from Android and other platforms. Unit sales of the Apple Watch also met Apple’s expectations for the quarter, but Cook also said it was following seasonal trends, which means it was less than the previous quarter. As usual, Apple doesn’t break out Apple Watch sales.

But services were a high spot, growing 20% year-over-year to $5.99 billion. Highlights included Apple Music, which grew two million over the quarter and now has 13 million subscribers. But the subscription music service has a long way to go to match the industry leader, Spotify, which claims 30 million paid subscribers. In addition, revenue from the App Store increased 35% to hit an all-time high.

The iPhone SE also shows promise. Although initial sales didn’t register in the March quarter, supplies are constrained because demand is higher than Apple expected. So skepticism that it wouldn’t do well may have been unfounded. Then again, Apple’s expectations might have been modest, and it’s not as if they’ll tell us what they really were.

It was also announced that 78% of the businesses who plan to buy smartphones during the current quarter will choose iPhones.

One promising note: Apple claims that it’ll present the best iPad revenue compares in over two years during the current quarter. The 9.7-inch iPad Pro appears to be having some impact. It was also revealed that the iPad has a 78% share of the tablet market for products over $200. Of course, lots of cheapie tablets are being sold, but one wonders what sort of use they get.

Despite trying to make good of a bad situation, it’s clear that Apple’s detractors will have a field day in the weeks ahead saying that doom and gloom is now upon us. It has already begun, with the next iPhone, presumably the iPhone 7, is being characterized as disappointing months before it is expected to be announced. Little has changed.

Apple’s notebook of the future, the MacBook, was introduced with a flourish last spring. A big deal was made of its slim and light form factor, the “stepped” battery that provided for higher capacity and reasonably long battery life. Oh, and this was Apple’s first foray into USB-C, an implementation of the USB 3.1 standard. It also sported a Retina display and a newly designed short-travel keyboard.

Almost from the very first day, Apple was attacked by tech pundits and others who claimed that, at $1,299, the 2015 MacBook was overpriced for what it offered. To them, Apple focused too much on fancy styling and not as much on performance and usability. Fitting with Apple’s minimalist design choices, the supplied Intel’s Core-M processor ran cool enough to eliminate the need for a cooling fan, thus enabling the MacBook to consume less power and run quieter even under load.

But the Core-M and its embedded Intel graphics score lower benchmarks than the Intel Core i5 that powers the MacBook Air, a lower-priced computer. The lone USB-C port is also used for charging, which means that you cannot connect anything else unless you pull the charging cable, or buy a dongle for extra ports. So they envision an underpowered notebook with loads of devices hanging off that dongle.

As a practical matter, the fears are groundless for most people. While the Core-M doesn’t score so high compared to current hardware, it’s perfectly capable of handling the needs of many road warriors who don’t need to worry about editing videos or playing high-energy games. Connecting multiple devices may be a tad less flexible (essentially one addition to cable clutter), but that’s not necessarily how many people use notebooks.

Well, at least one person.

So in the 1990s, I was somewhat obsessive about my travel planning. I would take along my PowerBook, a backup drive, a microphone for on-the-scene recording and, of course, a portable printer. After a few years, the printer went by the wayside, and backup drives can be quite small and mostly unobtrusive.

With 10-hour battery life, the MacBook can be used pretty much all day long without the need to plug anything into that USB-C port other than a single peripheral that might be required for your work. In my case, it would be a USB mic. Apple expects to go wireless for most connections, and they are right on. And there’s nothing wrong with having a wireless printer, if you need one.

Sure, I suppose one might require more CPU horsepower. Then again, for my situation, I still use a 2010 17-inch MacBook Pro. It weighs more than three times that of the MacBook, but its CPU scores are in pretty much the same range for most tasks. Since adding an SSD, I don’t feel at a loss for speed.

For me, the MacBook’s sole problem is a display that’s a little small for my needs. I’ve grown accustomed to 17 inches, a form factor long abandoned by Apple. But I could settle on a 15-inch due to the Retina display. Now if Apple built a 15-inch MacBook, perhaps with a little performance boost, it might be the perfect notebook and in many respects a better alternative than the MacBook Pro.

That, however, is purely academic at this point, since I’m still waiting on Apple to get me a review sample.

But I’ve had loads of experience with various and sundry notebooks since the early 1990s, so I have a good handle on what the MacBook is offering. I’ve also spent a fair amount of time using the Apple Magic Keyboard, which is somewhat similar in feel to the MacBook. My experience with the Magic Trackpad 2 convinces me that Force Touch is of little value to me, however.

Now the 2016 MacBook offers a little more performance for those who felt the original model wasn’t sufficient for their needs. It’s 15-20% faster according to published benchmarks, the SSD is 80-90% faster, which yields an even greater feeling of snappiness. But the critics are still griping at the lack of extra ports, the lack of a memory card slot, and the fact that the FaceTime camera has a resolution of a “mere” 480p. Unless your needs go beyond casual video chats, the latter shouldn’t matter.

I am not making excuses for a subpar product. Apple has clearly done its homework and has built a notebook computer that has a large potential market. But it also requires a careful rethinking of your needs, and what tradeoffs you’re willing to accept. It’s obviously not for everyone, which is why Apple produces more than one notebook computer.

Unfortunately, far too many product reviewers fail to recognize that different people have various needs and that a fair number might appreciate a slim and light traditional notebook computer with a great screen and acceptable performance. When you have to drag those things across long passageways from an airport’s security area to the gate from which your flight is departing, you’ll appreciate the lighter load. Let me tell you that my shoulder hurts after I drag that oversized MacBook Pro around for a while even with a carrying case that’s supposedly optimized for comfort.

So I remain intrigued by the possibilities of the MacBook Pro, but I still hope Apple will consider building a larger one.

It wasn’t terribly pleasant for Alphabet (Google) and Microsoft stockholders this past week. Both companies missed revenue targets, more or less, and thus suffered from lower stock prices. For Google, it’s pretty much the same old problem. Most of its revenue comes from one product, search, and, to a lesser extent, Google Play, Android’s app store. While the company continues to pour money into other ventures, they still aren’t paying off.

Even the purchase of Nest, a company that makes intelligent thermostats and smoke detectors, hasn’t been quite the cash cow Google expected when it bought the company in 2014 for $3.2 billion. That’s somewhat higher than Apple paid for Beats Electronics, a transaction that was greeted with skepticism by tech and financial pundits.

However, Beats was a successful company before Apple took it over, particularly when it came to its line of high-end headphones. Beats Music was still a developing service that now appears to be paying off in its guise as Apple Music. But, according to published reports, Nest generated a paltry $340 million in sales in 2015. That’s not so terrific when you consider the purchase price.

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