Some suggest that a new corporate leader will need to grow into the role, take baby steps before finding the right management approach. Others, particularly those who have had previous experience as a CEO, will attempt to hit the ground running. They will try to leverage prior experience as a guide towards approaching their new position. This is particularly true if the company they are joining is in trouble.

But trying to apply what an executive did at one company to another doesn’t always work. So Ron Johnson had a tremendous amount of success working with Steve Jobs to create and grow the Apple Store retail chain. But when he was hired by a struggling J.C. Penney to rebuild the brand, he failed, utterly. Evidently he misunderstood customer needs and expectations in the effort to move the stores upscale, and he was soon given his walking papers.

When Tim Cook became the permanent Apple CEO, the move was both expected and greeted with skepticism. But he had already occupied that post for months on end due to Steve Jobs’ illness, and thus had clearly demonstrated his abilities.

But where Cook was once regarded as strictly a behind-the-scenes person who managed the supply chain, clearly he had skills that have enabled him to become perhaps the most vocal CEO on the planet. That surely has come as a surprise to many who thought he’d be a caretaker executive who’d keep Apple on an even keel and maybe pave the way towards another — unknown — executive, who’d take Apple forward.

It didn’t help that Apple had a checkered history with CEOs, and Steve Jobs was an outsized personality who would be difficult, if not impossible, to replace.

At first, it appeared that Cook was staying the course, though it was clear that he supported a more open policy at the top. He did a few things, such as encouraging employees to make charitable donations, which clearly signaled a new direction. Stock buybacks and other financial moves made it clear he understood the needs of Wall Street better than Jobs, who seemed to feel it was mostly a necessary annoyance and not much more.

Some might suggest that the corporate financial maneuvers were meant as substitutes for the lack of significant new products, but it doesn’t appear that product introductions have slowed. If anything, they appear to have sped up, though some might question whether such gadgets as the Apple Watch are as significant in the scheme of things as an iPhone or an iPad, let alone the Mac.

Nowadays, we have Tim Cook as the outspoken advocate for truth, justice and fairness to all. Revealing what was already known by many, that he is gay, he has stood for LGBT rights, and quite vocally.

Rather than remain in the background, Cook is appearing more and more on national TV shows, not to mention writing op-eds for major newspapers. With the current dispute between Apple and the FBI in full swing — and the outcome still uncertain — Cook has been in the forefront of advocating for Apple’s position about encrypting iPhones. It almost seems he’s everywhere, and even one of his key corporate lieutenants, Craig Federighi, has gotten into act with his own guest editorial about the matter.

As he gains experience on the public stage, he has not been shy about showing up in unexpected places, such as last September’s appearance on the “Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” Can you imagine Steve Jobs making so many personal appearances?

Cook has clearly become more outgoing. While he seemed stiff in his early keynotes, he has learned to allow his easy southern charm to come through, making him a pleasant, comforting advocate for Apple. It’s not overexposure, but a measured, carefully crafted approach to giving the company a public face. Some suggest he may, in the long run, have a far greater impact on Apple going forward. But his tenure is still young, and I have little doubt that there is speculation about his potential successor.

And, yes, I wouldn’t doubt that Cook has undergone some training to improve his public presentation. Such skills don’t always come naturally.

Maybe Federighi, who has a likable, sometimes funny, public demeanor, is being groomed as a potential successor. That may explain why he was tasked to write an op-ed for the Washington Post. But he’s also the voice of Apple’s software, so it was an ideal choice to write about the encryption controversy. Of course, cynics will wonder the extent to which he contributed to that article, and where it was, in whole or in part, ghostwritten for him by Apple’s corporate public relations staff. But the same can be said for Cook’s op-eds.

At the same time, Apple’s critics will continue to attack Cook as the wrong person in the wrong position. There continue to be “Jobs would never do that” complaints, despite the reports that Jobs told Cook never to pose such a question going forward.

It’s no doubt way too early in the game to judge the total impact of Cook’s reign as Apple CEO. Lots of unexpected things might occur that will complicate the company’s position and chances for ongoing success. But if he can weather the inevitable storms in good form, history will likely judge him well.

So it’s over. Apple’s attempts to appeal a $450 million court judgment for antitrust behavior got turned back by the U.S. Supreme Court. By refusing to consider findings that Apple, along with several publishers, were engaged in a scheme to fix e-book prices, thus resulting in higher prices to customers, it let the lower court ruling stand. Apple has no choice but to write a bunch of checks to customers, states and lawyers.

Extolling its victory, U.S. Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer, who heads the Justice Department’s antitrust division, said “Apple’s liability for knowingly conspiring with book publishers to raise the prices of e-books is settled once and for all.”

It also means that $400 million of that verdict must be paid as refunds to customers who bought those overpriced e-books. So I suspect they will ultimately receive emails asking them to apply for their share. This seems similar to the usual class-action legal settlement where individuals receive coupons or checks to redress them for their losses. Indeed I just received a check for sixteen dollars and change for one of those cases.

Then again, one report I read says that customers will be automatically credited somehow, although credit cards are apt to change from the 2010-2012 timeframe involved to now.

Now the entire case has, as one might expect, been clouded with the usual back and forth posturing. The publishers caved early on, but Apple continued to claim they were acting to prevent Amazon from keeping its monopoly status in the e-book business.

Briefly, it all started in 2010, when Amazon dominated the market by offering e-books, particularly best-selling titles, as cheap loss leaders. In other words, they’d sell them for less than the publisher charged in order to build traffic and cash flow. This is a time-honored way of building a business, but it also left other dealers out in the cold because they wouldn’t play the same game.

So supposedly Apple conspired with the publishers to establish what’s called an “agency” pricing model, which means they set the prices and not the dealers. Supposedly the motives were pure, that no single dealer could undercut other dealers and charge less. But nothing prevented Apple, Barnes & Noble and other dealers from having loss leaders too, so why bother? In either case, the publishers would still receive their usual wholesale price, or whatever wholesale price they negotiated with a dealer.

Indeed, when two or more companies work out a deal to set prices, that appears to be the classic definition of price fixing. It didn’t help that the evidence included some frank emails from Steve Jobs that, shall we say, appeared to confirm the conspiracy. One letter alleged that publishers were withholding books from Amazon because they were unhappy with the pricing situation.

As Apple continued to appeal the verdict, which seemed fairly cut and dry to an outside observer, the court ordered Apple to alter its business practices, and even appointed a court monitor to make sure the company complied with the verdict. But even that became a matter of contention, as Apple accused the monitor of being too intrusive, and the monitor complained that Apple wasn’t cooperating.

The whole affair reminded me of a series arc on “The Good Wife,” a CBS drama, where a legal firm at which the main protagonist worked at the time had gone bankrupt and had to contend with a court monitor, an accountant, to get its affairs in order. He sat with the partners at their strategy meetings and would question every little decision they made. The role was played with comic flair by Nathan Lane, and, although the court monitor in the Apple case looked nothing like him, the whole brouhaha reminded me of the funny byplay on that show.

Regardless, it shouldn’t matter to a customer whether a dealer earns a profit or not from a sale, or what that dealer does to remain competitive in the marketplace; that is, so long as the customer doesn’t suffer. Surely customers don’t suffer when e-book prices are lowered. On the other hand, if a dealer engages in monopolistic behavior by doing unethical things to expand its market share, that’s a different story altogether.

Surely, if Apple had been able to demonstrate that Amazon was somehow violating antitrust laws, it might have had a valid complaint. To the outsider, however, it was Apple who, in collusion with major book publishers, was guilty of a price fixing conspiracy. That these companies allegedly acted to protect the interests of the customer seems to go against logic. How does paying more for a product or service benefit customers?

Now understand that this case will barely impact me. I’ve only purchased a few e-books over the years. I prefer to buy real (print) books. But I can see where Apple might get loads of requests to share some of that $400 million largesse with customers who apply for refunds.

In any case, writing these checks will amount to chump change to Apple. Most of the affected customers probably won’t apply for refunds. But one hopes Apple has actually learned something from the experience, and won’t continue to view it as an unfair court decision. As someone who has two novels available at Amazon, I’d love to see them offered at full price, but the e-book versions are priced at $9.99, and that’s their right. It’s a right that’s been affirmed by the courts.

So I read an article in a business publication that made some strong pronouncements about the performance of a product that the blogger never actually tested. This is the sort of behavior that I see quite often, and it goes to show utter desperation in trying to make it seem as if one product is better than another. It seems to happen more often when Apple makes one of those products.

In this case, the comparison is between an iPhone 6s, released in September of 2015, and the just-launched Samsung Galaxy S7. Clearly the intent was to demonstrate that the camera system on Samsung’s new high-end smartphone must, inevitably, be far superior to Apple. The article went on to list the specs of the two to present evidence of Apple’s inferiority. Clearly iPhones were attacked as behind being the times, that it was time for Apple to get it together.

Only one thing: The blogger never actually tested anything. He merely assumed, based on the specs, that the Samsung must have a superior camera and take superior pictures. But as Apple has demonstrated over and over again through the years, it’s not just the numbers that count. When it comes to actually taking pictures, an iPhone ranks among the best in the industry.

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I’m sure most of you know the basics. Cord-cutting means giving up on cable or satellite TV and fending for yourself. You may buy an antenna for local stations, subscribe to some streaming services, such as Hulu and Netflix, and perhaps rent movies and buy TV shows from iTunes and other services. All told, you mix and match services to get something that approximates the programming you like, while hoping to save a bundle of money.

Certainly, the cable/satellite choice never gets any cheaper. You may sign up for an introductory plan where you pay less for a few months, or as long as two years. Sometimes the rates creep up every few months as individual discounts evaporate. At the end of this period, you pay the full price for the service, whatever that is. With content providers constantly demanding more money from the cable/satellite companies — and sometimes cutting off their feeds as leverage to get a higher price for “carriage” — the price of admission will continue to increase.

For young people, just out of school and striking out on their own, even basic cable may be too expensive. Bills need to be paid, and those bills may include large student loans. Maybe they just don’t have the free time, or they don’t care all that much about series television, sporting events, and the other programs that are being offered. All right, I’m in the U.S. and keeping this entire discussion local, although those of you who live elsewhere might sympathize with some of what I’m writing about.

But as soon as your interests expand, is it really easy to go without cable/satellite?

That depends. Individual networks may have their own apps, and sometimes paid streaming services, to deliver some or all of their programming online. So you have CBS All Access and HBO NOW as ways to go direct to a network to get the shows you want. You might choose Hulu, owned by ABC, Fox and NBC, to get shows from those networks. But Netflix and Amazon Instant Video have their own original programming, and what about the local stations?

Well, if it’s network fare, CBS All Access and Hulu might suffice. But what about sports? Well, if it’s on a local station, there’s always an antenna, but what if you live in a small town, far away from any city that has more than a few stations? Do you erect an antenna on the roof of your home, or must you choose another option? That’s how cable TV got its start in the first place, as a way for people who couldn’t receive broadcast TV to, in effect, pool their efforts to set up a single large antenna, or network of antennas, to receive distant stations and feed those signals onto a network of cables and amplifiers to deliver decent signals to your home.

I say decent, as cable TV in those early days was hit or miss before TV signals went all digital.

But what this means is that, if you want broadcast TV, and the antenna solution isn’t suitable, you’re stuck with cable/satellite, even if it’s just the cheapest packages. Or you do without.

Another way to deliver programming is a slim streaming package, such as Dish Network’s Sling TV. This is a scheme to put together something akin to basic cable and feed it to you without the need for a wired or satellite hookup. There are several tiers of service — I understand broadcast stations are coming — which more or less puts you into the same category as a satellite subscriber without the satellite dish.

Apple has reportedly been working on their own streaming service, again a small bundle of cable networks, possibly along with broadcast. According to published reports, talks have bogged down over rights and packages and such. Indeed, the rumors had it that the service would arrive with the fourth generation Apple TV. Well, the Apple TV was launched last fall, but there’s been nothing new about such a service, and certainly Apple isn’t going to admit to anything.

This week came a report that AT&T’s DirecTV division is working on delivering its own streaming service, based on the existing satellite TV structure. What this means is that you’ll be able to order a package fairly similar to what you get with the satellite. I wouldn’t know whether it will be any cheaper since you wouldn’t need the dish and set-top box. You could do it with a web or mobile app, or perhaps as a channel in Apple TV, Roku and Amazon Fire TV. But nothing is certain, since it’s still in the works and hasn’t been finalized.

As with Sling TV, an Internet streaming service would use online bandwidth. Do you have enough with your ISP? I wouldn’t know. You’d have to check, but if you expect to watch streaming TV several hours a day in HD — and forget about the higher bandwidth needs of 4K — you could use up your allotted bandwidth in days. You’ll have to pay a premium for extra bandwidth, or be stuck with throttling — slower service — or being cut off because you exceeded the limits.

So at the end of the day, can an a la carte menu of streaming services, and perhaps a TV antenna, get you all or most of what cable/satellite offers? Probably, but at what cost? And what about your ISP’s bandwidth cap?

Suddenly cable/satellite may not seem such a bad choice after all, although there’s a lot that ought to be done to make the offerings more competitive and more customer-centric. Maybe extra service tiers and options so you’re not forced to buy a 300 channel bundle when you only care about a dozen of them.