A former FCC chairman once referred to TV as a “vast wasteland.” In other words, lots of stuff to watch, but most of it not very good. Even when a show had greater pretensions, it was often saddled with less-than-stellar acting, poor production values and, when needed, laughable special effects.

Some shows managed to rise above the morass of junk. Certainly the original “Star Trek,” despite its charms, such as its penchant for social commentary, had its problems. Special effects were cheesy mostly due to the lack of a budget big enough to set the creative teams exploring the frontiers of technology. Remember, this show arrived more than a decade before the first “Star Wars” film, “Episode IV: A New Hope,” where director George Lucas had to reinvent the wheel to do what he could with a budget a fraction of what is now expected of a “blockbuster” film.

That “vast wasteland” comment came before cable brought us 300 channels and more, often with little or nothing to watch. But it also meant that cable-only channels, including the “premium” outlets that were ad-free, could expand on the creativity when they chose to do so. Nowadays, Oscar-nominated and Oscar-winning performers, producers and directors often find a home on TV for their pet projects.

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As many of you know, the Night Owl is pretty sensitive about keyboards, perhaps a bit obsessive. Spending hours typing every single day means that I want to be careful about what I choose. I’m not sure about my readers, but I know that the wrong keyboard — or at least the one that’s wrong for me — can cause discomfort. Poor touch can mean more errors, slower typing speeds, less productivity. You get the picture.

Well, in recent years, I’ve settled on an old fashioned keyboard with mechanical switches, the Matias Quiet Pro. Similar to the Tactile Pro, it uses specially designed “Quiet Pro” switches that mostly match the feel and action of the original Apple Extended Keyboard II. But the Tactile Pro is quite noisy, whereas the Quiet Pro isn’t silent, but gets close, but at a slight decrease in precision.

A few days ago, my Quiet Pro began to exhibit a peculiar symptom, causing my iMac to display a message about using too much USB power. Company CEO Edgar Matias says they’re sending along  the smaller, lighter Laptop Pro as a replacement, per my request.

Meantime, I’ve examined the alternatives I have accumulated over the years. One was the original Apple Wireless Keyboard that came with the iMac. I’ve barely used it. It’s not so bad, but there’s a subtle stiffness to it that seems to slow down my typing speed just a trifle. This is no doubt highly subjective, and I’ll grant that I’ve developed a few bad habits over the decades that doesn’t help matters. My ideal keyboard was once an IBM Selectric II typewriter.

Well, my next candidate was the Apple Magic Keyboard, which debuted this past fall at $99, a $30 increase over its predecessor. It offers lightning cable support for charging, and slightly larger keycaps with a shorter travel, reminiscent of the MacBook. In general use, I found it a somewhat better experience than the Wireless Keyboard, but I still kept returning to the Matias.

Now the newest Apple keyboard is a temporary visitor, and must be returned to apple soon. I also wonder whether it would be worth the extra expense over the Wireless Keyboard that I already own if I decided to buy one.

So I went to the bookshelf in search of alternatives. I came upon one possibility that I received a couple of years back as a review prospect, without the requirement for its return. It offers at least one cool idea that Apple should have considered long ago, since a variation of that feature is available on Mac note-books. That’s illuminated keys.

The keyboard I’m referring to is the Logitech Wireless Illuminated Keyboard K800, which lists for $99.99. For the same price as the Magic Keyboard, you get a full-sized device, with something referred to as a “hand-proximity backlight,” which means the lights switch on when your fingers come less than an inch from the keys. That makes sense, since the light vanishes a few seconds after you move your fingers away, thus extending battery life. In the spirit of the Apple note-book keyboards, brightness is adjusted automatically depending on ambient light. Or you can manually raise or lower the brightness via two keyboard switches.

It’s compatible with Logitech’s Unifying wireless receiver, which means that, if you don’t already have one of those small USB dongles, you’ll only need one to support any Logitech input device that supports this scheme.

The manufacture’s ad page claims that “every stroke you make is comfortable, fluid, and whisper-quiet with the PerfectStroke key system.”

Quiet it is, but it’s also a tad springy. I hope I’ll get used to it, as it has its charms. In addition to the proximity lights, it’s full-sized. You get all the keys, including the numeric keypad, which mens it’s pretty large. On the downside, it’s also technically a Windows keyboard, since the keycaps show a Windows symbol and an Alt label, and there’s no Command key. However, you can easily configure it to work on a Mac by reversing the Windows and Alt keys in the Keyboard preference pane, so they thus serve the functions of Command and Option. After a while you’ll never notice. If you’re used to working on a PC, you may not even bother.

There’s also a handy FN key to access some of the same options as a Mac keyboard, which means it works just fine, at least in terms of keyboard layout and features.

If only I can get used to the feel. But as I write this article, I’ve been using it less than a day, and I suppose I might become accustomed to it after a few days. It did take a while to take to the Magic Keyboard.

Logitech claims up to ten days battery life with the supplied micro-USB cable. That remains to be seen, but I might just put it on the charging cable once a week to make sure it’s always ready, if I decide to continue to use it. Again, the key action is a tad springy, which means it requires a little extra effort to type as quickly as I can on other keyboards.

The replacement Matias keyboard should be here in a week or so. Then we’ll see.

Apple did reasonably well in 2015, earning record profits and expanding from two OS platforms to four with the Apple Watch and Apple TV. That it all seems to work as well as it does, more or less, may seem a miracle to some. How many tech companies manage a similar effort successfully? Well, Google tries, but it is not a hardware maker, so the success or failure is left to other companies.

That all Apple’s operating systems seem to work well enough is a tribute to great engineering. Still, there is some degree of raggedness around the edges. Even the supposed fixer-upper releases, iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan, are not quite as good as they were cracked up to be. There are too many loose ends, particularly with the latter, and there’s always hope another maintenance update or two will set things right.

There’s also unrealized potential. While the Apple Watch appears to be getting a high customer satisfaction rate, when I talk to tech journalists and have them tell me they would not have bought one if they didn’t need it for their work, I have reason for concern. Except that the iPhone wasn’t fully realized the first time out either. How soon we forget.

What’s more, some might believe that the iPad’s capabilities are not fully explored or enabled yet. It’s more than just a consumption device, but won’t be a consistent productivity tool until a wider range of apps come out. Being able to write a blog, a novel, or a long letter on one isn’t enough. Drawing great illustrations with an Apple Pencil does portend the possibilities for more.

To be fair, I am typing most of this column on an iPad Pro with Apple’s Smart Keyboard. I severely wish there was a better keyboard to be had. I’m still looking, and I ended up doing the final editing on my iMac.

So for 2016, I’d really like to see Apple make a greater effort to expand iPad developer opportunities, particularly when it comes to productivity apps. Perhaps the relationship with IBM will continue to bear fruit. It sure seems to be helping Mac sales possibilities. I also expect to see the successor to the iPad Air 2 gain Apple Pencil support. There seems to be little logic in restricting it to the most expensive model. (And please make the spacebar on the Smart Keyboard less awkward.)

There are published reports that an iPhone 6c is poised for lunch this spring. This would be a welcome development, because it does appear that many potential customers find the larger iPhones to just be too large. The reports describe a hardware configuration similar to the iPhone 6s, which would be quite promising. It would be interesting to see where it would be situated in terms of cost. I would like to think it would be similar to the iPhone 5c in relation to the iPhone 5s; $100 cheaper.

Of course, the tech media will claim it will be a failure, as they did with the iPhone 5c, even though whatever evidence exists of its sales demonstrate it did rather well for what it was. But once a story gains traction, facts don’t matter. Many people still do not realize that Apple Maps has grown way better over time, or that the flawed iOS 8.0.1 release in 2014 was only around for an hour or so before Apple pulled it.

I would also like to see how Apple intends to realize its plans to conquer the living room with Apple TV. While touch, Siri and third-party apps paint a potential, I think Apple should have embedded 4K support. True there are still growing pains with the format, especially with the enhanced contrast and color features. Most of the affordable 4K TV sets mainly provide enhanced resolution and not much else. I’m sure Apple knows that, but offering 4K, with the ability to add the rest in firmware, might have made the fourth generation Apple TV seem more competitive.

One story has it that Apple will offer a fifth generation version next year that will incorporate 4K and other features. For this sort of product, I think that would be a mistake. Or at least Apple might, if possible, offer some of the enhancements in firmware for the existing model so it’s future proofed. Apple’s silence on the matter doesn’t help.

For Macs, the designs for the MacBook Air and the MacBook Pro are somewhat long in the tooth, so I’d be curious to see if the 2016 revisions are just processor related, or will include sleeker and lighter form factors. Since they are already impossible to upgrade, it won’t make a difference in repairability unless Apple comes to its senses and allows for RAM and SSD upgrades, and allows you to do them without going through a clumsy teardown process.

The iMac is new enough not to matter so much, but Apple could at least upgrade the hardware on the Mac Pro. Or produce a version that would offer more opportunities for internal expansion. That would be a welcome change!

Does Apple have yet another new platform to offer for the new year? Or is it going to be mostly about revisions to existing gear and operating systems? As they say, that and more remains to be seen. But it’s a little early for the rumor sites to get a handle what’s to come, though the possibility for that iPhone 6c does seem to make sense. Or at least it fulfills some customer wish lists.

You know, Apple could keep doing what it’s doing and no doubt remain successful. While there are lots of tech and industry pundits who believe they know better,  that Apple is constantly screwing up, sales and profits show otherwise. That doesn’t mean a company necessarily succeeds on the basis of quality — and I can cite Microsoft over the years as a notorious example — at least it’s evident they are doing something right.

In Apple’s favor are products that receive high customer satisfaction rates. Clearly, over, the years, people continue to enjoy their Macs, iPhones, iPads and even the Apple Watch. It helps that large numbers of Apple customers continue to buy the company’s products, and it’s this halo effect that has reportedly helped fuel demand for buying additional gear.

But to say Apple is necessarily perfect is unrealistic. While it’s quite possible Apple doesn’t have to change a thing and remain successful for a long time, there are nonetheless reasons to feel frustrated at some of the things the company is doing. I’m not one to pretend I know better, but I’m still concerned.

So in yesterday’s column, I complained about the fact that you cannot upgrade RAM on most Macs, and the same is true for replacing the drive on recent note-books. Macs last longer, they are supported longer by OS X, but important upgrades are impossible for most products in recent years.

Now on the upcoming episode of The Tech Night Owl LIVE, I will interview iFixit’s Kyle Wiens on which gear is easy and which gear is hard to fix. Now Kyle has learned a thing or two over the years about tearing down and evaluating tech gear, and he and his crew will also catalog the parts during the disassembly process. So I accept him as an expert in repairability.

In the course of this discussion, which was taped shortly before this column was written, I asked him whether Apple would give up much in terms of thinness and low weight if they added RAM upgrade capabilities to models that no longer had it. But consider that the previous Mac mini and the current Mac mini use the same case design. The previous model was relatively easy to upgrade, while the current model is impossible. Apple made a user-hostile decision.

With other models, you might have to make some of them barely thicker, probably not to any noticeable degree, and a tad heavier, to allow for upgrades. The cost of additional parts should be insignificant. You’ll want to listen to the episode to learn more, but it’s clear to me that Apple’s priorities about upgradeability do not consider customer convenience.

Now one of the reasons I do not use an iPad regularly is the limit placed on the sort of apps you can  buy for Apple’s mobile gear. This is a reflection of another choice, which kinds of apps are allowed in the App Store. Apple uses sandboxing to wall off apps from one another. This is done in the interests of security, though there are “entitlements” that allow for some level of inter-app communication.

So would allowing developers to release apps that capture audio from other apps present a security problem? That’s just one example, and I don’t have the answer, but I do believe Apple could design iOS to allow for such additional entitlements without making your gear less secure. The same is true for OS X, where the are also severe limits to the type of apps you can buy from the Mac App Store. At least on a Mac, developers can set up their own online stores, or post their software elsewhere. So long as they use Apple’s developer certificates, an app can be installed without forcing you to jump through an extra hoop to allow it to open.

Now that Senior VP of Worldwide Marketing Philip Schiller has been given control of the App Stores for all platforms, perhaps he’ll consider asking his developers to devise ways to loosen restrictions in ways that will expand the possibilities.

I do think that the iPad can become a more productive tool with the right apps and iOS features. Perhaps Apple will find a way. There have already been improvements, but the iPad Pro, to me at least, still has loads of unrealized potential that may be limiting its value to some customers. Maybe it’s losing sales. I don’t know, but I would not consider buying one if I didn’t receive it for review. At least not yet.

For 2016, I’d like to see Apple hammer away at the bloated mess that’s iTunes. It’s hard to find people who really like everything it does and the way it does. There ought to be some serious rethinking for the next version. Apple Music also remains cluttered and could use improvement.

I’m very troubled whenever I read about lingering bugs with iOS and OS X. With a big public beta program, surely Apple has received feedback about many of the problems that still plague its operating systems. So why aren’t they being fixed? In my case, Mail for El Capitan still stalls for a half minute or so every so often. If there’s something I could do to fix the problem, I would. I have rebuilt the mailboxes, one remedy suggested, without result.

If there’s one New Year’s resolution Apple might make for 2016, it would be about paying more attention to the needs and concerns of its customers. As the product lines expand, the present issues may only get worse.