One thing is certain: There are commentators and industry analysts who appear to be spending unreasonable amounts of time waiting and hoping for Apple to fail. It has become an imperative to some who still cannot believe the company can continue to report higher iPhone sales, or even higher sales of Macs for that matter. Record sales and profits? Just a blip, and soon the company will return to — something or other.

This mantra has been repeated year after year, and you wonder whether some of these people are actually interested in talking down Apple’s stock to engage in some shady transactions. Not that I’m asserting that to be true, but it seems curious that Apple is getting more scrutiny than other large companies, and is taken less seriously. Compared to Google? Microsoft? Isn’t Apple doing better when it comes to revenue?

Google earns more than 90% of its revenue from one service — targeted ads — but Apple is still regarded as essentially a one product company since the iPhone delivers over 62% of revenues according to the last quarterly financials. But even if you subtract the iPhone from the mix, Apple is still larger than Google.

A main argument is that, even if Apple stays on a growth curve, the rate has to decline. There’s no way around that, as only so many people can afford a premium smartphone, and only a portion of those will choose Apple and iOS over Android. I’m omitting the other platforms since they are largely irrelevant in the scheme of things. That must be troubling to Microsoft, which has rejiggered its mobile phone strategy several times, and little seems to be happening even though Nokia smartphones are actually pretty good overall.

To some degree, this attitude is the result of what Apple actually did — 20 years ago — which nearly destroyed the company. No doubt most customers of Apple gear didn’t do business with them in those years. The iPod, the iPhone and the iPad brought tens of millions of new customers to the company. It’s fair to suggest that if Apple hadn’t made changes that started with the purchase of NeXT, and the return of Steve Jobs to the company in late 1996, there might have been no Apple to kick around anymore. We’d mostly be using Windows PCs and BlackBerrys.

What is most curious is the way some demand that Apple fire Tim Cook because of his alleged shortcomings in running Apple. What is conveniently forgotten that Cook has basically run Apple for years. Yes, he formally assumed the CEO spot in 2011, but he had been working on and off as a temporary CEO for several years prior to that due to the ongoing illness of Steve Jobs. During that period, Apple achieved its greatest successes, which included becoming the largest tech company on the planet.

You see the disconnect. How can you successfully argue that the person who headed the company during its most successful period is not competent to do the job? Just about any other tech company would love to have someone at the helm with that record of “failure.”

Beyond the financial successes, the typical arguments made against Cook are that he is introducing products that Jobs would never have accepted. They base that, in part, on comments Jobs would make from time to time disparaging a product or a specific feature. So when Apple released the iPad mini, you recalled Jobs’ comments about needing to sandpaper your fingers to work on a tablet with a small display. But the smaller iPad’s 7.9-inch display offered a lot more screen real estate than the typical 7-inch tablet. Remember, too, that Apple uses a standard 4:3 aspect ratio rather than widescreen. The advantage is especially important when it’s used in landscape mode.

When the Apple Pencil was introduced, the critics wanted to remind you that Jobs said that the need for a stylus on a touchscreen was evidence of a design failure. But the iPad Pro is still designed for you to interact with your fingers. The Apple Pencil is a precision device that is used for marking and drawing in ways you cannot do by finger painting. Recent interviews with Jonathan Ive have indicated as much. To Apple, it’s a logical extension of the abilities of a tablet, particularly for architects and other content creators.

I do recall a financial conference call back in, as I recall, October 2004. Apple executives were asked about making a cheap Mac. The response was sharp. Apple doesn’t build cheap gear.

Maybe that was fundamentally true, but the Mac mini, selling for $499, was introduced at a Macworld Expo keynote the following January. So was Apple lying, just misdirecting us or competitors about the real plans, or was the Mac mini simply not considered to be in the same class as other PCs?

The argument that Jobs was always perfect and Cook not so, particularly in light if chronic iCloud failures and lingering bugs in iOS and OS X, is misleading  Operating system upgrades have always been troublesome — for any company — and it often takes a few updates for things to calm down. No, it’s not specifically Cook’s fault any more than it was Jobs’ fault for problems that occurred on his watch. Either way, Apple could and should do better, but that’s no reason to fire the CEO.

I assume that most companies are in business to make profits. Sure, some might want to save the planet, but at the end of the day, if revenues and profits aren’t up to snuff, a business might go under. Well, maybe not Amazon, which manages to somehow prosper despite reporting barely any profit over the years. But look at the terrific cash flow!

I’m not about to evaluate Amazon’s business model. The company continues to expand, although the promise of one-day delivery hasn’t arrived in the slum of a neighborhood in which I live. Regardless, Amazon is happy, Wall Street is happy, and if everything doesn’t come crashing down on Jeff Bezos, that’s just fine. He also owns the Washington Post, by the way, and that property appears to be doing well I hear.

When it comes to selling tech gear, the critics want volume above everything, even if there are no profits in it. This is the source of the complaint that Apple isn’t doing well against Android, because it’s a distant second overall. It doesn’t matter that the iOS versus Android share in the U.S. is very close, or that iOS is gaining against Android around the world.

With PCs, it’s still true that Macs remain in the single digits around the world when it comes to market share, and the low double digits in the U.S. Windows won the OS wars years ago. Nobody disputes that, but Apple’s product line sits at the upper end of the price scale, which means each Mac sale accounts for a lot more money than the sale of the average Windows PC. Curiously, Microsoft’s new Surface tablet/PC/whatevers are relatively costly as such things go. Some configurations are even pricier than a 15-inch MacBook Pro. Curious indeed, or perhaps Microsoft is smart enough to know where the money is, even if volumes still aren’t terribly high.

I mean, you have to wonder how a company can make much or any profit when selling a PC for $400 or less. It’s not happening, but these companies, blissfully ignorant of reality, continue to push these things upon us in a declining market. At the same time, Macs have outgrown the PC market for years. Do you remember when Apple could barely manage moving a million Macs a quarter, and even less? Now it’s over five million.

Let’s return to the iPhone, which has really sucked the profits out of the smartphone industry.

So according to Canaccord Genuity, and investment bank based in Vancouver, Canada, Apple took some 92% of the profits in the smartphone industry in the June quarter. That number ticked up to 94% in the last quarter. Somehow Samsung managed 11%. That doesn’t quite come to 106% because some other companies actually lost money from smartphone sales.

On the surface, at least, it would seem that there is really no reason for any company other than Apple and Samsung to build them. Well, on the surface at least, though I suppose other companies hope that, if they keep on keeping on, they will be in a position to gain market share, revenue and profits if Apple or Samsung falters. Call them stalking horses.

Then again, if a company is otherwise profitable, not losing or earning very much in the way of profits from a mobile handset division still allows a company to stay the course. So if a product hits the mark, perhaps things will change. But the critics that insist Apple cannot be successful because they aren’t dominating many markets, well except for tablets and, evidently, smartwatches, aren’t really paying attention.

When it comes to profits, Apple remains unmatched. Sales, aside from the iPad and the iPod, continue to grow. Sure, I have little doubt growth rates will continue to flatten. Mac sales increased by only a few points in the last quarter, though sales fell for most of the other PC makers. Despite the potential to grow in emerging countries, iPhone sales cannot increase at their current rate without creating an impossible situation where everyone has one.

Sure, the pressure his high for Apple. Customer expectations are high. Industry expectations are high. Even the slightest indication of a miss, or an unsuccessful product, would attract the vultures. There are still folks who want to insist that Tim Cook is incapable of running Apple, though the financials and customer acceptance of new products appear to be off the charts.

Apple still has a lot to prove, and it would be nice if new operating systems were more stable at the outset. Although the situation seems pretty stable with iOS 9, OS X El Capitan is definitely not getting the love. It rates barely 2.5 stars at the App Store, with customers continuing to report performance issues and other glitches. True, some of that may be due to third-party apps, and aren’t Apple’s fault. The OS has been out less than two months, and I know developers are still working to make their software compatible.

An El Capitan 10.11.2 update is under development, with both developers and public beta testers getting seeds on Tuesday. Perhaps that’ll fix many of the remaining problems that are causing havoc for some users. We’ll see. But I would hope that Apple will find a way to get a better handle on bugs before an OS is released.

After Tim Cook suggested that we no longer needed a PC, and an iPad was just the ticket, some people took his words out of context. So was he telling us that Macs or PCs were now passé? Yesterday’s news? Certainly that fact that Cook boasts that he no longer takes a Mac with him on his travels was compelling. This is a busy executive who asserts that his iPad Pro and his iPhone (presumably an iPhone 6s Plus) were all he needed when he left his office.

As a practical matter, perhaps he’s correct, for him at least. But it is hard to dismiss the clear marketing connection. Maybe he is just trying to salvage falling iPad sales, even if it comes at some level of inconvenience to him. Sure, he can crunch numbers in Numbers, and even use Microsoft Excel if he’s a mind to, if only to see how the other half lives. With the Smart Keyboard, he should be able to conveniently manage all his emails and messages to his staff, and the Apple Pencil can surely suit if he wants to jot down a quick note.

You see, I am trying to explain the reasons for his decision. What bothers me, however, is why the media seems to want to take him at his word and not consider the all-too-obvious ulterior motive. Again, I’m not disputing his contention, just raising an obvious but unprovable point. It’s not we’re going to force Cook to take a lie detector test, but I am concerned over the fact that the media seems to be afraid to ask him tough questions. Well, maybe it’s because they don’t want to lose access, since he grants so few interviews, and publishing one is guaranteed hit bait!

But is that the end of it? Not by a long shot.

You see, the media was so ready to jump on Cook’s statement about the death of the PC industry that they failed to realize the entirety of what he meant. For some people, yes the iPad is a practical PC — or Mac — replacement. For others, it’s not.

In a recent interview, Cook also dismissed suggestions that Apple might be working on a so-called convergence device, one that would bridge iOS and OS X. His response is that it wouldn’t happen, which expands upon his remarks some time back about the folly of merging a toaster oven with a refrigerator. Cook believes that the so-called convertible note-books offered by some PC makers, which combine a traditional portable with a removable touch display, are compromises that do not satisfy the needs of the customer.

In short, Apple is interested in building the best iOS device and the best Mac. He admits there will be features that are available for both platforms that perform similarly, and he cites such integration features as Handoff that allow you to start a task on one Apple device, such as your iPad, and continue working on it with your Mac.

Indeed, the feature, part of Continuity, debuted last year on iOS 8 and OS X Yosemite. Supposedly Handoff works more efficiently on iOS 9 and OS X El Capitan, but it’s not quite perfect. What’s more, Macs released before 2012 are excluded because they lack the required Bluetooth LE hardware. So you get what’s essentially half a loaf if you want the full capabilities of Continuity — unless you buy a new Mac.

Regardless, it’s clear Apple’s strategy is to offer a selection of devices to cover a variety of customer needs, not just some sort of compromised product that sacrifices usability just to fit someone’s unproven marketing plan. Besides, it’s not at all clear that large numbers of people are clamoring for this tablet/note-book offshoot, although there are plenty available. At the very least, you have something that costs extra because of the extra capability.

Also, it doesn’t mean that Apple won’t someday find the need for convergence. Quite often Apple executives disparage someone else’s product at the same time they are working on their own solution.

It’s also true that the operating systems themselves will move closer together, even if they don’t merge. The new Split View features of iOS are more or less matched on OS X. iOS is taking on more productivity features, and it may well be that it will seem more Mac-like while optimized for both touch keyboards and physical keyboards. It may also be that, as Apple suggests, the iPad is a viable PC replacement for many users.

So the market itself may inevitably move Mac users to iPads. This goes back to the statement by Steve Jobs that likened the PC to the truck. Of course, in the real world, trucks and SUVs, utility vehicles, tend to outsell passenger cars. But when it comes to personal computers, perhaps customers will over time value the convenience of a tablet, perhaps with an attached keyboard, and migrate. Maybe the iPad Pro, which actually offers performance that matches at some traditional note-books, is a major step in that direction.

Again for some people.

But not for me, since I cannot handle my workflow, which includes recording and editing my two radio shows, on any iPad. A key reason is lack of a suitable app to capture Skype audio, such as Rogue Amoeba’s Audio Hijack. Apple’s sandboxing feature is required on iOS, and it blocks audio capture schemes of that sort. Even though Audio Hijack doesn’t make it to the Mac App Store for the same reason, you can still get it from the publisher’s site. If and when iOS allows such apps to be accepted, things might change. The lack of direct access to the file system — without a clumsy third-party app — is also a huge impediment.

If such changes occur in the next few years, I might have reason to give up on the 27-inch iMac and embrace some sort of iPad of the future. But not yet, and it’s clear Apple isn’t in favor of shotgun marriages between the two platforms.

Some stories never go away. There are still bloggers, both financial and tech, who proclaim Apple dead and buried, or designated to fail real soon now. They’ve been saying that for years, prompting The Mac Observer to post occasional “Apple Death Knell” articles from time to time. What is clear is that the company must follow a different, tougher set of rules. Every single product or service must be an instant success or that’s it. Kaput!

Of course, just about every company has its failures. How many products and services has Microsoft cancelled or relaunched because they didn’t do so well? Yes, Windows and Office remain pretty successful despite the PC sales slowdown. The Xbox may not be the number one game console nowadays, but it does well enough, even though Microsoft suffered from multibillion dollar losses before it became profitable. But how many people assert Microsoft is doomed? Well I have, half seriously, written installments of my own “Microsoft Death Watch” from time to time. But I recognize the successes and the failures.

Yes, it is true that, some day, but probably not very soon, Apple will fail big time in launching a product or service that might cripple the company. The decline of the PC market may really hurt Microsoft going forward, which is why they are trying to focus on products and services that also embrace other platforms. So there are really good versions of Office for OS X, iOS and Android. It only makes sense not to depend fully on operating systems, and certainly not on mobile phones. And I’m sure Apple is looking at the time when the iPhone isn’t such a significant factor in quarterly revenues.

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