As I await an opportunity to spend extended face time with the fourth generation Apple TV, I can already see a disconnect with the product and its reviews. There are certainly legitimate criticisms, but it’s also easy to put questionable value judgments on them.

So we have one review that, in essence, claims the product is completely flawed and mostly unusable. He cites voice recognition problems with Siri, login issues in setting up services after apps are installed, Bluetooth glitches, and the difficulty of using the remote flexibly.

There’s hardly much left. With all these apparent faults, it would seem that the Apple TV is a huge miss for Apple, a broken product in serious need of redesign. That, of course, assumes the article and the experiences cited are correct. Unfortunately, the piece comes from ZDNet, which is not always the most credible source for tech news.

To be fair, the writer might have purchased a defective unit, and merely exchanging it would eliminate some of the problems, but most seem to be the result of flawed software and not the hardware. Well, except for the Bluetooth issues. Since the writer didn’t attempt to confirm the conclusions with a second unit, it’s hard to know.

In contrast, Macworld’s Apple TV review was mostly positive. You might expect them to be biased in favor of Apple, but they do make sharp criticisms where necessary. My only concern is the fact that they didn’t mention the lack of 4K support, although that might change if the piece is ever revised. Maybe it’s not important to them, maybe they ran out of room and didn’t want to make the article too long. But this is a known shortcoming that must reviewers agree on.

Without enough time to explore the product, I won’t expand much on my concerns about ZDNet. But when one reviewer reports problems that aren’t fully confirmed by others, I wonder whether there are other factors at work there. It appears this unit was purchased and is not a review unit, meaning the software would be the actual release version. The only other area that concerns me is fretting over the fact that you have to login, separately, for each service you add. That is nothing new. When I set up Netflix on my third generation Apple TV, I also had to enter the login information from scratch. How else does Netflix know who is connecting to the service?

My real concern is whether the 2015 Apple TV vindicates Apple’s presumed plans to conquer the living room. The new features largely make it comparable with other set-top boxes that offer voice search and gaming. Perhaps Apple’s solution is sleeker, more elegant, but it hardly fixes the ongoing issues managing your entertainment gear. If Apple TV is meant to be your one-and-only set-top box, and there won’t be another box from a cable or satellite provider, a gaming console, or a Blu-ray player, that might be possible. But as soon as you have to deal with multiple gadgets, the core shortcomings persist. Apple hasn’t changed a thing, at least not yet.

Now as a harbinger of the future, perhaps Apple TV does have potential. If Apple eventually offers a TV subscription service that, when combined with a few subscriptions to separate services such as Netflix, offer all or most of the content you receive now with multiple gear, that’s quite another issue entirely. It might make sense for young people or new families, starting from scratch and hoping to survive on tight budgets.

I had hoped Apple would at least offer a solution to the multiple remote control dilemma. The only lip service played to the need for having several at hand is integrating the volume control so it works with your TV or audio system But the ZDNet review, if true, claims the volume cannot be controlled on Bluetooth headphones, which is a sad shortcoming.

My TV setup is fairly conventional as such setups go. I have a third generation Apple TV, a Cox set-top box, a VIZIO Blu-ray player, and a ZVOX sound base. I use a Logitech Harmony remote to make these devices work together, with varying degrees of success. Unless I hold it thus so, it will fail to switch on or switch off the correct devices. In fact, Barbara will often come ask ME to turn on the TV, because it regularly fails for her. At least I have the patience to click Help to let the Logitech attempt to sort things out when things go wrong. Or just turn the things on manually.

Other than going all-Apple, the newest Apple TV makes no effort to resolve such a dilemma. I realize Apple wants you to fully embrace its ecosystem, and I realize that will succeed for some. Or at least it has a chance when and if Apple offers its own alternative to cable and satellite television. But not yet.

I would feel more encouraged if Apple was more forthcoming about its game plan, but that’s Apple.

More and more auto makers are taking the drudgery — and some would argue the fun — out of motoring in your car, SUV or truck.

For me, it started simply enough. For my first nine years as a driver, I stuck with a manual transmission. That’s how I learned to drive, and I was quick and smooth about moving from gear to gear, assuming the vehicle was cooperative. For such an old technology, it’s surprising that some auto makers manage to build vehicles that are difficult to shift unless you really force the issue. I prefer butter smooth.

My approach, at the time, was to not just save money, but get the maximum performance and fuel economy from the cheap compact vehicles I chose to buy. Luxury cars were way off my radar, and not just because I couldn’t afford one.

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The usual tech blogs and mainstream papers have delivered their verdicts on Apple TV. For the most part, the early buzz is very positive. Some hope that Siri could be more flexible, but a major lapse appears to be the lack of 4K (Ultra HD) support. More and more lower cost TVs sport enhanced resolution, and the latest Amazon Fire TV and the Roku 4 include it as well. But Apple, so far at least, isn’t answering that need.

Unfortunately, it’s not as if Apple executives have been forthcoming about this missing feature in recent interviews. They focus on the positives, but for some reason I’m not seeing the lack of 4K being raised by journalists. Maybe I’m missing something, or maybe the responses ended up on the cutting room floor, but it seems to be a perfectly reasonable question.

It’s not that Apple would necessarily respond in the way you want. They might state that they do not comment on future products, a typical non-answer. But that would only be an admission that 4K has to wait for a future Apple TV refresh. Or Apple could have no comment whatever, which would be even more discouraging. There could also be the suggestion that Apple was looking at possible new features, or just explain why 4K might not be ready.

Not ready?

Well, yes, essentially all the major TV makers are offering 4K, with some models listing for less than $500. It seems a great incentive to jump in if you’re ready to buy a new set, but it’s not that simple. Yes, 4K offers four times the resolution as standard 1080p HD. But seeing the differences may not be so easy. It harkens back to the original Retina display argument, that it’s so sharp at a normal viewing distance that you can’t see the individual pixels. With 4K TV, consider the fact that you’d have to watch a 65-inch TV from a distance of no more than eight feet to see the Ultra HD advantage.

So unless you watch smaller TVs from a fairly close distance, 4K will do absolutely nothing for you. In the Steinberg household, Barbara and I usually watch our 55-inch 1080p TV in the master bedroom, lying on our bed. That puts us maybe eight or nine feet from the set. It’s not a large bedroom. If that set had 4K capability, it would be wasted.

The other 4K advantage is an enhanced color palette, with more and richer colors. That would provide a visible improvement. But the standards aren’t set in stone, and most of the cheaper sets don’t even offer HDR or any other color enhancements. Different TV makers that do, unfortunately, do it differently. This is clearly a disincentive for Apple to offer 4K, at least until things settle down.

As a practical matter, a 4K Apple TV, with support for the latest HDMI connection standards, would only offer a visible improvement to a small minority of potential customers. There’s very little 4K content to be had. Such services as Amazon Instant Video and Netflix don’t have much 4K fare available, and the high compression required to stream that content at a decent bit rate, compromises the experience even further.

Still, Amazon and Roku will provide a spec advantage over the Apple TV. It also raises questions why Apple hasn’t future proofed their new set-top box. Do they expect you to buy a new one next year — or the year after — when 4K support is inevitably added?

Maybe not. I’ve read several reports claiming that the A8 chip, which is being used for the new Apple TV, has 4K support baked in already. Apple would merely have to issue a firmware update to unlock that capability. But what about the current HDMI standards for connectivity to TVs and other gear? Can that be adjusted via a firmware update too?

I presume someone knowledgeable about such things would be in a position to speculate knowledgeably about the possibilities. If that’s true, maybe Apple will add 4K capability to the new Apple TV at a later time via a downloadable update, when the enhanced color standards are more consistent, or when they are prepared to offer 4K content in iTunes. I’m really shooting from the hip here, and I do not know for certain if this is something Apple considered when developing the fourth generation Apple TV.

But I would be surprised if Apple didn’t expect to keep this product around for a few years. Remember that the last Apple TV survived three years before the new model arrived. It wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense for Apple to release a major upgrade one year without a key feature, add it the following year, and expect you to replace the unit. I would like to think there is an end game here, and that we will eventually learn about it when Apple’s marketing people believe the time is right.

Or maybe not.

The critics say that, any day now, Apple will hit the limits on iPhone growth. Sales will flatten and will eventually begin to drop. Perhaps that’s already happened with the iPad, witness the sales decreases since 2014, after a four-year run-up. Of course, tablets represent a different issue entirely that’s outside the scope of this column.

Still, Apple has to prove itself each and every quarter. That the iPhone continues to gain against Samsung and other companies is evidently not so important. At one time, it seemed that Samsung was the unstoppable giant, until people decided that they weren’t so crazy about Galaxy smartphones despite all the praise lavished by some members of the tech press. Indeed, Consumer Reports continues to rate a Galaxy a tad higher than an iPhone, probably because it has more features. Less important to them is whether those extra  features really enhance the customer experience, or are merely window dressing to look impressive on bullet point charts.

In any case, Tim Cook attempted to give the financial community reason to be optimistic during the quarterly conference call. He cited two significant numbers that indicate the potential. One was the fact that 30% of iPhone sales in the September quarter went to Android switchers. And that’s mostly before the new Move to iOS Android app appeared in Google Play. That app eases the process of moving your stuff from Android to iOS.

But I do wonder how Apple managed to come up with that statistic, unless the numbers are based on some random surveys of new customers. It’s not that you have to tell them what you were using before you bought your first iPhone.

Unfortunately, probing but sensible questions of this sort are never asked by the financial community or the few journalists who are granted an interview with Apple’s CEO. But I will take it as accurate until I have reason to be skeptical.

Evidently that percentage has increased in recent months, and it may just be the result of the fact that Apple went to higher display sizes beginning with the iPhone 6 last year. That long-expected move essentially eliminated the key feature the competition offered that Apple couldn’t match. Yes, there are still wider ranges of display configurations on other smartphones, but a tenth of an inch or two is no big deal, although some desperate companies might want you to think it gives you a choice. To me, it’s a choice of confusion.

The other figure is of equal importance, and that is that only a similar percentage of iPhone users have upgraded to the newer versions. That leaves a huge opportunity for sales to people who are upgrading their gear, and maybe this will be that year. Despite the similar look, it’s been shown that the iPhone 6s actually offered far more new and enhanced features than its predecessor.

Cook also cites the sales opportunities in developing countries, particularly as they establish and expand LTE networks. This doesn’t mean Apple plans to cut the prices any, but evidently iPhones remain aspirational products that more and more people whose incomes are growing will consider.

Certainly the wireless carriers are doing what they can to entice you to upgrade. New lease-purchase schemes allow you to pay a monthly fee and upgrade your smartphone every 12 months, 18 months, or even two years without an extra charge. I think there are one or two plans out there that’ll support upgrades every six months, although that hardly makes any sense unless you are never satisfied. Apple also offers such a deal at their U.S. retail outlets, and that might be expanded to other dealers and countries.

In short, if you opt for such payment schemes, you will never stop paying. Well, amend that. You can continue paying without upgrading until the end of the contract, usually two years. You then own your iPhone free and clear.

Such purchase schemes help the industry as they look more and more towards upgraders to fuel smartphone growth, or at least keep it from flattening. A combination of upgraders and people buying a specific model for the first time might work for a time. So long as Apple can count on a decent number of Android switchers, that will also push growth, although a plateau is inevitable. Otherwise, they’ve have to sell an iPhone to everyone on Earth to keep going.

It does help Wall Street that Apple’s guidance for the current quarter is in the range of analyst estimates. If revenue matches those predictions, it’ll mean that the iPhone will continue to grow in the current quarter, though no doubt at a slower rate than last year.

I also wonder how long customers will tolerate the endless upgrade cycle. Obviously people are keeping their iPads longer than expected, which is just one of the reasons sales have fallen short. So how long can Apple keep coming up with compelling reasons for you to buy a new iPhone? Isn’t there a point where even two years will be too short?