There’s an assumption on the part of some people that Mac users are mindless dweebs, people who will loyally follow Apple Inc. over the edge of a cliff to prove their loyalty to the platform. Facts don’t matter to them, it’s claimed. So if Tim Cook says a new Mac feature is the bee’s knees, they must believe it because — well because…

Now if you’ve seen Mac users debate over the value of a particular feature, or why a feature is not included in OS X, not to mention the latest problems they’re having with their computers, you’ll see anything but conformity. But nothing matters when a media pundit has an agenda to advance. Besides, putting Apple or Mac or iPhone in the headlines is sure hit bait.

So that takes to a certain deluded blog commenting on six alleged Windows 10 features that “Mac users wish they had.”

Understand the blogger doesn’t actually mention any actual survey to demonstrate what features we want. That would get in the way of writing long passages of useless drivel.

So what are these supercalifragilisticexpialidocious features that we crave anyway, and why would we crave them? And if you’re wondering why I’m not linking to the article, stay with me. It’ll be obvious before long.

So the first alleged feature we must “crave” is a Universal app? What’s a universal app? Well, in Microsoft’s parlance, it’s an app that will work on a Windows PC, a tablet, or a smartphone using Windows 10. That way you only need one version of the app. This is part and parcel of Microsoft’s kitchen sink approach, where they decree that traditional PCs and mobile gear must be one.

Now a “Universal” app isn’t necessarily a unique concept. Some iOS apps are coded for both iPhone and iPad, and will support the platform on which they are installed. But here’s the dirty little secret that ill-informed blogger doesn’t grasp. If all the code is in one app, even code that you don’t need for your particular device, it takes up a lot more space. Now it’s reported that Microsoft’s app store will only provide the version you need for your gear when you download a copy, so you aren’t stuck with a fat app. But developers only have to build one.

So why do Mac users care? Well, they probably don’t.

The next feature we supposedly “crave” is the Cortana digital assistant. This is Microsoft’s answer to Siri and Google Now. It’s supposedly pretty good, though it’s questionable whether it really suits a desktop PC, particularly in an office setting where people stating their wishes aloud, and listening to Cortana’s responses, will only disturb their colleagues in the next cubicle.

Should Apple put Siri on a Mac? They can if they choose to do so, but I suspect they understand the potential hazards, particularly as they continue to expand Macs in the business world as the result of that IBM marketing deal.

Yet another feature we must “crave” is a Start menu. Now Microsoft has had a Start menu of one sort or another for 20 years. I suppose some Mac users might want one, but not many. This is something that a third-party could create if there was a demand. Indeed, the Windows 10 Start menu revision, which combines the traditional version with a collection of Windows 8-style live tiles, is actually being replaced by some PC users with third-party alternatives that are closer to Windows 7 setup. So it’s not exactly getting the love.

Unfortunately our unnamed blogger makes a lame effort to explain why Mac users are somehow deprived without a Start menu. It ends up that he doesn’t really grasp the purpose of such Mac features as the Finder, the Launchpad, or the seldom-used Dashboard, and the Dock isn’t even mentioned. Maybe he read something about Dashboard once, and it stuck in some deep and dark recess of his memory, though he doesn’t seem to have a clue what it is or why it’s not used much anymore.

One Windows 10 feature that might be useful is the ability to stream games from your Xbox. All right, if gaming is your bag, and it’s true the Mac hasn’t been the best gaming platform. But whether games should be streamed from another device is an unasked question for most.

The final wacky claim is that Apple’s Safari browser is “flirting with irrelevancy.” That’s just not so. Any webmaster who gets traffic from Mac users knows that it still dominates the platform. No doubt Google Chrome is the runner-up, and how does that justify the statement that Mac users “crave” Microsoft Edge?

To be fair, I think the Edge browser has a good start, although it doesn’t exactly soar ahead of the competition in terms of speed and rendering quality. It also lacks some features, such as extensions or add-ons, which will likely be added later. It has promise, and I wouldn’t mind seeing a Mac version, but to assume Safari isn’t favored on the Mac platform is sheer nonsense. There’s no support for the claim, so we have one more example of someone hoping, dreaming, but mostly making up stories to justify an unproven point.

The final item is about a feature Apple “borrowed” from the Windows platform for El Capitan, dubbed Split View. It’s similar to Snap, and allows you to pin two windows side by side. Windows 10 lets you do it with four Windows, which might be suited for a large display, but not so much for the typical 11-inch or 13-inch note-book. But why should Mac users crave something they are already getting?

Do I need to continue?

You know the story. You wake up on a Sunday morning, turn on the “tube,” and rummage through many channels in search of something to watch. Since you have one of the higher tiers from your cable or satellite connection, you have plenty of listings. You may not have even heard of many of the channels, but you soldier on, catching snippets of unfamiliar shows while checking the Info screens to see if there’s something, anything worth keeping on, even for background noise.

This is not an unfamiliar scenario in the Steinberg household. While I’ve scaled down the selection to keep the price down — with an eye towards the latest and greatest discount deals they are offering to keep my business — I ran into just this problem before I wrote this column. It was all so frustrating, but finally I selected reruns of “Law & Order,” and there are 465 episodes to be found. And I’m not even including the spin-off shows.

The rest? Well we aren’t into sports that much (at least after the Dodgers left Brooklyn when I was very, very young). We have no need for children’s shows since our one-and-only son is pushing 30, and there are no grandchildren.

Continue Reading…

So if you’ve put good money into Apple stock, you might be feeling discouraged of late. The price is down, back to the level achieved at the beginning of the year. So it’s understandable that Apple’s critics are busy explaining why the company is in serious trouble. After all, shouldn’t a successful company have a high stock price, one that’s growing by leaps and bounds?

Well, stock prices, as anyone who has tried to invest will be forced to admit, are mercurial. Even people who claim to be able to make reasoned, profitable guesses about individual stocks or market trends will get things wrong from time to time.

In theory, you’d think a company’s stock price reflects its current sales, past sales and future prospects. In the real world, it doesn’t always seem to work that way, at least predictably. So just imagine Apple Inc. for the June quarter, reporting record sales and profits. The iPhone is doing great, Macs are doing great, way ahead of the PC industry. True, you can’t say much about the Apple Watch, other than the statements that Apple is pleased but won’t tell you, except in a general way, how many were sold.

All right, the iPad has seen better days, but the whole future of Apple is not dependent on iPads. It’ll still be a while longer before the product’s potential is known. Perhaps we’ll see this fall, if there’s a full upgrade cycle from folks who bought earlier iPads, and the new multitasking capabilities of iOS 9 may indeed combine to raise sales even further. That in addition to the marketing deal with IBM.

But none of that has happened yet, so you would wonder why it would impact the stock price now, but everything has gone essentially downwards since the release of Apple’s financials. Clearly investors were unhappy, or were taking advice from analysts who were unhappy.

So is something wrong with Apple?

Well, the guidance for the current quarter was said to be conservative, but that’s nothing new for Apple. They usually underestimate actual sales. It’s also expected that new iPhones will debut at the end of this quarter, so there may not be so much time to demonstrate a huge impact. Perhaps sales of current iPhones have slowed somewhat in anticipation of a new model, but that’s pretty typical.

Some analysts believe that Apple’s revenue is dominated far too much by the iPhone, and if anything slows sales, perhaps saturation of the high end of the market, Apple has to suffer since there’s nothing in readiness to replace it. The Apple Watch, whatever its long-term potential, is still too new to get a handle on how it’ll do this holiday season. Clearly Apple is making the right moves by upgrading the WatchOS with a number of new features that are also said to improve performance. Availability should be pretty decent, and you might even find the one you want at an Apple Store, or some Best Buys and other retailers.

So there may be possibly logical reasons for Apple’s stock price to suffer, but there’s also the illogical. You see, the price has had its ups and downs over the years. Sometimes it has nothing to do with facts.

In late 2012, rumors arose that the sales of the iPhone 5 had tanked, based on alleged reports of order cutbacks in the supply chain. Apple continued to report record sales, so where’d that come from? Indeed Tim Cook was quoted as saying you can’t take a single metric from the supply chain and get a handle own how well a product is doing. This is only logical as Apple may vary orders from different suppliers to manage inventory.

Despite the fact that there was no slowdown in iPhone sales, Apple’s stock price tanked in 2013 before resuming an upward, inexorable climb. Those who sold short, betting on a stock price falling, no doubt earned a pretty penny from the situation. But it all strikes me as suspicious. Apple’s stock price was forced down to enrich some greedy people at the expense of people who had a long-term investment in Apple.

I wouldn’t presume to guess why the stock price has dropped now. Some companies are betting differently on where it’ll go, suggesting it might fall, or rise somewhat, or rise a lot. No doubt it’s a pretty complicated situation.

If I were a rich man, I might take some chances, but certainly not on a company’s stock that I write about. It’s an ethnical decision and not just a cash-poor decision.

Since there’s little or no correlation between the stock price and how Apple is doing on the short-term, it hardly makes sense to assume Apple is in some kind of trouble. The financials demonstrate a highly successful company that continues to excel in smartphones and, at a time when PC sales are dipping, with Macs. Day-to-day stock fluctuations aren’t going to demonstrate much beyond the condition of the overall market on any particular day, or the decisions of financial speculators. Besides, long-term investors in Apple have made plenty of money despite the short-term fluctuations.

When iOS 8 rolled out last September, it was shaky. Updates came fairly quickly. One, 8.0.1, lasted barely an hour before Apple pulled it. You see, it nearly bricked an iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus by making it impossible to make calls and use Touch ID. Apple got a torrent of negative publicity as a result about this, but only a small number of users were impacted. A Restore would set things right.

The very next day, Apple rolled out 8.0.2, which fixed a problem attributed to a bad or defective “wrapper,” whatever that’s supposed to be. Regardless, the updated was in good shape, although some media pundits exaggerated the situation beyond belief. It’s not as if Google and Microsoft haven’t released broken updates. It also had little to do with any skepticism over Apple’s current management, since problems of this sort have occurred from time to time over the years.

Regardless, it was perceived that iOS 8’s issues resulted in fewer upgraders, with the migration rate falling somewhat behind iOS 7. To be fair, iOS 7 had far more visible changes, and thus may have been the more compelling upgrade. But there were other issues that reduced the download count. If you had an iOS gadget without a few gigabytes of spare storage space, an in-place update on your device might fail because there wasn’t enough room.

Apple’s choices about what information prompts to display weren’t helpful. The best solution, until Apple reduced the size of the updates, was to use a Mac or PC with iTunes. That installation process was more space efficient. For iOS 9, Apple is promising the upgrades will require roughly one third the space of iOS 8.

Yet another reason for lower upgrade numbers is that some older hardware was no longer supported. But even the older supported hardware may not be upgraded, simply because performance was known to be noticeably inferior. For iOS 9, Apple is supporting the very same hardware, but with the added promise it’ll be better optimized for the target platform.

Now when iOS 8 came out, the migration rate for iOS 7 had exceeded 90% of the user base. Based on the baggage of its successor, I predicted iOS 8 would exceed perhaps 80% by the time iOS 9 arrived.

Well, it seems my prediction was just a little off. You see as of this week, some 85% of those visiting the App Store, according to Apple’s stats, are using iOS 8. To be fair, people with older gear may not be as quick to visit the App Store, thus skewing the numbers and making them somewhat higher than the actual user base. At the same time, Mixpanel Trends, a mobile analytic firm, keeps a running total, and it’s exceeded 89%.

In contrast, the user base for the various versions of Android Lollipop is about 18%. That’s not at all bad for Google’s mobile OS, because of all the fuss and bother in deploying those upgrades to eligible hardware. So Google releases the update. It then goes to the hardware maker to customize for their products, after which it goes to the carrier who must do their own testing and customization since they often toss their own junkware onto those handsets.

But if any of Google’s partners decide not to bother, the update never becomes available. Here’s where it gets dicey, because if there is a security problem, most Android users will never see a fix. Indeed, most Android users never see any OS updates, or if they do, they will appear months after the actual release.

Yes, there are occasional reports of security issues with iOS, but Apple will deliver updates within days or weeks, most times, and they will be available to hundreds of millions of users. Forget about the argument about Apple’s alleged walled garden, and restricting you to a single software repository and somewhat restricted features because of possible security concerns. Imagine having a smartphone or a tablet that will never, ever, receive a critical security update, or even bug fixes. Never, ever!

This is not about whether Apple’s updates are always perfect, and we know they are not. But Google has a broken upgrade system. They promised some years back to do something to fix the problem, and nothing’s happened. The goal towards a supposedly more open mobile platform has shortchanged customers who deserve better.

Sure, most people don’t care about updating their gadgets, or even on doing any settings beyond the basics, such as configuring an email account. But when it comes to things that can hurt your experience, Google should be doing more to make the system work. Of course that requires the support of manufacturers and carriers. Maybe it would involve redoing contracts and such, and perhaps there’s the fear that some of these companies might go to Microsoft instead.

Or maybe this isn’t one of Google’s major priorities, and little that’s come from their executive team demonstrates a serious intent to fix the update problem.