As some of you know, I’ve been a customer of cable TV since the 1970s. Yes, the 1970s (cable actually dates back to 1940), when it was all about delivering decent signals from far-away stations in small towns. Things didn’t begin to change until the FCC mandated that cable systems deliver original programming. In fact, I became host of a weekly press conference, a local variation of “Meet the Press,” at a cable station near Philadelphia. But I stupidly failed to follow up on an invitation from a Philadelphia TV executive to drop in and talk, and so I never made the transition from radio.

Or maybe that benefits the viewers somehow.

In any case, cable and satellite companies these days are finding it difficult to land new customers. More often than not, it’s about stealing customers from other services, and they all have special offers to make the move, although it usually involves a temporary discount if you agree to a 12-month or 24-month deal.

So we have so-called cord cutting, which means that customers quit cable and fend for themselves. Instead of having the comfort of a single coax cable and a set-top box to receive TV, you use several cables or a box that lets you access a bunch of services, such as an Apple TV or Roku. More and more TV sets advertise a “smart” capability, meaning they have apps that can access some of these extra services.

It can get real complicated when you want to save money.

One of the original cord-cutting services was Netflix, which was once merely a supplier of rented DVDs that, in fact, largely killed physical video rental stores in the U.S. But management was inspired to set up a streaming service that had, at first, mostly old TV shows and “B” movies, with a rare gem. It was a matter of the entertainment companies holding out for more money from traditional cable and satellite systems after DVD and Pay-Per-View dried up.

Netflix broke through by encouraging binge viewing of existing fare and producing original programming, such as “House of Cards,” and “Orange is the New Black.” More recently Netflix has added “Daredevil,” a dark reimagining of the Marvel comic book character, to the mix, and even brought back AMC’s “The Killing” for a short final season, and is resurrecting another cancelled TV series, “Longmire.”

But Netflix is mostly a supplement, not a replacement, for traditional TV services. So if you are cable-less, you might want to add Hulu Plus, which offers network programming, with limited ads, for a modest monthly fee. You can a;sp rent movies from iTunes and a handful of other services, and if you want broadcast TV, you get an antenna. Of course, if you’re too far from most local stations, you’re back to cable, and isn’t that how it all began?

The industry is aware of how things have changed, so even premium services, such as HBO and Showtime, are now into streaming; Showtime’s channel just premiered for a free 30-day trial on Apple TV. Dish Network’s Sling TV gives you a subset of the usual cable/satellite channel lineup, and there are multiple tiers for extra channels with the promise of one that will deliver local TV.

But if you hope to save money, be careful. Netflix is $8.99 per month for the “Gold” plan that provides HD for two screens. HBO NOW is $14.99 per month, and Showtime will be $10.99 after the initial trial period. Add to that $20 per month and up for Sling TV, Hulu Plus at $7.99 per month (plus Showtime for an extra $8.99 so you can avoid the standalone version), and it begins to add up.

And don’t forget your ISP’s bandwidth limits. It’s normally in the 250GB to 400GB range (Cox recently increased theirs to 2TB for higher tiers in several markets), so if you have a regular diet of streaming high definition video, expect to use it all up within days. There is no free ride, and you might be left paying an extra fee for exceeding your bandwidth allocation, or suffering from throttled service or no service if you’re a repeat offender.

If you’re annoyed at the interfaces provided by cable/satellite — and they are getting better though not quite at the TiVO level yet — imagine having to deal with several interfaces as you switch among services to find something to watch. The price of a lower monthly bill — assuming you don’t get carried away with the extra streaming services — is clutter.

Add to this the rumor that Apple is poised to introduce a streaming TV service, perhaps with a new Apple TV, in the near future. It depends on reaching deals with the entertainment companies, or maybe the cable companies too if Apple TV will be used as a cable/satellite front-end. A lot appears to be up in the air, but that would mean yet another interface and monthly payment to consider.

Apple clearly wants to have it all. So they’d likely want to pack as much content into a single service as possible, so you shouldn’t need anything extra. Well, except to sign up with Amazon Instant Video and Netflix for extra fare, unless Apple can steal away some of the programming. So don’t count Apple out.

As it is, I find the cable/satellite option more convenient, but it’s very easy to get carried away with the costly extras. The clever programing people will often spread channels willy nilly over different tiers to force you to buy more than you need to get the five or 10 channels you really want. Maybe cord cutting will persuade them to simplify the offerings, allow for more a la carte selections, and make it possible to stay with one service and still keep within a tight budget. That’s where competition makes sense, although, aside from Sling TV, I haven’t seen much improvement yet.

An article I read the other day asserts that Apple is merely bringing back Top 40 radio with Beats 1. I’ll get to that presently, but there’s another area in which Apple has taken an old feature and brought it back in a new dress. I’m referring to the Apple Watch and the Digital Crown.

Now when I look at my newly-acquired $12.88 wristwatch, I see an old fashioned crown, a tiny button at the right side of the watch that is used to set the time and the calendar date. It’s not smart enough to know about months shorter than 31 days apparently. One click for the calendar, two clicks for the time. When it’s in time setting mode, the second hand stops moving, giving me the chance to set the time as precisely as possible, and I have it running within a second of my iMac’s time display.

With the Apple Watch, Apple invented a Digital Crown, which physically appears to resemble the traditional version, and uses it for navigation. It’s a smarter substitute for pinch to zoom and other touch features that are available on a smartphone since, obviously, the display on a smartwatch is so much smaller. It’s the sort of attention to detail you won’t see on other contenders in this product space. Well, I suppose you will now.

In a sense, then, Apple attempted to design the Apple Watch so it closely resembled a regular watch, rather than provide some unique tech-savvy look. Why fix what isn’t broken?

Now when Apple Music debuted, the critics pounced on Apple for not reinventing the wheel yet again. So there are features that essentially mirror features you find on other subscription music services, only they are integrated with your Apple services, most particularly iTunes and the Music app on iOS. There is no successor to the Beats Music app except, of course, for migrating such features to Music.

What this means is that the service is totally integrated into your Apple user experience, and that makes it easier to get your 90-day free trial and use the service. Maybe you don’t care for the way the features are implemented, but they naturally follow from what you’re already accustomed to doing. That ought to make it easier to adapt to the new service, although it’s clear the critics don’t grasp that concept.

But the Beats 1 radio station takes me back a few decades, to the days when I first took a job as a radio disk jockey. While there’s less of a personal touch these days in music radio, particularly with stations that are merely branches of a large chain and share programming, clearly there’s an audience for old fashioned radio.

Well, old fashioned in the sense that, when dramas and variety shows went to TV from radio beginning in the late 1940s, broadcasters had to figure out what to do next. True, some radio dramas managed to survive until after 1960, such as “Gunsmoke” (which went to TV in 1956), but for most stations it was music and talk. In the 21 years I’ve been in the broadcasting business (there was a long interruption for reasons I won’t describe right now), I’ve navigated both worlds, but settled on news and talk after a few years when one station manager realized I could also write.

Now the arrival of Beats 1 is considered unique in one sense, but also a throwback to traditional radio. But SiriusXM satellite radio was doing it first, by hiring famous DJs for its music stations. A number came from New York City, such as “Cousin” Bruce Morrow, who is still doing his thing at age 79. In the old days, he hung out on WABC radio long before the station moved to talk. Music video personalities usually hang out on the 1980s channel, since that’s when the visual medium really came into its own.

Regardless, the shows are very old fashioned by delivering upbeat chatter, listener requests, and, of course, they routinely talk over the beginning notes of a music track. Indeed, when I listen to satellite radio, I feel that I’m back in the 1960s or 1970s, depending on the music genre I choose, and you can’t forget the “progressive rock” DJs who present various flavors of classic rock.

With Beats 1, Apple has hired a handful of famous DJs, added a few musical stars to the mix, and, as of now, provides 12 hours of live programming each day that consists of the usual patter, a mixture of old and new music, and, yes, you can send your requests by email or telephone. It’s enough to make you feel you’ve taken a trip back through time a few decades, although most of the music and the DJs are strictly from the 21st century.

Beats 1 is a smart move. It creates a community of live listeners in the 100 countries in which Apple Music is now available. It’s a focal point that isn’t being matched by other subscription services, although I expect it will be, since there are plenty of new and old DJs around who’d be delighted to take a worldwide gig that pays.

For now Beats 1 feels both old and new at the same time, and, if I cared for today’s music, I might even spend more than a few moments listening.

The way some tech bloggers put it, Apple has become the Big Brother depicted in George Orwell’s “1984.” Yes, the very first Macintosh commercial railed against conformity, largely against the IBM PC, but now that Apple has become so large, there’s a feeling on the part of some that Apple is taking unwanted control of your choices and your experiences even if they aren’t scraping your email to find fodder for targeted ads.

So when you buy an iPhone, an iPad, or a Mac — and now an Apple Watch — supposedly you have been imprisoned in a walled garden, and you are forced to accept the company’s choices on how to use your gear. Sure, it’s not easy to escape Apple’s mobile restrictions if you want to use apps that aren’t in the App Store. Instead you have to jailbreak your device, which can also make you vulnerable to malware-ridden apps.

But the App Store has an estimated 1.5 million apps. Sure there’s enough in that library to cater to most every need. Yes, I realize there are certain types of apps that aren’t allowed, in large part because they require system resources or forms of inter-app communication that Apple doesn’t support. An app to capture Skype audio is a notable example. But that’s not the result of a nasty trick to take control over your experience. No doubt there are legitimate security concerns that Apple needs to consider before such things are allowed.

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In addition to music library scrambling, a major complaint about Apple Music is that it’s not simple enough. There are too many features, and too much stuff is put in your face when you check the different music repositories, particularly New. And perhaps there’s not enough support, yet, for less-popular music genres. This means if you’re a fan of Taylor Swift — and I’m not one of those people — you’ll have no problem finding plenty of pop music for your listening pleasure. If you prefer classical, maybe not so much.

As Kirk McElhearn, Macworld’s “iTunes Guy,” tells me in an interview recorded for the next episode of The Tech Night Owl LIVE, Apple appears to be more concerned about the 80% of music listeners whose tastes aren’t well defined or who focus on more popular music genres. I suppose, then, that these people would be more apt to partake of the 90-day free trial and let their subscriptions auto-renew.

My feeling, though, is that devoted music lovers might be more inclined to invest time and energy into configuring Apple Music, and constructing playlists that are more nuanced, and thus would not want to throw it all away when renewal time arrives. At least that’s me.

The other issue is of greater concern. It’s understandable that the tracks you download via Apple Music are protected by DRM. After all, you’re renting them, not buying them. But it appears that DRM is also being attached to your own music that’s being managed through the service. Maybe this is a mistake, and one tech pundit suggests it may be part and parcel of Apple’s agreements with the music companies. That doesn’t sound sensible or logical to me. After all, why should you be prevented from playing music you already own on another device that isn’t covered under your Apple Music subscription?

I only hope this is just a mistake and that it will be handled. Or maybe it only shows up as protected on the device attached to your Apple Music subscription. We’ll see, but if not, there will be a hue and cry, not to mention threats of a class action lawsuit. That’s a real downer.

As to the service itself, there is already a structure for subscription music, since other companies, particularly Spotify, have established a robust market. While Apple often enters new markets with a product that might lack features in the very first version, that sort of approach isn’t possible for Apple Music. Apple has to one-up the competition, and it’s doing so in different ways.

So you have the typical iTunes approach, which is having established artists deliver exclusive content, such as Taylor Swift with her “1989” album. Another is seamless integration with existing iTunes music libraries including iTunes Match, or at least the promise of seamless integration. It’s Apple’s ecosystem, but one of the key complaints is that some music libraries are being scrambled when you enable the iCloud Music Library. One suggestion is not to use that feature, which is needed to sync your content. The repair otherwise might involve rebuilding your own iTunes library, or maybe this is something Apple needs to fix at the server end, and that might happen soon.

You have to expect early glitches with any new service. With a 90-day free trial, however, assuming most bugs are massaged out of the system over the next few weeks, customers will have plenty of time to get used to a well-oiled machine and thus will be inclined to renew. It’s very possible some people will just let that happen and not notice an extra $9.99 per month on their credit cards (or $14.99 for the family option). But you can disable auto-renew in your iTunes account whenever you want and deal with whether you want to continue to subscribe later on.

As to those complaints from the media that it’s just too complicated, maybe. Some features aren’t really obvious, but if you point and click and tap around a little bit, you’ll get most of it. If you’re not picky about every nuance of an interface being just so, you probably won’t care if tech pundits find a few issues. Apple Music has to be feature rich at the starting gate even if a few things aren’t well integrated or reasonably well implemented. It’s still a version 1.0 product, and Apple can make lots of visual and functional changes without ever touching the version of iTunes or Music for iOS that you’re using.

Meantime, Apple Music appears to be quickly adapting to my musical tastes, or at least those expressed after a few hours of listening and clicking Love icons. So I’m feeling positive about the whole thing, but I haven’t yet made the decision about paying for the service after the sampling period is done. Remember, I still believe in owning music, and nothing that Apple has shown me yet has convinced me to change my ways.