So we have broad hints from Apple CEO Tim Cook about some future media-related venture of which Apple is to play a huge part. We have Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes saying he’s “pretty confident” that Apple plans to launch a subscription TV venture soon. The HBO division of Time Warner already has a subscription TV product, HBO NOW, which launched exclusively on Apple gear, although it will spread to other platforms after the initial three-month rollout period.

So if nothing else, it would seem HBO would be a part of that service, and the same is true for Disney and other services. Although it was originally reported that talks with NBC, owned by Comcast, broke down, it so happens that NBC Sports Live Extra recently debuted on Apple TV. That development comes after Comcast, who owns NBC, denied having talks with Apple.

Regardless, it does appear someone at NBC has been talking with Apple, so it stands to reason that other services from the network will turn up should this subscription service become a reality. But who takes denials seriously anyway?

In any case, even if there is an Apple TV subscription service, how will it differentiate itself from the competition? What will it offer that Sony and Dish network’s Sling TV aren’t offering that will set the pace for the market? What advantages can Apple offer?

One, I suppose, is the ability to save your selected shows in the cloud with on-demand viewing, so you don’t need a DVR. You just watch them when you want, but will you be able to watch traditional network TV as you do now, when it’s broadcast over live TV? What about skipping through ads, which can be a hit/miss process with other services? Questions! Questions!

It does seem that the traditional cable and satellite services are reacting. Sling TV has different levels of content, so you can pick and choose, but it seems that Verizon’s new offerings are less credible. I saw one estimate that a supposedly cheaper service, when fattened up to offer a broader range of content, ended up little cheaper than the existing services, at least according to one report from a tech journalist.

But that ends up being the major question about cord cutting. When you try to duplicate what you get from traditional services, the price suddenly doesn’t seem so cheap. Take, for example, Netflix, Amazon Instant Video and Hulu Plus. Buy a DVR and an antenna for your set, and add one of the no-frills subscription services along with HBO. Is it really much cheaper for a broad range of content? If you pick and choose and don’t need much to provide the TV entertainment you need, I can see where it makes sense, particularly if broadcast TV and the need for time-shifting that content are low on your list of priorities.

For people used to the range of TV content you get now, cord cutting may not make so much sense, though more granular selections of channels would be real nice. Yes, 400 channels and nothing to watch!

For millennials and others who can’t or don’t want to pay $100-150 for traditional cable and satellite TV, the options may make sense. If the Apple alternative cuts through the multi-service dilemma with an affordable alternative, that may be the breakthrough.

Still, how does the broadband bandwidth cap impact all this online content? As a practical matter, if you are judicious about how many hours a day you watch your TV using online streaming, and perhaps you rely on a regular antenna for some of it, it may not be so important.

Those who spend several hours a day in front of the tube, and who have more than one set, cannot possibly deal with the existing broadband Internet structure. Yes, I know some services advertise “unlimited” that remains “unlimited” unless you somehow exceed a hidden threshold. Otherwise, the normal way of watching TV can’t be done online unless you view content at a really low bit rate. For high definition, you’d hit the limit in days. For 4K video, maybe hours?

I’m still concerned over the fact that most of the stories I read about Apple’s subscription TV service don’t mention the Achilles heel of that scheme — bandwidth. It’s the dirty little secret that will somehow have to be addressed if Apple hopes to provide a workable alternative to the masses still subscribing to traditional cable and satellite TV.

Now I suppose Apple could make a deal with those companies, perhaps by installing their own servers in their datacenters. It wouldn’t technically violate any net neutrality prohibition since Apple wouldn’t be paying for a fast lane. All their content would come through within the same constraints as other content, only bandwidth wouldn’t be counted. But I’m only shooting from the hip here. Clearly there is a problem, and clearly Apple must know about it. How they choose to resolve that problem can only be speculated upon.

As to bandwidth limits: I can see the value on a wireless network, where the pipes can become saturated at a cell tower. That may also, in part, be true for traditional broadband when millions have Netflix running to binge a new show. Or maybe the ISP will just require more money for unlimited, and you’ll have to see if what you expect to save from cutting the cord isn’t eaten up by your higher Internet bill.

You just know that Apple’s marketing machine has been in full force trying to convince you that the Apple Watch is absolutely amazing, about to take over an industry that has, so far, not gone very far. Reviews present a more nuanced view. It’s a fashionable, trendsetting gadget, but somewhat rough about the edges.

Understand that I have not had direct exposure to an Apple Watch. But I read a lot about it, perhaps a large book’s worth, and I have examined the illustrations. So I know a fair amount on an academic level, and personal experience will come. There are things worth observing, however.

At first, I felt it would be easy to learn the new controls, such was Force Touch and the Digital Crown. But, based on what I’ve read and the information guests on my radio show have conveyed, it clearly takes time to understand what does what and which technique works better to accomplish a particular task. Worse, it appears that Apple turns on too many functions, particularly notifications, when the smartwatch is first set up. This may help reduce the learning curve at the expense of annoying people with too many distractions.

For the most part, problems appear to be software related. So when functions aren’t as responsive or reliable as they should be, it’s quite possible a software update will fix it. Sometimes moving your wrist to activate the display simply doesn’t work, and sometimes it appears the Apple Watch just stays on, sucking battery life, when you’re doing routine things that aren’t about glancing at your watch, such as driving. Perhaps a nuanced threshold setting would be useful to allow for the differences in the way people do things.

While Tim Cook was clearly proud of the fact that some 3,500 apps have been released for the Apple Watch, he didn’t mention the fact that they, in large part, appear to be buggy in key respects. Reviewers have consistently mentioned slow launch times as a typical symptom. In fairness to developers, they were pretty much flying blind in producing these apps, since it was done in large part without actual access to an Apple Watch. So one expects ongoing software updates will help.

Now the basic setup instructions appear to be clear enough, offering so many features in a version 1.0 device may have served the marketing purpose of demonstrating how the Apple Watch beats the competition, but at the expense of making customers more confused.

As I read this material, I thought about the release of the very first iPhone, which also introduced you to new ways of doing things. But there was no Force Touch, no Taptic Engine, and the Home button was pretty intuitive. Ditto the volume controls that were similar in layout and function to other mobile handsets. The Sleep/Wake button was easily mastered. But the Digital Crown is a multifunction control, although that’s not unusual for a watch. The side button also reminds me the of the extra buttons on a chronograph.

The user interface, though described as fluid, also exhibits the consequences of taking a tiny screen and making it do lots of things. It just takes longer to get accustomed to how things work, and that’s to be expected. Could Apple have made it simpler? I’m not an interface designer.

Understand I am not trying to review a product I haven’t used. Instead, I’m trying to look over the shakiness of the Apple Watch and understand what it might mean.

Again, Apple is trying to do things that haven’t been done before, at least not on a device of this sort. There are a number of other smartwatches out there, but they don’t seem to have been as carefully engineered. Pebble works well by doing less, so there’s not as much to learn.

The biggest problem is that, when customers want to show off their new purchase, it may not always work the way they expect. This is particularly true if the display doesn’t activate with a wrist motion.

As more and more people get an Apple Watch, and Apple fields tech support questions, I expect software changes will be made to make the setup and usability process smoother and simpler. When I read of skilled tech journalists saying it took about a week to get accustomed to how things work, I wondered how many people would put up with the process. Understand a Mac is a whole lot more complicated to use, and don’t get me started with Windows, but we’ve had decades to get used to making those things work, but people still have problems.

Isn’t a watch supposed to be simple? Even then, some want more, such as the ability to monitor your sleep and, of course, a longer-lasting battery. There is even a published report claiming that people with tattoos on their wrists might find that the Apple Watch is less sensitive. We’ll see.

Meantime, the general sense I get from the articles I’ve read is that Apple Watch has a few glitches and, while a beautiful timepiece, is not as yet indispensable to your digital lifestyle.

Of course, I could say the same about the first iPhone.

As expected, iPad sales continue to decline at a fairly large pace. To those who thought the skies were the limit with Apple’s tablet computer, and that it would soon take over the PC world, well customers clearly have different priorities. So after a few years of large sales increases, they began to stall in 2014, and the pace of decline only increased in the March quarter.

Now in the scheme of things, selling 12.6 million units of everything is nothing to apologize for. But how the iPad has fallen? The question is why and whether Apple’s hopes and dreams for some stability and sales growth will come to pass.

Or is the tablet market already saturated?

One key element is the replacement factor, and how often iPad owners really want to upgrade. I could see this on a personal level when I received an iPad Air 2 to review from Apple. My wife’s iPad 3 was her constant companion. Knowing it might be a bad move, I handed her the new model to see her reaction. She remarked that it was thinner and seemed faster, but no so much for the sort of things she does, which include Safari, Face-book and her latest boards on Pinterest. None of these tasks really stretch CPU horsepower, so while apps launch more quickly, it wasn’t enough to tempt her to suggest I buy her one of these.

So the return to her own iPad, while quite a bit heavier, wasn’t the sea change you might have expected. I cannot take a survey of one and apply it to a couple of hundred million iPad owners, but I wonder if the changes Apple has made to the iPad are yet sufficient to feed a substantial upgrade cycle. All right, there’s Touch ID and better front and rear cameras, but taking snapshots isn’t necessarily the iPad’s forte.

But if people aren’t upgrading in huge numbers, what about earning new customers? So when Apple talks of first-timer rates of 40% to 70% in the current sales figures, depending on the country, clearly there’s life left in the platform. So perhaps there will come a point where it will come full circle, and owners of older iPads will really decide they must have a new one.

There’s also the cannibalization factor. In his responses to questions during Monday afternoon’s quarterly conference call with financial analysts, CEO Tim Cook said that potential iPad sales were going, instead, to the iPhone and the Mac. I can see the former, where the iPhone 6 Plus, the phablet, has become a proper convergence device for many. Although Apple doesn’t break out figures by model for the iPad, I would think that would hurt sales of the iPad mini. Perhaps that’s why the last refresh was so modest?

I can also see why people, in search of a PC, would just choose a Mac. The iPad may have a display size that’s almost good enough, if you consider the Mac note-books from the 1990s, it’s still very much blown up iPhone without the phone, or a blown up iPod. Apple hasn’t improved multitasking for the larger form factor, and you can’t run apps and multiple documents side by side. It’s still one app at a time, and that severely constrains your workflow.

Indeed, that’s a key reason, other than the lack of suitable apps, why I am not ready to attempt to do my work on an iPad. Recording and editing audio segments for my radio shows requires multiple apps running simultaneously. I capture Skype connections in Audio Hijack. They are edited in Sound Studio and Amadeus Pro, depending on what functions I’m using. Files are uploaded to the GCN network via Transmit, my favorite FTP app. When the shows are posted on iTunes, I use Sound Studio, Feeder and ID3 Editor to ready the files and update the feeds.

I write WordPress blogs directly in Safari, and work in both Microsoft Word and Apple Pages when I require traditional word processing tools. I still handle desktop publishing chores in QuarkXPress — I never did take to Adobe InDesign. While I don’t use it as often as I used to, I did help an author and publisher put a fairly large book into printable form last year.

While I have no religious attraction to any particular app to get my work done, I cannot handle such a workflow on an iPad. But if Apple got the multitasking house in order, perhaps developers would take the hint and make it a more productive tool.

So how does Apple help the iPad regain its luster? Well, what most of you regard as true multitasking is a must! Start with that, and perhaps more flexible ways to manage loads of files for various work-related functions. There are still rumors of a 12.9-inch iPad Pro that would be focused more on the enterprise and content creators. For it to be anything more than just a bigger iPad, Apple would have to deal with the limits of iOS in running multiple apps.

Does that make the iPad the potential PC replacement some expected it to be? I don’t know; I keep an open mind. But it’ll be a hard sell. I’ve been using Macs for more than 30 years, and maybe I’m set in my ways, but I would embrace a better solution.

Ahead of the release of Apple’s fiscal second quarter financials, the company’s stock market price was up, closing at $132.65, an increase of 1.82%. Clearly the financial community expected Apple to do well, perhaps better than analyst estimates. In the past, however, stock prices have often declined in after hours trading. This time, the stock price rose 1.24% to $134.30.

Despite the arrival of new flagship smartphones from Samsung, it’s questionable whether the South Korean conglomerate can gain much traction against the iPhone. In the March quarter, Apple remained the unstoppable juggernaut with sales that far exceeded estimates from financial analysts. Some 61.17 million iPhones were sold, compared to expectations averaging 56 million. It’s interesting to note that, according to CEO Tim Cook, some 20% of iPhone users had upgraded to the iPhone 6 or iPhone 6 Plus, so there appears to still be plenty of room to grow. And that’s before you factor in switchers from Android and other platforms.

In all, revenue totaled $58 billon, compared to analyst estimates of $56 billion, with profits of $13.6 billon, or $2.33 per diluted share. This compares to sales of $45.6 billon and a net profit of $10.2 billon, or $1.66 per diluted share, in the March quarter of 2014. Gross margins increased to 40.8 percent, a couple of points ahead of analyst estimates. Sales in China were up 71% over last year despite the heavy competition from Asian brands.

The June quarter outlook is for sales of $46-48 billon, way ahead of last year.

Mac sales continue to soar, with sales of some 4.56 million Macs, a 10% increase, compared to PC sales estimates of a contraction of 7% worldwide. In other words, Mac sales continue to outpace PC sales. Evidently the rush to ditch Windows XP, which fueled some increases in PC sales last year, is pretty much over. Microsoft can only hope that the arrival of Windows 10, promised for this summer, will fuel a new PC upgrade spurt. But don’t bet on it!

As expected, iPad sales continued to decline, with some 12.6 million sold (reflecting a sell-through of 13.7 million when inventory is counted), compared to 16.35 million in the year-ago quarter, a decrease of 23%. But there were some positive developments in the sea of declines, such as setting a new March quarter record for iPad sales in Japan,, and reaching an all-time record in China. Apple also reports that the iPad remains the number one tablet worldwide, and that it’s still number in the enterprise.

First time iPad buyers are ranging from 40% to 70%, depending on the country, with “off the charts” usage charts and customer satisfaction close to 100%. Cook claims iPad “is an extremely good business over the long term,” but won’t predict when the turnaround might come. Not mentioned is the alleged longer replacement cycle that some suggest is a main reason for iPad sales declines. This means that people are hanging onto their gear far longer before buying a new model.

Cook claimed they are “clearly seeing cannibalization” from the iPad to the iPhone and Mac. No doubt the success of the iPhone 6 Plus includes a number of people who might have otherwise bought iPads. But Cook says he expects the situation to stabilize going forward. The IBM partnership is said to still be in the early stages, but he expects to see the iPad play a huge part in that program.

All in all, however, I have little doubt that Apple is cherry picking the good news, and certainly there hasn’t been much iPad news of note since last fall’s release of new models. Rumors of a forthcoming 12.9-inch iPad Pro remain rumors. Even if such a product were to come to be, it wouldn’t happen for a while, though I suppose the business orientation of an iPad Pro could mean there will be news about it during the WWDC, if such a thing exists. I also expect an upgrade to the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display by summer, assuming quad-core Intel Broadwell chips are available in sufficient quantities. Apple clearly is benefitting from the continued growth of Macs despite the overall decline in the PC market.

Apple Watch will be available in more countries by June says Cook. While preorders and overall deliveries were not mentioned, he claimed that there are 3,500 apps available for Apple’s smartwatch platform, compared to some 1,000 apps originally expected at launch. Consumer response, he said, was “extremely positive,” close to 100%. It may not seem that way if you read the tech blogs, where glitches have been reported, such as slow launch times for third-party apps and other irritants. But perhaps those complaints are mostly confined to the early production units Apple seeded to selected members of the media.

Still, Apple didn’t say anything about actual preorders and deliveries. This is quite unlike the usual launch weeks for iPhones and iPads. Is that a harbinger of bad news, or just adjusting to the new ordering scheme, where most sales are being made online, and shipments are still backed up for weeks? But clearly Apple has real data out there that they could have revealed if they felt the news was better than analysts expected.

Cook also attacked third-party bill of materials estimates that claim to judge what it costs to make an Apple product. Cook said they’re usually off base, remarking “I’ve never seen one that’s even close to accurate”

For the money movers in our audience, Apple’s share buyback program was increased from $90 billion to $140 billion. The dividend was increased for the third time in the past three years, to 52 cents per share, with claims that Apple is among the largest dividend payers in the world.

All in all, Apple did extremely well. But I’m sure the critics will seize upon something to complain about. They always do, and the lack of meaningful information about Apple Watch sales might be a good start.