This is not an argument against freedom of the press. It’s not my intention to say that people shouldn’t be allowed to express their point of view within the normal common sense constraints, such as not defaming someone. What this means is that some go to wacky extremes in order to write something about Apple. Or at least to put Apple in the title even if the content is only superficially related to the content.

So we had a piece a blogger wrote last week, widely quoted, that was so far off base, the mind boggles. As of the last time I checked, the comments section was essentially right on about the problems. Yes, I did add one of my own; I couldn’t resist. In any case, it’s best to look at the silliness since it’ll likely be repeated elsewhere. Indeed, I expect the article’s research was largely limited to some online searches that appear to have produced curious results, without making any effort to validate the material.

I will, therefore, not include the title or the link, except to say that it got a high position in a recent listing from an aggregator of Mac-related content.

The first claim of any significance asserted that Apple would be working to add enterprise support in iOS 9. Take a minute to breathe! As most of you know if you’ve followed the development of business support in Apple’s mobile OS, you’ll see that such capabilities have been included in iOS for several years now, expanding from version to version. Apple continues to report that well over 90% of the Fortune 500 companies are testing or deploying iPhones. So to suggest Apple is somehow lacking in adding enterprise support is downright absurd.

What got me really concerned was the fact that the writer somehow believes that BlackBerry is still a leader in the enterprise market, not being aware, evidently, that the company’s sales have tanked for several years. Market share is in the low single digits. It appears to be only slightly removed from a rounding error.

I’m not suggesting BlackBerry is toast. Perhaps sales of services will count for something, and it does appear hardware sales have stabilized.

But I did feel when I read this material that the article was somehow written several years ago, before the iPhone started to gain traction in the business world. Or perhaps the author was lost in a time warp.

On to another troubling claim, and this one is a doozy.

When I read it, I had to look at the calendar twice to see that I wasn’t living in an alternate reality, because it was asserted that the iPhone 7 has been delayed. Delayed? What iPhone 7? As you know, no such product has been announced, and while there is some speculation Apple might move to a full version number revision for the iPhone this year, that would not be in keeping with the usual release timeframe. How can a product never announced be delayed?

Speculation about the enhancements for the next iPhone include Force Touch, which debuted on the Apple Watch, and is also included on the new MacBook and 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display. In passing, I expect all Mac note-books will have the feature before long, and it may even be included with Apple’s next Magic Trackpad, so iMac, Mac mini and Mac Pro users can also share the joy.

The next iPhone should have a faster processor, and perhaps the aluminum casing will be strengthened using technology first developed for the Apple Watch. While the BendGate issue was bogus, meaning the iPhone 6 Plus tests as decently immune from accidental bending, it doesn’t mean Apple wouldn’t want to make it stronger.

None of that is confirmed, and specs won’t be known probably till September, but at least the speculation has a logical basis to it.

But the actual look of the device doesn’t have to change, and even with these features, a better camera and a few other goodies, this fall’s refresh would likely be called iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. One set of rumors adds an iPhone 6c that puts all these goodies in a smaller package with a four-inch screen. It would cater to people who want to save some money and still get the convenience of the smaller form factor.

I realize that tech bloggers and industry analysts want to get in early on guessing what Apple plans for the iPhone this year. But it starts with understanding what has come before, and Apple’s usual approach for such product upgrades. Just taking a few unfounded rumors and repeating them without critical thought or comment just wastes everyone’s time.

When I first read that article, I had to stop a few times not knowing whether to laugh or cry. It was that bad. The same, alas, can be applied to all those “Apple Watch must flop” claims. While I have no idea how well it’ll do after the initial demand is satisfied, suggesting it is destined to fail is downright absurd. At the very least, sales through the first weekend may actually exceed that of all the other smartphones on the market so far. That conclusion is based on what industry analysts, who appear to have a sense of what’s going on, are saying. Sales could stall after that, but it doesn’t appear that’s going to happen, at least this early in the game.

The worst part about this, alas, is that, as quickly as the memories of the article that inspired this column fade, and they probably have for most of you already, there will be other pieces equally as lame.

The long and short of it is that, if you believe some people, don’t ever (and I mean never) buy the first version of anything from Apple. It will be fatally flawed, and some of those flaws may not be fixable via a simple software update. So you’ll be stuck with buggy gear for being so damned impatient. If you just wait a few years, all will be right with the world and you’ll get something that truly realizes its potential.

You can see this with the reviews of the 2015 MacBook. Apple overhauled the note-book computer to become a device that mostly connects wirelessly, perhaps a Mac version of an iPad without the touchscreen. That being the case, the need for hard-wired ports is lessened, which means for simpler circuitry, a smaller logic board, and maybe even a slightly lower price.

At $1,299, the 12-inch MacBook is thought to be expensive, but is it? The cheapest 11-inch MacBook Air is $899, so that would surely buttress the argument. But wait just a moment! If you add 256GB SSD to match the capacity of the one on the MacBook, the MacBook Air’s price increases by $200. You want 8GB of RAM? Prepare to spend another $100. Remember that RAM can’t be upgraded on this model, so you can’t do it later. But you end up with a purchase price of $1,199.

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The desperation of the Apple haters and/or critics knows no bounds. Taking advantage of the fact that putting Apple in the title is apt to get more hits, you inevitably come across some pretty, well, dumb stuff. And not all of it emerges from some lone virtually unknown blogger somewhere. Instead, it may originate with a major metropolitan or even national newspaper, which makes the piece doubly troubling.

So there’s now a story entitled, “Is Apple now a Gen 2 product company?” that implies that Apple used to get it right the first time. But recent products have not reached maturity until at least the second version. What this means is that version one may be seriously flawed with missing features, and perhaps reliability and performance issues.

Before I continue, please research the introductory version of any significant Apple product in the past 31 years, and tell me when this situation was ever any different. Was it the very first iPad? What about the Apple Watch or even Apple Pay? Consider all those operating system releases that required several maintenance updates to get rid of the original buckets of bugs. Can it be that Apple is releasing too many things too quickly, and thus getting the basics wrong? Shouldn’t they just hold back a little, give it an extra dose or two of Q&A before ramping up production?

There’s a problem with this theory, and that it’s nothing new for Apple and certainly not new for other tech companies. Indeed, the very premise of the article, meant to attack the company’s quality control or product release schedule, is totally wrong! Not partly wrong, but totally wrong!

So I said let’s go back 31 years, to the very first Apple Macintosh personal computer. If you believe that article, this should have been a perfect computing appliance right out of the starting gate. Perfect. It was also revolutionary, being one of the earliest computers to sport a graphical user interface. No need to deal with MS-DOS and such.

But it was real early in the game for Macs. That original 128K Macintosh was a closed box, without the ability to upgrade RAM or add an external hard drive. The early versions of Mac OS were certainly feature limited, and you didn’t have the ability to run more than a single app at a time. There was no MultiFinder yet.

So it took a few product revisions before content creators began to embrace the Mac. Some suggest the Mac first came into its own with the Mac Plus, released in 1986, or even the Macintosh II, a high-performance workstation with extensive upgrade possibilities.

That’s the end of the argument, but I’ll continue for the sake of historical perspective.

So do you really think the first Newton MessagePad had superior handwriting recognition? I remember playing with one at a Macworld Expo, and I can assure you it was unable to recognize my chicken scratches. Later editions were somewhat better, but it’s academic. Steve Jobs killed the Newton not long after taking over as “interim” CEO of the company.

In August of 1998, the very first iMac was released, the famous Bondi Blue version. It was OK from the standpoint of being a low-powered consumer Mac based on PowerBook internals. It certainly put Apple back on track, but it was hardly the perfect product.

Ditto for the iPod in 2001. With “only” 1,000 songs in your pocket, at $399 it was considered too expensive. Advances in the development of tiny hard drives ultimately increased storage space to accommodate all but the largest music libraries. The original iPod also arrived before there was an iTunes Store from which to download legal music, but that’s a separate issue.

The article correctly mentions the first iPhone, in 2007, as flawed in many ways, and I have to agree. It was restricted to just one cellular carrier, AT&T, formerly known as Cingular, which had known network flaws. Indeed all that new iPhone traffic clogged networks. The first iPhone was sold retail, no carrier subsidies, so it was expensive and there wasn’t even an App Store, nor support for 3G networks. It’s fair to say the iPhone didn’t come into its own until the second version arrived in mid-2008, the iPhone 3G, which supported 3G networks, was available at a subsidized price from AT&T, and did I mention the Apple Store?

I think the first iPad, in 2010, was a fairly complete product, though it lacked a camera. It also took a while for iOS apps to be modified for the larger screen. But in keeping with the second time’s a charm concept, it’s true that the second or iPad 2, released in 2011, which came with a faster processor and front and rear cameras, was a far more compelling product. But the third generation, in 2012, added a Retina display and was known strictly as iPad or the “New iPad.”

The argument continues with the Apple Watch. Some reviews mentioned a few flaws, such as waking the unit when bringing it to your eyes, which might require a more aggressive movement of your wrist, and apps that launch and perform slowly, as evidence it’s a version 1.0 product that won’t hit its stride until the next version, or the one after that. But software updates may be enough to fix some of the basic glitches.

In short, the claim that Apple has, in recent years, suddenly become a “Gen 2 product company” is not only outrageous. It’s just not true. That’s the way Apple has always operated, for better or worse. Products of all sorts often require several generations to come into their own. Even motor vehicles frequently suffer from version 1.0 limitations or glitches. If you want product perfection, find another planet. It doesn’t happen on this one.

Hardly a day passes where a tech blogger — or so-called industry analyst — rants about how well Apple Watch will do when the sales figures are tallied, or whether it’ll be an abject failure. So far we’ve heard several estimates in the one million range for the first day of preorders. But you wonder how many people are going to get in line knowing they have to wait a month or two for delivery. Does that explain why backlogs have grown no worse, or is Apple steadily ramping up production?

What the suggestion that perhaps Apple underproduced the Apple Watch to build up hype? But why would the company sacrifice revenue, and possibly lose sales, just to exaggerate public reaction? It doesn’t appear logical that any profit-making corporation would sacrifice revenue, although I suppose some people may be drawn to a product believing others are lining up to buy one.

Of course, the problem with all the guesstimates is simple: There is really not much of a history of potential smartphone sales other than tepid demand. Pebble claims to have sold a million units since 2013, which appears to be the best of the bunch. That Apple could deliver the same results in a day or less would appear to be an amazing achievement.

But once the early adopters take delivery, how does Apple continue to build demand, or is it already there?

Speculation has already begun about the next versions of the Apple Watch, though not to large degree. It’s more about how well the current model will do.

On to other subjects.

It’s early in the game to know a whole lot about the next versions of OS X and iOS, although the statement from Philip Schiller that I quoted in yesterday’s column, about new technologies, appears to bury the rumors that Apple would hit pause on the new features, fix the underpinnings of the two operating systems and make them more stable.

The other day I read speculation about the next iPhone. Theory goes, true to form, there will be an iPhone 6s and an iPhone 6s Plus, keeping essentially the same form factor as current models with new insides. Maybe Force Touch, which has already debuted in the Apple Watch and two MacBook models. That would almost seem a given, that Apple wants to spread this feature to other products. Will there be a new Magic Trackpad so users of desktop Macs can share in the joy?

In any case, a new iPhone lineup would no doubt have a faster processor, presumed to be the A9, along with a better camera and other hardware enhancements. But I read a suggestion or two that Apple will go whole hog and move on to an iPhone 7, with the perception that a release with mostly internal enhancements wouldn’t necessarily attract as many customers. Yet only a small number of the people using current models would be expected to upgrade. It’s mostly about customers with older iPhones or smartphones from other platforms.

What about an iPhone 6c, an update to the iPhone 5c with a new case — metal this time? There’s still the belief that the 5c was unsuccessful, although that has never been confirmed with any hard numbers. But when a meme takes over, it’s hard for facts to get in the way. But there is a solid case for a 4-inch iPhone.

What about the prospects for this alleged iPad Pro that arise every so often? Would a 12.9-inch model, which would evidently have appeal to content creators and businesses in general, jumpstart sales? Would that and the growing roster of apps from IBM help move more iPads? What about the folks who bought the first or second versions and are now possibly ready to upgrade? Is Tim Cook correct about the temporary bump in the road, and continued optimism about the product’s future prospects? Or is that just an excuse to explain away falling sales?

My feeling is that it’s early in the game for a replacement cycle, and once that ramps up, perhaps things will get better. But will it happen this holiday season, or does Apple have to do more to boost iPad demand?

While the preliminaries about WWDC are all about iOS and OS X, you would expect more Apple Watch announcements for developers, and perhaps something about Apple TV. But that product would seem to have the most traction for the holidays, unless it’s about an Apple TV developer’s kit with the promise of future availability of more apps. When Apple TV arrives, would it come without 4K or Ultra HD support? That wouldn’t make so much sense since 4K TV sales are expected to grow much faster this year as cheaper sets hit the market.

The rumored Apple subscription TV service? Timing says fall, not during a developer’s session.

It would seem, though, that maybe it’s time for an updated Mac Pro. At this point, though, it would appear to be confined to processor and graphics card enhancements, although I suppose Apple could find a way to offer a larger SSD.

Are there going to be any all new Apple gadgets or services this year, or is the Apple Watch and product refreshes about it for this year?

The critics will tell us what Apple should or shouldn’t do, but growing sales and profits might just tell the tale.