Those who have little better to do than diss Apple for real or imagined ills will no doubt enjoy coming up with new drivel to spread this year. Of course, last year had plenty of meat and potatoes to consume. Some of it was true, such as the failed iOS 8.0.1 update that bricked some iPhones. But others were utterly bogus, and Bendgate is a prime example. It was never true that the iPhone 6 Plus was far more prone to bending than other comparably-sized mobile handsets.

When I think about it, though, I wonder about the people who are so willing to bend a sophisticated consumer electronics gadget that costs upwards of $750 at retail. Do they have enough spare cash on hand to throw it away? Or maybe they just hoped Apple would fix the damage at no cost if they told a good story.

Sometimes there’s so much sheer silliness, you cannot keep up with it. I know several of us monitor these hit bait articles on a regular basis. Some publications are devoted to fear mongering about Apple, while others do it occasionally. Not that Apple is above criticism. The company has done some stupid things and should be roundly criticized, but there’s no excuse for just making stuff up.

Sometimes a basic set of facts can be corrupted to fuel a legal action. Now SEC filings will usually reveal that Apple is suing others, and others are suing Apple. Often cases are settled out of court, perhaps for an undisclosed sum, to get them resolved as painlessly as possible. Sometimes they never seem to end, such as the remaining legal skirmishes between Apple and Samsung, and that iPod lawsuit, which recently came to its natural conclusion in Apple’s favor after percolating in the courts for years.

The latest legal action involves complaints that Apple is somehow cheating you of storage space on your iPhone or iPad and, worse, that if you run short of space, you may be invited to get more via iCloud. It’s all a nasty trick, I suppose, except for the fact that you already have 5GB of iCloud storage free before you consider whether you need any more. I know I’ve existed within that limit and haven’t felt the need to fatten up the capacity.

Well, to be fair, I also have 1TB storage courtesy of Microsoft’s OneDrive and whatever Dropbox offers before you have to order up a paid plan (actually it’s 2GB). I use some of the latter to exchange files with a graphic artist from time to time, but that’s pretty much the sum of it. Maybe I’m just living off the grid, or I’m out of touch.

But I do sympathize with people who are unaware of the basic facts about the storage on a personal computer or mobile device. For obvious reasons, there are severe constraints on the latter, though a 128GB iPhone or iPad gives you plenty of room for a decent music, photo or movie library. Decent.

Unfortunately, the people behind Storagegate seem deliberately ignorant of some basic facts, which his that, as operating systems mature, they necessarily grow larger to add additional features. When a company says a device has a capacity of 16GB, or whatever, they are obviously not suggesting that you can still get all of it with the OS and bundled apps installed. Some companies reserve so much for their own needs that they don’t leave very much for your own stuff. Maybe they are selfish.

Take a 64GB Microsoft Surface 3, where there’s only 23GB left for your own needs when it’s first activated. Is that abuse, or just a reflection of reality, that if you want the OS and apps that Microsoft offers, you have to assume a certain amount of space is required? But is that message clearly conveyed to customers, that perhaps they’d be better off investing in the 128GB version instead? After all, these flash-based devices don’t allow you to just pop a chip and add more, although that would be a neat idea.

I suppose the tech industry could do a little better to inform customers about what they are actually  getting. Wouldn’t an asterisk after the storage spec, pointing to a few lines about the available space with OS and bundled apps, be sufficient to properly alert even the most naive customers — not to mention their lawyers — about the terms and conditions?

Now it’s true that Apple already has a long set of fine print that applies to storage specs on an iPhone, which start with: “1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less.” To Apple’s lawyers, that might be sufficient, but maybe it does call for an additional explanation, perhaps a sentence such as, “Advertised capacity is reduced by the operating system and bundled apps.” That would do it don’t you think?

In any case, you can expect that 2015 will bring all sorts of faux conspiracies and complaints. Apple will, as usual screw up, but one hopes not to a large degree. But those in search of hit bait, to boost their sites, will continue to look to Apple for inspiration, or merely for a name to put in a headline.

Although Consumer Reports magazine is supposed to be incorruptible — mostly because the publication doesn’t accept ads and tested products are purchased rather than manufacturer review samples — there are clear problems with the way they are evaluated. As I’ve stated though the years, Apple gear isn’t always treated fairly, largely because of curious test standards that don’t always accurately reflect what the customer should expect.

That carries through to other product categories. So the magazine’s highly valued surveys of motor vehicle reliability are not taken from dealer repair shops, independent or otherwise, but from consumers checking a few boxes on annual questionnaires. I’ve received them myself, and the information requested is extremely superficial. It’s being asked of regular people, not automotive experts, but it’s used as the basis to assert whether your car is reliable or not. Sure, a car prone to have engine, transmission, suspension and audio system repairs deserves to be rated unreliable. It doesn’t require an auto expert to know whether you had to bring your car into the shop for a serious problem. But many of the finer points are not being accurately considered; again, because the survey is unscientific and isn’t specific enough to provide a comprehensive picture of how well your car will fare under normal use and service.

CR is particularly unable to deal with tech gear. When it comes to smartphones and tablets, for example, products with more features are apt to get higher ratings. It doesn’t matter if some of those features are barely functional. Samsung is one of the worst offenders, and I’ve already covered the Galaxy S4, the king of junkware-ridden handsets, and the Galaxy S5, which sported a barely functional fingerprint sensor.

When it comes to personal computers, CR has devised a category known as “Versatility” with which to evaluate some of the features offered in a PC. According the magazine’s annual buyer’s guide for 2015, “Versatility includes hardware such as memory-card slots and A/V connections, software such as security programs and productivity applications, and tech support and warranty provisions.”

On the basis of this curious definition, it really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. A product’s “Versatility” shouldn’t be judged by the length and breadth of the warranty or the quality of tech support. These two should be moved to the existing support or reliability categories.

Now it’s interesting that many of the models from Apple that CR tests are actually priced in the same range as top-rated products from other companies. But it’s also true that Apple tends to be frugal about adding lots of ports, and that’s one reason to perhaps downgrade Macs. But “security programs” is largely a non-issue on the Mac platform, so it shouldn’t be considered even though there are loads of such programs for Windows users.

Unfortunately, CR’s evaluations are so general, lacking key specifics, that the reader doesn’t know whether the items under “Versatility” are weighted based on importance or relevance, or simply checked off and given equal consideration. This lapse of attention to detail represents the larger issue with CR’s PC ratings, which is that most of the differences between operating systems are rarely explained. To the reader,the OS X and Windows are essentially identical platforms that just happen to be built by different companies.

I realize that CR is catering largely to a non-technical audience, people who just want to know how what to buy and get on with their lives. To them, the fine details of automative design and the technical niceties that separate a Mac from a PC may not be so important. You might as well be talking in a foreign language.

But this doesn’t mean such people are necessarily ignorant, or plain stupid. Some may be positively brilliant in the fields in which they operate, but they have other priorities. That’s a perfectly reasonable approach. Unfortunately, CR doesn’t serve such people terribly well, because they aren’t really being given the information they need to know which products and services might suit them best.

Worse, the magazine’s heavy dependence on unscientific reader surveys means that the reader isn’t always getting accurate information about which products are the most reliable. People with problems are generally more likely to respond to such surveys, while those who have no problems are apt to set the surveys aside and worry about more important matters.

This, too, is the reason that online reports about new products always seems heavily weighted towards the defects. People with gear that just works seldom bother. So I have a car that has never needed more than scheduled maintenance, a wheel alignment and a single battery replacement. I’m hardly inclined to concern myself with filling out surveys about my experiences with the vehicle, but if it gets a lot less reliable as the mileage climbs, you can bet I’ll have something to say.

For now, I still have an old J.D. Power survey invitation on hand, and I haven’t bothered to fill it out. Maybe I am cheating that company of the benefits of my experience, but I just haven’t had the time.

In any case, my arguments about CR are largely unchanged. The writing style is less dry than it used to be, the basic editorial quality is superior, but the reviews, despite a somewhat hipper approach, still suffer from the same shortcomings.

To my surprise, there have been pro and con comments about the recent class action lawsuit against Apple. This is the legal action that claims Apple deceived you about the available storage space on an iPhone and iPad, and, worse, is trying to persuade you to buy iCloud storage to compensate.

On the surface, the lawsuit is dumb. When a device is rated at 16GB storage, that’s the raw capacity, not what you are left with after the OS, bundled apps and overhead are accounted for. So the 16GB iPhone may leave you with anywhere from 12.2GB to 12.6GB of free space, according to recent estimates. Before you consider those amounts excessive, and they can be over 1GB more than iOS 7 used, other smartphones aren’t apt to do better, and usually do worse.

So a Google Nexus 5, a pure Android device free of third-party apps and other useless bloatware, gives you 12.28GB of available storage, a wee bit higher than an iPhone 5s. All other companies do worse, sometimes far worse. The Samsung Galaxy S4, for example, notorious for useless junk apps, leaves you with just 8.56GB of free storage when it’s first activated. Now that should really spark a lawsuit, but only Apple was so honored.

And don’t forget the humongous storage requirements of the bundled OS and apps on a 64GB Microsoft Surface Pro 3, leaving just 36% free space, or 23GB. And that’s before you add your own apps and documents. Talk about waste! Now remember that Microsoft is selling the Surface Pro 3 as a head-on competitor to the MacBook Air that comes with at least 128GB storage. Yes, some of that is lost to the OS and bundled apps, but Apple isn’t giving you Office, which is huge source of bloat.

Now not every commentator is calling the lawsuit dumb, or completely dumb, though it’s clearly misleading in what it hopes to resolve. For the lawsuit to be fair, it should include the entire industry, not just a key player, since we’re dealing with usual and customary practices here. Or maybe it’s about common sense, that people already understand — or should understand — that rated capacities do not include the default factory installation of the OS and other stuff.

One of the contrary viewpoints comes from commentator Kirk McElhearn, who suggests that Apple should have made an effort to explain to customers how much more space iOS 8 requires compared to iOS 7. According to Kirk, “The space problem is compounded as there are more and larger displays for iOS devices. Since apps you install contain all the graphics for all available devices, they are getting bigger and bigger. It would make sense for iTunes – or iOS devices – to only install the graphics that specific devices need. This said, I understand why Apple does not do this. If you download an app to an older iPhone, then transfer the purchase to iTunes to later use on a larger device, the transferred app won’t have all the elements the larger device needs. Nevertheless, Apple could fix this, with a system that downloads all the app’s assets after you transfer the purchase.”

In other words, a little more efficiency and more honesty in storage specs. While there are utilities available for OS X that allow you to strip out unneeded assets, such as the multiple language support you may never need, no developer will be allowed to deliver an app that will strip out unneeded app resources for iOS. But some intelligent installations would address this problem. Why have to have artwork that supports an iPhone 6 Plus, and it’s 5.5-inch display, on an iPhone 5s? Would it not make sense to copy a pointer to an app when you set up a new device, and download only the needed resources?

Yes, I realize that it won’t be long before minimum capacities increase to 32GB or even 64GB over the next year or two. But that will leave hundreds of millions of storage-starved devices in use.

While I’m at it, the fact that Apple has settled on flash storage for note-books, other than a lone traditional MacBook Pro with a mechanical hard drive, means you have to be cautious about how you fill it up. Perhaps Apple ought to offer a setting that will slim the OS and other apps of unneeded assets, while putting up a warning that you will have to download an expansion pack should you need it for overseas travel or any sort of multilingual use.

All this may seem complicated, but Apple can already deliver delta OS updates — just the content you need to install the update on your piece of hardware — and that’s a way to reduce bandwidth consumption, and make the installation faster and more efficient. So setting up apps downloads to only deliver what your device needs shouldn’t be so much harder. I suspect the tools to accomplish this could work automatically within the compiler, so developers wouldn’t have to cope with such matters.

At the end of the day, however, the “Storagegate” complaint is still foolish. But it does raise legitimate questions that tech companies ought to consider.

If early indications hold true, the iPhone did extremely well during the recently-ended holiday season. While actual sales won’t be known till Apple releases the quarterly numbers, it’s very likely there was a fairly substantial increase. Apple clearly did the right thing in deciding to build larger iPhones. The real question is whether the legacy iPhone 5s did well, and whether a new smaller iPhone will be in the offing for later this year.

It’s very likely Macs did quite well too. The new iMac 5K, costly by PC standards, was in short supply for a while, and I’ve heard from lots of people who opted to buy one. This is the sort of computer that serves both pros and consumers quite well for specific needs that might formerly have been met by a Mac Pro. It doesn’t kill the Mac Pro, but lessens the need to have one for many users at a huge cost savings.

The iPad is the question mark. Reports of tablet activations were down substantially, and one estimate had Apple selling roughly 10% fewer units for 2014. It’s still a substantial number, but it’s clear the iPad has confronted headwinds, and it’s an open question how Apple plans to deal with the situation. Will the marketing deal with IBM deliver far more iPads into the enterprise to compensate? Will Apple devise more features to push them into the hands of consumers? Is the longer replacement cycle a large part of the problem?

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