Most of you know that I’ve long had mixed feelings about tablets. I’ve tried several iPads, and while my wife will never be without one, I’m inclined to rely on my note-book or iPhone when traveling. At home, it’s a 27-inch iMac — I’m currently reviewing Apple’s 5K version — and an iPhone. I’ve tried and tried to get accustomed to the iPad, but other than helping my wife solve a problem, or learn a new skill, I don’t use it very much. After writing my initial review of the iPad Air 2, my wife has agreed to complete the process.

So news that tablet sales are in cooling mode doesn’t come as a surprise, though I’ll get to the reasons in a moment. Meantime, some useful holiday stats have come out. One is the claim that iPad sales will decline from 74 million, in 2013, to 68 million this year. It’s still credible number, but it doesn’t necessarily show a favorable trend.

Another survey, from a data research firm known as Flurry, as reported in USA Today, claims that full-size tablet activations declined from 17% last year to 11% this year. It appears such phablets as the iPhone 6 Plus and the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 are picking up the slack and then some, with activations increasing from a mere 3% two years ago to 13% today. But I suspect a lot of those increases this year are due to the presence of the iPhone 6 Plus. So if Apple loses an iPad sale, and sells you an iPhone 6 Plus instead, that means higher profits. It’s really good news, even if an Apple fan would like to see iPad sales increase.

Before I go on, these figures aren’t confirmed by Apple. Actual numbers won’t be released until later this month. The figures being published now are merely estimates, which means there’s room for error, and the difference between a slight decline and a slight increase might just fall within those margins. So let’s be cautious and consider whether the surveys were done by firms with a track record for accuracy. That’s not often the case for companies that do industry or data analysis, but they are seldom called out on the carpet for their mistakes. There are no licensing standards for an industry analyst, so if you declare yourself to be one, and get loads of contracts, you are successful regardless of how well you can actually do the work.

In saying that, though, I won’t dismiss the possibility that the best iPad sales were in the past, and that Apple needs to develop its tablet strategy further to find the best markets and uses for the device. Remember that, before the iPad arrived, the year of the tablet never came. Microsoft kept touting it, and it didn’t happen. While some suggested the iPad was little more than a grown up iPod touch, and I suppose there was reason to hold that opinion, it did seem to find a willing market for a while.

Indeed, people who were uncomfortable around a traditional personal computer, either Mac or PC, seemed to love their iPads. They are certainly suitable for reading a book or watching a movie or TV show. After a fashion, they are capable of different forms of productive work. Using a finger or a stylus is certainly one way to do graphics work, and an accessory keyboard would seem to turn an iPad, or any tablet, into a credible replacement for a note-book.

Or perhaps not.

Remember that the note-book is a single integrated device, and some have touchscreens, though dual-purpose boxes aren’t terribly successful. An iPad is made to be used by itself with the touchscreen. There are add-on keyboards, but most appear to make clumsy substitutes for a genuine note-book. Microsoft markets the Surface Pro 3 against a MacBook Air, but the tasks for which a keyboard is preferred are far better accomplished on the MacBook Air. Embedding a keyboard in the cover is a compromise, useful in a pinch but not necessarily for heavy-duty writing on an extended basis. But I’m sure some will disagree.

I’ll admit my experiences with iPad keyboards are somewhat limited. I have one from Logitech on hand, an Ultrathin designed to work with an iPad Air 2. It works all right, but the connection to the iPad, held in a thin slot, always seems tenuous. I’ll try some other keyboards to get a better sense of how well they work; one is due from Touchfire shortly.

My problem is very likely that I am somewhat of a creature of habit at this stage in my life. While I enjoy trying new things, the experience has to be quite compelling for me to change my ways. That hasn’t happened with the iPad yet.

Part of that may be due to the fact that I have a workflow that depends on apps that aren’t yet available on an iPad. Some of them might be, and I will certainly give them their due. But I also have to manage fairly large audio files on a regular basis, and interaction with an iPad’s file system to put radio shows together isn’t near as easy as on a Mac, with the help of a valuable utility, Default Folder X. As it stands, each 10-minute segment takes me 15 minutes to perform a quick touch-up in an audio editing app. It’s rarely any longer. If I could be as productive on an iPad, I’d be willing to consider the alternative.

Long and short of it is that, if iPad sales continue to stall, Apple will have to look not just at the upgrade cycle, obviously far longer than a smartphone, but at ways to make them more indispensable to your digital life. A lot of what an iPad can do may be accomplished perfectly well on an iPhone, except for tasks that benefit from the larger display. Apple’s deal with IBM may put more iPads into the enterprise, and that may compensate for slack sales elsewhere. And then there’s the rumor of a larger model sporting a display that’s over twelve inches, which is being referred to as the iPad Pro.

But this is a story that’s still being written, and the iPad may indeed still be in search of reasons for more people to buy one.

So Apple is in the thick of it again, named in a new lawsuit claiming they are being deceptive about the amount of available storage space on an iPhone and an iPad. Worse, Apple is doing this to grab a few dollars a month from you to buy extra iCloud storage. Such a deal!

Now let me put this in perspective, which is something most reports I’ve read about this lawsuit aren’t doing.

The basic claim is that an 8GB and a 16GB iOS device doesn’t have enough space because the OS is taking up too much of the precious available storage capacity. The lawsuit, filed on December 30 in a California federal court, claims that between 18.1% and 23.1% of the available storage on a 16GB iPod touch, iPad or iPhone are unavailable. Since you don’t get the full 16GB, Apple is therefore misrepresenting the facts.

Now before I go on, let’s look at what these claims are alleging. Even if you lose a roughly 3.2GB of storage space for the OS and overhead, and decide that the 5GB free storage on iCloud isn’t enough to compensate, you can get 20GB for 99 cents a month. So the conspiracy is that Apple is selling you gadgets costing hundreds of dollars, and offering insufficient storage to get you to shell out an additional $11.88 per year.

With me so far?

What an incredible conspiracy to spark a class action lawsuit. Now of course the OS and overhead will consume some storage space. The question is whether iOS 8 is taking up too much for what it offers, and that seems silly on the face of it.

Regardless of Apple’s motives in making iOS 8 larger, and clearly it was to accommodate extra features and not to get you to pay $11.88 more per year, the lawsuit overlooks real examples of software bloat. Do you recall how a 32GB Microsoft Surface gave up nearly half that storage for overhead, the OS and apps? What about a certain Samsung Galaxy where 16GB available storage shrunk by similar percentages? Were there class action lawsuits against Microsoft and Samsung because they were engaged in a plot to sell you — what? Microsoft is already offering a pretty decent deal on cloud storage, and Samsung really isn’t heavily involved in that market.

So what’s their endgame? To sell you gear with more storage capacity? But if you’re dissatisfied with a Microsoft or Samsung gadget, for whatever reason, would they expect you to return it for a more expensive model? Does that really make sense to anyone?

Now I suppose the legal eagles — so to speak — who initiated this class action lawsuit against Apple might have considered that the company really wanted you to buy iOS gear with more capacity, but expecting you to pay $100 extra is a stretch, so I suppose they figured manufacturing a $11.88 Storagegate conspiracy would seem more sensible. They are also using the iOS 8 prompt suggesting that you buy an iCloud subscription if you run out of storage as proof of the alleged conspiracy. But that hardly proves Apple deliberately made iOS 8 fatter. It strains logic, and one hopes the courts will see that too and dismiss this misbegotten, ambulance-chasing misfire before it gets too far along.

But it may also be that the court will want to establish a record about such cases, and allow it to run its course. That’s very likely the reason the recently-concluded iPod conspiracy case was allowed to go to its logical conclusion. Once case law is established — assuming it survives an appeal, if one is made — lawyers who seek to file future actions can use the precedent.

And remember that Apple won the iPod lawsuit, as the jury came back with the favorable verdict in a matter of three hours.

Now what about those alleged aggrieved parties, the people who found their iPods, iPhones and iPads to be so bereft of space that they couldn’t do what they wanted after upgrading to iOS 8? If Apple were to lose this case — and I’m extremely doubtful that it has any chance of succeeding, or reaching a settlement — what remedies can you expect?

What about my wife’s 16GB iPhone 5c? Well, it so happens she hasn’t complained about the lack of available storage space, and it is running iOS 8.1.2.

So I suppose one solution would be for Apple to offer a one-year or two-year complimentary subscription to the 20GB iCloud storage plan. The losses would be minimal, and the key complaint, if had the remotest chance of being valid, would be dealt with. It’s not as if Apple will give up and take back 16GB gear from aggrieved customers and give them models with larger capacity.

One thing is sure, though. As iOS takes more storage space, Apple should consider abandoning 16GB and moving right to 32GB. The actual cost increase to Apple would be minimal, barely impacting profits, and it would make customers with the cheapest devices happier and more apt to buy apps and music with which to fill their flash storage.

It would also discourage future legal teams from attempting stunts of this sort until, of course, a future iOS makes even 32GB seem paltry. I still wonder what might happen if the next Storagegate lawsuits impact the real offenders — Microsoft and Samsung — but that’s not about to happen.

At the start of 2014, even the most diehard Apple fanatic might have wondered about the future prospects of their favorite fruit company. Sales didn’t always meet Wall Street projections, and profits were flattening. The stock price was way down from historic highs.

To no surprise, some members of the mainstream media were calling for CEO Tim Cook to take a hike. Could it be that Steve Jobs’ handpicked successor was a monumental screw up, or was there a long-term plan in place that would set things right before long?

Questions, questions.

Many of the particulars are ably recorded in a no-holds barred editorial from Daniel Eran Dilger, a frequent guest on The Tech Night Owl LIVE, over at AppleInsider. So I will be brief about some of the details.

Now understand that the perception that Apple was on the rocks was largely manufactured. When Steve Jobs introduced iterative upgrades to Apple gear, that was part of the standard upgrade cycle. When Tim Cook did the same, there must be something terribly wrong with Apple’s mojo, and the company clearly lost its power to innovate. After all, Cook was the supply chain expert. What right did he have to operate a company known for its amazing innovation?

You’d think that Apple was supposed to upend a market every year. The critics forget the years that passed between the first iPod, the first iPhone and the first iPad. Miracles don’t come every day, but where were the trendsetting products from Tim Cook’s Apple?

This didn’t stop iPhone sales from climbing, at a time when Samsung’s sales began to falter. The claim that Samsung had it all over Apple when it came to high sales and meeting the needs of a variety of customers was shown to be shaky. Yes, Samsung still sold loads of mobile handsets, but far too many were cheap, with little profit. While Apple continued to make huge profits from iPhones, Samsung’s margins continued to shrink. Tepid response to the latest Galaxy series didn’t help. Apple moved far more iPhones.

Amid rising sales, Apple’s first maneuvers for 2014 were financial. Stock buybacks and the seven-to-one stock split pleased Wall Street. But was Apple just stalling, avoiding the question of what innovative products were in the pipeline? Yes, Apple made promises, but when were they going to deliver?

WWDC came, as usual, in June. The critics said it was all about the software, but Apple added an amazing number of new features to iOS and OS X. The bill of particulars was far larger than what Google and Microsoft were promising. True, some suggested Apple bit off a little too much this time, but the bugs are being vanquished, and the end result presents many new opportunities for developers to make a profit and to benefit customers.

For regular people, the real significant event came in September, with the introduction of the iPhone 6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, a phablet with a 5.5-inch display. The critics had been long clamoring for Apple to enter the larger smartphone space, but Apple, as usual, took its sweet time about developing the right product. Certainly the public embraced the new gear, with record sales the very first weekend and chronic shortages through most of the holiday season.

But some people realized that the romantic ideal of the larger smartphone wasn’t quite so compelling after you spent a little time with one. One-handed operation meant something, and the larger handsets could be difficult to fit in a smaller pocket or purse.

And don’t forget Apple Watch. An early production model was demonstrated, and delivery was promised in early 2015.

October brought new iPads, but the flagship model, the iPad Air 2, thinner than its predecessor, was the lone compelling upgrade. The iPad mini 3 was little different from its predecessor aside from Touch ID, and it still cost $100 more. It wasn’t such a great deal, and the jury is out how well tablets sold this holiday season. But the iPad Air 2 is, as my friends across the Atlantic are apt to say, a marvelous piece of kit. It will be hard for my wife to give up the one she is using when the Apple editorial loan expires in February.

The other product intro in October, the iMac 5K, was simply stunning, particularly the picture and the technology that makes it happen for a price that even Dell couldn’t match. Last I checked, Dell’s 5K display is just about the same price as the 5K iMac, but Apple gives you the computer as part of the package.

None of this means everything went perfect for Apple. Don’t forget the missteps — or alleged missteps — depending on your point of view. So those celebrities whose nude photos, stored in iCloud, were hacked and circulated online have only themselves to blame for poor password choices. Why did they have those pictures there in the first place? But the iOS 8.0.1 update was the worst sort of failure, fixing most iPhones, but causing some to lose their cellular connections and Touch ID capability. Apple pulled the update in little over an hour, and released a fixed version the very next day, but the publicity fallout continues. Yes, Microsoft has done worse, far worse, but this is Apple.

Please don’t get me started about iTunes 12. The complaints haven’t been stilled, and I wonder whether Apple needs to get back to the drawing board to sort things out.

Some alleged scandals were just nonsense. An iPhone 6 Plus was no more prone to bending than other large mobile handsets. No, Apple didn’t suddenly out of the blue sneak a security update onto Macs with OS X Mountain Lion, Mavericks and Yosemite. That particular update came using the App Store update mechanism, the successor to Software Update. Where there’s an automatic install option, as there is in Yosemite, you can switch it off. Besides, the NTP security flaw, impacting the time syncing feature of OS X, Unix and even Linux distributions, could allow a remote attacker to gain control of your computer. Even the U.S. Department of Homeland Security got in the act to report the danger, so was it wrong for Apple to protect you in a way that did no harm?

For 2015, we know the Apple Watch is coming, but there is no consistency on how well it’ll do. And what about the fate of Apple TV? Is there an Apple TV set on the horizon? An iPad Pro, a version with a display that’s 12 inches or more? Is there something out of the blue in store? And what will Apple do to flesh out the features for iOS 9 and OS X 10.11? And I will not speculate on the code name for the next Mac OS.

The tech world can be as topsy-turvy as the rest of our little corner of the universe. At one time, Apple’s iPhone seemed positively huge, with an expansive 3.5-inch display. Desperate for ways to compete with Apple’s handset, other companies decided the easiest solution was simply to deliver gear with larger displays.

Apple made a move, beginning with the iPhone 5, to migrate to four inches. Other companies made their handsets larger and larger, and some today approach six inches. That takes them into tablet territory, but since they contain a telephone too, they’ve become phablets.

So the critics demanded that Apple get with the program. Four inches is puny compared to a Samsung Galaxy at just over five inches. Besides, isn’t Android trouncing the iPhone with more variety, larger screens, smaller screens, and everything in between? The naysayers said Apple could not compete unless it entered the large handset space.

All those criticisms came despite the fact that Apple more than held its own over the years, with growing iPhone sales and profits. Yet despite some ill-informed claims, the iPhone was never number one, with or without a bullet.

Yes, Android had a greater market share, with higher unit sales, but most of those sales were confined to the low end of the market where scant profits are to be made. Still, when CEO Tim Cook was asked about larger iPhones, he didn’t dismiss the concept. He focused more on supposed tradeoffs in the larger displays, implying that Apple would work out a solution and release it when ready.

Now the arrival of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus came as something new and different, not just Apple’s answer to large smartphones or phablets. But Samsung and other competitors had made huge deals over the fact that Apple wasn’t playing in the larger smartphone league, and that seemed to be their only compelling advantage. Useless features that barely worked, such as Samsung’s notorious Tilt to Scroll, or a fingerprint sensor that most times failed to sense unless you swiped your finger at the “right” speed, hardly made the case for Android gear even before Apple introduced larger displays.

While the final numbers won’t be known until next month, early indications are that Apple’s new iPhones were the stars of the handset market among individual models during the holiday season. Far more people bought the iPhone 6, but it’s larger sibling was also harder to get because of tight supplies. Only in the final days ahead of Christmas did the situation really improve.

That, as they said, should be that until the next iPhone arrives, but some suggest that Apple shouldn’t overlook a smaller handset. Not everyone desires a larger screen, and there are undeniable shortcomings when you try to hold one of those things with one hand and actually get something done. Apple’s clumsy solution, double tapping on the Home button to engage Reachability, will simply reduce the content vertically to help, and that may be all they can do.

Except to continue to build smaller iPhones.

If your requirements max out at four inches, you can still buy last year’s iPhone 5s in 16GB or 32GB sizes, or an iPhone 5c with a mere 8GB of storage. Good luck upgrading to new iOS releases on the latter. In any case, Apple will probably not break down individual sales of the various models, but maybe something will be said if there’s still a huge demand for the 5s. I know of one prominent tech commentator, Macworld contributor Kirk McElhearn, who actually sent back his iPhone 6 after a couple of weeks and stuck with his iPhone 5s because he didn’t want something so big and clumsy.

There are even published reports suggesting Apple might deliver, in the fall of 2015, a smaller version of the iPhone 6 form factor known as the iPhone mini. That would be a four-inch version, possibly offering the specs of this year’s standard iPhone 6. While some might chafe at offering too many sizes, it makes plenty of sense to attempt to fill the needs of customers without subdividing the lineup into numerous barely distinguishable models. In fact, Samsung is supposedly going to cut back on model proliferation next year, but not enough to match Apple’s approach.

Yes Apple is playing the multiple model game with the current iPad lineup, but it doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. Offering the iPad mini 2 and iPad mini 3, for example, which are not seriously different except that the latter has Touch ID and a wider range of storage options. The iPad mini 3 is also $100 more, which doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. There’s little to justify the purchase of this year’s model if you really want a smaller iPad.

Or perhaps you might want to consider getting an iPhone 6 Plus instead, putting up with a smaller display, but gaining a telephone, superior camera optics and genuine optical image stabilization. Yes, the price without a contract is higher than most iPads, but there are quite enough compelling deals out there that appear to make a subsidized deal a good choice.

In any case, I won’t make any predictions about Apple’s future moves, but an iPhone mini — or whatever you want to call it — seems to make a lot of sense.