There’s something perfectly boring about hearing a statement that some company has beaten Apple to the punch by releasing a certain product or feature. But it’s not as if Apple is first to market with most of their new gear.

So the Mac wasn’t the first personal computer with a graphical user interface, and the iPod was surely not the first digital media player. But both took off; the latter launched a market that was filled with nearly useless devices. Apple managed to solve the problem of poor user interfaces and performance with a much better solution, which is the Apple way.

The iPhone wasn’t the first smartphone to market. There were others from Palm, BlackBerry and other companies that became the playthings — and often essential tools — for busy executives including potential future presidents. But the iPhone and its strictly touch interface made such gadgets warm and fuzzy for regular people. That’s why other companies quickly copied Apple’s inventions, and why there’s still a legal action involving their largest component supplier, Samsung.

I’m sure few would dispute the fact that the iPad wasn’t the first tablet by a long shot. Tablet concepts date back to the 1970s and earlier — they were featured as props on the 1980s sci-fi series, “Star Trek: The Next Generation” — and Microsoft touted a tablet revolution for years. But until the iPad arrived, a device some suggested was just a warmed over iPod touch with a larger display,  this market didn’t go anywhere outside of a small corner of the business world.

And I’m sure you realize that Apple Pay isn’t the first mobile payment system, nor is Apple Watch the first smartwatch. But the former appears to be helping to jumpstart a business that hasn’t gone anywhere up till now. Guessing about the potential of Apple Watch is a non-starter since the product isn’t even shipping yet. But that won’t stop some people from suggesting it’s destined to fail. That sure sounds familiar.

Now when it comes to basics, Apple again doesn’t always arrive first with a new feature, but often makes it more usable than the competition. Consider Touch ID, Apple’s fingerprint sensor that uses technology from a company they acquired, AuthenTec. Now there have been attempts to put fingerprint sensors on smartphones in the past, and they are in use on some PC note-books. But most don’t work very well.

The fingerprint sensor technology used on the Samsung Galaxy S5 is a current example. It requires a swipe at a specific pace to work. That level of exactitude can even confound the experts who criticized the feature as being hit or miss. To some, it appears to be mostly a miss.

But this week there’s a story claiming that a new generation of fingerprint sensors is coming to PC note-books, thus beating Apple to the punch. Now this first assumes Apple wants to put a Touch ID configuration onto a Mac, and I’m not at all certain there’s much of a demand. That also assumes that the fingerprint scanning hardwire, known as SecurePad by Synaptics, will be simple to use and secure.

What the ill-informed headline writer forgot, however, is that Apple uses fingerprint technology based on AuthenTec technology, which already has been reasonably successful on iOS gear. It shouldn’t require any huge investment to add a similar capability to some MacBooks if Apple decided to give it a go. I don’t know that they do. But to assume that someone else’s technology to provide a feature already available on PC note-books is beating Apple to the punch is beside the point. That assumes Apple is in a race and that they lost, which is certainly not the case.

This all goes back to the standard run of spec comparisons that some make of Apple gear compared to the rest. In most cases, the competition will appear to win because there will inevitably be extra features. Indeed, display size was used for several years to denigrate the iPhone, even though Apple recorded great sales. Sure, Samsung may have sold more units overall, but not of any single model. That remains a fact that some members of the media won’t admit.

In any case, Apple did deliver bigger iPhones. The result has been consistent backorders and the end of any perceived advantage of any Android smartphone. All right, some Android gear also has NFC first, but whether bumping your smartphone to share stuff really matters is a huge question mark. It’s fair to say that Apple Pay represents one of the best uses for NFC.

Going forward, you can bet that many new tech products and new features will probably arrive on other platforms before Apple gets involved — if they get involved. But that doesn’t mean Apple has somehow been defeated in an imaginary war. Lest I repeat myself, that’s not how Apple plays the game.

As I’ve said in the past, some of those who fancy themselves as informed critics of Apple Inc. seldom pay attention. Rather than take time to understand the progression of the company and the details of its history, they make assumptions. Sometimes those assumptions are based on what others might believe without supporting evidence. Sometimes those assumptions are meant to take advantage of the value of putting “Apple” in the title; in other words hit bait. Sometimes those assumptions may even benefit a rival company.

So we have the claim that the pace of innovation has slowed severely at Apple since Steve Jobs passed away, that Tim Cook has concentrated more on minor product refreshes, with a few exceptions. That is part and parcel of the demands that Cook should be replaced for — well — one reason or another. Maybe they just want to hold a seance and have Jobs run Apple from the hereafter.

Forget the silliness. Let’s look at the facts. Up until the iPod arrived in 2001, Apple, then Apple Computer, was primarily thought of as a maker of personal computers. True there were Apple printers and other products, but at the end of the day, the Apple of 1997, when Jobs took over as CEO, earned the largest part of its revenue from Mac sales.

So where did this illusion of a constant appearance of new product categories begin?

In August, 1998, Apple introduced the original Bondi blue iMac. I remember it well. As a member of Apple’s Customer Quality Feedback program at the time, I beta tested both software and hardware. That first iMac was included, and I had the promise of being able to keep it if it sustained the final firmware update. That update bricked the computer — which may be what my contact at CQF expected — so I returned it.

The iMac may have looked like no other Mac before it — or PC for that matter — but the basic concept dated back to the original all-in-one Mac from 1984. It was meant to be a computing appliance, easy to set up, simple to maintain. Rather than have a bunch of ports, Apple concentrated on USB and Ethernet. Aside from the CRT display, Apple relied heavily on PowerBook parts with the same processors and RAM. No doubt that kept manufacturing costs low.

Aside from the distinctive looks, the iMac was hardly innovative otherwise. It wasn’t a new product category by any means, but it sold well, and helped Apple return from the brink. Apple also had fun with the iMac, choosing all sorts of color schemes that, along with minor hardware refreshes, got more mileage out of the same basic design.

The real new product category arrived with the punch line, “1000 songs in your pocket.” At $399, the iPod it may have seemed overpriced, but sales took off. Apple spread the joy over the years by building a Windows version of iTunes, thus expanding the iPod to a much larger market.

That same year, Apple also released the first version of OS X, which represented the new OS direction for the Mac. But shorn of the pretty face, it was heavily derived from the original NeXT OS that first appeared in the 1980s.

There was no new product category for Apple in 2002. A total of nearly six years transpired between the first iPod and the first iPhone. Yes, the iPod got better and more popular, with several variations to fit the needs of different customers with different budgets. iPod became the metaphor for a digital music player, and that hasn’t changed even though sales are a fraction of what they were at its peak.

The iPhone arrived in 2007 as a standalone product that was tied exclusively to AT&T’s network, although hackers found ways to jailbreak the device. There was no App Store at first. Steve Jobs envisioned web apps, but was finally convinced to give developers a chance to build what became a huge online storefront that now offers well over a million selections.

Now there was yet another new Apple product in 2007, the first Apple TV. But the present-day concept of a tiny video streamer with minimal storage didn’t appear until 2010. The current 1080p version didn’t show up until 2012, and it’s not at all certain where Apple will go with its hobby. Well, it’s not called a hobby now, but the speculation continues as to whether there will be a TV set with an Apple label, an enhanced Apple TV set-top box, or both.

Now while the iPhone got better and better, Apple didn’t enter another new product category until 2010. That year, the iPod became the first tablet computer to succeed as a mass market gadget. While Microsoft had touted tablets for years, they were mostly clumsy note-books with swivel touchscreens. These days, although PC tablets are slimmer and lighter, the original unsuccessful design concept of a convertible PC hasn’t changed.

So rather than enter new product categories, weekly, monthly, or annually, Apple’s annual product introductions were mostly refreshes of existing gear. Revenue kept growing, so why attack Cook?

Apple Pay arrived in October to a positive reception. There were few glitches, and banks and merchants are signing up at a steady clip. Well at least merchants who haven’t committed to a competing and more complicated mobile payment scheme known as CurrentC.

Apple Watch arrives in 2015 to take on the nascent smartwatch market. Existing gear hasn’t gone anywhere, but there may be hope for Apple’s intriguing variation on the theme. But remember that the iPod, the iPhone and even the iPad were dismissed by skeptics who claimed they’d never succeed. So it may well be that those skeptics will be proven wrong yet again.

And when you look at Apple’s history, you’ll see that Tim Cook is taking the company into new product directions at a roughly similar pace as his predecessor. The critics may believe otherwise, but that’s their cross to bear.

There has been no end of speculation as to why iPad sales, once soaring, are down slightly this year. True, Apple has recorded tens of millions of sales of the first truly successful tablet computer, but are the glory days over?

Aside from the reasons why this might be so, it’s unfortunate that the industry analysts who tally sales lump an iPad, which starts at $249 for the first generation iPad mini, with cheap media tablets that may sell for as little as $50, perhaps less. It’s fair to say those devices are little more than toys and thus shouldn’t be taken seriously for media consumption or for productivity. But if the goal is to minimize the success of the iPad, that strategy is a success.

Now comes a report from IDC claiming that Apple has surrendered the iPad’s stellar lead in U.S. education to those cheap Google netbooks known as Chrome-books, which can cost maybe $200 or so. Now the reasons why this is a misleading — if downright false — claim are complicated, but they are well-defined by investigative journalist Daniel Eran Dilger in a piece he wrote for AppleInsider that sharply criticizes a Financial Times article. As you can see from the article, Daniel reveals that, rather than being hugely successful, total Chrome-book sales are but a fraction of those of the iPad.

It starts with the apparent disconnect between the headline, “Google Overtakes Apple in the US Classroom,” which Daniel claims is actually contradicted in the article itself. The figures used indicate that Apple is slightly ahead, but even that is misleading.

As Daniel states, “Based on IDC’s reported numbers, Apple’s U.S. education sales of Mac and iPads were not only larger than the corresponding, combined shipments of Android and Chrome OS products, but the ‘slight lead’ Apple had over Google was a margin 172.6 percent greater than the unit differential that Garrahan and Bradshaw directed attention to in their article.”

Are you dizzy yet?

Long and short of it is that the only area where Chrome-books have shown any traction, with global sales still somewhere between two and three million a year depending on which study you believe, is education. But remember that Chrome-books are little more than small note-books using a web-based OS with very few apps. I suppose that might be good enough for simple tasks, and Google’s online office suite is certainly useful for writing homework assignments and such. But Google doesn’t offer the breadth of apps that you can get on an iPad. Indeed, Apple has hundreds of thousands of tablet-optimized apps at the App Store. A Google tablet has very few. Most just scale up poorly from smartphone apps with few enhancements to exploit the larger displays.

Worse, the media, as usual, takes the IDC figures as gospel without evaluating the study in search of possible complications or omissions. A recent Macworld article — and Macworld is owned by the same parent company as IDC — quoted the figures about the iPad’s fall in U.S. education without a single critical comment. It hasn’t been disputed, for example, that over 90% of the tablets used in classrooms are iPads.

So why the sales stall?

Well, it doesn’t appear that there’s anything wrong with iPads, or that Google tablets are demonstrably better. Clearly when it comes to the app ecosystem, Google Play is far inferior, even if the total number of Android apps are roughly compatible with the totals in the App Store.

Perhaps the key issue is the upgrade cycle, and the fact that the iPad is still a new player in the enterprise, not to mention education. While a deal with a Los Angeles school system to deploy iPads fell apart, and politics may be to blame, Apple is still pushing to have iPads put in students’ hands. The new deal with IBM means that tens of thousands of IBM Solution Providers will be marketing Apple mobile gear with special vertical apps to businesses. The potential, which won’t be realized till some time in 2015, appears to be huge.

So how often do people upgrade their tablets? It’s nowhere near the traditional two-year upgrade cycle of smartphones. It appears to be somewhere between a mobile handset and a personal computer, maybe three or four years. Businesses particularly may have an original iPad or iPad 2 and see no reason to upgrade. If the apps they require still work, it makes sense to hold onto the investment for as long as possible.

But that’s true for home users as well. While a new iPad may come into the home, the older models will simply be handed down to other family members. There’s also the iOS 8 factor. The iPad 2 is the oldest supported model, and it’s generally known that performance suffers noticeably compared to iOS 7. That might be a true incentive to replace these iPads three years after release. Time will tell whether the new models present a credible upgrade opportunity.

It is also apparent that the iPhone 6 Plus is cannibalizing some iPad sales, for people who don’t want to have to lug around two devices when one, a compromise to be sure, will suffice for many purposes. I expect iPad mini sales will suffer the most, which may explain why the iPad mini 3 didn’t change very much from last year’s model, except for Touch ID and a better camera. Apple even stayed with the A7 chip.

No doubt iPad sales for the December quarter will be most revealing. If sales increase by a decent amount, and growth is sustained moving into 2015, the critics will be forced to change their tune. If sales decline or remain flat, I suppose second guessers will have more ammunition to complain. And then there are the rumors of an even larger model, the iPad Pro, which may come next year. But how many people want to buy a 12-inch tablet, or does it become a viable MacBook Air alternative?

Let me put my cards on the table. With the first release of the MacBook Pro with Retina display, I was convinced it would be a terrific addition to Apple’s product portfolio if done right. The reviews and some hands-on exposure convinced me that Apple found a way to make me feel less sad about the decision to discontinue the 17-inch model. Surely the sharper display would compensate for having to examine content in a smaller space.

After all, I was already convinced that a Retina display worked on an iPhone, so mirroring that concept on a note-book computer didn’t surprise me. However, it wasn’t easy to scale up the display, pack a graphics chip powerful enough to move all those pixels, and make it at least somewhat affordable. But prices have come down over time. Today’s 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display starts at $1,299. The low-end 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display — low being relative — starts at $1,999. The latter is outfitted with 16GB of RAM, though the SSD drive is only 256GB. You really need twice that.

As high definition note-books go, those prices are actually quite competitive with PC hardware of similar specs, although Apple continues to possess the unfortunate reputation of charging an alleged “Apple Tax.” But when rumors arose of a Retina iMac in the works, I was skeptical. As a long-time user of a 27-inch iMac, I felt the display was quite sharp enough. But why did I always gravitate to my iPhone to read long passages of text?

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