A few facts are obvious. iPhone sales keep climbing, Samsung’s sales are falling, but the Android platform is still ahead of the game worldwide on the basis of unit sales. But Apple still manages to earn most of the profits in the industry with high margins and competitive prices. Nowadays, dealers are even more proactive about discounting iPhones, but you don’t see the two-for-one fire sales that that apply to some of the newest Android gear.

Well, a certain blogger, unnamed for obvious reasons, has yet another listicle for you to read to explain how Android is better than the iPhone in six different ways. At least that’s the promise, but the list wasn’t even completed, as you’ll see in a moment.

Before I get to the main course, I realize that nobody need make an excuse for personal preference. You may even be one of the few who buys a BlackBerry or a Windows Phone nowadays, and if you think you made the right choice, more power to you. It doesn’t matter what I think. Be happy.

Now one of the obvious perceived advantages of Android is variety. You have a gazillion choices of sizes and specs from dozens of manufacturers. True only Samsung manages to actually earn much profit from an Android smartphone, but the choices are almost endless. To keep prices low, manufacturers often forget such niceties as earning a decent profit from a sale.

Worse, the vast selection often creates confusion, because there are so many superficially similar models you often don’t know which choice to make. At least Apple keeps the selection sensible. You can get three display sizes — four inches, 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches — and different storage capacities.

Apple is not a company to offer an endless variety, although they tried that in the 1990s with the infamous Performa series, and we all know how that turned out. But the rest of the consumer electronics industry clearly hasn’t learned.

On the other hand, if you want a smartphone with a display larger than 5.5 inches, or smaller than four inches, at least there are options. The same is true if you want to take a handset with you while surfing and need something that’s reasonably waterproof. Indeed, the Samsung Galaxy S5, an underachiever when it comes to sales, can at least be dunked if that’s your thing.

There are also vague references to battery life and display quality, implying there’s something lacking on the iPhone with either. But while there are certainly smartphones with bigger batteries, boasting longer times between charges, Apple’s has always been on the cutting edge of display technology. Perhaps the blogger was looking at specs and got immersed in the “resolution is everything” gambit, not realizing that great specs doesn’t always translate to great quality.

Other than the desire for a beefier battery, though, I don’t see the claim as an example of a feature that the iPhone doesn’t have.

The other argument is price and the lack of the ability to add a microSD card. Now the article cites Android phones listing from $300-$500, which I presume is meant to reflect the unlocked price, not what you pay with a carrier contract. Indeed, with some contracts, you pay nothing down, but your bill increases modestly each month until the balance is paid off.

Regardless, an unlocked 8GB iPhone 5c is $450, and an unlocked iPhone 5s is $550. So I’m not sure what the author is trying to convey, beyond the lack of microSD. While I’m not averse to having removable storage, I wonder how many people don’t buy iPhones because of the lack of this feature, or even care.

The other complaint is about “much better and deeper integration with Google’s app and service ecosystem.” We are hitting the dumb department here, of course, but let me explain. It seems that this is a fuzzy sentence that isn’t referring to the quality if iOS apps. That’s an argument the blogger will lose right away. While the number of iOS and Google Play apps may not be altogether different, Apple has a far richer selection.

But that’s not the claim.

Instead, it’s about “web based software and services,” such as mapping and cloud storage. The problem with this argument is is that you can access Google offerings of this sort on an iPhone with Google’s apps. If you don’t like Maps for iOS, and it’s getting better, Google Maps is available. The reverse is obviously not true. Apple’s services are not available on an Android device.

There’s more, but it’s not in the article. The blogger curiously refers us to a link to yet another site to get the rest. But the link isn’t contained in the article, not even a “click here” for direct access, not even a summary.

Or perhaps the remaining features not found on an iPhone are even less significant.

It is certainly true that you can devise a long list of things you can get on an Android smartphone that Apple has decided not to offer, at least not yet. Sometimes Apple plays catch up, such as adding widgets and expanded support for third-party keyboards in iOS 8. But it’s more about ease of use and features that actually work that count more; in other words, the user experience. Android’s presumed advantages may exist on paper, such as onboard chips with more processing cores. Does that translate to a product that performs better in the real world?

Most times, no. But that’s not the sort of subtlety some of these bloggers understand.

The original concept of the Internet was to be free and open. Well, not in the sense of charging you for the service, but letting you access the content you want without a gatekeeper. Sure there are sites that require usernames and passwords, and cater strictly to people who are customers who sometimes pay for access, but if the site is legal, your ISP shouldn’t get involved.

Now in the early days of the online world, only a few had open Internet access. Such mass-market online services as AOL and CompuServe (later acquired by AOL) chose to dole out the Internet in tiny digestible bits, while keeping you mostly inside their walled gardens.

That was a long time ago, and when you order up Internet service today, you expect that any site or service you access will present content to you at near the speed for which you contracted. Sure sites might run slower because their servers are overloaded, or for reasons beyond the control of your ISP, but you should otherwise expect things to just work. Well, unless your ISP has an outage.

Things went awry when large content providers clogged the Internet pipes with their content, usually streaming video. Perhaps the “worst offender” is Netflix.

According to a recent AP report, “Netflix increased its share of fixed-line Internet traffic in North America in the first half of 2014, accounting for 34 percent of data flowing to consumers during peak times, up from 32 percent in the latter half of 2013. That’s according to a new report from Sandvine Inc., a Canadian networking services company.”

I imagine a lot of that traffic overload occurs when Netflix is premiering a new series, as millions of people are binge viewing “House of Cards” and other great shows. All right, I usually take it all in with single episodes, most of the time anyway. But lots of Netflix customers complained about stuttering or constant rebuffering.

Whose at fault when this happens?

Well quite often it’s your ISP, doing some traffic control or throttling to reduce the impact on their networks. Many of these ISPs run their own cable TV services, with content delivered free of any slowdowns, and it doesn’t count towards that service’s online bandwidth cap.  In order words, the company is playing favorites.

To get around this, Netflix has actually contracted with a few ISPs, such as Comcast (the largest broadband service in the U.S.), so they can place their own servers in the ISP’s datacenters and be assured of providing uninterrupted service to customers at the highest possible speeds. All it takes is a big check to open the pipes. If a content provider, particularly a startup, doesn’t have the funds to pay a ransom for uninterrupted traffic, that’s just too bad.

In all fairness, Netflix claims they are only paying Comcast and other broadband services for a direct connection, not access to a fast lane. Take that anyway you want, but it’s also true that Comcast customers essentially stopped complaining about performance glitches with Netflix.

Now the FCC tried to enforce net neutrality, meaning that the ISP couldn’t selectively throttle Internet traffic or exact fees to enter a fast line. Unfortunately, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia decided, in a ruling earlier this year, that the FCC didn’t have the authority to issue that order.

So it was back to square one.

Sad to say, the latest FCC proposal only confuses the situation, by essentially conveying the impression that everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others. What this means is that, in theory, the new ruling would prevent ISPs from blocking or prioritizing online traffic. But individual content providers could still pay for a fast lane. It seems a case of having it both ways, and the responses contained in millions of communications received by the FCC appear to be mostly negative.

This week, President Obama stepped in, at long last, calling for true net neutrality, no ifs, ands or buts. The Internet must be free and open.

Predictably Republicans are complaining that it’s just another example of government overreach, an improper attempt to stop private industry from acting in their own best interests. Firebrand Republican Senator Ted Cruz outrageously called it “Obamacare for the Internet.”

The Mac Observer’s outspoken Jeff Gamet remarked that it “seems the Senator needs some schooling on what a free and open Internet really is, and why it’s so important.”

So there’s no confusion, the FCC can act as an independent body and rule as they wish on net neutrality. In light of that court decision, however, the final ruling will have to be handled differently. One possibility is to classify an ISP as a consumer broadband service under Title II of the Telecommunications Act. That section deals with public utilities.

However, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, a former cable and wireless industry lobbyist, has indicated the agency is looking for a more nuanced solution. Nothing is expected to happen until next year.

While I hesitate to get into politics, I should think that a political party devoted to individual freedom would recognize the right of the individual to receive unfettered Internet access, and not find themselves unable to access content at acceptable speeds because of an ISP’s arbitrary decision to selectively throttle traffic from those who don’t pay a ransom. At the same time, an Internet company has the perfect right to charge you for extra bandwidth and higher speeds. It’s all about the freedom to do business in a responsible fashion.

But is it their right to determine which content to offer at full speed and which content to throttle? Doesn’t such behavior restrict your personal freedom to access a free and open Internet?

Before the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus arrived, there were photos of components and finished cases that appeared quite close to the mark. So despite Apple’s efforts to clamp down on security leaks, the word still got out. As a practical matter, with hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people assembling Apple gear, it is virtually impossible to shut it all down. The stories will get out from time to time, and Apple has to cope with it.

Sure, secrets are kept, but very often they manage to avoid the Asian supply chain. The Mac Pro, for example, is assembled in the U.S.A., and production is fairly limited, hence there were fewer people to suffer from bouts of loose lips before the original launch. Since the Apple Watch hasn’t yet gone into mass production, again Apple has fuller control over the leaks. Indeed, very little of the final configuration was known in advance of the September media event where the curtain was lifted, though there was plenty of guesswork, some of which might have hinted at the reality by sheer logic or luck.

But Apple rumors are big business, and even the mainstream media will post them from time to time. Sometimes they’ll even quote known rumor sites, which gives a story all that much extra credibility. So we have frequent situations where a rumor becomes more credible because someone has quoted one posted by someone else.

We have a situation, then, where you might read a story that, “according to a rumor published in rumorsitedujour.com, Apple is going to release a 24-inch iPod Super Pro at the end of 2016 to cater to graphic artists and sign painters.”

Now before I go on, I’m sure you realize there is no such site, or at least not yet, and that there is no such rumor, at least not yet. Don’t take it seriously, but when such things go through several generations of transmission and retransmission, along with some embellishment, they can take on a life of their own.

The larger problem with coverage of Apple Inc., however, is the unfortunate fact that little glitches can become major, and modest glitches can become unmitigated disasters. We know, for example, that the iOS 8.0.1 update went awfully wrong if you owned any variation of an iPhone 6. You lost cellular connections and Touch ID. That was bad, and Apple knew it quickly enough to withdraw the update in a little over an hour. But not before 40,000 people were impacted. Yes, there was a not-too-painful fix of restoring the device with the original iOS 8. Apple released a working 8.0.2 update the very next day.

This is also not the first time someone’s software update went wrong, and it doesn’t matter why. Apple says it was the “wrapper” without actually explaining what that meant to most people. Regardless, it doesn’t take much in the way of online searches to find failed updates everywhere, not just with Apple. Stuff will happen, but the real question is how well a company addresses and fixes a glitch. Clearly Apple acted quickly once the damage was known. Would Microsoft issue a fixed update in 24 hours? Or 24 days?

On Monday afternoon, I heard a brief AP news story during their hourly radio newscast about alleged infected apps that could impact Apple devices. It sounded all new, but offered no details. Unfortunately, it may be nothing more than a repeat of last week’s report about the WireLurker trojan that impacted both Macs and iOS gear. If so, the story failed to mention that the infection was spread by pirated apps downloaded from an illegal software site in China. What’s more, Apple has taken steps to block the affected apps so they can’t be launched on a Mac and do their nasty stuff.

So it appears that the AP report was not only out of date, but misleading. Worse, it’s the sort of story that might be repeated uncritically on a radio or TV station. A few laughing talking heads embellishing the story with snide comments, and new rumors would be spread. But I don’t expect mainstream media outlets to correctly parse tech stories unless they have people onboard who understand what’s actually going on. And maybe not even then if a story putting Apple in a bad light would boost ratings.

To be fair, it may well be that AP was referring to something called a “Masque Attack,” involving bogus iOS apps that may be distributed using Apple’s enterprise provisioning system. It’s a vulnerability first discovered last summer but not reported until this week by a security company. Still, it doesn’t mean that anyone has ever been infected by it. If it’s as serious as it seems, I would expect Apple to close the security hole in a future iOS update. But remember that potential security problems don’t count for much unless they are actually exploited somehow.

But you can see how reports of this sort fuel speculation about the alleged lack of security on the OS X or iOS platforms, ignoring the very real problems on Android that will rarely, if ever, be fixed. Remember that most people with Android gear never, ever receive critical software updates, or any software updates. Sure, Google might fix problems with Google Play that don’t require pushing an update to a smartphone or tablet. But that’s not even half a loaf.

Since things that happen at Google ought to be big news, you wonder why these radio and TV talking heads aren’t covering Android security lapses. Maybe someone from Apple should quietly make a few phone calls. But I wonder at times whether one of those other companies are making calls asking their favored reporters to look at an alleged Apple problem, or at least a rumor that casts unfavorable light on the company.

Taking advantage of lower prices for flash storage, buying iPhones and iPads with more space to put your stuff has become cheaper. So it costs $100 extra to increase capacity from 16GB to 64GB, and another $100 to go to 128GB. In passing, I eagerly await the time when Apple offers larger solid state drives on new Macs for prices that come closer to that of a mechanical hard drive.

So clearly Apple is delighted if you have plenty of extra space. Unlike Microsoft and Samsung, Apple actually doesn’t reserve a huge portion of storage space for its own needs on an iPhone or an iPad. But it still may not be enough for iOS 8.

Now there have been loads of questions as to why the iOS 8 upgrade pace continues to lag behind iOS 7, and even iOS 6. Give it time some suggest, while others talk about rampant bugs. The 8.0.1 update, which killed cellular service and Touch ID on an iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, is cited as a key example. But Apple withdraw the update within a little over an hour, not enough time for many people to be impacted. In all, some 40,000 devices were affected, and Apple provided easy instructions to restore those devices. The next day, iOS 8.0.2 arrived, which fixed the problem that was allegedly due to a problem with the update’s “wrapper,” according to Apple.

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