As most of you know, IDC is a major industry analyst. The company is also a division of IDG Group, which also brings you, among other properties, Macworld magazine and the Macworld | iWorld Expo. So you sort of expect that IDC would be fair to Apple.

But expectations are sometimes not met. So you have the case of IDC “misunderestimating” Mac sales in the last quarter, claiming U.S. sales declined. But according to Apple, which has obviously the actual sales figures and not estimates, they increased by double digits. This is the second consecutive quarter where IDC’s numbers undercounted true Mac sales.

The long and short of it is that those who report on IDC findings ought to include the fact that those findings may be subject to error.

That takes us to the latest survey of the worldwide share of smartphones in the second quarter of 2014. Here we see that iOS and Android, together, account for 96.4%. The remaining 3.6% is distributed among Windows Phone, BlackBerry and lesser contenders such as they are.

Now the dominance of these two platforms is not a question, and certainly the trend seems to be accurate, which means that Android is growing faster than iOS. But IDC makes a very critical mistake, one that is never addressed, which makes the figures at the very least misleading even if you take them at face value.

So with iOS, you know we’re talking of one product line, which is Apple’s iPhone. With Android, you are talking of many, but that’s only part of the story. Here’s where IDC continues to mislead their customers and the public quarter after quarter without addressing the contradiction.

You see, not all Android handsets support the Google Play ecosystem. Don’t forget Amazon’s new Fire Phone, which won’t factor into the numbers until this quarter, but you have other handset makers who fork Android and provide their own app and music stores. This is particularly true with the Asian makers of low-cost gear that have seriously hurt the largest portion of Samsung’s market.

So these handsets are technically Android, but they do not necessarily run Google’s services, nor do you buy apps from Google Play, which means those sales don’t impact the bottom line. Besides, sales data from these lesser-known players is murkier. Samsung pulls a common stunt, classifying shipments as sales, but there’s no way to know whether the sales reported by the other companies bears any connection to reality.

More to the point, these handsets from such companies as Xiaomi Tech, primarily reach an Asian market. But it seems possible that Xiaomi, at the very least, has hopes of entering the  western world in the near future now that they’ve hired former Google Android VP Hugo Barra to run the International division. Clearly he’s not going to put any restrictions on market reach, with India and even South America on the horizon.

It’s a questionable, however, whether you’ll be able to by an Xiaomi smartphone at your neighborhood Best Buy or Radio Shack store in the U.S. anytime soon, but hiring Barra clearly indicates that the company, founded in 2010 in Beijing, wants to expand into other parts of the world as quickly as possible.

Now the forked and heavily modified OS on an Xiaomi smartphone is called MIUI. It doesn’t matter what it looks like, though it’s curiously described as having a visual resemblance to iOS and Samsung’s TouchWiz, to name two really different approaches. Regardless, it’s hard to see how you’d call MIUI just another Android OS despite its origins.

To be perfectly fair, I think IDC should subdivide Android into those products that support Google Play and all or most of their Android services and those with their own app ecosystems. As a practical matter, the handsets sold by such companies as Xiaomi aren’t going to enrich Google in any way and shouldn’t count as part of the overall Android marketshare.

Of course this smoke and mirrors game isn’t new for IDC, Gartner and other analysts, who pulled various stunts to reduce the apparent sales impact of the iPad. Rather than putting them in the same category as PCs, as you do with a Windows tablet, iPad wasn’t included. Worse, iPad market share is compared with millions of cheap Android-based tablets, such as the ones you buy at a discount store for $50 or so. I’d classify such gear as toys, not serious gear that you can actually use for productivity.

Yes, I realize this commentary may come across as sour grapes to some, that I’m making excuses for lost market share from Apple. But shouldn’t numbers of market share be presented as accurately as possible? It doesn’t help Google that so many Android handsets used modified versions that do not work with their ecosystem. So why put them in the very same category other than to make Apple’s apparent lesser sales growth seem more significant?

In short, I would like to know how you can really break down Android figures into official and forked versions, and whether the market share gains, if true, apply to the former, the latter, or both. I suspect, with the problems Samsung has encountered by Samsung of late, it’s the latter.

If the published reports are correct — and they have yet to be confirmed by Apple — there will be a media event on Tuesday, September 9th to announce the next generation iPhone. Keeping with past as precedent, it’ll be called the iPhone 6, and will present some heavy-duty changes in form factor, particularly a larger display size, or two larger display sizes. The recent reports have settled on 4.7 inches and 5.5 inches; the latter puts Apple in the phablet camp, though they certainly won’t call it that.

Now it does appear Apple has been pushed perhaps kicking and screaming to build larger iPhones. Despite claiming that the 4-inch size is ideal for one-handed use, it’s still true that Samsung and other companies sell an awful lot of larger handsets. You can argue all you want about quality, the worth of Android versus iOS and all the rest. But if customers want larger smartphones, and they are willing to pay for premium gear, Apple finds it hard to ignore the market.

True, Tim Cook hasn’t in the past dismissed the idea of a larger iPhone. He talked of tradeoffs and the limitation of display technology, such as picture quality and longevity, though I’ve not heard of people with Samsung smartphones complaining about premature failures. Still, that’s marketspeak for saying Apple has a better solution in the offing, and I’m sure that solution will be revealed next month.

The other features often mentioned include an A8 processor, enhanced Touch ID, perhaps a beefier camera with more megapixels, and maybe a few extra hardware goodies. NFC continues to be mentioned year after year, but is there really a case for that technology?

But maybe just a larger screen would be enough. One of my clients, whose eyesight has seen better days, told me the other day, “When the new phone comes out if there’s no large screen I’ll buy a Samsung.” There ought to be other reasons, to be sure, but I can see where she’s coming from.

Certainly, with the media and financial community all believing Apple must release an iPhone 6 product line with two display sizes, delivering anything less would be a real letdown. Apple wants to exceed expectations, but those expectations get higher and higher every single year. So even announcing an iPhone lineup that’s pretty much what has been predicted so far might not be enough.

Last year, much of what ended up in the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s was predicted in advance. The 64-bit A7 and M7 coprocessor weren’t fully described in advance, though. Unfortunately, the 5c didn’t get the love from the media, although it seems to have been quite successful from a sales standpoint. Yes, that point has been driven home again and again, but perceptions count for a lot and the media seldom admits it was all wrong about Apple.

So unless Apple can pull something out of the hat that was totally unexpected, it may be that the media will deliver a yawn about the new products. This is particularly true if, as rumored, the 5.5-inch model is in short supply or won’t arrive until a few weeks later.

Now every time I see all this advance chatter, other than the expected interest in a new Apple gadget, I wonder just whether the company’s own marketing and PR team were responsible for some of the “leaks.” It comes across as a conspiracy theory, I suppose, but clearly Apple benefits from a free marketing campaign worth tens of millions of dollars.

It will focus an immense amount of attention on the new products, and if there’s a lot of pent-up demand, as most of you expect, the iPhone 6 ought to be flying off the shelves on Day One.

What will be telling is whether the iPhone 5c stays in the product line as the “free” product with a wireless contract. That would pretty much confirm how successful it really was.

Now some are wondering if Apple is prepared to release another gadget at the same time, perhaps the mythical iWatch. It has been years since an Apple person used the magical phrase, “one more thing” to introduce something unexpected. But it doesn’t appear that will be the case this time. Maybe it’s better to focus all the attention in the iPhone 6 and iOS 8 — though Yosemite might arrive the same day — and deliver the next product a few weeks later. Stuffing everything into one agenda might just diffuse interest, since there would be too much for the media to digest.

Consider the WWDC, rich with announcements of numerous changes and enhancements for iOS and OS X, and the curious conclusion on the part of some tech pundits that not a lot happened. Where’s the new hardware, they thought? It was just some software updates.

In any case, I just hope that too much hype doesn’t end up reducing attention to the real event.

So it is now pretty well known that Apple won’t be able to take advantage of Intel’s latest chip family, Broadwell, until 2015. Well, not unless there’s a low-power Mac in the works that would represent a slimmer MacBook Air, or an Air-Lite version. The low-power version is the only Broadwell chip that’s come out so far.

Now I can understand that it’s not always possible to predict exact release dates of new chip technologies. In large part, however, it appears Broadwell’s biggest advantage is in power consumption, which would make your MacBook Air and MacBook Pro run longer on a single battery charge. That’s a good thing, certainly,

But not so good if all you want is a faster computer, since performance improvements in Intel chipsets have tended to be relatively minor in recent years. Absent a solid state drive, which really makes your Mac soar, the differences in performance for each model iteration have been relatively minor. Yes, a 2009 iMac is noticeably slower than a 2013 iMac, but the difference is mostly measured with apps that take extra time to do their thing.

These days, I expect a Mac mini, which hasn’t seen an update since 2012, would deliver performance that would satisfy most of you. Adding a Fusion drive would deliver most of the performance of a dedicated solid state drive at a more affordable price, and it would really make the difference.

In any case, some of the rumors still suggest a 12-inch MacBook Air with Retina display is in the offing, though it seems that Apple wants to keep the existing lineup as affordable as possible. While the benefits of the higher resolution are undeniable, particularly on a note-book (less so on a desktop computer where you are farther away from the display), the question is whether the higher price would attract a large portion or customers, or just cannibalize business from the MacBook Pro with Retina display.

But I expect, as prices for Retina display panels decrease, there may come a time where Apple could offer the feature in the standard MacBook Air without a price premium. Remember it wasn’t so long ago that a solid state drive was a relatively high-end option, although prices for upgrades to the largest capacities are still too expensive for most people.

When it comes to the iMac, I’m running back and forth as to whether it makes sense for Apple to release more new models this year. Yes, there are likely slightly faster Haswell chips to be had, and changing the version number for 2013 to 2014 might make the iMac appear more current. Psychology means a lot when it comes to sales, but it may just be that the cheaper 21.5-inch model announced some weeks back will be the sole change in the lineup for this year. I suppose that depends as much on how existing sales are going as on the availability of somewhat faster parts from Intel.

Still, the $1,099 21.5-inch iMac, which is essentially a MacBook Air in a desktop guise, is regarded by the reviewers as underpowered compared to the model you can get for $200 more. Maybe it makes sense for Apple to cut the price to $999, clearly removing an important barrier in terms of marketing, and do a minor speed bump for the rest of the lineup. But I sort of think Apple could have done that at the same time the cheaper model was announced.

The Mac Pro doesn’t seem to be a candidate for a near-term refresh, unless faster Xeons are available that would rally make for a decent performance difference.

In any case, I really don’t see why the Mac mini hasn’t been touched for two years. Maybe it’s not such a great seller and all, but it shouldn’t take much in the way of development money to put in the latest Haswell chips in that tiny box. No need to change a thing otherwise, and maybe reduce the price by $50 or $100. It would surely make it easier for Windows users to make the Mac migration, along with the perception that they are upgrading to a current model rather than something that’s using older chip technology.

As I said, maybe performance wouldn’t be all that different, but perceptions count for a lot, and I expect increased sales would more than cover development costs and the price of the newer parts. Unless Apple has some major form factor and parts changes in the offing, I just wonder why the mini is left to stagnate. Indeed, this is a great time to pick up business from Windows PC users who are just sick and tired of Windows 8, and may not even find the modest changes in the offing for Windows 9 to be compelling enough to stick with the platform.

Certainly the promise of Yosemite has made the Mac alternative all the more compelling. The tighter integration with iOS was a smart move, even though some Mac users incorrectly believe that OS 10.10 will make their computers operate like an iPhone or an iPad. From personal experience, I can state that’s not the case. Besides, Apple is not going to build a convertible Mac with a touchscreen and all the other unneeded stuff that Microsoft installed on the failed Surface 3.

As Microsoft prepares to shed 18,000 employees, you’d think the company’s marketing team would be working overtime to boost income and shore up weaker products. Instead, it doesn’t appear that any lessons have been learned from the ongoing failure of the Surface.

Now in a previous round of Surface ads, Microsoft touted the ability to run Office and Skype, forgetting, or ignoring the fact that you could also do both on a Mac or an iPad. So where’s the advantage? Besides, the consumers that Microsoft was targeting would care about the latter more than the former. In addition to Macs and iPads, they could also run Skype on an iPhone or an Android phone, not to mention Windows Phone. So?

In other words, if a company is touting something as advantage, make sure it’s an advantage. It’s not an advantage to mention a product or service that the competition also has. It just coneys the impression that, in this case at least, Microsoft must think potential customers of the Surface 3 aren’t very smart.

More to the point, are those advantages relevant to the target audience? Now flashy TV ads would tend to impact consumers. If you want to reach the IT market, maybe go to Computerworld or a similar enterprise-oriented publication. Consumers may care about Skype, but not so much about Microsoft Office, unless it’s needed at work, but it’s not considered a sexy feature by any means.

Microsoft, as their marketing team probably expected, got some attention from the Mac media for the latest series of ads touting the Surface 3. Typical of previous campaigns, though, Microsoft doesn’t quite get the audience they’re trying to reach, which continues to explain why the Surface tablets have failed in the marketplace.

This time, Microsoft is presenting the Surface 3 as a slightly costlier — but superior — alternative to the MacBook Air. So after the Windows critics attacked Apple for selling overpriced gear — the alleged “Apple Tax” — now we have a product that, with optional keyboard, is more expensive than an Apple note-book. So the question is why?

It’s certainly not more powerful than the MacBook Air, so what is there that you can’t live without?

Well, it seems that Microsoft is still pushing the tablet trope that has gone nowhere for well over a decade. Although slimmer and lighter than most PC equivalents, Microsoft has clearly learned no lessons. So the Surface 3 is better than a MacBook Air because it has a touchscreen, a stylus and a detachable keyboard. Well, actually it’s an attachable keyboard because the core product doesn’t have one.

A stylus?

The stylus and the touchscreen have been part of every single failed Windows tablet for years. As I’ve mentioned in the past, our former family doctor had a network of those tablets, a thick old Toshiba, which actually hampered entry and retrieval of patient information. I still remember watching him and his assistants combing through complex interfaces to manage a patient visit. I expect it actually made the visits take longer, hence the doctor made less money, since the prices charged were the same as other physicians. In the end, he moved his practice to a member-only scheme, where you pay an annual fee in addition to the price of the office visits.

I would not assume the change was due to the harm caused by using inefficient convertible note-books.

One thing has been clear, though, and that is that convertible note-books haven’t done a lot for the PC market. Indeed, the success story this past quarter was the traditional desktop minitower, largely because businesses are rushing to upgrade their computers in the wake of Microsoft’s decision to end support for Windows XP. Old systems that won’t work efficiently with Windows 7 had to be replaced. Once that replacement cycle is finished, perhaps PC sales will return to the doldrums.

As one blogger suggested, Microsoft isn’t going to persuade many MacBook Air owners that the clunky Surface 3 is a superior alternative. They might persuade other PC users, at the expense of competing with OEMs. Of course, Microsoft has never been above competing with OEMs in the past, so that would be nothing new.

But now that the targets for Microsoft’s corporate blood letting have been identified — and they appear to be mostly employees of Nokia’s handset division — perhaps the next task would be to get the marketing division working full-time to identify the correct markets and demand for a device or service, and to do their level best to expand those markets.

Trying to pigeonhole an existing product into a category in which it doesn’t fit isn’t going to magically move millions of copies of the Surface 3 into the hands of customers. Revisiting old, failed strategies isn’t going to help either.

For the future, I gather Microsoft is hoping that Windows 9 will help people forget the stench of Windows 8, perhaps the worst OS failure in the company’s history. But the early feature set seems a throwback. The desktop interface will get greater emphasis, there will be a redone Start menu, and the addition of virtual desktops. But OS X and Linux users have been taking advantage of virtual desktops for several years. There have been third party alternatives for Windows, too, so adding native support would be a useful feature, but hardly unique, and hardly worth the upgrade from Windows 8 — or Windows 7 for that matter.

In contrast, take a look at the immense feature set for OS X Yosemite. If Microsoft manages a tenth of what Apple is offering, Windows boosters will tout that as a significant development.