So it really doesn’t matter what Apple does or doesn’t do. There will be plenty of fear merchants who will engage in FUD, which is short for fear, uncertainty, doubt. It doesn’t matter whether any of it is based on fact. Just make up a story, make it seem credible at first glance, post it, and hope the hint count soars.

So there’s a report in a certain online financial publication fretting about what Apple might do should something happen to CEO Tim Cook. What if he becomes disabled, unable to continue to work? What if he meets a premature end? Do we want to dwell on the tragic implications?

Certainly Steve Jobs left us before his time. In a different life, he may have hung on for another 30 or 40 years. Wasn’t he concerned about having a healthy diet? But it’s also true that nobody can predict what might happen. I have a close relative, someone who seemed as healthy as can be, who was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and is now fighting for his life. We hope he’ll survive because the doctors caught it early, and it hasn’t spread, but you get the point.

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So the theory goes that net neutrality simply means that your ISP cannot throttle traffic to your computer or mobile gadget and exact a “ransom” from the content provider to stop slowing things down. That’s the theory, but it’s all very complicated, and the FCC’s latest effort to sort things out may end up being more confusing than ever. Indeed, some are saying it will be the end of net neutrality as we know it.

Indeed, when you read the proposal passed by the FCC this week on a three-two vote, you wonder if the commissions are talking out of both sides of their mouth. When I read the proposal, I began to feel as if I was in a car dealer’s finance office, where all sorts of confusing offers are made, with papers rushed into your hands for signature. If you don’t pay attention and hold your pen at bay, you may end up getting ripped off with extended warranties, gap insurance and other overpriced and usually unnecessary frills.

So, yes, there is the portion of the proposal that says ISPs cannot shuttle some traffic into a slow lane, thus reducing performance. This is supposedly aimed primarily at high-traffic users, such as Netflix, so, even if you have a speedy connection, playback of the latest episode of “House of Cards” may come in fits and starts with lots of buffering messages.

That means that if you’re paying for a 50 megabit connection, you should receive something close to that for all traffic, assuming the company sending that content is capable of handling the load. That seems to make sense so far as it goes.

But yet another set of proposals allows a content provider to strike a special deal with the ISP for preferred access, which usually involves setting up a direct connection to that ISP’s broadband pipes. Normally Internet traffic travels over a number of routes to go from there to here, with the number of “hops” reflecting the number of servers or connection points that are involved in that transmission.

What this seems to mean is that everyone is equal, but some are more equal than others if they have the spare cash to pay for direct access to your ISP. With that direct connection, Netflix can supposedly reach the “last mile” to your home or office at the full speed you paid for. Indeed, after months in which Comcast users complained of poor Netflix performance, the streaming service struck a deal with this country’s largest ISP to deal with the problem.

Now despite Comcast’s denials, you have to wonder why Netflix couldn’t reach that company’s subscribers with good performance without paying for a faster connection. It’s also possible this deal will be scuttled as part of the approval process for Comcast’s proposed merger with Time Warner.

At the end of the day, was Comcast doing something nasty to throttle Netflix traffic? I thought of that recently when I encountered a similar problem on a much lower scale, involving one of our Web servers and the ISP I use, CenturyLink. While I would get full performance with most traffic, if it came from the server, it would proceed at barely dial up speeds, about 50K. That, clearly, was quite unacceptable and it meant that anyone downloading one of my radio shows via that ISP would have to wait over an hour to get the download even if they used the highest speeds offered by CenturyLink.

After back and forth communications with different support people that extended over about a month, CenturyLink finally blamed the problem on their peering connection with an Internet backbone provider known as Cogent Communications. At the end of the day, each blamed the other for not offering sufficient capacity to allow the traffic to go through at full speed. I don’t know about the private deals between the two, but it does appear, at the end of the day, to be very much about money. In theory, if the traffic going in each direction is equal, no problem. When it becomes unequal, where more traffic is being sent than received, or the other way around, suddenly things go awry, and money sometimes changes hands to set things right.

I can only guess at what happened, but right now the slowdown one day ended. It appears that the datacenter where my server is housed opted to use a different backbone provider, Tata Communications, to send traffic. Or at least that’s what my tests show. Regardless, the slowdowns are history. But I wonder about the customer who encounters such a problem only to be brushed off by the ISP because the standard speed tests don’t reveal any problems.

In any case, the FCC proposal is now open for comments for the next 120 days. Supposedly the FCC will look at those comments, which will come from both individuals and companies, to determine whether the rule goes forward or is modified in some way.

Regardless of how it turns out, the promise that the FCC won’t allow ISPs to put traffic in a slow lane still rings hollow. This could very much be a have and have-not situation, where large streaming companies, such as Netflix, with deep pockets, can get preferred status, while small startups won’t have the extra cash to get fair access to their subscribers. Yes, the FCC claims that they expect contracts to be fair, that those needing less bandwidth because they are small will simply pay less for the privilege, and that such deals will be reviewed.

But allowing these arrangements in the first place seems to argue against net neutrality. It doesn’t matter how the FCC spins it. That’s what it seems, and that’s the worst possible outcome.

The other day, I heard a TV ad for sunglasses using the term “HD,” as if to indicate that what you saw would be more accurate because of the special type of lenses being used. Of course, it’s all nonsense, but HD has become a buzzword that conveys the illusion of something better.

Now with HD television, it is something demonstrably better, no doubt about it. With HD sources, the picture is far superior compared to standard definition. Yet I do hear tell that a lot of people with HD TVs still don’t use HDMI cables or get HD from their cable or satellite provider. Even though Blu-ray disc players are less than $100 nowadays, some still use the standard DVD, or buy standard DVDs because they are cheaper. The quality difference is definitely worth it once you see it.

These days, TV makers have another kind of HD, Ultra HD or 4K, which promises pictures with up to four times the pixels. It sounds great on paper, but in the real world the difference doesn’t appear so significant. If you’re not in the habit of sitting real close to a set, you’d want to consider a model with a 60-inch or larger screen to to see a visible improvement on 4K material. Of course, the TV makers would love to sell you more expensive TVs with bigger screens. Otherwise, it’s probably not worth the bother. But it’s also true that 4K will filter down to cheaper models over the next few years, so when you’re in the market for a new set, you may end up with one anyway.

Yet another sort of HD is HD audio. According to a story at MacRumors, Apple is working on support for some sort of HD audio scheme for iOS 8. It will allegedly require different Lightning cables and earphones. Yes, I suppose it sounds promising, except for the fact that it probably won’t make any difference in what you can actually hear, and there’s the rub.

But first, the issue about needing special cables or earphones is absurd. Lighting cables and the connector simply pass a digital stream. The tiny ear buds you get with your iPhone or iPad will offer decent enough sound, but hardly what HD would potentially deliver. Still, it’s a trivial matter to substitute a better headset, and you can get good ones for less than $50, and spectacular ones for more than $300.

Regardless, the real question is whether you can actually hear a higher resolution recording. The current standard for iTunes, 256K with AAC encoding, is said to be very close to that of a standard audio CD, which offers a 44.1 kHz sampling rate with 16-bit depth. That’s sufficient to deliver the potential of a 96dB signal-to-noise radio and a frequency response that exceeds the standard of 20 Hz–20 kHz. That was deemed sufficient to offer the promise of “perfect sound forever” back in the 1980s. These days, however, audio engineers typically make digital recordings with a higher resolution, usually 24-bit with a 96 kHz sampling rate. The theory goes that, when mixed down to the CD audio rate, you’ll get a better sounding track.

In theory.

Yet it’s also true that some perceive vinyl, which has a much lower resolution (although a theoretically wider frequency range, at least till the record wears), as sounding better. But as with tube amplifiers, it’s about imperfect reproduction sources tailoring the sound in a way that’s more pleasing to the ear. That means it’s less perfect, but perfect doesn’t always mean the music source actually sounds better.

Regardless, the main issue here is whether people, even with the most expensive audio systems, could actually hear a difference between the current iTunes music, and uncompressed audio. You’d probably say it has to be night and day, but would it survive a true double-blind listening test (making sure levels were within a fraction of a dB)? Perhaps, but I doubt the difference would be significant. AAC technology is actually quite good despite the high rate of compression.

I suppose, for the rare few with “golden ears” and the best (and usually most expensive) audio gear available, being able to buy lossless or HD audio tracks might be worth paying extra. Of course, you’d also have far fewer songs on your iOS gear, since the files would be considerably larger. Would that be worth the tradeoff?

Or, as with 4K video, is HD audio just more hype to entice you to buy the more expensive spread rather than the cheap one? For most of you it would be, but if the option satisfies your emotions and your budget, I suppose there’s nothing wrong with having another choice.

But I also recall the words of an old-time reviewer of audio and video gear who famously wondered whether the difference was significant enough to be worth paying more. I suspect not, but that doesn’t mean Apple wouldn’t consider offering higher resolution audio tracks if it was perceived there was a sizable market for them. As it is, digital music sales are declining, not by much, and perhaps because customers have already saturated their storage devices with the content they want. Or maybe recent releases aren’t quite as compelling.

That, however, won’t stop companies from offering products and services touting some sort of real or imagined HD capabilty to convey the illusion you are getting something better, even if the reality is usually otherwise

As we get closer to the expected release of the next iPhone, more and more mockups and raw case parts are emerging online. They are all allegedly sourced from the supply chain, and are presented, with or without comment, on various sites, particularly those that truck in Apple rumors.

By and large, they fit into the current media meme about the iPhone 6, which is that it will come in a 4.7-inch version, and as a “phablet,” with a 5.5-inch display. The general tenor of the phablet claim is that Apple is allegedly having problems with displays and batteries, and thus may debut this model a few weeks or a few months after the smaller handset appears. It has also been given a name, the iPhone Air, which is in keeping with the flagship iPad motif.

Where there’s any consistency, it’s that the case is thinner on both models, and the corners are more rounded, somewhat in keeping with a vintage iPod touch. But when it comes to a smartphone, there are only so many variations on the rounded corner theme before it’s not so rounded and appears all or mostly squared off. Apple is into making things sturdy but slim, so I suppose the larger case could be used to contain a bigger battery without making the unit noticeably larger.

Other rumors talk of using the next generation A8 chip, and an enhanced camera sensor with larger pixels, or more pixels, or a combination of the true. The antenna is also said to be undergoing a redesign, though the one on the existing iPhones seems to work well enough. We are way past the day of that infamous Antennagate episode, although Apple is reported to have only recently discontinued production of the 2010 iPhone 4, the model that featured the controversial antenna design, which continued to be sold in India and other countries.

Now I’m not about to suggest whether or not the prototypes are as represented, nor will I reproduce the drawings and photos. It’s not as if we really know which might be real, which might be made up, or which might be a combination of the two extremes.

It’s certainly true that leaks from the supply chain have been common with recent Apple hardware. We all pretty much knew the basics of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c before they were released, so a lot of the details did not come as a surprise. Even the fingerprint sensor had been rumored in light of Apple’s purchase of AuthenTec, the company who invented the technology, in 2012. So it was only a matter of time before the feature that became Touch ID appeared on a new Apple mobile device.

As we get closer to the actual release date, which may happen as early as August according to a new set of rumors — though that would depend on the release date of iOS 8 — you’ll see more and more photos of the new model or models. They would likely be more accurate representations of the finished product.

I suppose it’s unfortunate that these product leaks have diminished the wow factor of new Apple gear. All right, you didn’t know the surprising details about the Mac Pro before the original demonstration at last year’s WWDC, but Apple was still several months from production, so there was more opportunity to keep the prototypes secret. With an iPhone, an iPad, or any other Mac, the time between launch and going on sale is a matter of days, the better not to kill demand for an existing model.

But there is still a side effect of all those iPhone 6 rumors, leaks, or whatever. It is reported that a fair percentage of people are holding off buying an iPhone until the next model comes out. But that wouldn’t require a rumor, since Apple’s release cycle is fairly consistent. Even if the iPhone 6 comes out a month earlier this year, it would still be roughly in keeping with the refresh schedule.

At the same time, I wonder how many people, who might have bought, say, a Samsung smartphone because it has a larger display might be holding off now that there appear to be credible and consistent rumors of larger iPhones. So I wonder if some of these leaks aren’t deliberate, and that Apple had a hand in it.

Still, I expect Apple will try to keep some features close to the vest, particularly as they interact with iOS 8. Yes, you’ll know more about the new mobile OS at the WWDC as of June 2, but the final details, and some of the built-in features of the iPhone 6, won’t be apparent until the release date or shortly before.

Regardless of how things turn out, there was surely something to be said about wondering about the next great Apple product, but getting no solid information until the official rollout. These days, fairly accurate information leaks days or weeks ahead of time. Even the recent MacBook Air refresh was hinted at a day before the actual announcement. So the press release and product rollout came across as mostly an afterthought.