Apple has one advantage in saying very little about future products. It gives the media plenty of space to make things up, or at least attempt to speculate about what form those future products might take.

This year’s Apple product focus begins with the next versions of the gear with which we’re already familiar, such as the iPhone and the iPad and, to a limited extent, Macs. So it is assumed that the next iPhone must be the iPhone 6, because Apple uses full model numbers without subversions in alternate years, and the current model is the iPhone 5s. Sure, Apple could change this predictability with the stroke of a different model number designation, but let’s take it as correct.

So it’s easy to consider that the iPhone 6 must be a major change, at least physically, from the current version. That would appear to include changes to the case design and, of course, a larger display. Well, maybe. Some of the rumors talk of two different sizes, but it may be that Apple is just sampling different display configurations before deciding on which one to produce. Yet another rumor says it’ll be just one, perhaps 4.7 inches.

Speculation about a bigger iPad? Well, Apple already made the big changes last fall, particularly with the arrival of the iPad Air. But some rumors spoke of a 12.9-inch version, but whether such a form factor is practical or would even attract a large audience is questionable. Don’t even ask me.

Regardless, it seems as if the rumors of an iPad Pro, advanced by no less than the Wall Street Journal, have died down of late. Supposedly Apple has postponed the product, or has given up entirely. Once again, I suppose it’s possible word of a prototype leaked from the supply chain, and reporters ran with it. Just a possibility.

But what about the new product categories that Tim Cook has promised?

Well, Mac|Life magazine has entered the fray in their April 2014 issue with articles predicting the possible design and feature sets of an iWatch, an Apple connected TV and, of course, that iPad Pro.

At least with the last, you sort of expect it to be a big iPad Air should it come to be. But the rest remains lost in the alternate universe of rumors and speculation. You know that Apple is interested in the potential of wearables, because Tim Cook has said so. But does that mean offering health-related apps and other features in iOS, or in the next generation iPhones and iPads? Or does it mean a whole new device that will resemble a fancy electronic wristwatch, to be dubbed iWatch? Or does it mean some other device that only has a passing resemblance to a smartwatch, at least because it’s small?

The question of a TV set is even murkier. It all goes back to that oft-quoted statement from Steve Jobs, as quoted in Walter Isaacson’s official biography. Sure, Apple might have developed the greatest TV interface ever, but does it have to appear in a TV set? What about a revised Apple TV?

Indeed, speculation about the next Apple TV is mounting. Apple recently moved it from the Accessories spot to its own space on the online store. That clearly signals a greater emphasis, as there should be since Apple took in $1 billion in revenue from the product last year. You can hardly call that a hobby, since entire companies make do with far less.

What’s more, there is yet another quote attributed to Steve Jobs, that there is no profit in the TV industry. That’s something that the current manufacturers seem to be demonstrating over and over again. As prices go down, they struggle to find more snazzy technologies to entice you to buy a new set, preferably one that costs more.

So we had 3D, but there were few takers. Even after 3D moved down to cheaper sets, there wasn’t much evidence of interest, and so you see fewer 2014 models that sport the feature. But there are also reports of a new 3D technology, one that doesn’t require the glasses, which may debut next year. So the TV makers are still trying.

Another scheme to get you to pay more is 4K or Ultra HD. Having four times as many pixels, twice as many horizontally and twice as many vertically, may sound great on paper. But it’s mostly a specs game, because you need a really large set to see much of a difference. There’s still the question of delivering higher resolution content on today’s Internet pipes. Samsung’s answer is to sell you a $300 hard drive on which 4K movies are installed. If you want more movies, buy another drive I suppose. But this is from the company that brought you the Galaxy Gear smartwatch, so I’m not expecting much.

But the long and short of it is that an Apple Store is not configured to be a big box retailer. The TV market is more than saturated, and Apple would probably do as well or better with an enhanced Apple TV, along with content deals with the entertainment industry and the cable providers. There are even recent published reports that Apple is talking with Comcast about delivering content through an Apple TV. Clearly things are happening, but it doesn’t seem to be about a TV set with an Apple logo.

Over the past few days, I have had some ongoing discussions with someone over whether Macs can actually be used for work. Seems my adversary, so to speak, made it a point of how Macs were great consumer machines, but couldn’t be taken seriously for business.

Now I don’t know about you, gentle reader, but when I began to respond to these statements, I thought I had somehow been transported back to another decade, in another century, because this is the sort of myth that was first presented about Macs beginning with the introduction of the very first one, in 1984.

In those days, it was about the graphical user interface. Real PCs used text-based interfaces, and particularly Microsoft’s MS-DOS. These arguments were being made at the same time that Microsoft was busy doing what Google did decades later, which was to copy an Apple-built operating system.

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Having followed Apple since the 1980s, I often don’t recognize the company described in some of the articles I read. This has been especially true since the passing of Steve Jobs. The meme is that Apple couldn’t have gone so far without Jobs, and thus his absence means the company is toast. Anything that seems even somewhat negative is used as evidence that this all must be true.

I’ll ignore, for a moment, that Apple’s stock price is actually higher now than when Jobs was alive. After all, the stock price has had wide swings over the years, and those wide swings didn’t always reflect the reality of Apple’s finances.

Now imagine you get the assignment to write a book about how Apple is doing since Jobs died. Or maybe you pitched the book to a publisher. Regardless, how would you approach the job? Would you attempt to interview current and former Apple employees to get a fair picture of the company? Would you examine the products, the financials, and other reports about Apple to separate fact from fiction?

Or would you begin the task with a specific point of view? What, for example, would a title such as “Haunted Empire: Apple After Steve Jobs” mean? Well, it’s pretty obvious, so the question is whether former Wall Street Journal Apple reporter Yukari Iwatani Kane used that title as the focus and wrote a book to convey that point of view, or whether the title flows naturally from the book manuscript?

I would hope the latter, although reviews from people I know and trust clearly indicate the book was meant to be a hatchet job. What’s more, Apple is taking it very seriously regardless. You see, Apple never comments about books, but this time, CEO Tim Cook has made it crystal clear he’s not impressed:

This nonsense belongs with some of the other books I’ve read about Apple. It fails to capture Apple, Steve, or anyone else in the company. Apple has over 85,000 employees that come to work each day to do their best work, to create the world’s best products, to put their mark in the universe and leave it better than they found it. This has been the heart of Apple from day one and will remain at the heart for decades to come. I am very confident about our future.

I wonder about those other books, but this paragraph appears to have been carefully messaged through Apple’s PR machine. It covers all the salient points, and conveys an image the company chooses to present. But it’s also clear Apple expects people to be impressed by Kane’s book because it comes from a mainstream reporter. So they are doing damage control.

But it’s not just Cook. Eddy Cue, the Senior Vice President for Internet Software and Services, denied an anecdote about how he become a member of Jobs inner circle, which included Jobs throwing a pen at him.

Now the behavior seems par for the course for the mercurial Jobs, and perhaps it was conveyed to the book’s author by a former employee who might have even believed it to be true. To be sure, nobody currently in Apple’s employ would submit to questions, and if they did on background, and got caught, they would likely be looking for a new job real soon now.

The larger question is whether the book was meant as a sincere effort to put together a full picture of Apple as a company, its past, and its possible future path, or whether it was meant as a hit piece for which the title was established before the manuscript was written. Of course, I wouldn’t pretend to know, but the reviews haven’t been very favorable. More to the point, a number of factual errors have been discovered, which is even worse. You can disagree with someone’s opinions, but facts are facts.

This doesn’t mean Apple is blameless and made no mistakes when Jobs was here and after he was gone. That would be downright absurd. But one hopes that a book’s author, usually having more time to do a decent job of research unless pressed with a particularly unreasonable deadline, would double and triple check facts and make sure, as much as possible, that everything is presented as accurately as possible.

It may be that facts don’t really matter. If the book breaks sales records, the publisher and author will be happy. But I did check the situation at Amazon as I wrote this column. With several dozen reviews, the ratings hovered between two and three stars (out of five). Sales were decidedly average; nothing that would put it in the potential best seller category.

Sure, the sales picture at Amazon can change quickly, more so as a book climbs up the sales ladder. But I’m not seeing the love for this book, and its negative bias was not overlooked by the reviewers.

As for me, I’m happy to read books that cover a subject from all sides, but nothing about this book tempts me to buy a copy. I’ve read enough fiction about Apple without having to pay for it.

Consider this problem. You have a very fast Internet connection, but on some sites, download speeds are glacial, in the same range as dial-up. So you call your ISP and they claim each of their tests show there’s nothing wrong with their network.

But the performance problem persists. Is there a solution?

That’s something I’m still trying to find out as I continue to look for a better way to access files from one of my web servers via my CenturyLink residential DSL account. I’ve had a technician visit my home, switch out wiring, replace connectors and even swap out the DSL router. I’ve called support more than a dozen times, sometimes waiting over an hour on the phone, but the situation hasn’t changed.

Alas, communicating the nature of the issue with CenturyLink has been very difficult. I expect anyone would encounter a similar obstacle.

Here’s what I mean.

I got a really cheap package with CenturyLink to handle my intensive data requirements. I’m paying a little over $41 per month for 40 megabit downloads, 20 megabit uploads, but the download speed is typically closer to 50. I also have a static IP number, which is important for my needs.

For the most part, download speeds of streaming videos, Apple software updates, and so on and so forth are fast enough to demonstrate I’m getting the performance for which I’m paying. Standard broadband benchmarks are stellar.

Unfortunately, when I attempt to download files from my primary web server, performance drops down severely. It’s a consistent problem, day and night, and it started on or about March 8th, when I did a test download of the latest episode of The Tech Night Owl LIVE. It took over 50 minutes to transfer a 115MB file, which was profoundly absurd. I thought it was perhaps due to a network hiccup, and tried again the very next day. Nothing changed.

Tests of other file downloads from other servers proceeded at the normal pace.

Well, the web server in question uses solid state drives, and is located on a gigabit network switch in a huge, high performance, datacenter. The datacenter’s customer support people ran a battery of diagnostics to see where the hangup was, and they said it was CenturyLink’s fault.

But conveying that message to CenturyLink was no easy process, and I can’t say I succeeded. You see, a residential customer gets a very basic level of support, and the techs on that first level of support are located in the Philippines. You have to specially request American support to get someone with a proper grasp of English.

If there’s a general performance problem, they will make some effort to help you. Usually it’s confined to suggesting you restart the router and your computer. But if it involves only some sites, and not all, they will blame the people running those sites. Even when you present them with detailed diagnostics showing where the bottleneck lies, they will pretend not to understand what you are talking about.

All so very frustrating.

At the end of the day, I traced my particular problem to congestion at the “peering” point between CenturyLink and another ISP, Cogent Communications, which provides traffic to and from ISPs and other services. Peering is the point at which data is exchanged, and if one of the services isn’t providing a big enough pipe, slowdowns will occur, which is precisely what happened to me.

Now Cogent doesn’t have a squeaky clean reputation for being fair about delivering Internet traffic. There are reports through the years of data throttling, particularly with such video streaming services as Netflix and even YouTube. In my case, though, I actually got someone on the phone from Cogent, and the tech not only assured me it was CenturyLink’s problem, but they gave me a the actual ticket number they used to make requests to reduce peering congestion.

The tech also blamed the problem on the recent loss by the FCC of the ability to enforce net neutrality, implying that CenturyLink was doing a little traffic shaping, perhaps in the hope of exacting a higher fee to open the pipes.

So what about CenturyLink? Good question. Even the company’s American team seems barely capable of understanding the nature of the problem, let alone telling me or if it’ll be resolved. I have even made a complaint to the office of the president of CenturyLink, Glen F. Post, III, to resolve a problem that has made it impossible for me to use that server. I also left a phone message via the company’s corporate office to a department that’s supposedly set up to handle customer escalation issues.

3/24 Update: CenturyLink has issued a written response from their legal team about problems of the sort I’m having. Their conclusion is to essentially blame Cogent for the congestion-related slowdowns. So we have the all-too-typical situation where two companies blame each other for a problem, but nothing ever gets resolved.

In the meantime, I’ve moved all of our sites to a backup server, where there is absolutely no performance bottleneck whatever. Its traffic doesn’t pass through Cogent.

Yes, I suppose I could switch service to CenturyLink’s main competitor in Arizona, Cox Communications, but I won’t be getting a sweetheart deal for high-speed service. Besides, that wouldn’t prevent other CenturyLink customers from facing similar download hurdles whenever they access traffic that passes from Cogent to CenturyLink.

Other than getting the word out, and complaining to anyone and everyone who might listen, I don’t see an immediate solution to dilemmas of this sort. Many of you might be stuck with an ISP because it’s the only one in your city, or the price is just too attractive to ignore. But when the problems go a step or two beyond basic issues of whether the service is on or off, you can see where you may end up spinning in circles.

Update: And whether fixing the net neutrality problem will resolve problems of this sort is anyone’s guess. A story in Ars Technica reports that traffic slowdowns of the sort I’ve encountered may be the result of attempts by ISPs to exact higher “toll” fees from such carriers as Cogent and Level 3.