If you’re not a baby boomer, you may not recognize the name RCA, but even our younger readers know something about Motorola. Despite this, both companies have long histories, but nothing is forever.

So RCA Corporation, originally known as Radio Corporation of America, was founded in 1919. Among its achievements was the NBC network, which it founded in 1926 as the result of the acquisition of several radio stations. Just three years later, after the purchase of the Victor Talking Machine company, RCA become the world’s largest manufacturer of phonographs.

Phonographs? Yes, you remember them, right, and don’t forget the record company. Indeed some of the world’s most famous recording artists, including Elvis Presley, had their music released under the RCA label. So you see we’re talking of a company with a pedigree, although various mergers and acquisitions essentially undid the company’s core in the 1980s.

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So I recently updated our Web server, which also handles email. So far so good. We actually switched over to a box with a pair of solid state drives, delivering the potential for much faster performance. We’ll see.

In the meantime, it didn’t take long for me to encounter problems getting my email on my iPhone 5s when I wasn’t connected via Wi-Fi to my home router. When I was on AT&T’s wireless network, I got a prompt that the device couldn’t connect to that server. Since I have several domains with different email addresses, this meant several of those prompts every few minutes. Annoying? You bet!

Well, I contacted AT&T support, and it became even more annoying. In fact, it took several tries to locate anyone who had a handle on the nature of my problem, or the possible solution.

Now many of you are aware of how the Internet works, and the slow process of the Domain Name System (DNS) in updating information on new domains or domain changes. For those who aren’t into such things, DNS essentially converts the domain name, such as technightowl.live, to its corresponding IP number. Now different ISPs will usually have different DNS systems, and it may take a day or two (sometimes longer) for the servers to record changes, or even the existence of a new domain.

Now a large ISP or telecom company, such as AT&T, doesn’t give customers direct access to the team who handles those servers, and that’s understandable. More important, if there’s a problem, finding the source and having it fixed may be near impossible.

But I tried.

First I dialed up the regular AT&T support line, and tried to explain what was happening, that I wasn’t able to reach my email or Web server. At this point, the conversation became essentially useless. I dared to use the term “DNS” and I heard silence. The support person had no clue what I was talking about. After going through a couple of levels of this non-response, I was offered the chance to talk to someone who could help me configure my email account.

I was also asked whether it was a “business” email account, and when I said yes, the support person came to the conclusion that it was a Microsoft Exchange issue. This is all about Microsoft’s control of the enterprise, but obviously it had nothing to do with anything I said, since I told them I was accessing an IMAP server. I might as well have said that the moon is turning into a gray radish for all it mattered.

You see, most support people on that level are trained to handle the most basic customer issues, and configuring an email account may seem simple, but there are pitfalls. While it’s fairly straightforward on an iPhone, the Samsung Galaxy smartphones I’ve tried offer dozens and dozens of sometimes absurd options to configure, and I can see where people encounter difficulties, particularly if they make the wrong choice about which options to select.

Over a period of roughly 45 minutes, I was transferred several times to different support people. At one point, I even reached a voice messaging system claiming that my wireless plan with AT&T did not include support for the service I wanted.

When I pressed the “0” button on my phone, I was actually connected to Apple support. I got a sympathetic response when I described my problem, but we both knew that it was up to AT&T to sort things out.

So I called AT&T again, and got handed off to a supervisor and explained my dilemma. This time I reached someone who actually seemed to know what I was talking about, or maybe I was inferring a little too much from the conversation.

Regardless, this time I received a promise that the team handling such issues would be notified via email about the problem. I gave her the server hostname and the root domain name, and took the brazen approach of requesting a service credit for my time and trouble. I reminded her that this server handled my business email and it was critical that I access those communications while on the road.

I also rather suspect that AT&T would rather not lose the business from a customer who had been with them seven years. That’s a fairly long time in the wireless carrier business. For the most part, service has actually been pretty good, though T-Mobile’s promise of early termination fee rebates and cheaper rates is very tempting. But it’s by no means certain I’ll get better service, particularly since T-Mobile’s coverage is far worse than AT&T in the rural areas.

In any case, I got a service credit that covers the monthly fee I pay for the iPhone on their family plan. Even better, after several hours, the problem was resolved. Now maybe it was all about AT&T’s DNS servers catching up and recording the correct hostname for my email server. Or maybe their support people actually did something.

Regardless, at least it works, despite the aggravation in setting things right. What’s more, I don’t know if any other wireless carrier would have done any better.

Once upon a time, it was a very rare thing to see anyone with an Apple product. Consider all those years where the Mac barely made a dent in the PC business, and many people who did use Macs were often regarded as being just a little weird. Well, maybe I just took it personally, but it was a lonely world out there when I visited friends and family and found computers that, to me, were more than a little alien.

Now even though Apple owns the premium PC market nowadays, and the overall market has seen better days, it appears that there’s still plenty of room for the Mac to grow. Apple clearly isn’t following Microsoft’s playbook — to merge desktop and mobile platforms — and there still appear to be a fair number of people for whom a tablet is not a PC replacement.

In other words, there are still untapped markets for Apple to sell more Macs, at least so long as PC demand remains fairly decent. But if it continues to fall at the current rate, Apple will be playing in a smaller and smaller market.

In the mobile universe, smartphones and tablets have grown really fast. It’s hard to find anyone nowadays who doesn’t have one or the other — or both. Even folks at the low end of the income scale can get a smartphone free or at a really low price with a fairly cheap wireless plan. Tablets can be had for $50-$100, although I wouldn’t say much about the quality. And I suppose if a smartphone does a decent job of handling phone calls and texting, that may be all that some people actually need.

Regardless, smartphones dominate, so it seems that fewer and fewer people don’t have one. This means that the handset makers, and that includes Apple and Samsung, are fighting to make new sales in a smaller and smaller pool of customers who don’t have one of these gadgets. In the U.S., the wireless carriers have made sales a little more difficult by lengthening the time before they allow early upgrades.

Well, that’s one excuse Apple CEO Tim Cook gave for fewer iPhone sales. But he ignored the fact that the largest wireless carriers were also busy advertising extra-cost schemes where you could upgrade your mobile handsets more frequently.

What this means, though, is that a large portion of customers for current smartphones are upgraders. It’s not their first purchase, so sales growth is being reduced. If the upgrade cycle lengthens, as it has with the PC, it also hurts sales, and it’s clear Apple isn’t the only tech company to see reduced growth.

Apple, however, shows no inkling of moving down-market. The iPhone 5c, which may or may not have been successful — depending on whom you ask — was simply a repackaging of the previous year’s technology for $100 less. Apple clearly intends to play in the most profitable segments, as they’ve done with Macs.

So will Apple have to accept growing sales at maybe a few percent a year, which is typical for a large company serving a saturated market, or are there different ways to go?

One way is to succeed in emerging markets where a growing middle class will aspire to more expensive gear. This is the logic behind Apple’s expansion into China. If Apple’s efforts to gain traction in China, India and elsewhere succeed, sales may grow at a faster rate, but probably nowhere near the levels achieved in the early days of the iPhone and iPad.

So what is Apple to do? Well, the financial community demands new products in new categories, and Tim Cook keeps claiming they are planning just that. In fact, he’s said it again and again, and I can well understand why some media pundits might just be a tad skeptical.

But it’s also true that the refreshed Mac Pro clearly demonstrates that Apple still has it in them to innovate in surprising ways, although that product obviously didn’t create a new product category.

So if the pressure was high in 2013, it is far higher in 2014, particularly after releasing financials and guidance that the investment community regards as underwhelming. But what are the new product categories that Apple plans to enter? Cook says more than one, so where does Apple go next?

Clearly Apple won’t tell you, although it’s possible, I suppose, for increased pressures, particularly from the investment community, to force disclosure of at least a few hints. Up till now, Apple hasn’t listened to Wall Street because, frankly, financial analysts have never understood the company. That may not change now, but if the hopes and dreams for new product initiatives don’t play out by spring or summer, increasing skepticism from the media and Wall Street could force a different response.

But there’s clearly precedent. Remember that the original iPhone was announced months before it was actually released. There was no product to make obsolete, of course, and it’s also true that FCC testing would have revealed its existence before long. Certainly one excuse Apple gives to withhold information on a new product is how it would impact sales of existing models.

If those existing products are made by other companies, of course, Apple could still stage an early preview, build demand, and, in turn, possibly kill sales of the competition as customers wait for Apple’s solution. This could play out nicely with a smartwatch, the rumored iWatch. If Apple plans a connected TV set, a surprise demonstration might really spook the rest of the industry, particularly since most competing products were already presented at the CES earlier this month.

Sure, Apple usually doesn’t spill the beans on future products, except, of course, when they do. Maybe it’s time for Cook to rethink the strategy, not just to satisfy Wall Street but to tempt millions of potential customers. There’s a lot to be said for building demand early, particularly if Apple has a real hit or two in the wings.

So you know that, in response to the insistence from the media that Apple has lost its way, Tim Cook gave reasons why some portions of the company’s fiscal first quarter financials seemed underwhelming. When it comes to the iPhone, as a main example, one reason why “only” 51 million were sold is that the product mix was off, which meant that there was difficulty filling product demand.

Specifically, the iPhone 5c was expected to do better. In fact, it has been deemed an abject failure by the tech media even though sales are apparently higher than last year’s “cheap” iPhone, the 4s. So Cook said that more customers than expected wanted the more expensive iPhone 5s, with the Touch ID and the 64-bit processor. This is understandable, but it should be a good thing, since it boosted the average selling price for the iPhone.

But does it really mean Apple might have sold a few million more if the iPhone 5s was more plentiful? If there truly was unfulfilled demand, what did the disappointed customers do? Did they choose to wait? Apparently not, since this quarter’s guidance projects lower sales. Did they buy an iPhone 5c? Apparently not in large enough quantities. So what about someone else’s smartphone instead? Good question, but one that the questioners during Apple’s conference call with financial analysts didn’t touch.

It’s fair to say that financial analysts aren’t journalists, and don’t do so well with the follow up questions. There was a lot left unsaid.

Certainly Wall Street was very unimpressed. Despite record sales for the iPhone and the iPad, and surprisingly robust sales for Macs, Apple’s stock price nose-dived on Tuesday. Is that just a knee-jerk reaction, or will it signal yet another trend? Did the lower-than-expected guidance contribute to renewed concerns about Apple?

Well, outspoken investor Carl Icahn has made it clear that he, at least, has confidence in Apple, since he invested yet another $500 million into the company. Or maybe he was taking advantage of what he perceived to be a bargain price for shares.

Now when it comes to Tim Cook, do his responses about Apple’s perceived sales and revenue shortcomings ring true?

The explanation about getting the demand mix wrong for the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s makes sense. It took a while for quantities of the iPhone 5s to meet demand and for backorders to be filled. But that’s not necessarily a new phenomenon, since new iPhones are almost always in short supply. Of course, getting an iPhone 5c was easy from Day One, so perhaps it’s true that Apple made too many of them. Or maybe it was just easier to flood the market with the cheaper iPhone since production issues with plastic are less daunting.

Does this mean the iPhone 5c is destined for the closeout racks when the iPhone 6–or whatever it’s called–arrives? Again, I stick with my theory that, if sales ended up being higher than what a plain iPhone 5 would have brought, or even the same, there’s no reason to discontinue the product other than to respond to media perceptions that it was a failure.

When it comes to Macs, Cook didn’t have to make excuses, though he might have said something about the curious figures produced by IDC indicating lower sales, whereas Gartner said, correctly, they were higher. Maybe he doesn’t wish to offend.

But remember that the seasoned corporate executive will almost always sugarcoat the bad news. The reasons may be true, they may be excuses, or some combination in between. Think of Microsoft, which earned just a fraction of Apple’s revenue on tablets. Media coverage of Microsoft’s financials focused on the claim that sales of the Surface doubled from the previous quarter. Doesn’t matter. They were still quite unimpressive. The iPad continues to rule, and Microsoft’s tablet strategy was wrong yesterday, wrong today, and will be wrong tomorrow unless things change.

One area that is sounding like a broken record, though, is Cook’s insistence that Apple’s ability to innovate remains intact, that there will be great products going forward this year, including some in new categories.

That would seem quite encouraging, other than the fact that he’s said it again and again. But last fall’s product refreshes were pretty impressive nonetheless. Not just Touch ID and 64-bit for the iPhone 5s, but the stunning Mac Pro.

But Apple will face even greater pressure this year to produce something truly unique. There’s still some chatter about the rumored iWatch, though it’s largely focused on alleged production problems. Stories about the TV space mostly concentrate on reports that a new Apple TV box is in the works. Beyond that, who knows?

But Apple TV isn’t a new category; an Apple connected TV would be, as would an iWatch.

Does Apple have something else to introduce? You see, just product refreshes for 2014 will do nothing to vindicate Cook’s claim, no matter how good they are.

In the scheme of things, Apple did pretty well last quarter. But it wasn’t enough, and I sometimes wonder what Apple has to do to persuade the investor community that they are still innovating at full bore.