As I continue to read the silly comments and conclusions made by tech pundits and industry analysts, I really wonder about the decision-makers who hired them. Of course that assumes they aren’t just self-employed, in which case it doesn’t matter. There’s no government test or license required to hang out a shingle and call yourself an industry analyst.

So we had a typical situation, where analysts misjudged Apple’s expected sales on the iPhone launch this past weekend. Some suggested as little as five million, same as last year, while other estimates were as high as eight million. When Apple announced that over nine million were sold, suggesting that more would have found their way into the hands of customers had the iPhone 5s not been in very short supply, you can bet there were excuses aplenty.

One claim has it that the nine million sales merely means Apple stuffed the channel. If that were the case, why couldn’t they supply an iPhone 5s to everyone who wanted one? Did they ask dealers to deliberately hold back product to create the illusion of being sold out? Giving up potential sales doesn’t pass the logic test. Sure, perhaps these customers would be willing to wait, but when that wait extends to another quarter, Apple’s financials suffer. No sane CEO would allow that to happen.

On the other hand, stuffing the channel merely to report high shipments may have a short-term value if sales aren’t stellar. You can bet some other otherwise unnamed tech companies are known to do that, but they have to pay the piper somewhere along the line. Either they cut back on future shipments, or sell off excess inventory at lower prices, which doesn’t help the bottom line. Again, it’s foolish, and not a sensible way to boost a company’s bottom line. The real answer is just to find more customers if they can.

Let’s now return to the innovation front, where Apple continues to be criticized for not building a revolutionary product every other day. They are quick to blame CEO Tim Cook for not being Steve Jobs, even though he was there through all of Apple’s greatest years when Jobs was at the helm. But they speak or write without thinking. Consider that the 1998 iMac, the 2001 iPod, the 2007 iPhone and 2010 iPad were  particularly notable developments in recent Apple history. Notice that these products were released three or more years apart, and that the other upgrades were simple refreshes, more or less.

If you look at the lessons of history, you’ll see that Apple has only revolutionized a product category on a few occasions. The rest of the time, those new products were refined, tuned, and sometimes made a tad more affordable. OS X debuted in 2001, and it’s now 2013, and you can see that the changes have been gradual, not drastic. OK, perhaps iOS 7 is a pretty major upgrade, at least when it comes to the user interface, but that happened on Tim Cook’s watch, so they just ignore it, or complain it’s a bad upgrade.

The ongoing argument is that Apple with Jobs was good, except when they were criticizing the company and saying it was on death’s door. Apple after Jobs, with Cook in charge, must be bad. It doesn’t matter that sales may exceed expectations. It doesn’t matter that iOS is actually gaining market share in the U.S. at the expense of Android, and it doesn’t matter that, after one week, an estimated 52% of the iOS Web traffic comes from iOS 7.

All right, some people hate iOS 7, but nobody forces them to upgrade. We even had someone post a comment on this site, claiming to have purchased an Android smartphone because of problems with an iPhone 4S running iOS 7. Inasmuch as that post appeared a mere five days after iOS 7 came out, and nobody forced the person to upgrade, you wonder if it’s all made up. Feel free to come to your own conclusions.

This isn’t to say that the pressures aren’t on Apple to quickly catch up with demand for the iPhone 5s, and to keep sales high until next year. There’s also the iPad, and how the next refresh will change things. Already the chatter speaks of a slimmer and lighter full-sized model, and adding a Retina display to the iPad mini. Whatever Apple does, it won’t be enough and it’ll be too expensive.

Then again, I wonder if the critics even know the real prices. Microsoft is still running ads pegging an iPad as starting at $599, rather than $499, to make the comparison between the failed Surface tablet seem more drastic. The ad also reduces the size of the iPad to seem smaller in comparison with a Surface.

That, my friends, is false advertising. I would think Apple would make an effort to correct their sometimes partner, or maybe it’s all too funny to take seriously. After all, customers aren’t taking it seriously, and it’s not at all clear that the Surface 2 will fare any better.

So, without giving you a reference to the original source, and confuse you further, some tech media sites fell for the foolish claim that iOS 7 somehow makes your iPhone waterproof. Are you with me so far?

Now implicit in such an absurd assumption is the belief that software will somehow render the hardware impervious to damage by water and other liquid substances. I’d love to know the magic formula in that software, or is Apple sending out good vibes that put a “dome” or some other zone of protection around your iOS gadget?

Another item getting lots of coverage is the alleged poor security of Apple’s Touch ID fingerprint sensor system. Now when you examine a feature of this sort, you have to put it in perspective, just as you consider Apple’s Time Machine backup system.

When Apple announced Time Machine with OS 10.5 Leopard in 2007, it was pointed out that most Mac users never backup, and, of that number, only a fraction actually use backup software. For the most part, they just copy files somewhere, usually another drive or maybe a USB stick. With Time Machine, Apple made the process simple to set up and nearly painless to use. Sure, dedicated backup software will offer far more options, such as a clone backup, in which the target or backup drive is identical to the source. But you can still restore a trashed drive from a Time Machine backup, and, besides, it’s free.

Now when it comes to Touch ID, the latest scuttlebutt has it that more than half of the users of iPhones or iPads never, ever, lock their devices. They just leave them open for anyone who has access to the unit itself, rather than set a password. But even if they do set a password, four digits is trivial for a hacker to guess, and it’s not because they can do it on TV.

Typical of Apple’s approach to sophisticated technology, they have made Touch ID on the fast-selling iPhone 5s as idiot proof as possible. It takes 30 seconds to a minute to read your fingerprint, toe print, or whatever. Once that’s done, press the Home button, and in almost a flash, it’s unlocked. For now, Touch ID appears to be limited to the App Store and iTunes, aside from unlocking your iPhone 5s.

Now the critics are saying that you can easily defeat the fingerprint scanner, just as you can defeat other fingerprint detection systems. As a practical matter, though, you cannot just take someone’s dead finger and make it work. From all the reviews, it appears that almost anyone with even a vaguely normal fingerprint, even with scars, can make Touch ID work after the short training period. It appears to be almost perfect in normal use, although some wonder what happens if your fingers are wet or greasy. But you shouldn’t be using such costly gear with dirty hands, unless you have no alternative and need to take that call.

If Touch ID somehow fails after several tries, you still have the option of typing your password, and setting one up is a requirement to use Touch ID.

Now nothing is 100% perfect, and there are already reports that a hacker group has managed to break Touch ID with an elaborate combination of dusting for one’s fingerprint and recreating it as a high resolution image that somehow can be read when the Home button is pressed. It sounds like a fair amount of pain to get access to even one iPhone 5s, let alone a number of stolen units.

Indeed, thieves would prefer to steal something that’s unlocked and easily fenced to an offshore source. If they had to engage in elaborate dusting, retouching and imaging processes to obtain access on a single device, they probably wouldn’t bother. Yes, I suppose one can imagine law enforcement, or even the NSA, using such a technique, but the right to such access is not an issue that will be debated here. As a practical matter, Apple has made it easy for people who would never consider password protecting their iPhones. Over time Apple could conceivably add Touch ID support to a wider range of transactions, but this is something that will be done cautiously, in baby steps, to make sure the process is as easy and secure as possible. This is the sort of thing that the critics cannot understand, because they want everything done at once.

Since the benchmarks of Apple’s A7 processor demonstrate clearly enough that the switch to 64-bit is no gimmick, I’ll set that claim aside without further comment.

Let me continue.

In case you tuned in real late, you know that Apple sold nine million iPhones on launch weekend. Independent estimates suggest a three-to-one or greater ratio in favor of the iPhone 5s. But Apple is having difficulty keeping them in stock, so maybe they could have done better. Regardless, some members of the media are saying that’s not really so good, since Apple made the new iPhone available to more dealers in more countries this year. It’s possible that Apple could have made it available in fewer countries, and still might not have been able to satisfy demand.

Another silly argument has it that it’s all marketing. The iPhone 5s isn’t such a huge upgrade over the previous model, and, besides, people getting off their two year contracts would naturally migrate to the latest and greatest iPhone. Well, unless they went Android, right? You see, people have choices, and Apple clearly gets the highest customer satisfaction rates and, on a per-model basis, continues to beat the competition by a large margin.

Remember that nobody forces people to line up around an Apple Store to buy a new iPhone. They can always order online, or wait a few days for their favorite model to be in stock. They aren’t rushing out to be first in line for the latest Samsung Galaxy or Microsoft Surface tablet. Some tech pundits might want you to believe that people are either stupid, or Apple is using mind control to attract customers. In the real world, the iPhone launch was hugely successful, beating analyst estimates by a fair margin.

Yes, the products aren’t perfect, and iOS 7, installed by over 200 million people so far, has some early release flaws. But nobody does it better than Apple.

Let’s take a brief journey back through time. In 2012, amid predictions that Apple would sell up to ten million copies of the iPhone 5, they announced that a “mere” five million were sold. Now in passing, it should be pointed out that Apple never made any presales predictions, but they did state that they could have sold more if enough stock were available. Regardless, what should have been a successful launch, with record sales of a smartphone that exceeded all competitors, ended up being perceived as a failure.

Of course, the actual failure involved media analysts who were clearly making things up, coming up with outrageous predictions that seemed to have no factual basis whatever. But Apple took the brunt of the blame for failing to deliver on someone else’s inflated estimates.

I suppose you can put the start of Apple’s latest stock market roller coaster ride on the launch of the iPhone 5. From there, it was all about facts be damned, so long as the information cast an unfavorable light on Apple. So we had stories of tepid demand for the iPhone 5, along with claims from the supply chain that Apple had cut back on orders from this, that, or another supplier.

Sure, Tim Cook was aware of those claims, and he calmly stated, at a quarterly conference call with financial analysts, that you cannot take one metric from the supply chain and assume it reflects Apple’s actual sales performance. But few listened.

When Samsung boasted of selling 10 million Galaxy S4’s in 28 days, and remember Apple sold five million in just three days, the achievement was regarded as a big deal. It was evidence that Apple was suffering and that they were foolish to concentrate on selling high-end gear. Think of the tens of millions of sales they are leaving on the table without a cheap iPhone in the inventory.

Apple’s answer to those on a budget has been to sell older models, but that’s as far as they’ve gone. With the announcement of a new iPhone lineup on September 10, Apple decided it was better to push two models rather than one. Sure, the iPhone 5c is basically a warmed over iPhone 5 with a few modest changes, such as a beefier battery, and a colorful polycarbonate case. Some called it an iPod-style approach, but it meant that people who didn’t need the latest and greatest could still buy a current and somewhat cheaper iPhone.

But how many would Apple sell and did they build enough copies of the iPhone 5s to satisfy demand?

Industry analysts were mostly in the five million to eight million unit range, and some felt that the iPhone 5c would get the larger proportion of sales. But just as they were dead wrong about flaccid iPhone 5 sales, they didn’t grok what was really happening with all those people snaking around Apple Stores on iPhone launch day.

After all the dire predictions, and the complaints that the iPhone 5c and iPhone 5s represented little in the way of change over the original iPhone 5 — the numbers were in. Apple announced that over nine million were sold the very first weekend; there was no official breakdown among the two models. An independent estimate suggests over three of the iPhone 5s were sold for every iPhone 5c, which explains the sudden stockout. Surprisingly, some 200 million had supposedly upgraded to iOS 7, which is nothing short of a record in the tech industry and then some.

Apple also filed an 8-K document with the S.E.C. to revise guidance for the current quarter, which ends on Saturday, indicating it would fall at the high end of their projected range of $34 to $37 billion. Obviously, that disclosure was deliberate, a shot across the bow of the ship filled with naysayers.

Now the reviews of the two iPhones are coming in droves. I’ve already given you some of my initial feelings about the iPhone 5c, and will have something to say about the iPhone 5s in a few days. But I don’t want to bore you. The long and short of it is that the negatives about both largely cover perceived missing features, at least compared to Android, or the smaller displays.

Even before testing Touch ID, some were dismissive. What if your fingers are wet or greasy? Can you just cut off someone’s finger and have it work, as is done on those TV shows? Well, it seems that one hacking organization claimed success in a sort of elaborate fashion. At the end of the day, however, fingerprints are far more secure than four-digit passcodes. If you want a 100% solution, where do you look? Certainly not Samsung.

Indeed, after living with Samsung smartphones for seven months, an iPhone seems almost tiny by comparison, until you put one in your pocket. You soon understand that getting a larger display has significant tradeoffs, and might present more trouble than you expect. Every time the screen totally washed out even in dim sunlight on a Samsung, I longed for the return of an iPhone.

Meantime, Apple’s stock price took a fairly big jump on a day when the market, overall, was down. But that doesn’t necessarily signal a trend. In another few days, they’ll be going after Apple yet again. Next target, the iPad, and whether Apple can deliver a credible refresh.

Realizing that I needed more extended exposure to Android smartphones, I decided to make a bold move earlier this year. I contacted Samsung’s PR agency and asked if they had a Galaxy smartphone for me to evaluate on a long-term basis.

They were happy to oblige, and within days, I had a turquoise blue Galaxy S3 in my hands. I could use it for two weeks, or have it added to my own AT&T account and keep it for a longer period, and so I began my journey into Androidland.

Having used an iPhone on a daily basis almost since they were first released, I had grown accustomed to a specific set of apps and settings. Since Android is supposed to offer an extensive feature set that allows you to customize the look of your handset to a fare-thee-well, I figured it would be easy to deliver a similar experience, but I was only partly correct.

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