I suppose many of you felt I must be joking when I began a series columns exploring the possible death or decline into irrelevance of Microsoft. After all, how could Microsoft possibly go out of business, or become unimportant in the tech industry? But the warning signs were there, and I wonder if the company is starting to realize that there are serious problems that need to be solved real soon now.

In failing to meet Wall Street guidance for the last financial quarter, Microsoft is taking a $900 million write-down on the Surface tablet. A huge factor is an inventory of millions that remain unsold. Just a few days ago, the prices were cut by $150, each, in order to boost sales. But does anyone care?

The Surface was launched with a huge flourish in the spring of 2012, when Microsoft held a special event in Los Angeles in a curious effort to do better than Apple at staging such sessions. So the media wasn’t told where the event would be held until that very day. Stupid? You betcha!

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Over the years, Apple has had a habit of releasing Macs that made memory upgrades user hostile or impossible. It all began with the very first Mac, released in 1984, which was the quintessential closed box. That doesn’t mean there were no power users who prided themselves on tearing it open and doing their thing. But the dream of Steve Jobs was to create a real computing appliance, although that dream probably wasn’t quite realized until the iPad arrived in 2010.

In any case, over the years, upgrading the memory on your Mac has been a hit or miss proposition. Even when it was possible, design decisions conspired to make it difficult. I remember, for example, opening the case of a Quadra 800 in the early 1990s. I had just moved to a new home, and didn’t want to be bothered with spending more than a few minutes performing the RAM upgrade, but it took a lot longer. I had to remove several wiring harnesses and the logic board to get at the RAM slots. Why did they do that to me?

Indeed, when I attended a press briefing to debut a new Mac a few years later (the Power Mac 9500 I think), the product person who hosted the session demonstrated how easy it was to open the case and get direct access to the RAM and peripheral card slots. There was a round of applause. What happened to the engineers who designed the Quadra 800 and similarly user hostile boxes, such as the Power Mac 8100? Well, one Apple person told me “they no longer worked here,” but I didn’t inquire as to who they were and whether that statement had any truth behind it.

But Apple didn’t give up on making RAM upgrades difficult. In 1998, the original iMac again sported a nasty RAM upgrade process, involving taking the entire unit apart to get to the logic board and the twin RAM slots. It didn’t stop the iMac from becoming a runaway success and fueling Apple’s resurgence, but what were they thinking about?

Well, I suppose you’d think Apple had learned, and that the latest and greatest 2012 and 2013 models all make it very simple to upgrade RAM. Unfortunately, the reverse has occurred. The top-selling MacBook Air dominates the thin and light note-book market, but forget about upgrading RAM. Apple’s product designers, in their infinite wisdom, decided to solder the memory chips onto the logic board. I appreciate the space savings, but I’m also sure Apple’s engineers are smart enough to devise a scheme to allow you to easily open the case and replace RAM, yet not increase weight or physical size. Instead, the MacBook Air is meant to be a closed box for customers. The same is true for the MacBook Pro with Retina display. The only Mac note-book that allows for memory upgrades is the regular MacBook Pro, which is pretty much regarded as an endangered species.

On the regular Mac lineup, things are a little more user friendly, except for the 21.5-inch iMac, which has no convenient method to upgrade RAM. But why?

What this means is that, if you buy one of these closed boxes, prepare to spend as much as you can to buy one with the maximum amount of RAM you ever expect to need during the computer’s expected useful life. It’s not that you’ll be able to go back a year later and buy more memory. I suppose that could be one reason why OS X Mavericks, the next great Mac OS, is designed to make more efficient use of memory with such features as compressed RAM.

I haven’t mentioned the plight of the third party RAM supplier, who can often beat Apple’s prices on memory. As more and more Macs are shipped without the ability to upgrade RAM, or at least not being able to do so without major surgery, these companies lose lots of business. Sure, I suppose some will prosper after the 2013 Mac Pro arrives later this year. It will use some of the most expensive ECC memory chips in the industry, and surely some customers will want to try to beat Apple’s prices. But it won’t make up the volume of the sales lost because of the way most mass market Macs are designed.

Yes, I suppose I can see what Apple might have considered in making this questionable move. When customers can’t upgrade RAM, there is no chance for mistakes or possible damage to the machine. Apple has fewer tech support calls to manage. It’s also possible that the Mac-as-an-appliance can be built for less cost, and deliver greater reliability over the years. Possibly. Apple is also notorious for wanting customers to adapt to new ways of doing things, and not having the ability to upgrade RAM, and the need to buy an external device if you want an optical drive, is only part of that approach.

As an old timer, however, I prefer a Mac that is at least slightly extensible. I also think Mac users can complain a little more loudly about the situation, and maybe Apple will listen. They sometimes do.

It wasn’t so long ago that users of an application could buy the all-new version at a discount. Usually it was half price, but it might be less, depending on the publisher and how recent a version you had. Some companies, such as Adobe, would actually charge more if you upgraded from an older version. That’s the price for not upgrading regularly.

But the software publishing business is changing, and Apple is only part of the picture.

Adobe has moved the Creative Suite to the cloud (hence a CC designation). Instead of making a new version a major event, updates are always incremental. But you pay the same monthly fee regardless of the frequency of those updates. In theory, the version you install today may be unchanged for the next five years, but your payments will never change unless they change for all users in the same category. It almost sounds like an insurance policy.

With the App Store on the iOS and OS X, Apple has put the kibosh on the usual paid upgrade cycle perhaps by benign neglect. You can get free updates, no problem. But if a publisher wants to exact a fee for a major upgrade, it has to be released as a separate version. Existing users do not receive any benefit for being a loyal user of the app. They pay the same.

I suppose that’s not such a big deal with a cheap app, or an OS X upgrade, where the prevailing fee is $19.99, although it could also be free when Mavericks arrives. But when you pay $199.99, as you do with Apple’s digital recording suite, Logic Pro X, it doesn’t matter if you used the previous version or not. Everyone is equal. Imagine buying a new car. Five years later, you’re ready to get the new model. But the dealer won’t accept your old car in trade. If you want to sell it by yourself, fine and dandy, but it’s not their problem.

All right, I realize the car business is not the same as the app business, so different standards apply.

Assuming you accept Apple’s financial model, buying an app is no different from buying a can of bathroom spray. You pay for it, use it as you wish, and when you buy more, you pay the regular price. You can’t give back the spray can if it hasn’t been emptied and get a new one for a discount. All right, I suppose you could bring it back to the store and tell them it didn’t work, or made your skin itchy, but that trick will only work one time.

This doesn’t mean that OS X app developers can’t give you a discount for the new version. Nothing stops them from selling it to you directly. That leaves the Mac App Store out of the equation, although more and more apps will depend on being available in Apple’s software repository to reach the maximum number of potential customers. Of course, with iOS you can’t buy software from another vendor unless you jailbreak the device and are willing to take the chance.

Regardless, it’s not that Apple is apt to explain a corporate policy, except in rare circumstances. On the few occasions where Tim Cook has been interviewed, I do not recall him being asked why Apple doesn’t believe in giving existing customers a discount when upgrading to a new version of an app. I suppose, to Apple, it puts everyone on an equal footing. When the new version arrives, it’s a new product. Buy it or not. It’s up to you, and nothing stops you from using the old version until it is no longer supported. Perhaps there will be free updates to fix bugs.

To be fair, Logic Pro X is a great deal. Imagine getting a state-of-the-art recording suite for just shy of $200. Maintenance updates will be free and, when there’s a Logic Pro XI or whatever it’s called two or three years from now, it’ll be another $199.99 I suppose. Such a deal! Indeed, companies who make more expensive recording software have to be shaking in their boots over what Apple has done.

Also, Apple’s approach is helping to reduce prices for apps across the board. If you can buy professional video editing software, Final Cut Pro X, for $299.99, and other apps for less, wouldn’t that encourage major developers to rethink their pricing strategies? Yes, I suppose it would hurt the income stream, but reaching more customers may make up the difference. If you could buy QuarkXPress, the high-end desktop publishing app, for $199.99 instead of $849, wouldn’t those who use lesser programs to create documents, such as Apple’s Pages, be more inclined to give it a try? In the end, Quark might gain substantial market share against Adobe InDesign, particularly in a climate where people are rebelling at the latter’s software rental scheme, where the app stops working if next month’s payment isn’t received.

But it’s still too bad that app developers, who have their products in an Apple App Store, can’t access their customers information directly, unless they register in the app itself. That’s something that still should be fixed, even if upgrade discounts become history.

Officially, Apple TV, a video streaming set top box that costs a mere $99, remains a “hobby” or “grand vision” for Apple, depending on which comments from Tim Cook you take seriously. Perhaps both are correct. However, that doesn’t mean the Apple TV isn’t successful. In fact, it’s the market leader.

So here we go with yet another survey. This one comes from Frost & Sullivan, a market research company, which states that, in 2012, the Apple TV had a 56% share of the streaming video player market. Way behind was the Roku, with a 21% market share. The report concludes that Apple TV has a “relatively narrow content access,” although it has grown recently, but attributes the product’s success to AirPlay, which lets you stream content to your TV set. The firm concludes that “AirPlay is the primary reason for purchase of Apple TV devices.”

That Apple has been regularly adding new content offerings, such as the recent addition of HBO Go, isn’t being considered. To be fair, this survey was also based on 2012 sales, and the results are no different from what Apple has said already about the success of the Apple TV.

In contrast, Google TV, that company’s effort to gain a foothold in the streaming video space, has apparently been consigned to the “other” category. These results clearly don’t support the promise from the company’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, that “by the summer of 2012, the majority of televisions you see in stores will have Google TV embedded.”

Yes, there are still a handful of tech pundits who are high on Google TV. But certainly not Logitech, which took hundreds of millions of dollars in write-downs when their Google TV gadget failed big time in the marketplace. Maybe they should have asked Google for a refund, but they only have themselves to blame for being taken in by the promise of this misbegotten platform.

However, current success doesn’t necessarily prove that Apple TV is a keeper. Selling more than 13 million copies of anything would be considered a huge success for almost any company outside of Apple. But Apple TV is a product that remains in search of an unspecified goal. However, it is far more useful than the Frost & Sullivan report implies, since there are a reasonable number of streaming services beyond what you can do with AirPlay. There is iTunes, plus 13 third-party services, which  include Netflix, Hulu Plus, YouTube, Flickr, and other video services, including sporting events and news.

Maybe the current Apple TV won’t let you cut the cable cord, but it may come quite close. I can see a lot of you surviving happily with Netflix, Hulu Plus and iTunes, along with hooking up an antenna to get your local high definition broadcast stations. If you are careful about what you rent or buy from iTunes, you will keep your monthly investment really low.

Yes, Roku, aside from the lack of iTunes, has far more streaming services from which to select. But there are reports, apparently reliable, that Apple and Time Warner, parent company of HBO, are soon going to agree on a new deal. That pact will let customers of Time Warner’s cable division access the service on an Apple TV. The stories, emerging from the usual “informed sources,” don’t clarify how time-shifting will be handled. Maybe Apple will work with Time Warner to use a cloud-based DVR. There’s even talk, also unconfirmed, of a commercial skipping feature available as an extra cost option.

Such an agreement, should it come to pass, may pave the way for Apple signing up other cable and satellite providers. Certainly accessing your cable service through the integrated Apple TV environment, with access duplicated on your iPhone, iPad and Mac, might actually bring more business to these companies at a time when subscriber growth has mostly stalled.

For Apple, this would be a terrific way to expand the reach of the existing Apple TV, and perhaps pave the way for a souped up model that, I would hope, would offer seamless integration of all your connected accessories, including a Blu-ray player and a gaming console. Maybe Apple would prefer you didn’t use those gadgets, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be supported. I can see the potential of Apple TV becoming not just the streaming device, but a universal remote that eliminates the awkward process of making all the components in your living room play nicely together.

Yes, there are lots of universal remotes on the market. Some TV and cable box remotes can also be programmed to handle other gear. But programming all of them to work together smoothly, and somehow managing to aim the remote so it reaches the various sensors on all your gadgets, is not a seamless process. I have already mentioned how my Logitech Harmony 900 remote, which supposedly works with just about any consumer electronics gadget out there that comes with a remote, is often difficult to program. And that’s with a mass market TV set, such as a VIZIO.

In any case, I’m encouraged by the success of the Apple TV. I just wonder where Apple is taking their hobby, and when that goal will be revealed. Regardless of where Apple TV goes, though, it doesn’t mean that Apple is also planning to release a connected TV set. Sure, maybe it’ll happen, but Apple could also work with existing manufacturers to embed Apple TV and use its interface for all key control functions. Strange? Well, consider what Apple is doing with auto makers.