As many of you recall, Apple found itself in the thick of it after a mass shooting in December of 2015 in San Bernardino, CA. The FBI asked them to create a back door for iOS, which would allow the authorities to break in to an iPhone 5c used as a work phone by one of the assailants.

The request was the result of stupidity. A work device set up properly with Apple’s configuration tools ought to have been easily unlocked by the employer. It should not have been necessary to accidentally lock the device and hope that the proper password or unlock scheme would be discovered before the unit is locked for good as the result of five passcode attempts.

On the surface, it seemed a sensible move despite the logical fallacies. Why, for example, would the terrorists place incriminating data on a work phone? Wouldn’t it be stored on personal devices? Other than assuming they were very stupid, which may very well be true, it didn’t create much hope that a successful entry would yield any significant amount of information.

But the authorities had to check anyway, in the hope that the unit contained evidence critical to the investigation, perhaps to reveal the existence of other plotters in the scheme. But Apple said they couldn’t help for a very sensible reason. The mere act of creating such a back door would, in effect, defeat the iOS potentially for almost anyone clever enough to exploit that back door. And don’t think it isn’t possible. Some members of the U.S. Congress also repeated this fiction, that it could be restricted to a single device.

Well, the FBI couldn’t get the courts to go along with the demand, but it didn’t matter in the end. They were able to pay a third-party hacker to do the deed, perhaps much as a million dollars. Or maybe not, and in the end they reportedly didn’t find any useful information on that iPhone.

Now before people run off and complain that Apple’s security is now seriously comprised and you can’t trust such devices, as a practical matter nothing is perfect. There are tricks to defeat a fingerprint sensor, even Touch ID. What’s more, Face ID isn’t immune to hacking either. A 3D mask reportedly can do the deed, shades of Mission Impossible!

For law enforcement officers, there are now two forensic companies that promise to break into iPhones and other gear. You’ll notice, by the way, that we never hear of anyone having trouble breaking in to devices running Google Android. It’s always about the iPhone, which ought to at least reassure most of you that a successful intrusion no easy process. so there’s little reason to feel paranoid.

Remember that even the key fob from your family auto may be defeated by hackers with fairly cheap tools. It’s why we have auto insurance.

Now the original company reportedly engaged in unlocking iPhones and other gear was an Israel firm, Cellebrite. It reportedly costs $1,500 per iPhone to bypass the Secure Enclave that houses your fingerprint or facial data. It can supposedly be used even on the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X — yes the one with Face ID!

Clearly business is good, as Cellebrite recently reported record revenue and growth for 2017.

Yet another company is getting in the act, one called Grayshift, a startup reportedly run by U.S. intelligence contractors and a former security engineer from Apple. If the latter is true, Apple must be busy consulting the former employee’s NDA to see if there’s a legal angle to put a stop to this venture. The GrayKey tool reportedly costs $15,000 for an online solution said to be limited to 300 users. It’s unlocking scheme is reportedly similar to Cellebrite’s.

Now it’s not that such efforts are always universally applauded for law enforcement authorities. There are downsides, such as the ability of rogue governments around the world to compromise the privacy of their enemies, and perhaps for criminals to get ahold of such gear and unlock devices used by intelligence people and the well-heeled. Even if Cellebrite and Grayshift are diligent in making sure that their tools are not being acquired by criminal elements, I suppose it’s always possible for a unit to be stolen and misused.

No doubt such successes may be temporary. Assuming Apple can figure out what they’re doing, they can devise ways to tighten security and bypass such schemes, and other devices that may become available. At the same time, such forensic firms will no doubt, in turn, find ways to improve their detection algorithms and around and around we go.

You’ll notice that Apple is not making a deal of talking about such devices. Certainly Alphabet, Google’s parent company, won’t touch this one with a ten foot pole, because Android has no security reputation to speak of.

At the same time I wouldn’t be surprised to learn of a startup that could possibly add an additional lawyer of protection to a mobile device to defeat the efforts of Cellebrite and Grayhawk to unlock iPhones.

Long before the phrase “fake news” began to occupy the nation’s political dialogue, one tech company was constantly the subject of stories often made up out of whole cloth. Not just rumors, but claims that something was factual, or accepted fact, even though the reverse was true.

I think back to the early days of the Mac. In those years, it was still about a Microsoft’s text-based OS, MS-DOS, and the claim that real people didn’t point and click.

Until they did, that is.

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One way for industry analysts to reduce a company’s share of a specific market is to change the market. At one time, iPads were placed in a so-called media tablet category, as opposed to a Windows tablet which, is of course, used for real work. This put a modestly expensive gadget in the same category as cheap ones, such as Amazon Kindles, and thus make its sales achievements seem less impressive.

For a time, this scheme seemed to work, as Apple’s market share was much lower. When sales flattened and dipped, the situation became much worse for iPads. Sure, Tim Cook continued to express confidence on the platform, pointing to the conquests in the business world and in China and elsewhere. At the end of the day, sales began to rise again in small increments, and average sales prices increased by somewhat larger amounts because customers preferred the more expensive “Pro” models.

So what about the Apple Watch?

Well, from the very first, Apple opted to hide actual sales numbers in an “Other Products” category along with the AirPod, Beats headphones and other gear. The critics felt this was merely Apple’s scheme to hide sales, because they weren’t confident that the numbers would be positive. Or maybe for competitive reasons, even though the numbers have been estimated in ways that appear to be fairly accurate.

So the latest numbers for 2017 are in the neighborhood of 18 million units, but Apple’s market share depends on the category in which you place Apple Watch. Since you wear a watch, an IDC survey can undercount the impact of sales and revenue by placing it in the “Wearables” category. But isn’t it a smartwatch? On the other hand, isn’t a regular Fitbit a wearable too because you wear it in order to monitor your fitness? Even if it has no watch in the way you’d refer to a device as a watch, it still counts.

So I won’t quibble.

Regardless, it appears the Series 3 models, with LTE, closed the deal. Based strictly on IDC, which tends to undercount Apple, sales for the Apple Watch last year totaled 17.7 million, compared to 11.3 million in 2016. That’s an improvement of 55.9%, with sales not much lower than iPhone sales in its third year.

And, no, I don’t expect people to buy hundreds of millions of Apple Watches in the near future, but I’m not a marketing wizard either.

In any case, that accounts for a 15.3% share of the amorphous wearables market. China tech giant Xiaomi shipped 15.7 million, very slightly lower than last year. Fitbit’s sales tanked, down to 15.4 million compared to 22.5 million last year. And don’t forget that Apple Watch prices are usually far higher than a Fitbit.

There’s also a huge “Others” category, totaling 55.5 million that’s spread across a number of smaller makers that have shares below the top five. A number of them appear to be startups with teeny tiny sales numbers. It may be a case of here today, gone tomorrow.

Regardless, Apple remains the company to beat, but it doesn’t appear that any other smartwatches are making significant gains. Most Xiaomi wearables I caught online appear to be relatively cheap junk and, as I said, sales were a tad lower compared to 2016.

Outside of the top five are such apparent losers as Samsung Galaxy Gear or any Android Wear product. As much as the critics want to compare Apple to hundreds of other companies, with high double-digit growth, it’s clear that sales are a long way from hitting their peaks. With sales growing that fast — and no solid predictions of what the Series 4 Apple Watch might be like — its potential has clearly yet to be realized.

And any company that can sell nearly 18 million of anything has to be respected. How many Surfaces does Microsoft sell each year? Pixel smartphones? Amazon Echo Dots, starting at $50? Is an Apple Watch, starting at $249 for the legacy Series 1 version, overpriced, or pretty much what you’d expect given all the technology it contains? Are lots of people rejecting such a device because it’s not $99?

Well, despite all the fake news about price resistance, the iPhone X fueled a huge rise in the average sale price for these products, despite the fact that you can buy a perfectly decent iPhone, the SE, for $349 and that might even be cheaper this fall if the trends continue.

This certainly doesn’t mean the Apple Watch is everyone’s cup of tea, or an essential gadget. It is still basically an iPhone accessory even though the LTE feature, the ability to access cellular data, makes it more independent.

While I expected an LTE option, it came earlier than I thought. If Apple can add more powerful features, reduce power needs, and maybe find a better battery solution to fit into that small space, I can see where more and more people might just leave their iPhones at home and do more things with their smartwatch.

Then again, I’m not in that category yet. Although I see more and more Apple Watches in my travels, I have yet to feel tempted in any way to retire my three-year-old $12.88 Walmart stainless steel watch. It’s nowhere near as perfect as Apple’s solution, and the only extra feature it contains is a semi-automatic calendar (meaning it has to be set manually for months shorter than 31 days). It also gains a few seconds a month, but I’ve tolerated imperfect wristwatches for years. Maybe someday, if a long-lost relative is feeling generous for birthday or holiday giving.

At one time, it was common to exchange or replace a smartphone around the two-year mark. This was particularly true in the U.S., where wireless carriers would tie you in to a 24-month subsidy contract, where you’ll pay a small down payment — or no down payment — and take home your new phone. Only thing is that you had to hold onto it for two years, or at least keep your account active for that period, to avoid a stiff early termination fee.

If you just decided to keep the phone after the contract expired, you’d still pay the same fee. It wouldn’t go down, meaning you’d end up paying extra for an aging device.

The situation became fair, more or less, beginning with T-Mobile’s “Uncarrier” promotions. You’d buy your service plan, including talk, text and data, and pay separately for the phone. The usual deal was a full payment or a lease/purchase plan where you’d pay it off within two years or so, plus a small down payment. Some plans would allow you to exchange the handset for the new model every year or two.

You would be paying the standard price, minus discounts, but at least you know that you’d some day pay off the loan. Seeing your monthly payments go down must surely have encouraged some people to hang onto what they had for a while longer if it still worked all right. With iPhones, you can routinely install the latest iOS on devices over four years old. Sure, maybe performance wouldn’t be great shakes, but it worked, and it certainly encouraged people to hang onto what they had. My wife, for example, still has her iPhone 5c, which is actually stuck in the iOS 10 zone. But it is small enough to fit into a tiny purse, and still makes and receives phone calls with good quality. She’s happy with it, and only lately has she been  hinting that she’d like something new or newer for her next birthday, in December.

But that doesn’t mean that Apple has been free of the fake charge of deliberately making iPhones obsolete to entice you to buy next year’s model. This comes at a time where the iPhone 6s, first introduced in 2015, is still being sold.

The charges became more intense when it was discovered that an iOS update throttled iPhone performance if the battery was failing. The theory was that the performance cut wasn’t about batteries but about fooling you into buying a new device. Although there are several dozen class-action lawsuits in force over this issue, it appears to be more a matter of poor communication with customers. If Apple had fully explained the decision to reduce performance when battery capacity had deteriorated to prevent unexpected shutdowns, there may not have been so many complaints.

One claim is that Apple also hid the ability to replace an iPhone battery, which doesn’t make sense, since there are a number of customer support documents on the topic that include pricing. Plus independent dealers promote the ability to replace batteries at prices that are lower than Apple’s. One dealer, a five minute drive from here, boasts that they can do it in 10 or 15 minutes, while you wait. To them it’s no big deal. A nearby Walmart has a smartphone/PC repair concession that will also happily replace the battery on any popular mobile handset with a full warranty. It’s even possible to do it yourself with the right tools and flexible fingers.

So much for conspiracy theories. But these days, you can replace the battery on a number of iPhone models for $29 from an Apple Store if you’re willing to wait. The iOS 11.3 update, being beta tested now, includes a battery health tester and the ability to switch off throttling if you want to take your chances. When asked if he was concerned that fewer people would upgrade their iPhones with cheap replacement batteries available, Apple CEO Tim Cook said he didn’t care.

Meantime, a certain financial newspaper has run an article suggesting that slumping smartphone sales are the result of people buying refreshed phones because new phones are too expensive, that customers are “balking at price tags for new phones pushing $1,000.” We know what phone that is.

The theory, however, is not tenable. Apple, for example, sells five different lines of iPhones starting with the SE at $349. The iPhone 6s is $449, and it’s not so different from today’s iPhone 8 that it will disappoint many users. Apple is clearly quite aware of the need to offer iPhones at different price points. Samsung sells lots of cheap stuff, at prices less than half that of an iPhone.

So if you are on a budget, and can put up with last year’s model, or one a year or two older than that, you can get a perfectly satisfactory iPhone that’s brand now, or factory refurbished, without having to buy someone’s used handset instead, even if it was properly serviced.

What’s more, the fact that the average sales price of iPhones soared with the arrival of the iPhone X, despite so many cheaper options available, makes it clear that pricing is not deterring users. It’s very likely more about high quality products that will deliver reliable performance for several years, unless badly abused, and the obvious fact that prices go down when a loan or lease is paid off.

But Apple critics, even when they work for publications with millions of readers, won’t let facts get in the way.