As you might expect, Apple has been relatively tight-lipped about the next Mac Pro. That they’ve said anything at all clearly demonstrates the pressure they confronted as pros made it clear they didn’t believe they had the love.

I do believe Apple is telling us the truth, such as it is, as to what they are working on. The next Mac Pro will be modular and allow for easy upgrades. But it’s not as if it will resemble the cheese grater design of the original. I’m expecting something more decorative, in keeping with Sir Jonathan Ive’s design sensibilities. When I suggested it would be smaller and weigh maybe half what the Mac Pro minitower weighed, one engineer suggested I hadn’t considered the thermal limitations.

Since this is Apple, so expect something innovative when it comes to a cooling system. It won’t have lots of fans.

But it may be more than that, at least based on a published report about Apple trademarks for the Mac Pro that mentioned “augmented reality displays.”

Remember, too, that Apple will develop a new display to go along with the Mac Pro, so there may be added capabilities that can only be understood by looking at patents and trademarks. But the existence of a trademark does not, in itself, offer much information about a new product. Apple will apply for all sorts of patents on all sorts of technologies. Small companies are routinely purchased to acquire technology.

But not all such inventions and new acquisitions will have an immediate result. It may take a few years for them to gel. Sure, you can look at the purchase of Siri for $200 million in 2010 as an example of bringing something to market quickly. The iPhone 4s, with the first release of Siri in beta form, came out in October of 2011.

Apple bought AuthenTec, a pioneer in fingerprint recognition technology, in 2012 for $356 million. The iPhone 5s, which featured the original version of Touch ID, debuted the following year.

Beats Music, the key service acquired with the 2014 purchase of Beats Electronics for $3 billion, morphed into Apple Music, which debuted in mid-2015.

So it’s reasonable to expect a quick payback of an investment. But that’s not always the case.

In 2014, Apple acquired LuxVue, a startup working on MicroLED technology, which may become the next great thing, but not yet. There are published reports that the 2017 Apple Watch may ditch the OLED display for one featuring MicroLED, but that’s a far cry from being able to install such a screen on an iPhone, or an iPod. Don’t expect to see MicroLED on a Mac or a flat-screen TV for a few years.

In short, Apple also invests for the long term.

So it may well be that the next Mac Pro will provide support for augmented reality, perhaps incorporating the powerful graphics chips required for that capability to work flexibly. The forthcoming display may also offer a whole lot more than the LG UltraFine 5K display, which is obviously a stopgap product. Apple provides support for two external 5K displays on the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar, and that wouldn’t make much sense unless you could actually connect it to a pair of compatible monitors.

While the tech sites are scouring the Internet, and leaks from the supply chain, to figure out what form the next Mac Pro will take, it’s far too early to really know. All that’s been said about the deadline is that it won’t be this year. That doesn’t mean there won’t be a technology demonstration of the next Mac Pro at the June WWDC, with a promised release date of early 2018. Indeed, that would almost be in keeping with how the troubled 2013 model debuted.

So the trash can Mac Pro was shown off at the 2013 WWDC, with the promise of end-of-year delivery. It barely made it, and, for most customers, it didn’t arrive until early in 2014. If Apple is close to a final design of its 2018 model, at least insofar as being able to demonstrate a mostly functional prototype, it might be a great way to help satisfy the concerns of skeptical professional users.

Clearly Apple is paying attention to Mac professionals in other ways. This week, it was announced at the NAB conference that Final Cut Pro X, the troubled $299 video editing app, now has two million users. That’s quite a bit for such software, and I wonder how many of those users are doing professional editing for TV and movies. The conventional wisdom had it that, when the feature-crippled first release of FCP X arrived in 2011, loads of video editors fled to Adobe Premiere and Avid rather than stick with the previous version of Apple’s app until the new version was fixed. So maybe it’s now time for a big push to pros. Earlier this year, the music production app, Logic Pro X, received two major updates.

Together, they represent a glimmer of hope, that Apple does take pros seriously, and that the next Mac Pro and its companion display will be designed to meet their needs. In passing, I wonder if the new Mac display will offer 8K resolution — or even higher.

Is that even necessary?

Well, don’t forget that 8K digital cameras, such as the $49,500 RED WEAPON 8K S35, produce output for motion pictures that has to be edited somewhere. Today’s 5K displays flexibly handle 4K video content with room for an app’s menus and palettes.

If Apple can fulfill its promises and deliver a future-proof workstation and high-resolution display for professional Mac users, the platform will prosper for many years. I’m really curious to see how it all turns out.

In recent columns, I’ve covered at length the attempts by the tech media to present the just-released Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphone as not only superior to the iPhone 7 but more advanced than the unannounced iPhone 8. The latter is obviously an absurd comparison.

But what bothers me most is that the Galaxy S8’s known flaws are being largely overlooked by reviewers. Consider the flawed biometrics, key components to enhance the handset’s security. Consumer Reports initial review came close, mentioning the inconvenience of putting a fingerprint sensor at the rear and the limitations of its slow iris detection system that cannot handle darkness and bright sunlight. It’s not as flexible as the ones you see on TV, but there’s nothing said about the flawed facial recognition that can be fooled by a photograph.

Well, you get the picture. Imagine if an iPhone had similar flaws. You’d never hear the end of it.

The critics want to tell you that Apple is in deep trouble and there’s no way the iPhone 8 can possibly compete. But what about other Android  competitors, such as the LG G6, which is being touted as a cheaper alternative to the Galaxy S8?

Now when it comes to the Apple Watch, since Apple doesn’t reveal actual sales, it is assumed to be a failure. But independent estimates of its sales show that it leads the pack when it comes to smartwatches. An alleged larger competitor, Fitness wearables, has its own problems, with sales less than expected during the December quarter. This after buying up two competitors, including Pebble.

For a product that continues to lead the market, the Apple Watch isn’t getting the love — at least not yet. But with reports that the third edition might contain such features as a new self-emitting display technology, MicroLED, it can’t be dismissed. What makes a potential move to MicroLED more credible is the fact that Apple acquired one of the pioneers of that technology, LuxVue, in 2014. So even if there’s an iPhone with OLED display in our future, it may only be a temporary move until Apple can perfect even better displays.

You can certainly be assured the critics are really going after the Mac. It’s a legacy product, it’s Apple’s Achilles heel. It has to be set aside so Mac users would be forced to switch to — Windows?

I suppose you have to remind such people that the Mac is also used to build apps for the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple TV. There are 100 million Mac users out there, most of whom wouldn’t want to see their preferred platform discontinued because people said a business of that sort is not a good fit for Apple.

Yes, I know it sounds absurd to me too.

But it’s not as if Apple hasn’t done things — or not done some things — to foster that impression. It will take a while to live down the failure of the Mac Pro, and the only real solution is to release a compelling upgrade that answers the needs of professional users. That would be a huge start towards a Mac renewal.

It’s also clear that Apple is serious about being dedicated to its professional applications. It was revealed this week, at the annual National Association of Broadcasters conference, that Final Cut Pro X, Apple’s video editing app, now has two million users. When it first came on the market in 2011 as a successor to Final Cut Pro 7, the app was attacked for losing important features needed by creatives.

Over the next few years, Apple restored lost features and added others. When you look at the bill of particulars, you’ll find capabilities that seem far beyond what a student or hobbyist might need. The 27-inch iMac with 5K Retina display was clearly designed with FCP X in mind. You’d be able to edit a 4K movie at its native resolution, and have space left on the display for menus and palettes. The app was also updated to work swiftly with the new iMac’s graphics hardware.

During the rollout of the MacBook Pro with Touch Bar last fall, one of the key demonstrations included a FCP X update with Touch Bar support. Apple recently hired developer Tim Dashwood, who had previously created 3D and 360-degree VR plugins, to join the team.

Obviously Apple is committed to the app.

Apple’s other pro app, Logic Pro X, has received two major updates so far this year, with loads of new and enhanced features listed on recent release notes.

Of course, it wouldn’t hurt to see a new Mac before fall, perhaps a 2017 MacBook and maybe even a long-awaited refresh for the Mac mini. You know, just to see what’s possible.

The critics will continue to tout Microsoft’s premium-priced Surface PCs as the next great thing, even though sales continue to be a fraction of what Apple sells. The real threat of the Surface, however, is to mainstream PC makers, as Microsoft continues to rain on their parades.

Oh, and the other day, a reader suggested I was putting myself in Samsung’s legal crosshairs by suggesting it may be responsible, in part, for some of the negative publicity about Apple. I wish they would do something; I could use the publicity.

The silly things I read about Apple or an Apple product boggle the mind. The other day, I ran across a perfectly absurd piece suggesting there was something harmful or nasty about Apple’s iWork software.

I’m waiting for the mind to boggle!

Now in the real world, Apple has been producing consumer-level productivity suites for years. It dates back to the launch of AppleWorks for the Apple II platform. Mac and PC versions existed ClarisWorks before becoming AppleWorks.

Apple stopped selling AppleWorks in 2007, two years after its successor, iWork, was introduced.

iWork consists of three apps. Pages provides word processing and simple page layout functions. Numbers is the spreadsheet, and Keynote is the presentation component.

When iWork debuted for the iOS platform in 2013, the critics attacked Apple for releasing comparable Mac versions that lost some key features, such as multiple selection, linked text books, bookmarks, mail merge, the ability to import and export RTF files, page count, and, most important to some, AppleScript support.

Some features have returned, other’s haven’t, but there is also support now for real-time collaboration. Besides, the consumers for whom Apple caters with iWork may not care all that much. It’s not that there are no options for the Mac and iOS platforms. Even better, the three apps are free downloads from Apple’s App Stores. For a while, iWork was free only to people who bought new gear, and that changed recently. While there’s no Windows version, anyone with an Apple ID can use the free cloud-based version that offers a decent subset of features and good compatibility.

System requirements for the latest iWork apps are a little tight, however. You need macOS Sierra or iOS 10. Nothing earlier works. I suppose there’s reason to criticize Apple’s decision, although Macs from seven to eight years old can run Sierra; iOS gear as far back as 2012 can run iOS 10.

All told, the three iWork apps are actually quite decent overall. Keynote is actually superior to PowerPoint for some users; Apple uses it for their on-screen demos at media events, a fact that first became obvious years ago when Steve Jobs claimed that the app was originally designed for him.

It’s quite a good deal, since it means that people switching to the Mac, an iPhone or an iPad can get free productivity apps that offer decent compatibility with Microsoft Office. It’s not full compatibility, but since Office is available and regularly updated for Apple’s computing platforms, nothing stops you from choosing a paid and more full-featured alternative.

Speaking as someone who has used Microsoft’s productivity suite for years — and written a couple of books about it — I can tell you that I do not need all the features available in Office. Most people don’t, and even some businesses can survive on something simpler. By adding real-time collaboration, Apple has entered Google Docs territory without the privacy concerns.

Now long-time users of AppleWorks and ClarisWorks were concerned over the fact that their documents cannot be opened in the current versions of iWork. The compatibility scale is regrettably complicated. So you’d need iWork ’09 to open AppleWorks 6 documents, for example. That’s the reason why I’ve kept the older iWork suite around on my Mac all these years, though I’ve rarely needed it.

While I understand why Apple might want to keep the code base as simple as possible, opening documents from an app’s predecessor shouldn’t present a serious development issue. The ability to handle RTF documents, for example, was recently restored to the suite, but I suspect Apple isn’t paying much attention to the needs of people with older documents that can’t be opened without jumping through some hoops.

I use Pages to write my weekly newsletters for The Paracast. The newsletter is sent via a mailing list script, and the formatting is dead simple, so I can probably do it in TextEdit too, but having a working word count feature is a plus. But I am forced to switch to Word when I write a manuscript for an outside publisher, since that is the standard of the publishing industry.

If I had a wish list, it would be to see Apple explore the potential of iWork, perhaps make a greater effort to match or exceed the features of Microsoft Office. However, it’s still of critical importance for many people that Office be available in macOS and iOS versions. Maybe Apple, having gone through this before, isn’t really interested in testing Microsoft’s limits. Besides, there are many free and low-cost productivity apps in the App Stores. I was surprised how many are actually being offered. Key examples include such advanced word processors as Mellel and Nisus Writer Pro. There are also full-featured office suites for the Mac that are free of charge. A key example is LibreOffice, although it sometimes pays only passing adherence to macOS interface conventions due to its cross-platform development scheme.

Since iWork is free, you lose nothing if you decide not to use it. It’s not that you don’t have lots of potentially superior alternatives.

If you look at the media meme these days, the just-released Samsung Galaxy S8 is the bee’s knees. Apple’s unannounced successor to the iPhone 7, which may include a high-end iPhone 8, must be an inferior product. Apple has lost its taste for innovation, and the executives are sitting back and drinking Frappuccinos or some other overpriced beverage counting their blessings. Or the value of their stock options.

Samsung has announced that it has received record orders for the Galaxy S8, 30% above the underperforming Galaxy S7. However, that boast means little since Samsung doesn’t exactly release sales figures. At least when Apple released iPhone sales for its first weekend, you’d get real numbers. All right, Apple didn’t do that last fall amid expectations of lower sales, perhaps fed by severe constraints on supplies of the iPhone 7 Plus.

Despite the favorable press, the Galaxy S8 ships with some known problems, such as a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor that’s awkward to reach, a facial recognition system that can be fooled by a photograph. The Consumer Reports review suggested you could use the iris scanner instead, but it, too, has some shortcomings. “The iris scanner, however, takes about a second longer to unlock the screen and doesn’t work very well in sunlight or very dark rooms.”

In addition, Samsung’s brand spanking new voice assistant, Bixby, developed by some of the people who brought you Siri, is too buggy for prime time. It will arrive later. Preliminary benchmarks reveal that the only area where the Galaxy S8 runs any faster than an iPhone 7 is in multicore tests, which don’t reflect real-world use of one of these gadgets.

I should also mention that the Consumer Reports reviewer remarked that the test units “threatened to slip out of my hands more than a few times in the week I handled them, twice over a concrete sidewalk.”

But reviewers are knocked out by the Infinity AMOLED display with bright pictures and rich colors. The camera  reportedly delivers better low-light snapshots than last year’s iPhone 7.

Now it may well be that Samsung has overcome the stench of its Galaxy Note 7 recall. Even though the battery design of the S8 is supposed to resemble the one used in the Note 7, one hopes that Samsung has taken steps to avoid the problems that crippled the latter.

With all this, it’s clear Samsung has, for the most part, gotten good press, despite the S8’s known flaws.

Yet here we are, perhaps five months away from the release of the next iPhone, and it’s already being branded a failure. If the rumored iPhone 8 — or whatever it’ll be called — has an edge-to-edge OLED display, it won’t matter. Samsung and other mobile handset makers had them first. Wireless charging? Well, Apple is late to the party with that one also.

It may not matter that Apple will probably claim that its use of OLED makes for a superior display, that it has a more effective wireless charging solution. Apple wasn’t first with a fingerprint sensor either, by the way, but being first isn’t always Apple’s way. And don’t forget the claims that Apple is running behind and won’t be able to get the high-end iPhone out on time, or at best, supplies will be severely constrained.

So is there a single source of the bad press, or are Apple skeptics separately rating its forthcoming products potential failures?

Now I’m not about to make any charges, but let’s not forget that Samsung’s former CEO was arrested by South Korean authorities for corruption. In other words, if found guilty, he’s a crook. But does that behavior extend to Samsung?

Well, lest we forget, Apple has successfully sued Samsung for stealing elements of the iPhone design. I realize these cases are still being appealed, but still. True, Apple has lost patent lawsuits too, but they generally involve gray areas that aren’t always terribly obvious.

Samsung is also notorious for adjusting performance parameters of its gear to show up better results during benchmarks. In other words, they cheat. Sort of reminds me, in a way, of what Volkswagen did to pass emissions tests with its diesel engines.

So add these factors together, and we come up with a company with a culture of corruption that would not be above trying to induce journalists to write negative stories about its biggest competitor — Apple. I’m not suggesting those journalists are necessarily corrupt, or being paid off. But it may well be that Samsung has some people on its payroll that know how to generate stories and rumors, and perhaps persuade a few friendly journalists about what stories to cover. Or maybe they pay outside operatives to pretend to be fellow reporters.

This isn’t to say that all negative stories about Apple are the result of Samsung’s dirty tricks. Some tech journalists may write those negative stories with lurid headline as hit bait, to generate ad-clicks. Others might be honest brokers, who believe in what they write. But a company that is known to do dishonest things is a credible suspect.

Remember that Apple hasn’t said anything about the next iPhone and won’t until it’s time for release. I’ll assume that’ll happen in September. Until then, all we will know are the usual supply chain leaks and maybe a few hints dropped by people in the know on deep background to generate online chatter. The rest may simply be made up.

Remember they attacked the iPhone 7 last year as unimpressive, but such moves didn’t affect sales.