At the same time that I read a report speculating about the feature set of the rumored iPhone 6, there was yet another headline suggesting that Samsung was poised to introduce a smartphone designed to compete head-on, which may be called Alpha. Of course, this is the way of the tech world. Apple puts out something, and tech pundits tout competing products that are intended to be “killers.”

So we had the iPod killer, the iPhone killer and the iPad killer. But none of these killers every actually sold more copies than the Apple gadget they competed with. Yes, more Android smartphones are sold than iPhones. But most are cheap models with which Apple never competes.

When I mention Apple having higher sales, I’m referring to single models, not hundreds of products produced by dozens of manufacturers both small and large. That’s a distinction that isn’t always drawn by commentators who want you to believe that the iOS has been overwhelmed by Android, there’s no room for a more profitable number two, and Apple might as well throw in the towel.

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So the tech media has, for months, been inundated with supposed supply chain leaks and other tales about the next iPhone, presumably the iPhone 6. If the stories are true, there will be two versions; one with a 4.7-inch screen, and the other with a 5.5-inch screen that represents Apple’s first foray into the world of phablets.

The feature set, predictably, speaks of an A8 processor, perhaps quad-core, a better camera and maybe other new hardware features. There’s nothing here that seems more than the natural evolution of the iPhone. It is not going where no previous iPhone has gone before except as a natural outgrowth of improving technologies.

As a practical matter, little of the information should come as a surprise. You don’t have to have supply chain leaks, if they exist, to expect a linear progression in iPhone advancement.

The larger screen, for example. Although the iPhone at first had a larger display than the competition, competitors desperately sought ways to beat Apple at something, anything. If it wasn’t a feature that didn’t work so well, such as the notorious tilt to scroll capability of the Samsung Galaxy S4, it was a larger display. Rather than stick with one size, each product iteration had to receive a larger screen, even if the difference was hardly significant. Consider the jump from five inches to 5.1-inches starting with the Galaxy S5.

Apple hasn’t actually dismissed the concept of using larger displays. Tim Cook has said on more than one occasion that Apple is looking for improvements in problems that allegedly afflict the larger smartphones, such as inferior image quality, poor battery life and other issues. You can argue whether or not he has a point. Certainly the Samsung’s OLED display was pretty good except in bright sunlight, and that problem is not as bad in the latest models.

Regardless, it’s also true that customers do want larger smartphones, and phablets appear to have caught on in Asia, a part of the world that Apple focuses heavily on. So, at the risk of making the iPhone lineup a little more complicated, it’s only natural for Apple to find ways to meet the demand.

Anyway, if the iPhone 6 is precisely as predicted, there will be few surprises, unless Apple throws in a few added hardware features that haven’t been anticipated. Consider the addition of 64-bit in the A7 and the M7 coprocessor last year. This year, there’s talk of a new haptic feedback engine, so does that mean you’ll feel the buzz when you type? On Android, that feature is merely annoying.

But if there’s little else, will industry analysts and tech pundits emit a collective yawn at the next Apple media event, expected to happen in early September, because everything or most everything was known in advance?

What about the next iPad and iPad mini? Well, the former had a major upgrade last year, and the latter received a Retina display, so what’s left beyond maybe Touch ID support? But if iPad sales continue to flatten, perhaps Apple will devise something unique, but the advance chatter isn’t showing anything significant.

We may know a little more about the rumored iWatch, if only because of Apple’s recent hires from the fashion and fitness industries. That clearly demonstrates something is afoot, and the HealthKit and HomeKit of iOS 8 seem tailor made for a wearable.

Again, no surprises, but if the new products are less than anticipated, which is hardly likely, there will be disappointment. But to some, whatever Apple does is a disappointment.

As to Macs, there’s a published report claiming sales declined in the U.S. the last quarter from the same source that reported a decline in the previous quarter. But since yet another source reported the opposite in the previous quarter, it’s hard to take any of it seriously. Overall, Mac sales have been growing ahead of the PC industry, but the real figures — rather than the surveys and speculation — won’t be known until Apple releases them later this month. That doesn’t stop the media from happily reporting that Mac sales are falling.

Meantime, Apple has a dilemma with Mac refreshes. Intel’s next generation chip, code-named Broadwell, is supposed to offer genuine performance improvements that some have estimated at up to 30%. If true, it would represent a huge change compared to previous chip upgrades, which have focused more on power efficiency than raw performance.

Regardless, you probably won’t see Macs with Broadwell inside this year because of Intel’s ongoing production problems. While the low-end chips are expected soon, the higher-end parts that Apple uses may not arrive until the end of 2014 or later, meaning they won’t show up until 2015 in new Macs. So any product refreshes this year may be similar to the recent MacBook Air upgrade. There will be slightly faster processors, and a slightly lower price to move hardware. Period. I suppose Apple could do something fancy with the packaging, but not the actual hardware. And, no, I do not expect to see an ARM-powered Mac anytime soon, though it might show up eventually if Intel continues to encounter delays in shipping new product.

Then there’s the Apple TV, and the report that the Roku lineup is moving ahead, even if Apple has sold more units worldwide. Apple TV software improvements have been confined to minor feature updates and more channels. Is there a surprise this fall? At least with the iPhone, you can believe in supply chain leaks since they ultimately end up being close to the mark. I suppose Apple could pop an A7 or A8 with more memory into the next Apple TV and use the same form factor. But Apple is also rumored to be working on something altogether new to change the direction of the industry.

Surprises are good.

If you can believe recent stories, and the general flavor of the criticism about Apple, Tim Cook was the wrong man at the wrong time to take over Apple when Steve Jobs gave up the throne. Of course, it’s also true that even The New York Times mistakenly believe that Cook took control after Jobs died, which most of you know just isn’t true. They also tend to ignore the long periods in which Cook was acting CEO when Jobs took his various sick leaves.

So it’s not that Cook walked into the CEO’s office unprepared. No doubt he had extensive conversations with Jobs about what would be expected of him, and the obstacles he would face.

Certainly Cook doesn’t consider the “what would Steve do?” question, and he was urged by Jobs not to. Instead, he has moved Apple in a somewhat different direction, with a more collaborative executive team, and a greater openness in dealing with developers, investors and, to some degree, the public. When Apple was attacked by The New York Times about poor working conditions at contract factories in China — a piece that ignored the fact that other large tech companies build their gear in the same plants — it was clear that Apple was taking steps to improve the situation. What has Dell and HP done, or does anyone even ask?

And what about the plight of the workers who build gear for Samsung?

Although Wall Street was clearly pleased, Apple’s plan to buy back billions of dollars of stock, give dividends to investors, and split the stock was regarded by some as an excuse to obscure the fact that the company has yet to enter into any new markets. It was as if Jobs would click his boots three times, and a new product would come to be. This mistaken belief ignores the fact that he reportedly had to be sold on, for example, building the iPod, a product that paved the way for all of Apple’s excursions into consumer electronics territory.

What is troublesome to the critics, of course, is that Apple has a long standing policy of not telling you what is being developed, other than the first version of something or a new OS. It’s about the “wow” factor, not to mention potentially killing sales of an existing product when the new model arrives. But all those promises about entering new product categories (plural) sure indicates that there’s something more than an iWatch afoot. The next Apple TV? That’s still an existing product, even if you add some gaming features and perhaps an Apple-built gaming console.

One of the ongoing arguments is that “Steve Jobs would not have done this,” in response to anything Cook does, which is absolutely silly. For one thing, the vast majority of those critics never knew Steve Jobs. Even if they met him at an Apple event — as I did several times over the years — they really didn’t know him. They could not possibly know how he’d react to any particular product decision made by Cook. They do not even know how many of the current products and strategies were actually approved by Jobs in his final days, though I’d think that number is dwindling rapidly.

Some suggest that Jobs was better at building a startup, whereas Cook is better at building a mature company. Remember that Apple was established more than 38 years ago. It has had ups and downs and long periods of struggling to find a direction. It hasn’t been a smooth ride by any means. Few would believe that Apple would grow into the largest company on the planet by market cap, let alone by building fancy mobile telephone handsets and digital music players. I suppose you could see the possibility of tablets with the Newton eMate.

Today’s Apple gets far more right than wrong, but to assume Apple’s foul-ups occurred after Jobs left is foolish. Apple’s history under Jobs demonstrates otherwise.

From a financial standpoint, Apple is in solid shape. But it’s still about products and services, and it remains to be seen what new products will arrive in the next few months that will take Apple to the next generation of product greatness.

I can see where there’s skepticism, though. But the new products and services that have been rumored appear to be highly consumer oriented, which means that the best time to release them is in the fall, ahead of the start of the holiday shopping season. A newly-released product will sell in the highest numbers. It makes less sense to bring a refreshed iPhone to market in, say, April, which is what Samsung did with the Galaxy S5. By fall, it’ll be old news in the fast-moving tech industry.

But no matter what Apple does, it’s a sure thing that the skeptics will complain that Cook is doing most or everything wrong. That will never change, and even if he is succeeded by someone in the near future, no matter how qualified, how will that change anything?

So is the curious romance with anything Samsung about to come to an end? This is the nagging question in light of the most recent problems with Samsung’s mobile sales and profits. Indeed, Samsung is once again issuing a warning to the financial community. They plan to announce that profits in the most recent quarter dropped by as much as 26% over last year. The reason? Weak demand for smartphones, plus more intense competition in China and Europe. According to published reports, profits will be in the range of $6.9 billion to $7.3 billion, and it would represent the third quarter in which they have declined over the previous year

Shouldn’t this story be making headlines around the world, and not just in South Korea?

You see, while Apple has reported slimmer profit growth, and a decline in one recent quarter, the situation is nowhere near as serious as Samsung. Sales continue to grow for the iPhone, often ahead of analyst predictions, and Mac sales continue to advance ahead of the PC industry. But Apple was also considered to be on its last legs due to falsehoods about alleged poor iPhone 5 sales in 2012. None of it was true, yet the stock price collapsed over reports of alleged production cutbacks in the supply chain.

The situation didn’t change even when Tim Cook warned that you can’t take a few metrics from the supply chain and make assumptions. But that didn’t stop the onrush of stories that Apple can no longer innovate. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal is only the latest publication to make curious claims about Tim Cook’s leadership, that perhaps he’s doing too much by focusing not just on products, but the company’s stock, environmental and supply chain issues and things, in general, that Steve Jobs was apt to overlook.

Now it’s true most of Samsung’s sales shortfall is in the cheap and mid-tier smartphones that deliver minimal profits. But it’s not that the high-end gear, such as the Galaxy S5, is doing as well as some expected. What is apparently happening is that Samsung is getting battered by the low-end competition from Chinese handset makers, and at the high end by Apple. So they are spending a bundle to clear unsold inventory, which also kills profit margins.

Now if Apple suffered from the same dilemma, you wouldn’t hear the end of it. Samsung? Well, it gets some coverage, but Samsung doesn’t have the Apple aura, so you don’t see huge headlines about the company’s ongoing problems.

So there’s a published report today asserting that Samsung needs to be more innovative. Perhaps. But Samsung was built upon imitation. They even got away with it until Apple called in their legal team and fought back. Sure, you can still buy the alleged infringing products, and Samsung has yet to pay Apple anything despite owing them over a billion dollars as the result of recent legal defeats, but one hopes they got the memo this time.

The real problem is that Samsung is delivering mostly generic hardware that can be duplicated by loads of other companies at the high and low end. Where there are distinguishing features, such as a fingerprint sensor on the Galaxy S5, or the infamous Tilt Scroll introduced on the Galaxy S4, they are poorly implemented and often just don’t work. Sometimes the reviewers call them out on these failures, but it doesn’t stop them from still lavishing praise over the new handsets.

I suppose some might regard it as the chickens coming home to roost. So Samsung continues to build decent gear that doesn’t set the creative juices afire, nor upend a market. Up till now, with relatively high sales and profits, the industry has given them a pass. Some even regarded their copycat approach as somehow innovative.

But now that Samsung is facing the same problems already confronted by smaller handset companies, such as HTC and even Motorola Mobility, I wonder how the media will react. Or will they?

Of course, Google is still thought of as somehow successful with hardware, even though their biggest attempt, the result of squandering $12 billion to buy Motorola Mobility, was an abject failure, and they had to pawn the division off to Lenovo at a third the price.

Year after year, the latest Google “innovation” gets worldwide publicity. Most of it accounts for nothing. Google Glass remains an expensive “gearhead” gadget that is still essentially a public beta that you have to buy. The latest TV gadget du jour was announced at the recent I/O conference, but the predecessors have mostly fallen on deaf ears in the marketplace. Well, Google Chromecast seems to be doing well enough, but mostly for its cheap price. It’s still decidedly inferior to an Apple TV or a Roku box.

But without the marketing success of Samsung, which delivers most of the Android handsets and tablets, just where would Google’s mobile platform be anyway? As to Samsung, after the news of the sales shortfall disappears, the media will be touting a possible iPhone 6 killer this fall. It never changes.