So members of the media have pushed this rumor and that rumor about the form and substance of the next iPhone. While some commentators are suggesting that such competitors as the Samsung Galaxy S4, which is doing pretty well on the sales front, are beating Apple, the iPhone remains the standard by which others are judged.

To nobody’s surprise, Galaxy S4’s improvements over the Galaxy S3 have been relatively minor in the scheme of things, such as a slightly larger screen, faster chips, and a bigger battery in a slightly lighter, slimmer case, and, of course, lots more junkware, Apple continues to face heavy criticism if they don’t do a major refresh for the next iPhone. But Samsung seems insulated from complaints that they aren’t revolutionizing the market. Only Apple does that.

Some of what you can expect will be previewed when iOS 7 is unleashed at the WWDC in June. But if there are exclusive hardware-related features, such as support for fingerprint recognition or NFC, that will await until there is a device available with that capability.

But trying to figure out what’s happening on the basis of what Tim Cook has said in recent months, particularly at this week’s AllThingsD conference, might be an exercise in futility. He continues to repeat essentially the same talking points, perhaps couched in slightly different language, so it’s not as if there was much new, except for loads of articles repeating the same things without reminding you that little has changed.

You know, for example, that Apple’s ongoing interest in TVs and the living room is now part of a “grand vision,” as if this represents anything altogether different, and it doesn’t. You know that Apple is looking into wearables, but that doesn’t mean the rumored iWatch is in our future, near or otherwise.

You know that Apple is skeptical about larger screens for a smartphone. Cook has repeated the basics, about color quality, longevity, battery life and all the other considerations. He should also mention being visible in sunlit surroundings, where the 5-inch Galaxy S4, and the 4.8-inch Galaxy S3 fail miserably. Well, they fail in the eyes of most users and reviewers except for Consumer Reports, which gave the latest Samsung smartphone high ratings for brightness. They must spend too much time indoors.

The issue that Cook didn’t mention, however, is the fact that changing the screen resolution and aspect ratio potentially causes trouble for iOS developers, who would be forced to update over 800,000 apps to take advantage of those changes. Sure, you got black bars on apps run on the iPhone 5 until developers got the message and made the necessary updates. If Apple makes the iPhone too large, using one hand to do basic navigation becomes essentially impossible for most users. Apple cares about such things, but if enough customers prefer bigger displays, Apple would want to consider how best to provide one.

There is also a case to be made for a cheaper iPhone, and a recent report suggests that Apple has selected a different contract factory, Pegatron, a Taiwan-based corporation with operations in China, Brazil, Czechoslovakia, Mexico and even the U.S.A., to build them, Supposedly Pegatron is hiring tens of thousands of workers to run the production lines for new Apple gear, and one of those products might indeed by a cheaper and possibly smaller iPhone made of less expensive parts.

Possible? Cook won’t dismiss the possibility of a lower-cost iPhone. He doesn’t say anything about it, but selling models from last year and the previous year does not seem to be a credible long-term solution. Certainly the competition is producing new cheap models, not just relying on older gear.

But it all comes down to the bill of materials. Regardless of where the iPhone is built, it would have to be available at a relatively affordable price for it to make sense. That means something less than the current $400-450 for an unlocked iPhone 4. How much less? Would $299 be sufficient to get lots of sales from developing countries? Would Apple be able to make it that cheap, assuming that’s cheap of course, retain a high level of quality, yet earn enough profits to keep stockholders and Wall Street happy? Well, if they build tens of millions of them, I suppose it’s not going to be much of a problem.

One thing is certain, however. You don’t need to look over the tea leaves to realize that there will be no new mobile products from Apple at the WWDC. iOS 7 will be demonstrated in a way that withholds news about any feature that would require a newer iPhone. You expect it’ll arrive in two or three months, and that the release will coincide, roughly speaking, with the release of the 2013 iPhone or iPhones.

Will it be an iPhone 5s, an iPhone 6, or an iPhone with another designation isn’t clear. It seems that, unlike the iPad, existing naming conventions will apply, to make it easier for wireless carriers to market the thing. Or maybe not.

It’s fair to say that Apple CEO Tim Cook has the ability to imply much while saying little. As the result, he can generate plenty of headlines about what Apple might be planning. And by parsing the sentences and phrases, you might find room to speculate about a forthcoming product.

So there’s Apple’s “hobby,” the Apple TV set top box that was never promoted beyond simple announcements at media events, but still managed to sell some six million copies in 2012, for a total of 13 million since the product was originally launched in 2007. It may not be so much different from the competition, but Roku and the rest are hardly mentioned. It’s all about Apple TV, and where Apple hopes to take it.

During his interview at the D11 conference sponsored by AllThingsD, Tim Cook spoke of Apple’s “grand vision” for conquering the living room. Well actually that’s pretty much what he said, that he was dissatisfied with the current state of the TV experience, there was a “grand vision,” and that’s it. Will it be a souped up Apple TV set top box, an Apple smart TV, or something altogether different isn’t certain. When Apple is ready, you’ll know, or at least the run-up to the product’s introduction will be heralded by the usual spate of rumors and possible press leaks. The marketing plan will be carefully calculated to attract as much interest as possible.

But it’s a sure thing it won’t happen at the WWDC, which doesn’t cater to a strictly consumer audience.

What will happen, however, is that there will be new versions of iOS and OS X, and it appeared Cook was paying more attention to the former, since that OS powers Apple’s largest cash cows. Yes, designer Jonathan Ive is working on both software and hardware these days, so there will be many changes, and most may be visual. Maps is also getting better, but Cook admitted more work had to be done. But that’s nothing that isn’t obvious from using it and comparing the performance and accuracy to the train wreck that debuted last September.

During the interview, Cook explained why it takes a year to make an all-new iPhone, but didn’t dismiss the possibility of other models, at different prices. His comments on the subject at D11 began with the fact that the iPod is available at different price points to satisfy different users and different needs. The closest he came to an admission of additional iPhone variations was the statement that they haven’t done it up to now, but “that doesn’t shut off the future.”

A smokescreen, or an admission that more than one iPhone model will arrive by fall? Consider that Apple’s usual “we don’t comment on future products” stance was loosened ever so slightly, which will keep the speculation coming. But I’m sure that was Cook’s intention.

Unfortunately, most of the questions asked at such sessions are predictable, which no doubt gave Cook and his team plenty of time to devise the right answers, and reveal just the amount of information they cared to disclose. Sure, there was a brief Q&A session after the interview ended, but it’s not as if you might have learned much that was new. If you’ve followed Apple pretty closely, there were few surprises.

As expected, Cook isn’t enamored with Google Glass, but doesn’t dismiss the prospect of wearable devices in general and what purposes they’d fulfill. That tells you that something is afoot, but it’s not at all certain if it’ll be an iWatch or something else.

My personal take on all this is that, yes, there is an Apple connected TV and even an iWatch in Apple’s development labs. There are no doubt products that we can’t even suspect, and perhaps some will undergo preliminary production runs. Supply chain leaks will fuel the rumors and there will be growing expectations about this or that product. However, that doesn’t mean any of them will really be launched.

So it’s a sure thing that the transcript of Cook’s presentation at AllThingsD will be carefully scrutinized, and the text carefully parsed to see if he revealed something unexpected. Cook is smart enough to make it seem as if he’s telling you something, but when you actually examine the words, you find that there is little or no solid information.

I suppose, however, that the interview serves as a suitable preview for the WWDC keynote. You know that there will be new operating systems to talk about. It’s also quite likely that there will be upgraded MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros, and possibly a Mac mini, since it uses similar parts. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear word about a major refresh for the aging Mac Pro lineup at long last, and I expect that the redesign will be more severe than a simple parts swap.

Sure, Cook didn’t promise any major product intros until the fall, so maybe the Mac Pro won’t ship for a while. But if you were expecting word of the next iPhone, the next iPad, or an “incredible” new product, keep waiting.

So from the lame pundit school of commentary comes a report claiming that Apple is essentially toast if cloud-based services aren’t fixed real fast. Google is cited as the industry standard, and Apple supposedly has nothing more than a few data centers, and loads of problems. Do you remember Mapgate?

When I read articles of this sort, I sometimes think the writer is living in an alternate reality where down is up and left or right are nowhere to be found. But repeating old news, or disproven claims, is par for the course. Once a story gains traction, it can take on a life of its own.

So consider Maps for iOS 6. When it was first released, there were serious problems, particularly with the 3D Flyover feature. Some locales were improperly rendered, even at times melting. Don’t ask what the Statue of Liberty looked like, and directions were sometimes dead wrong. Perhaps Apple should have faced reality and labeled the thing a beta, which would have deflected some of the worst criticisms. But Tim Cook did apologize for Apple’s missteps, and published reports indicate that Maps has continued to improve. If the service was crafted in stone, unchanged, there would be a problem, but it seems that the people who make the most severe complaints just haven’t bothered to look.

Google, supposedly the standard-bearer, labels its navigation feature a “beta,” with all sorts of terms and conditions that state they aren’t responsible if you get lost. And you can, since Google’s mapping feature, even though it was clearly better than Apple’s as of last fall, could get you lost too. I recall one instance where I wanted directions to a nearby health food store, and Google left me two miles short. At least they got the street correct. Their new 3D service delivers images that are no better than Apple’s last year. But it’s all beta, so you have to expect mistakes. Don’t think it’s beta? Maybe you tapped past the warning notice, and didn’t actually read it. But I did, and it was troubling, to put it mildly.

In passing, let me remind you that some tech writers did a brief mapping comparison in the San Francisco area that included Google and Apple some weeks back. Apple won, but that fact hasn’t received much publicity. Why?

Now the article in question also complains that iTunes isn’t all that great. Well, maybe, but it is still the online music, video and app store by which others are judged. Google gets positives for introducing the Google Play All Access music service, as if Apple is doing wrong in not introducing yet another music subscription/online radio offering. Is Google’s better than Pandora or Spotify? Music subscription services have come and gone, and the jury is still out whether Apple will enter that business. The article doesn’t mention that Google tried the set top box game with Google TV and failed big time.

Google is praised for their online productivity apps, but Apple’s Pages, Keynote, and Numbers, part of the iWork suite, are regarded as “mostly ignored.” Maybe in the curiously twisted mind of the writer in question, but, last I checked, Pages was in the Top 12 among iPad apps, and Keynote and Numbers were in the Top 40. And that’s for all apps, not just those used for productivity. Unfortunately, some commentators simply won’t let facts get in the way.

But this isn’t to say that Apple is doing everything right. When it comes to a pure cloud-based system, iCloud may have 200 million users, more or less, but most are using it for simple syncing of iPhone and iPad backups, contacts and Safari bookmarks. There is support for third-party developers, who find the going treacherous and unreliable. For regular users, the email system has too many breakdowns, and that’s been true from the earliest days of .Mac and MobileMe. Of course, you had to pay for the service then, but it’s not as if the free version is all that much better.

In the scheme of things, the simple-minded Google is great and Apple is bad meme doesn’t wash. There are large gray areas that need to be addressed on Apple’s part, and when is the media going to admit that the mobile version of Google’s mapping service remains a beta, and is not regarded as a finished product? How many will revisit Maps for iOS 6 and see how things have improved?

Well, at least with Maps, it’s quite possible Apple will take the bull by the horns and deliver a detailed update during the WWDC keynote on June 10. I won’t presume to guess how Apple will address the ongoing problems and solutions. I’d think a little humor, displaying the bad version and the good version, would go a long way towards making customers feel warmer and fuzzier about the whole thing. But it’s not as if the flaws in Maps have actually hurt iPhone and iPad sales to any degree, or at least surveys have yet to reveal such a problem. It won’t stop some elements of the media from failing to realize it’s no longer September 2012, unfortunately.

Along with the announcement of a new version of Microsoft’s Xbox gaming console, the One, comes renewed demands that Apple must release a fleshed out Apple TV to compete. After all, it’s Microsoft and Apple is falling behind the curve. When others lead, Apple must follow, or something like that.

Now I have little doubt that Apple is working on some sort of strategy to gain a more significant place in your living room. Maybe it’s a souped up Apple TV with more features and the ability to manage all of your entertainment gear. Or maybe it’s a connected TV with the aforementioned features. Or maybe it’s both. Apple surely wants to keep us guessing.

There are also demands that Apple must produce a cheap iPhone, or fall way, way behind other companies, such as Samsung, which have already littered the market with cheap stuff. Little profit? No matter. Apple merely needs to sell more units to catch up, but that doesn’t seem to have really helped the competition in the mobile handset market or even the PC industry for that matter.

When it comes to mobile gadgets, Apple gets most of the profits and Samsung is in second place. The rest of the companies earn a bit, lose a bit. So selling lots of gear doesn’t really help if the profits from each sale are small.

If it was a matter of big profits versus market share, what would a company run by a sane CEO prefer? Well, big profits mean more money for R&D, larger buckets of cash for employees, especially those who occupy the executive suite, funds to help shore up a company during an economic downturn, and maybe something to return to shareholders. Nothing wrong with that, although Amazon continues to survive without showing much in the way of profit. But they sure have to sell lots of stuff to stay ahead of the curve.

Apple has also been urged to come up with a cheap PC. The closest they came was the Mac mini, which debuted at $499 in 2005, and now sells for $599. This model arrived some weeks after Apple once again reminded you that they do not build cheap gear. But as PCs go, the mini is really a medium-priced computer, and you don’t even get a mouse or display. There are loads of PCs that sell for less, and contain everything you need. Well, other than providing aspirin or a substitute to help deal with the headaches you might suffer setting them up or using them, particularly if Windows 8 is preloaded.

However, in case you haven’t noticed, Apple isn’t in the habit of building something because the media or financial analysts tell them to. How many were clamoring for an iPod anyway? Sure, after the iPod arrived, other tech companies were racing to compete, and even Microsoft tried and failed, but not before.

The iPhone? Well, Motorola once did build a feature phone that supported iTunes, the ROKR. Motorola boasted that the ROKR “is rocking the world,” but it didn’t move a pebble. Motorola’s design and user interfaces were pathetic. The product failed, and that might have been the end to Apple’s flirtation with the mobile handset market. Well, until the iPhone arrived.

But before the iPhone appeared, all eyes were on the BlackBerry, and even the imitations from Samsung and other companies had tiny physical keyboards. The BlackBerry was an executive plaything, and even a certain future U.S. President had one. When Apple announced the iPhone, far too many said the product was dead on arrival. Until after it arrived, and almost every other mobile handset maker decided to follow Apple’s design lead.

The iPad? Well, before Apple’s tablet was launched, the critics suggested Apple needed to jump on the netbook bandwagon before it was too late. Netbooks, which were little more than tiny PC note-books, seem to catch on in a big way until customers realized they were cheap hunks of junk. Since tablets, or at least the convertible PCs that Microsoft labeled tablets, had gone nowhere outside of a few vertical markets, the arrival of the iPad was greeted with extreme skepticism.

Until people started buying them. Suddenly there were iPad imitations all over the place. Microsoft? Well, the Surface is basically a slim and light PC note-book, combining the original concept of a tablet with a netbook. And, predictably, there are few buyers.

So should Apple make a cheaper iPhone, one that’s inexpensive without a subsidized carrier contract? Considering the fact that the iPhone 4 sells for $400-450 unlocked, a lot of potential customers in less-developed countries cannot afford one. As these countries become more prosperous, the populace will be able to buy more expensive gear, and if they’ve already become accustomed to an existing ecosystem, and I’m assuming Android, would that hurt future business for Apple?

But Apple sells a cheap iPod, the Mac mini isn’t terribly expensive, and the iPad mini brings Apple’s halo to a larger market. If Apple can pack the best of the iPhone in a classy yet less expensive package, they’ll probably do it. But not because the media tells them to.