• by Thom Forbes  @tforbes, September 11, 2013

Perhaps the biggest surprise of Tuesday’s Apple press conference was that there was little surprise. The company still has enough mojo that observers hope for an announcement out of Apple’s white skies that might disrupt entire product lines. But yesterday does not seem to be one of those “Creative Destruction Days” that Nick Bilton talked about in Monday’s New York Times unless, say, you’re selling high-tech pedometers for 100 bills and are now running against Apple’s new M7 “motion-coprocessor.”

“The new features still keep Apple at the forefront of smartphone design. But they leave open the question of when, and whether, Apple can be a groundbreaker,” write Ian Sherr and Greg Bensinger in the Wall Street Journal. “Two years after the death of its co-founder Steve Jobs, the company has yet to come out with new product categories, or even many product surprises.”

Most of the features of the two iPhones that were formally unveiled –- the middle-market 5C and the high-end 5S –- have been blogged about for months. The “one major surprise’ in Forbes’ Mark Rogowsky’s assessment, in fact, was that the “much-rumored low-cost iPhone 5c is anything but, coming in at $99 with a contract, but a whopping $549 without one.”

A Chicago Tribune subhead aptly sums up what you’ll notice offhand when you see the devices: “IPhone 5S comes in gold, while the iPhone 5C is ‘beautifully, unapologetically plastic.’” As everyone knew.

To be sure, the new 5S has a faster processor, improved still- and video-camera functions and other hardware tweaks such as Touch ID. But as ZDNet’s Larry Dignan writes about the former: “What's unclear is whether the 64-bit smartphone will be much of a selling point for anyone who doesn't play Infinity Blade.”

Meanwhile iOS7, the new software for mobile devices that has been getting a lot of positive reviews, was touted at the company’s developer’s conference in June and has been previewed on the Apple website.

Apple says that its new iOS7 will make current customers who download it for their post- iPhone 4 and iPad2S devices think “they’re getting an all-new device,” as Craig Federighi, the senior vice president of software engineering put it. But as good as it is, “that souped-up operating system could end up hurting sales…,” observes the AP’s Michael Liedtke. “because owners of the older models [will have] less incentive to buy Apple’s newest products.”

In keeping with the no-big-surprises tenor of the event, there are few differences between the iOS that software developers’ saw a few months ago and what Apple will ship. One is the announcement that iWork apps will now be free rather than $5 to $10 for each.

“The iWork suite includes Pages and Numbers -- the iOS equivalent of Microsoft's Word and Excel -- iMovie, Keynote and iPhoto,” reports ZDNet’s Charlie Osborne, who says that removing the fees may also “tempt more consumers away from rival services such as Google Drive” and “upsell more space” on iCloud.

Another noticeable differences is the font -- Helvetica Neue replaces Helvetica Neue Ultra Light, which many people found difficult to read.

Not that fonts aren’t important, as Verge’s Aaron Souppouris wrote a few days before the actual announcement. The new typeface is more readable and fonts “[play] a larger part in Apple's design language than ever before,” he reports. “Many interface elements that used to have icons -- such as the ‘answer’ and ‘decline’ buttons you're presented with when receiving an incoming call -- are now entirely text.”

The new homescreen icons, which were widely panned by designers, are pretty much the same, but Souppouris tells us that behind-the-scenes tools will allow developers to more readily create appealing layouts for their apps. Overall, though, “iOS 7 still represents more of a coat of paint than a dramatic reimagining of how you should navigate around your phone.”

Will a new coat of paint –- which aptly sums up all of yesterday’s news -- be enough for Apple to hold off surging Samsung and other competitors in the global marketplace?

“Apple must change marketing tack to prevent brand erosion,” reads the headline over Lara O’Reilly’s chat with several analysts in the UK’s Marketing Week this morning. But Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps offers an intriguing insight regarding marketers’ ability to reach more customers more enticingly.

“iPhones have been a great platform for marketers to reach high-end consumers. With the 5C, marketers’ reach will be much broader, reaching more consumers in more countries,” Epps points out. “The upgraded sensors and performance of the 5S mean that marketers can do more on the platform: the iPhone enables more intimate and more engaging experiences than ever before.”