• by Ben Frederick , Staff Writer @mp_benfred, September 10, 2015

Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller called the new iPad Pro “a magical piece of glass you hold in your hands” during the company's annual “wear jeans and watch super-slick video of devices moving through space” presentation yesterday.

Maybe because I’m sensitive to these things, or maybe because I'm new to the mobile/tech space, but that word magical... even if it was just a piece of corporate hyperbole, it bothered me.

I couldn’t get it out of my head while a watch that wants to be an iPhone, a bigger iPad with a nifty pencil, and the latest, slightly larger iPhone were presented in classic Apple fashion.

I have nothing against the occasional exaggeration from a proud executive, but real magic in technology makes people wonder why they hadn’t thought of it before. In the world of ads and tech, magic is the simple solution to a complex problem (or the solution that meets a need you didn’t know you had).

Magic is not an incremental increase in processing power and a slightly larger or more pink (sorry, “rose gold”) device. A better camera may be closer to magic --  but for me, that would only lead to a higher-res Instagram feed.

The only piece of new tech that I’ve seen recently with  that "rom-com pretty girl turning heads" kind of effect on people is the Tesla, and even that’s worn off pretty quickly.

There are myriad reasons why Apple’s latest announcement didn’t have much oomph, but the biggest was that nothing was that spectacular about the new products. It seemed as if the company was playing catch-up rather than riding the cutting edge of tech.

Apple stocks reflect the general sense of dissatisfaction making its way around the Internet. Despite the hype surrounding the announcement, stocks fell 30 days prior to the event, when they usually get a 5% bump. With so much of Apple's revenue riding on the iPhone (and yes, a lot of people will get it because it’s the newest one), company strategists are probably hoping for a hot Q4 in which more smartphone users will leapfrog to the newest device.

It wasn’t magical, no matter how badly I wanted it to be -- and whatever was new felt borrowed from other companies. Apple has had some misses in recent years, and this was definitely a year short on innovation.