I don't think anyone is suggesting that nothing is new. Just that nothing is mind-blowingly new. As you say, the last ten years have seen a lot of improvements in existing concepts - connections are faster, displays are better, etc. etc.
But that's not the kind of mind blowing change Sam suggests that it is. If you had told me ten years ago that tech would look like it does today I would say "yep, sounds about right".
I suppose that looking back it just seems like by 2004, there was a whole ton of stuff that by 1994 standards would have been implausible - whereas here in 2014, a lot of the impressive stuff would in 2004 have been merely impractical.
Or perhaps I'm just old and tired now. Who knows. Maybe I'm underselling SSDs. Anyway, whatever. Time for my nap.
Thinking on this further, the difference between 10 years and 20 years is immense: 2004 vs 1994. Maybe we just need another 10 years to see how far we've really come since 2004. We are only just beginning to experience what happens when you connect the global population wirelessly.