No, there really aren't. From the article:
"The cases are different, but the underlying legal question is very similar," says Alex Abdo, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union. "The question in the New York case is whether the government can rely on this very old statute to conscript Apple into government service."
Moreover, the "ask" in this case is nearly identical. Apple is being asked only to bypass the 10-failed-attempt device wipe, so that investigators can enumerate all 10,000 codes:
http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/02/encryption-isnt-at-stak...
...which means that it's effectively exactly the same thing that Apple has done in previous cases. The only technological difference is one that has been manufactured by Apple.
This whole thing boils down to a question of whether or not Apple should facilitate a brute-force attack on a single phone, under a search warrant, for a known criminal. And they've done same thing 70-some times in the past.
Everything that you've read about a "backdoor" or a "key" is totally uninformed commentary on the matter. The intarwebz are outraged (outraged!), but they don't even understand the debate.
The other times weren't though.
> they don't even understand the debate
Look in a mirror lately?
Just as easy? Maybe if you ignore the effort to create it and secure it. I really can't believe writing secure software is being trivialized in the comments here.
The only difference is that this time the software they install would also have to turn off the delete-after-ten-attempts thing.
(You're probably having a hard time with this because the debate sounds absoultely ridiculous when the facts are laid out plainly. Totally understandable. The technical debate is absolutely ridiculous. The legal debate is the only one that matters, but it's not technical at all.)
http://www.npr.org/2016/02/22/467602161/the-seeds-of-apples-...
This is an entirely new stance from Apple. Historically, they've been on the other side.