A method to the iPhone madness?
After a week of iPhone madness, I think I have a pretty good idea of what it's like to cover the Super Bowl.
Every year, the week leading up to the Super Bowl produces some of the silliest news stories of the year, as thousands of journalists exhaust every possible angle. By the time the game rolls around on Sunday, it feels almost anticlimactic, and more people watch the commercials than the real action.
That's what it has felt like, living at the center of iPhone insanity for the last seven days, and it should get even more interesting after the gadget finally goes on sale at 6 pm local time. Suddenly, every detail is important, from how many staffers AT&T has hired to prepare for the launch to the cottage industry that has sprung up around waiting in line outside Apple's stores.
You think you're sick of the damn iPhone? Believe me, you have no idea. Just think of all the iPhone-related stuff we rejected covering (such as the shall-be-nameless PR rep who pitched a story about "a candid look at the challenges that companies face in aligning their value chains to successfully introduce products rapidly to an ever-changing consumer market").
You think you're sick of the damn iPhone? Believe me, you have no idea.
Still, a few hundred people fired off flames criticizing what they perceive as a page-view mentality that has us stoking the hype. But the iPhone has provoked thought and debate on our pages like almost no other product launch in the past.
This is online journalism. Unlike print, radio, or television, we can track exactly how many people are reading each story. And you folks are soaking up as much iPhone content as you can get your hands on.
You keep coming back for more. And if you don't find it here, you go somewhere else. There aren't many tech-news organizations that are making a principled stand on iPhone hype this week.
That's because there's an intense interest in anything related to Apple among the technology community. Whether people come to praise it or damn it, Apple evokes a passion rarely found in other sectors of the business world.
And when the company finally confirmed the long-standing rumors that it was developing a mobile phone, the tech industry sat up and took notice. Despite its complete lack of experience in this market, Apple had to be taken seriously because of how the iPod changed the way people listened to music. The company earned that sort of credibility the old-fashioned way; it wasn't bestowed on them by a fawning press or rabid fanboys (for the most part).
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