A new Apple rumor, and the reason we're writing about it

Executives must dream of the free publicity Apple's Steve Jobs enjoys when his fandom is anticipating a new product.

Gizmodo is reporting Tuesday that someone "very, very close" to the 3G iPhone launch has confirmed that Apple will unveil the new iPhone during the June 9 keynote address at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference at San Francisco's Moscone Center. The phone should be available right after the keynote, Gizmodo reports. This is pretty much what an analyst report released last week from from Piper Jaffray said was going to happen.

Have you read anything about this gizmo?

As you can tell by this page on Google News, the 3G iPhone is easily the most hotly anticipated way to spend disposable income on a gadget since the original iPhone was released last summer.

Reporters, of course, love to grouse about product rumors, even as we dutifully write about them. (Far be it for us to deny the public the rumor du jour!) But we do it for a reason beyond the obvious page view benefits of intense Apple coverage: It's interesting.

In an era of me-too Web applications and shelves full of PCs and cell phones barely distinguishable from one another, Apple still manages to do something different. Love them or hate them, they're innovators.

As my colleague Tom Krazit wrote last summer on the morning of the iPhone launch: "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...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)."

A year later, what Tom wrote is more true than ever. Yes, Apple gets lots of free publicity. In fact, Harvard Business School professor David Yoffie estimated last year that the iPhone generated $400 million in free publicity for Apple. A little embarrassing for those of us in the news business? Sure. But as reporters covering the technology industry, we're as curious as you about what Jobs has up his sleeve.

So we'll stop writing about it when you stop reading about it and Apple stops producing interesting stuff--none of which anyone expects to happen anytime soon.

[nbvail]

A little embarrassing for those of us in the news business? What's wrong? It was a profound product and should be reporter, and as to other companies just design, build and sell great products and you too will get a lot of free press. Most US companies build crap and think we should just buy it and live with the horrors of their poorly conceived products.

[shetaan819]

Does that mean I should take the day off right now for Monday, June 9th, ? I cant imagine the productivity loss that will be recorded as scores of workers run out of the office to go stand in line at the AT&T store to get their iPhone at lunch time.....:0

[jksturg]

3G? Did I miss 2G? Hasn't there only been 1G of the iPhone so far?

[saintseminole]

Isn't it about time they dropped the letters "phone" from the names of these products? In common English usage, a "phone" is a device that can make and receive audio calls. Sure, the iPhone does that, but making calls doesn't seem to be its primary purpose.

Personally, I'm ready for the day when a company can make a phone that's just.... a phone.

[amandachuck]

3G is shorthand for the network speed, not the generation. This will be the 2nd iPhone, first on a 3G network, as the 1st Gen was on a 2.5G network. Which makes a lot of sense?

Anyway, until email is searchable, I can't use the iPhone productively.

And the blogger leaves out the iMac and iBook, which busted back into the consumer and education realms with a vengeance. The progression went iMac, iBook, iPod, iPhone in order of hardware products that brought Apple back from nothing to meaning something again in the mainstream. In terms of software, the products were Final Cut Pro, OSX, and iTunes, none of which were based on Apple software?

[Mr. Dee]

I know I helped with the free publicity here in the Caribbean island of Jamaica. When it comes to talking about coolest, most innovative cellular phone, the iPhone just roles off my tongue. I haven't seen a phone like it that compares in integration, sleekness. The touch experience makes it like none other I have seen. Yes, Blackberry and many others are playing catch up now (HTC Touch), but there is just this legitimacy that the iPhone introduced that makes you conclude there is none other. In addition to that it creates a loyalty that its the phone I must have, although I don't own/can't afford one and its not officially supported here 'yet'.

[supoman]

True innovation should be praised. You guys spend equally as much ink talking about mediocre products. And if you could stack all the print you've gave to Microsoft who is the king of mediocre it would wrap around the solar system!!

[john55440]

With Steve Job's Media Poodles, Apple hardly needs a marketing department. That said, Apple does a great job of bundling technologies that were invented by other companies and pretending that it's innovation; and they are masters of marketing pseudocool to wannabes.

[falkensmaze]

whats an iphone?

[ceebee23]

Yes Apple does bundle existing tech but the key is the way they bundle.... touch screen + phone was a new bundle and their implementation left the phone industry reeling and desperate to catch up.

Much as the original Macintosh bundled personal computer + GUI . That left Bill Gates playing catchup for a decade.