Don't touch that iPhone or I'll shoot!
As this week wears on, the iPhone hysteria will only get worse. By Friday at 6 p.m. when The Most Hyped Device of All Time goes on sale, it has been estimated that the average U.S. citizen will have heard or read about the iPhone 10,472 times. Okay, I just made that up. But I can’t be too far off, can I?
Evidence of the deepening iPhone madness continues to accumulate. A few of my favorite examples from recent days:
The line starts here The Vicarious Music Web site spotted two guys yesterday who appeared to be the first in line to buy an iPhone from the Apple Store in Manhattan. The site provided several photographs as proof. If the pair is serious, they will sit on a New York City street for four days... waiting to buy a phone.
Accessorize, accessorize, accessorize An Associated Press story on the iPhone hype reported that though no consumers yet own the product, more than 1,100 peripheral items are available on eBay, “including colorful holsters, touch-screen protectors and car adapters.”
Locked and loaded Electronic device security took on a whole new meaning Monday morning when AppleInsider reported that the first iPhones had been delivered to select locations – accompanied by “armed personnel.” As AppleInsider explains: “Armed guards are extremely unusual for freight coming out of the Asian sector, those familiar with the matter explained, and are typically reserved for shipments containing riches such as gold and diamonds.”
Quantifiable craziness The Blackfriars Marketing Web site is using its blog to track the “iPhone Buzz Index” – defined as how many iPhone news articles turn up in a search conducted on Google News at exactly 9:45 a.m. EDT each day for the previous 24-hour period. How many iPhone stories would you guess typically appear in one day? A thousand? Two thousand? Not quite. An accompanying chart, updated daily, shows that about 6,000 stories on the iPhone appear in a typical 24-hour period, although there was a spike over the weekend of 8,225 on Saturday and 9,973 on Sunday. And I’m sure you read every one of them.
