It’s iPhone release day folks - welcome to a new world.
Seriously, iHype has reached the boiling point. We gadget writers are already liberally slathered in news of gear and accessories for iPhone. You can buy third party accessories from utilitarian acrylic stands to superfluous sexy desktops from Playboy. But that’s not all!
According to Apple, many of our iPod accessories will also work with iPhone. If you’ve walked around CES the last two years, you can’t help notice that anything involved in music playback has an iPod accessory. Really, who can blame manufacturers for throwing their hats into iCraze? According to a recent survey, iTunes sales are the #3 source of music today, ahead of Target and Amazon but just behind Wal-Mart and Best Buy. Consumer electronics manufacturers see it as iUp or risk being iMarginalized.
But is there a tipping point where this Apple’s iCraze will suffer in hallowed halls of popular opinion? Think of Ben Affleck back in about 2004, when popular opinion turned against him due to media saturation.
Future Hype
Author Bob Seidensticker has a book on this very topic called “Future Hype: The Myths of Technology Change”. In it he illustrates how so many of our so called “new” and “revolutionary” devices are not so new, but are actually recycled old ideas. Mr. Seidensticker offers that we’re not driving forward with technology as much as we’re trapped on a treadmill of cycling ideas.
On the release date of one of the most anticipated devices of the last few years, ask yourself if this devices is letting us do something different or new. Or is it just letting us do the same old stuff with new glossy animations on the surface?