The AP on Apple's iPhone "hype machine"

Best line from the article:

Keep in mind that AP moved multiple versions of most of these stories. We collected 52 separate copies of these 17 (we forgot the "hype" story itself) stories. Just in 14 days. Just from AP - the service that says Apple has gone into overdrive to hype the iPhone by issuing six press releases in six months.

This was part of my response to this on the article:

So based on this allegation,

Technology analysts say Apple started its publicity campaign for the iPhone uncharacteristically early, first showing off the device six months ago and shrewdly stoking the media feeding-frenzy since then with incremental announcements that have kept the sleek cell phone-multimedia player-Internet browser in the news.
A quick check of press releases by Apple that had ANY reference to the iPhone at all, direct or indirect, shows 8 of 39. That's less than 25% of all the press releases from the January product announcement, for any reference to the iPhone. In terms of ad placement there was the ad set that ran during the American Academy Awards, and then the ad series that stared running here in June. Except for the interviews with Mosser et al, that's it.

The hype[rbole] has been almost exclusively on the part of analysts, pundits, fans and haters, who created the maelstrom of speculation around it. Apple did as it has always done. Announced the product, declared it wonderful and then sat back and let everyone else go crazy talking about it. Easily, half or more of all the storm has been naysayers, who, for some obtuse reason felt compelled to weigh in negatively. Which is about as ironic as things get - since they are clearly, in their part, as responsible as the fans (or even moreso) for whipping up the frenzy.

Not that criticism is not good, nor being able to poke at softspots in the feature set. But then to accuse Apple of generating the frenzy, as they add they voice to the cacaphony seems a bit ridiculous.