I came across this recently; it’s an outline of the Apple product cycle.

My favourite step is probably this one:

Wall Street analysts appear on CNBC wearing big smiles and bright spring colors to announce that Apple’s new device will drive Apple’s sales to unprecedented levels and might be the key to turning around the decades-long decline in Apple’s share of the global PC market. Apple’s share price surges. People who understand the root cause of the dot com bubble shake their heads in silent disgust.

Tongue firmly in cheek, there’s a fair bit of it that smells familiar (off the top of my head - the front-facing iPhone webcam and the Apple netbook).

I think a lot of it points to a complete lack of perspective and “me-too”ness in the tech reporting business. As soon as one tech site gets up an article on some new piece of technology, another has to post a “hands on review” which is done as soon as demo versions are available at trade shows.

My own personal example is when I was looking for information on the Asus 1000HE before it was released - it seemed like every tech media had the exact same information for the product, including the same pictures of the laptop that were probably in a press kit somewhere.