Apple's one-of-a-kind communication strategy

Apple held a huge media event this week that had bloggers and the press in a tizzy: it shared (largely pedestrian, in my view) features from the upcoming 3.0 version of its phone OS. How can people get so excited about copy-and-paste?

If someone told you the best way to build your brand was to:

• Sue bloggers who have conversations that don't meet a corporately-appointed schedule
• Ignore basic and necessary feature requests over and over
• Be evasive with shareholders about the health of the CEO

Apple still operates largely in secrecy in an increasingly open corporate communication environment. How does Apple get away with it? How do Apple press conferences maintain Super-Bowl like status for the tech crowd?

Because Apple is consistently amazing in one area: innovative technology that is simple to use. Their ability to deliver on that premise, over and over, buys them a lot of wiggle room in other areas. Their flagship products almost always carry a wow factor, and users don't have to do a lot of homework to interoperate with them.

Being amazing at just one thing provides focus and clarity for an organization. But when it comes at the expense of expected politeness and protocol in business communication, it applies a lot of extra pressure. Fail to deliver on amazing just a couple of times and things can go south pretty quickly.

(When did Blackberry add copy/paste? Around 2001?)