A cure for cancer….

It might as well have been for the avalanche of sycophantic coverage. But, no, it’s actually a phone. Oh sorry, a reinvented phone.

Yes, finally, for all those fools that rushed out to buy an overpriced proprietary MP3 player called an iPod, there is something else for them to waste their money on.

Steve Jobs has pulled off the old Jedi mind trick again and launched an iPhone, which is also a phone and a ‘breakthrough internet device.’ Of course most people didn’t know you could break through the internet, thinking it was just a fantastical ‘looking glass’ scenario but, lo, Apple is wonderful. And you use your finger to dial. Visionary.

So, hoorah, look forward to plenty of politicians eagerly talking to youth magazines to fill “who’s in my iPhone” columns, and charts dedicated to knowing whose number has been downloaded most this week.

These will be the same magazines, of course, that are hungrily consumed by those unquestioning enough to pay £5 for a magazine whose sole editorial purpose is to make their readers feel materially inadequate.

These sheep-minded consumers – frittering away their hard-earned cash on Nero coffees, Nike trainers, Tommy Hilfiger, Hollywood blockbusters and plasma TVs – exercise no independent thought before buying whatever it is that everyone else is buying. The world and his wife have one. Now I do too. I’m an individual. I’m thick. It’s Apple. It’s great.

Choose Apple. Choose a gadget. Choose a statement. Choose proprietary. Choose to look like a cock who’s wearing white headphones. Choose something with shit batteries. Choose poor security protection. Choose not to choose, you utterly ignorant over-paid twat. Choose to work really hard to get a job in journalism at the BBC and then undermine yourself by writing a great big advert for a new product.

And all this before it’s even available. Not only that, but of course us laggards in the UK have to wait not only until the iPhone is actually launched, but until it’s available through someone other than Cingular. In fact, until it’s available through a UK operator.

Marketing, Jesus. Bill Hicks was right.

It’s even enough to make you remember that Microsoft isn’t so good at marketing after all and, indeed, isn't quite so evil.

Apple iPhone mania is here. Run for the hills.