Thanks for the comment; it’s very insightful. Yes, I agree with you. I think, for the most part, that we (the entire world) have had enough of Steve Jobs in many respects. The elusive CEO/jeans-and-black-shirt wearing persona he has built has transcended the brand, no doubt. But watching and reading the iPhone 4 debacle he put on as press conference showed that perhaps he should tone it down a bit – show that he’s human in there somewhere — that kind of things.

But, with that said, not many CEOs can pull off what he does on a stage to get fans excited about a brand. And it’s that last part “excited about a brand,” where so many other corporate leaders could take a lesson.

Your deconstruction nicely illustrates how Apple have generated such brand equity in 2010 that they can convince customers a trip to a computer store is actually a ‘phenomenal experience’. Since the launch of the original iMac in ’98, Jobs has successfully re-invented Apple as no mere purveyor of electrical goods, but as a Willy Wonka-esque weaver of magic.

But, like the guy on spring break who feels the need to tell everyone he’s having the wildest time of his life, you wish he would calm down and gain a little perspective. It’s true that repetition is key to building brand awareness, but – following Aesop’s fable – Jobs is rapidly turning into the boy who cried “phenomenal”.

Just yesterday the new round of updates arrived in my inbox in an email titled “iPod. iTunes. Apple TV. All new. Totally amazing.” Gone are the days when I was allowed to construct for myself a metric for determining amazingness. Apple does it all for me now.

Clever marketing? Yes. Frequently overbearing and enforcing a delusional understanding of Apple’s capability to make our lives stupendous? Quite possibly.

Like you say, Jobs does things with such an insane passion that it’s hard to tell how much he himself buys into the idea of his toys as happiness generators. Personally, I’d like our CEOs and other captains of industry to exhibit a little more sane passion; the world sorely needs it.

Yes, the launch team stopped, and realized “OMG, we should have had some WOMEN on our team, or we never would have launched a huge product named after a sanitary product!”

Seriously – big time branding FAIL if you ask me, no matter how great the product is. I started writing the SNL skits in my head the second the announcement hit the press….