[glenra]

Secret-unveilings are worth many millions of dollars in free publicity. Apple gets front-page stories for all their product announcements because they're news. Without that, they'd have a much harder time. If that was at all at risk here, it was probably worth announcing early.

Also, Gruber correctly points out that the Osborne Effect might help them here - if the product seems promising enough, some people will postpone buying something else to wait for the Apple product. We should still expect subsequent versions return to the "you can buy this next week!" model.

[dilap]

I don't know, the advance leaks of the last few iPhones doesn't seem to have hurt their publicity much. (And millions ain't much to Apple; they are rumored to have spent millions on the U2 debacle. But I do take your greater point about the massive interest in Apple's product announcements being very valuable...)

[glenra]

I just looked it up - the usual estimate is that the original iPhone introduction generated $400 million worth of free publicity. Even to Apple, that's a lot.

(eg: http://gizmodo.com/243222/iphone-generated-400-million-in-fr... )

Although one might argue that Apple TODAY is so much of a market leader they don't need the surprise factor as much as they did in times past. Apple used to be a clear underdog that punched way above its weight class by using gimmicks and clever marketing for their signal to escape an over-crowded playing field. Now that Apple is the big dog, they might not need that so much.

Tim's clearly no Steve, but maybe he doesn't need to be.