Fever Builds for iPhone

Newyork time release :

During an onscreen demonstration of the iPhone in Apple’s sprawling retail store here recently, an employee, clad in a black T-shirt, of course, surprised a potential customer.
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Illustration by The New York Times

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Apple introduced its iPhone at MacWorld in San Francisco in January.

Nonplused, the customer stammered, “You mean it’s a cellphone, too?”

Such is the spell that Steven P. Jobs has cast on the American consumer.

It has been almost six months since Mr. Jobs, the world’s consummate salesman, introduced the iPhone as the Ronco Veg-O-Matic for the Internet era. Tongue only partly in cheek, Mr. Jobs promised that Apple’s entry into the cellular handset market would be a better phone, Web browser and music player.

Mr. Jobs succeeded in building expectations for what some have called “the God machine.” The bar-of-soap-size phone is being coveted as a talisman for a digital age, and iPhone hysteria is beginning to reach levels usually reserved for video-game machines at Christmas.

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