Big, fat Apple slices! Big, fat Apple slices!

By the time you're reading this, a few of you have probably already come back from Apple's Cupertino HQ with your latest harem of iGizmos that have already been hailed as 'iConic'. With Tuesday's launch of the thinnest iPhone to date, Apple Watch series 11 that's one whole number ahead of series 10, and 'updated' AirPods, Apple insists that all this is 'awe-dropping!' And the villagers - sorry, consumers - will buy it hook, livestream, and synch-er. So, has the proverbial boy cried the proverbial 'Wolf!' again? You bet the 0.3 mm shaved off the latest iPhone model, yes. Tim Cook knows how to put lipstick on a pig and call it the Year of the iPig. The crowds at Steve Jobs Theatre in San Francisco gasped. And the rest of the world will gasp seeing - and reading about - them gasping. Not at cool features, but at how Apple still manages to sell deja vu wrapped in titanium.

Apple's version of crying 'Wolf!' is exclaiming 'Innovation!' every September. And we sprint to the nearest Apple Store like a Pavlov non-wolf. Somewhere not too deep inside, we know the upgrades are incremental. And, yet, we return. Because paying a higher price than last year's iStuff is a ritual. And in this cult of Cupertino, even the thinnest iPhone casts the fattest shadow. Next year, expect the iPhone 18: semi-invisible. After all, who'd want to make it invisible in one go?