Whether it's announcing release dates via TV commercials or forbidding writers from taking snapshots at events, Apple does public relations a little different from most tech companies.

Ask tech reporters what working with the company is like, and you'll usually a get a response ranging from "casual indifference" to "thinly-veiled hostility."

Ask a former Apple PR person what working for the company was like, and you'll get the sort of nervous laugh and sideways glance  normally reserved for patrons of the witness protection program.

This is not by accident.

09 Aug 2007

It is because Apple, to a much greater extent than most companies, does not need the press. Steve jobs noted this in his presentation yesterday when he declared that the company's legion of zealous user evangelists were "the best sales and marketing force we could ask for."

Steve knows that the media is, much of the time, a hinderance to the Cupertino hype machine, what with all of their subjective questioning and willingness to point out fault.

Why spend time and money trying to tout the virtues of a product with pre-briefings and executive interviews when you can simply put out a one page release and trust your army of college film students and freelance designers to spew its benefits and attack its critics as if they were stumping for a presidential candidate?

It's brilliant marketing, perhaps the best in the IT industry. And as Jobs revealed yesterday, it's no accident.

And you thought they were only good at making electronics.