Has anyone else seen the new iPhone ads? If so, you probably noticed one startling feature — there are hardly any iPhones in the commercial at all! Now, at first I felt it was nothing more than a poor excuse for advertising, but then I figured it all out — everyone already knows what the iPhone does and what it looks like. Why would we need to see it again?

Think about it: how many do you know that have yet to see what the Palm Centro or even a Blackberry looks like? But if you bring up the iPhone, chances are they’ll talk for at least five minutes about how “cool” the device is and how they would “love” to have one of these “great looking” phones. If you think about it objectively, no device in the past five years has entered into the mainstream of society so quickly or so adeptly. Try to find me one device that everyone (everyone!) is talking about and I’ll give you a ham sandwich — with mustard. The iPhone is a success so far and I don’t think there is any denying that fact. Will it last? Time will tell. But if the company can still produce television ads that don’t even show the product and it still can sell devices like it’s going out of style, I wouldn’t worry too much.

Don Reisinger is a freelance technology journalist who covers everything from HDTVs to the iPhone. He writes The Digital Home for CNET, product reviews for InformationWeek and PC World, and contributes to over 15 publications throughout the world.