A lot has been written about the rumored Apple cell phone. Even so, one must soberly consider that maybe, just maybe, that's not in Apple's plans. Yet, considering the present situation, Apple must now do so according to an article at Information Week published Thursday.

The author brought up an important point in his recollection of a General Electric customer survey years ago. "...General Electric was looking at the popcorn maker market, and comissioned (sic) a consumer survey to find out what people thought about the existing products. Surprisingly, GE's own popcorn maker came out on top in areas like reliabiilty and customer satisfaction. The surprising part -- GE didn't actually sell any popcorn makers yet. Instead, consumers had formed strong associations with the GE brand, and had projected those features onto a non-existent product."

The conclusion was that all the best thoughts about what a cell phone should be are being projected onto Apple. Apple, essentially, is now synonymous with the best cell phone ever designed, even though the product doesn't exist.

And that's why the author thinks that Apple just ought to sell a cell phone anyway. "Apple fans are notorious cheerleaders, so even if the phones only had one button and tended to explode after four hours of continued use, there would still be fans out there praising its curves and colors."