That stampede you hear...

...is the sound of thousands of Apple geeks making their way to San Francisco.

In case you don't know, I'd avoid the area surrounding the Moscone Center in the South of Market district of the City by the Bay for pretty much all of next week. Why, you ask? Four simple letters: WWDC.

More specifically, WWDC 2008. No, we're not talking about some television station located east of the Mississippi River, we're talking about the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, where thousands of tried-and-true Apple geeks converge on Moscone West to learn the latest things about developing applications for the Mac. This year's WWDC has become, as have nearly every Apple event since the introduction of the iPod in 2001, a media spectacle as journos from around the world gather to find out what's the latest and greatest product to come out of Cupertino. 

Apple CEO Steve Jobs will deliver his keynote (or Stevenote as some bloggers have coined these presentations) address on Monday morning, and it's widely expected that a new, second-generation iPhone will debut. Let's face it: Apple is the maker of what are arguably America's hottest products (sorry, Chrysler, for borrowing the tagline from another one of your failed ad campaigns a few years ago). Millions of people who just last year spent upwards of $500 on the first iPhone are now going to be lining up in the middle of the night in front of Apple stores across the country to no doubt drop another $500 on the latest and greatest iPhone, that will surely be usurped by the third-generation iPhone in oh, say 2009. 

Even crazier: people are already lining up in New York to be the first to purchase the new iPhone that might debut next week. The new iPhone, while widely expected from Apple, hasn't even been officially announced yet, but dammit, these people are going to be the first to get their hands on it even if they don't know how much it costs or when it'll actually become available. 

I purchased my iPhone at the end of February this year, knowing full well that a new iPhone was probably mere months away. After months and months of waiting, I just went to the mall one night and bought it. I must say, it's been a life-changing device. At the time, I never thought about possibly spending another $400 (Apple graciously lowered the price by $100 before Christmas 2007) on a new iPhone a little over three months later, but Apple actually has me considering it.