An interesting thing happened last week. Apple released a new product. It is both hailed as the next revolution in personal computing and derided as a useless, redundant piece of technology. Also, the President of the United States delivered the State of the Union. Barack Obama delivered his first State of the Union. Everyone was talking about the iPad. No one was talking about the speech. Year after year Apple continues to dominate the news cycle and our social conscious with their product announcements. They have mastered the technique of leveraging thenews media to promote their products and wheedled their way in to our daily discourse.

What it is about Apple that is so captivating? How do they overshadow President Obama with the announcement of what amounts to a bigger version of the iPhone?

The other day I was talking with a friend of mine who knows the creator of Apple's 1997 Think Different ad campaign. The montage of famous faces, from Einstein to Ali from Gandhi to  Earhart, sends the message that Apple is of that echelon of significance. The ad doesn't mention computers. It doesn't show images of computers. The ad is about ideas. The ad positions Apple as an idea, a message, a courageous act, and makes the consumer feel as if they can be part of it if they have an Apple - whatever the product is.

Obama did the same thing with his campaign. He was an idea, a message, a courageous act and empowered people to become a part of it. Yes we can - think differently. But after a year of governing it isn't about ideas, it's about reality. The State of the Union is the report on the nitty gritty. It's more about the system of politics than the hope of democracy. Year after year Steve Jobs continues to shroud his product announcements in the veil of the future, possibility, imagination, ideas.

This is the appeal and power of technology. More than anything, technology expresses hope. Hope that what we know in our day to day lives can be different, can be better. This is how Apple commands our attention. Their announcements aren't focused on sales reports or the number of computers sold or business models, they are about the actualization of our imagination. Whether the iPad meets your vision is a different conversation but the hype and buzz and excitement around it, the fact that we were talking about it at work and bars and dinner parties, proves that it taps our longing for change. No one is talking about the State of Union. It was mainly about why things didn't change as much as we expected. Or as much as we had hoped.

But a President works in a different realm than a technology company. The President is bound by human reality and forced to compromise and concede in order to create change. The Presidency is about facing struggle and adversity.  Apple just has to dream. And dreams are easier to talk about than struggles. That's why we care so much about Apple.