How iPhone apps are like McDonalds hamburgers.

"When do Apple and Apple watchers stop caring so much about how exactly how many iPhone apps there are?"

By your example, somewhere beyond "billions and billions".

The U.S. seems to do the same thing with our deficit. It's over $13 Trillion USD, and yet they don't put that under every government office sign.

At some point, numbers seem to get just too big to matter to people. Kind of like Richie Rich and all of the jewels and jewelry all over his estate. It was just there. It didn't matter.

BTW- Richie Rich is back. "The first new Richie Rich comic should hit retail in early 2011.": http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/18545.html

The reason the McDonalds signs lost the "billions served" isn't because corporate just stopped caring. McDonalds, like most successful mega corporations, doesn't do anything without numbers and studies to back it up.

What happened is the marketing message changed. No longer does McDonalds need to prove that they are legitimate fast food vendor by telling everyone "hey - we've sold a lot of hamburgers!". If anything, they're now trying to gloss over the notion that they stamp out 2 million of these uninspired little blobs every hour.

The consumer climate has changed and now "billions served" doesn't sound nearly as impressive as "we handmade this one for you".