Apple is brilliant. The company has been trying to get the media to leave Steve Jobs alone for months and nothing has worked. Until now. Apple used the oldest trick in the book–they drew attention away from Steve’s health and pending return to the company by showing us something new and shiny. The brilliance is that everyone fell for it.

When I walked into the keynote hall for Phil Schiller’s WWDC address, I was convinced there would not be an iPhone released at the conference. I fully expected that a new iPhone would be released at a special event in July.

This would be the return of Steve Jobs. He would show the world this incredible new device and people would be in awe of the master.

But that didn’t happen. What we got was the iPhone 3G S. I’m not saying that it’s not a great phone, because it is. In fact, I can’t wait to get my hands on mine. The speed improvements alone makes it a worthwhile upgrade for me.

However, if it wasn’t for the release of the iPhone 3G S, media outlets would be clogging their virtual pages with rumor and speculation about the health of Jobs. How many stories have you seen about Jobs since WWDC? Not very many.

Without the iPhone release at WWDC, even the conference’s strong points like iPhone OS 3.0 and Snow Leopard would have been overshadowed by the fact that Steve didn’t show up.

There were a few stories on the fact that Steve wasn’t there, but Apple said he wasn’t going to show up. Sure, I would have liked it if he came out for “One More Thing,” but that’s okay.

iPhone OS 3.0 went live on Wednesday. The launch went off without a hitch for the vast majority of the people. I’ve been using it for some time and it is a fantastic piece of software. That took up almost a week of the media’s time, preparing for the release and then writing about the release and follow-up.

Today, the iPhone 3G S launches and its reportedly doing very well too. (Mine hasn’t arrived yet, but I jump every time I hear the doorbell).

The iPhone launch will have the media tied up until Wednesday of next week as everyone reports on the launch, activation issues and most importantly sales numbers.

All of a sudden, we have less than a week to go before Steve comes back. Brilliant.

Apple managed to kill the better part of three weeks (including WWDC) without anyone asking about Steve’s health. On top of that, they release a nice upgraded iPhone, a great iPhone OS and have a successful conference.

Not bad, Apple. Not bad at all.