It happened during Christmas dinner.
I took out my iPhone XR[1] to check a text -- surely someone was finally wishing me a Merry Christmas -- and one of my wife's relatives asked: "What's that?"
"It's an iPhone XR," I replied, sinking, as many people do, to the Eks-R pronunciation.
"What's that?" she replied.
Also: Apple fixed my biggest complaint about the iPhone XR[2]
I paused, a touch stumped for an explanation. Doesn't everyone know about iPhones[3] the minute they're released -- and often before?
"Well, it's the newest iPhone," I said.
"Never heard of it," she replied. "Never seen one either."
My thoughts drifted to how Apple[4] has advertised these new, cheaper beasts. First, it did the usual phones-floating-in-mid-air sort of ad[5], with all sorts of product benefits featured in words.
Depth control. Liquid retina. Color-accurate LCD.
Did these things impress anyone? Did they even mean anything? And isn't it a touch odd to see Apple splatter so many product benefits over an ad?
It used to be that Apple would simply present the phone, play a little modern music and the phones would enchant masses.
Then I seemed to remember another iPhone XR ad that had invaded a recent NFL game on my TV. This one touted the phone's marvelous battery life. (And it is marvelous, for an iPhone.)
Could it be that Cupertino doesn't have a clue how to sell a phone that, to many eyes -- including my own -- offers a far more satisfying value than, say, the XS?
It was fascinating that, on the morning of the XR's launch, there