Going to try and keep this short…

I’ve seen some stuff, including this from Niley Patel, saying that the XR is a strange, mismash of a phone.

It’s not. We can see its precedents in the 5c, new MacBook Pro, and the iPhone SE.

• The SE showed Apple that it could put top of the line internals in a compromised phone and have it sell like mad.
  • Recall that the SE had the 6S flagship’s processor and phone
  • But combined with the two-year old screen and selfie camera of the 5S
• The 5c showed Apple that if you take an old phone and give it colors, you can give an inferior phone a sales bump.
• The two flavors of the 2016 MacBook Pro shows us Apple is starting to give design teams overlapping, but flexible constraints.
  • That is, we’ve got two completely different computers (same link), one cheap, slow, with two ports, and one top of the line, expensive, with four, in exactly the same case.
  • For the XR, we flip the script, and have two completely different shells with the same internals.
  • That’s essentially what we had with the SE. Point here is that this “shared design constraint” model is increasingly prevalent at Apple

I think we add one more point to this list…

• Apple was surprised by SE sales, and wishes they’d charged more.

What needs to happen to charge more for a cheaper version of the same internals? Well, first, you can’t pitch it as a spiritual remake of a four year-old design. You have to pitch it as a new phone.

So we have…

• Top of the line internals but in a cheaper phone (SE)
• An excuse to charge more by using an updated design (MBP)
• A purely aesthetic appeal for dollars with frivolous colors (5c)

It’s not a perfect parallel, but I think you see how Apple’s past clearly births this new .

EDIT: Though Stratechery says I’m wrong about the 5c:

Still, I for one thought it would sell very well; all indications are that Apple agreed, but it quickly became apparent that customers overwhelmingly preferred the iPhone 5S. Apple struggled to keep the latter in stock, having produced far too many 5Cs, and the model was quietly discontinued two years later….

The 5C’s failure, such that it was, showed that the iPhone had three distinct markets:

• Customers who wanted the best possible phone. They bought the 5S.
• Customers who wanted the prestige of owning the highest-status phone on the market. Heavily concentrated in China, they bought the gold 5S.
• Customers who aspire to owning a top-of-the-line iPhone, but couldn’t afford one. They bought the 4S instead of the 5C.

I guess I’m wrongly biased from seeing tons of kids enjoy the 5c, sometimes even over a 5 or 5S. I’d guess the 5c failed largely because of the craptastic 8 gig storage on the lowest-end 5c. That’s simply not a useable phone.

But the argument that people want what I’d call “aspirational luxury” from their iPhone is an important point.

As I said about the SE, above – “Well, first, you can’t pitch it as a spiritual remake of a four year-old design.” – is exactly what we're saying here.

If colors didn’t sell, the XR wouldn’t use them. Though maybe I should’ve substituted iMac for 5c?!

More interesting in the most recent Stratechery update is the XR explanation, however:

There is, of course, the question of cannibalism: if the XR is so great, why spend $250 more on an XS, or $350 more for the giant XS Max?

This is where the iPhone X lesson matters. Last year’s iPhone 8 was a great phone too, with the same A11 processor as the iPhone X, a high quality LCD screen like the iPhone XR, and a premium aluminum-and-glass case (and 3D Touch!). It also had Touch ID and a more familiar interface, both arguably advantages in their own right, and the Plus size that so many people preferred.

It didn’t matter: [For] Apple’s best customers... price is a secondary concern.

Labels: apple, business, design, iphone, macbook pro