Maybe iPhone X is here to stay
Unless you've been living under a rock on mars, you may have heard that the advanced iPhone which Apple plans to release tomorrow (the one without the home button) will most likely be called the "iPhone X". But since that information was found in text form only, the open question is whether that will be "iPhone ten" or "iPhone ex".
I'm going to put a stake in the ground here (knowing this may not age well beyond tomorrow) and pick a side. I think it will be "iPhone X", pronounced “ex”, for three reasons.
First, releasing the "iPhone ten" alongside the "iPhone 8" is strange and clunky marketing. It invites the question "what about 9?", which triggers unwanted comparisons with the competition. It puts the 8 and 10 products in direct competition with each other, which reflects badly on the iPhone 8, and may actually end up driving customers towards Samsung instead. It also boxes Apple in for next year and the year after, since future descendants of the iPhone 8 form factor need to receive numbers below 10 but above 8, of which math foresees relatively few. If the iPhone-with-button form factor receives a few more updates until its processor is ahead of the one that will be in the 2017 iPhone X, what number can they give that? Calling it “iPhone ten” leaves them no wiggle room.
Second, I think X is not a counter, but a brand moniker. I think they will position "iPhone X" as a seperate sub-product within the iPhone lineup, like "MacBook Air" and "iPod Touch" within the MacBook and iPod lineups. The X may be implied to stand for "Experimental", along the lines of Gruber's thoughts on Apple's challenges in scaling up new features. The current iPhone form factor may eventually get renamed into iPhone Classic, along the lines of you-know-what. That would bring the overall iPhone family to iPhone SE, iPhone Classic, iPhone X. Not a bad way to get some much-needed price differentiation.
This is roughly the same as Gruber's speculation around an "iPhone Pro", but with the difference that the extra moniker is "X" instead of "Pro". That makes sense to me, since the "Pro" on all of Apple's other "Pro" products indicates a seperate target audience - people who use this product professionally as part of their job. The higher pricepoint is not just a consequence of the better features, but of professional users' higher willingness-to-pay since they see these products as investments in future revenue, rather than a personal expenditure. The Mac Pro is targeted at people who need a more powerful Mac to do heavy-duty tasks like video editing. But this new iPhone is not targeted at people who are professional callers. Its differentiating features are not tied to whether or not you make a living with this phone. It seems to be more a phone with more advanced sensors, potentially supporting experimental AR in the same way that Google's Project Tango phones do. So "X" is a better choice than "Pro".
Third, you have to assume Apple already knows roughly what's in the pipeline for 2018, 2019 and beyond. What comes after "iPhone X"? iPhone XI? iPhone X 11? iPhone X 10.1 Puma?
No, I think after the iPhone X, one option may be "iPhone X2" released alongside iPhone 9. Going from X to X2 implies a larger incremental benefit than going from 10 to 11. But even more likely, we may just get "iPhone X (late 2018)", like Apple does with the rest of its product lines. They have been trying to move away from strictly numbered products in the iPad range and with the iPhone SE range, I don't see any reason why they would do differently with the iPhone X range.
We'll see tomorrow.
Just my two cents.
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Update: nope.
I'm going to put a stake in the ground here (knowing this may not age well beyond tomorrow) and pick a side. I think it will be "iPhone X", pronounced “ex”, for three reasons.
First, releasing the "iPhone ten" alongside the "iPhone 8" is strange and clunky marketing. It invites the question "what about 9?", which triggers unwanted comparisons with the competition. It puts the 8 and 10 products in direct competition with each other, which reflects badly on the iPhone 8, and may actually end up driving customers towards Samsung instead. It also boxes Apple in for next year and the year after, since future descendants of the iPhone 8 form factor need to receive numbers below 10 but above 8, of which math foresees relatively few. If the iPhone-with-button form factor receives a few more updates until its processor is ahead of the one that will be in the 2017 iPhone X, what number can they give that? Calling it “iPhone ten” leaves them no wiggle room.
Second, I think X is not a counter, but a brand moniker. I think they will position "iPhone X" as a seperate sub-product within the iPhone lineup, like "MacBook Air" and "iPod Touch" within the MacBook and iPod lineups. The X may be implied to stand for "Experimental", along the lines of Gruber's thoughts on Apple's challenges in scaling up new features. The current iPhone form factor may eventually get renamed into iPhone Classic, along the lines of you-know-what. That would bring the overall iPhone family to iPhone SE, iPhone Classic, iPhone X. Not a bad way to get some much-needed price differentiation.
This is roughly the same as Gruber's speculation around an "iPhone Pro", but with the difference that the extra moniker is "X" instead of "Pro". That makes sense to me, since the "Pro" on all of Apple's other "Pro" products indicates a seperate target audience - people who use this product professionally as part of their job. The higher pricepoint is not just a consequence of the better features, but of professional users' higher willingness-to-pay since they see these products as investments in future revenue, rather than a personal expenditure. The Mac Pro is targeted at people who need a more powerful Mac to do heavy-duty tasks like video editing. But this new iPhone is not targeted at people who are professional callers. Its differentiating features are not tied to whether or not you make a living with this phone. It seems to be more a phone with more advanced sensors, potentially supporting experimental AR in the same way that Google's Project Tango phones do. So "X" is a better choice than "Pro".
Third, you have to assume Apple already knows roughly what's in the pipeline for 2018, 2019 and beyond. What comes after "iPhone X"? iPhone XI? iPhone X 11? iPhone X 10.1 Puma?
No, I think after the iPhone X, one option may be "iPhone X2" released alongside iPhone 9. Going from X to X2 implies a larger incremental benefit than going from 10 to 11. But even more likely, we may just get "iPhone X (late 2018)", like Apple does with the rest of its product lines. They have been trying to move away from strictly numbered products in the iPad range and with the iPhone SE range, I don't see any reason why they would do differently with the iPhone X range.
We'll see tomorrow.
Just my two cents.
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Update: nope.
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