Video: iPhone X review
They're a little precious at times, the Cupertinians.
Every time a new phone comes out, so does a video voiced by Apple's head of design, Jony Ive[1].
How much time does it take him -- and his no-doubt equally precious team of scriptwriters -- to come up with a new turn of tortured vocabulary that matches the glory of the new gadget?
My favorite is him describing[2] the iPhone 5c as "unashamedly plastic."
Read also: iPhone X clone? Xiaomi Mi 8 has notch, face unlock[3]
Still, when iPhone X came out[4], so many critics thought it unashamedly ugly. One specific part of it, that is: The notch.
That odd indent at the top of the screen that hosted the front-facing TrueDepth camera system incited ululations of derision.
"It offends me. It's ungainly and unnatural," offered[5] famed, pained Apple-watcher John Gruber.
I confess to have suffered almost hemorrhoidal discomfort, but for a different reason. It seemed as if Apple wanted to pretend the notch wasn't even there.
In its advertising, it described the phone with these words, "It's all screen." Which had the naked Emperor exclaiming: "There goes Apple copying me again."
Yet, here we are, a mere seven months later, and the notch has become something of a norm.
Why, here's the latest rumor[6] that the new Google Pixel 3XL[7] will have, oh, a notch. It would therefore accompany the LG G7 ThinQ and the OnePlus 6 to have notch.
Moreover -- and, some might say, worse -- a whole industry quickly