Photo credit to Tyler Lastovich on Unsplash

I've heard a lot of talk about the iPhone X (the iPhone 10, the skipped iPhone 9 - whatever), some of it is extremely critical towards it, some is praise. My point of view (Note: I do not own the iPhone X) is from a designer's perspective and about why Apple really needed the iPhone X.

Apple has not been known as a true innovator for a while. However, they are regarded as a mass-market innovator, meaning that they take already existing technologies and improve upon them to make it work for the mass market.

One of the more recent examples of this is TouchID. Fingerprint scanning existed before Apple took the idea and put it on the iPhone, that's no secret nor is it a surprise. However, TouchID is among the best currently available fingerprint scanners available on phones - it works for the mass market and is not just a niche.

How can only Apple be Apple?

As I previously mentioned, Apple is not one of the most innovative companies and they are not the cheapest either. Apple is known for many things but the most common descriptive words are simple, premium, overpriced and expensive. (I'm not here to argue about the pricing of Apple products since I already briefly expressed my thoughts in the conclusion of my MacBook Pro thoughts post.)

Simple. Premium. Expensive. Apple in a nutshell.

If we think about it, then what is Apple's core message? Wonderfully expressed by Simon Sinek in his "How to find your WHY" talk, it's "We believe in challenging the status quo. The way we challenge the status quo is making our products beautifully designed, simple to use and user-friendly."

So their products are beautifully designed, great. We knew that already, didn't we? Yes, we did. So what makes Apple Apple? It's how they present themselves - they present themselves as a lifestyle brand, not a phone brand. The vast majority of their customers don't buy it for the product, they buy it for the lifestyle of owning that product.

So why did Apple need the iPhone X?

Photo credit to Evan Dennis

Even if your design is beautiful, repetition is not the key to infinite victory. You need something to stand out again every once in a while.

Every iPhone has stood out for being different from something that came before it. The iPhone 6 stood out by being different from the iPhone 5 and having a bigger model available. The iPhone 7 stood out by not having a headphone jack (which I personally dislike, because it also carries over to other phones in the Android space).
Understandably, the iPhone 8 would have stood out as an iPhone 7 Plus Plus, not as an iPhone 8 since it looked virtually the same as the iPhone 7, which in turn looked virtually the same as the iPhone 6. Apple was already grasping at straws by removing the headphone jack from the iPhone 7, iPhone 8 on its own would have been sad to see.

Then came the iPhone X.

A vastly different phone that stood out from the crowd. There was chatter, there was praise, there was criticism. I'd go as far as to say that it revived the excitement around Apple among the online folk.

It's different in terms of design, it's different in terms of user experience. It's different.

When you walk on the street and someone has an iPhone X out, you can tell that it's an iPhone X instantly, no matter what angle you look at it, you can tell it's the iPhone X. Apple wants their customers to have the saying "Is that the new one? oh, I still have the old one" because they market it as a lifestyle product that you need to switch out when the new one comes around. If the new one isn't different, there isn't as much excitement to buy the newer model, meaning that less of the customers that buy it as a lifestyle product will buy the newer model.

Conclusion

So that's why the iPhone X is important for Apple. It's different, so people want it. It fills the Apple need of having a new, different product out for the users that buy it for the lifestyle, not just for the cool tech.

Apple is not an exception to any rule, they just know how to market themselves to fill their needs. That's what makes them different, but not an exception.

Call to Action

If you enjoyed this post, then you're welcome to check out my previous Apple-related post about my thoughts on the newest MacBook Pro after owning it for a little over a month.
If you're not interested in another Apple-related post, then you're welcome to take a look at my 3 reasons for being excited about the future of design.