Brian Willis

Why Does This Product Exist?

Had Apple followed the trend that they’ve established in the last few years, this morning they would have released the iPhone 5S and kept last year’s iPhone 5 around as their lower cost $99 model.

Instead, they decided to release the iPhone 5C - a pointless product which I can’t understand the existence of.

If you gave me a choice between the metal-backed, durable, good looking iPhone 5, and the functionally equivalent but plastic iPhone 5C, I’d stick with the older model.

What purpose does the 5C serve? Sure, it’s a cheaper iPhone, but we’ve had those for years. It comes in a bunch of colours, but people who care about that sort of thing often use cases to achieve the same effect. I know some people like to scoff at cases for uglying things up, but Apple hasn’t been shy about getting into the business of making them alongside their devices, which looks like an endorsement for using them.

I imagine that plastic back is cheaper to produce though, even if it is less nice. Remember all that hoopla about 725 unique glass inlays that were indistinguishable to the naked eye? Yeah, that’ll cost you $100 more now.