New iPhones and Frustrating Pricing

Apple has differentiated its new iPhones in a super frustrating way, probably in an effort to drive up average selling prices.

• iPhone XR: phenomenal performance to price ratio. Offers 128 GB storage. Awesome colour choices. Aluminum instead of steel. Inferior but still great screen. No 3D Touch. Only one camera.
• iPhone XS and XS Max: awesome screen. Two cameras. Doesn’t offer 128 GB – only 64, 256, and 512.

I am currently using 78 GB of storage on my iPhone 7+. Way too low to justify 256 GB for an additional $210, but way too high to try to fit it all in a 64 GB phone. And I really want the optical zoom capability of the dual camera setup – something I use all the time on my current phone.

So either I can pay $1099 and settle for a single camera, or pay a whopping $1589 to get all the things I actually want, plus a bunch of things I don’t care about.

I’m willing to bet a lot of other people are in the same camp.

Furthermore, Apple is selling these new devices at CAD$1.40 to the US Dollar, instead of the actual current exchange rate, CAD$1.30. They usually treat us Canadians pretty fairly, but this is awful.