“Apple has today rolled out a new ad titled ‘Bokeh’d’ focused on the computational bokeh effect found on iPhone 7 Plus and later,” Peter Cao reports for 9to5Mac.
“The ad features two mom’s talking about a photo that was taken with the Portrait Mode Depth Control feature on the iPhone XR,” Cao reports. “One of the mom’s is asking why her son was ‘bokeh’d’ out, referring to the blurring effect used in Portrait mode.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s a guilt-fest of bokeh recriminations!
The iPhone XR should be marketed to idiots and fools. For the price of a maxed out XR, you could spend less to get a much better phone with an OLED screen, the iPhone X.
If you need a maxed out XR, you could potentially do as well (but I disagree the much better statement) with an X for less money.
But what if you don’t need a maxed out XR? I bought a low end XR for my spouse (not an idiot OR a fool) but just not a techie. She loves it. It was a great deal made even better by the $150 rebate by sending in her old 6.
The yellow back is very nifty distinctive plus for her and means more than a screen type. To her, OLED is just a misspelled word. She could care less about the screen quality as long as it works well which the basic XR does. When I compare to my X to the XR, they seem mostly equivalent except for perhaps a bit better XR battery life. I can barely tell the difference between the XR screen an an OLED screen.
There is a reason why the XR is the best selling “X” model. Remember people value different attributes in phones. Not everyone values the same features. Many definitely don’t need a maxed out phone. Condemning everyone who buys an XR as an idiot and a fool is forcing what you value in phone features onto the rest of the world who disagree when they make an iPhone purchase – not out of ignorance but simple different preferences.
I think your suggestion would work well for your needs but please at least recognize there are other tastes and preferences in the world before making sweeping condemnations.
@SecondOpinion:
Wow! Kudos to you for your non-bashing, yet informative reply and point of view for people who buy differently.
More comments should be like yours: educational, non-combative, and caring enough to explain clearly! I miss civility these past years.
I kinda like that fact it is poking fun at way overly sensitive snowflakes that can seemingly make a big deal about an absolute nothing burger, and turn anything against anyone. So yah, I like it for that reason!
Finally, a commercial for humans, one that delights. It has every day emotions, people’s emotions instead of manufactured ones. It tickles instead of being a tech-fest. It has just enough poke-you-in-the-eye or cringy stuff, right on the edge, not too much but enough to make it Jobsian. This commercial may be the first such during wet mop Cook.
Better ad
Photographers beware – hobbled XR portrait ‘feature’ works only with people, not objects.
The Google Pixel 3, with basically the same hardware as the iPhone XR, can do the depth effect on ANYTHING. And do it consistently and quickly. I did an in-store comparison with the iPhone XS and the Pixel was faster and better at finding the appropriate depth and blurring the background. The XR creates a nice effect WHEN it can detect a human face. Apple needs to hang out near Mountain View and throw wads of cash at the Google photography team to lure them over to Cupertino. The XR has far more processing power than the Pixel. I hope Apple does an iOS update to turn on object detection background blur, or at least pet detection. But I suspect they’ll bake that into a new model (like no Depth Control on the X) to drive sales.
Unfortunately that won’t fix anything ’cause Google can throw same level of money at talent that Apple can.
BTW Go Gators!
There are some third-party apps that enable bokeh on other photos, though this of course complicates the workflow — no simple swipe-left from the lock screen to take a shot.
My wife (a photographer) laughed out loud at that one. The best Apple ad in years, because it shows a significant camera feature that’s hard to explain, it introduces a photography term to the masses, and it’s funny as shit.
99 out of 100 people don’t know what “Bokeh’d” is or care. And they won’t know after the commercial either. But it is effective for the 1%. And it doesn’t have dancing urban hipsters, so it’s got that going for it, which is good.