Future Tense

An Incomplete List of Superlatives That Apple Executives Heaped On Their Own Products at the iPhone 5 Launch

Phil Schiller on the iPhone 5, the thinnest, lightest, fastest, bestest iPhone ever
Phil Schiller, the greatest Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing ever.

Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

When life gives you marginally better lemons, call them “the best lemons ever.” As long as the last lemons were better than the lemons before those, and so on, it’s trivially true. And it sounds way more impressive than just saying that you’ve slightly improved your best-selling lemonade.

That, it seemed, was the thinking that guided Apple’s iPhone 5 launch on Wednesday. Just for fun, I’ve compiled here an incomplete list of superlatives that Apple executives Tim Cook, Phil Schiller, Scott Forstall et al. heaped on their own products in the course of the two-hour event. (Note: These are only the superlatives that happened to be directly quoted on Engadget’s live blog of the event. If more come to light, I will update this list accordingly so that I can present it to you as the most complete list of Apple superlatives ever.)

On Apple Stores: “Our stores offer the best buying experience and the best customer service on the planet.”

“The perfect place to explore and discover Apple’s latest products.”

On the latest version of Mac OS X: “Best OS on the planet.”

“Fastest-selling version of OS X yet.”

On the latest MacBook Pro: “The best Mac we’ve ever made.”

“Number one in U.S. market share the last three months.”

On the iPad: “The finest tablet you can buy.”

On the iPhone 5: “It is an absolute jewel. It is the most beautiful product we have ever made, bar none.”

“It’s designed and built to an exacting level of standard unlike anything we, or anyone in our industry, have made before.”

“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that the hardware and software engineering that has gone into this product is unlike we’ve ever undertaken before.”

“The thinnest and lightest iPhone yet.”

“The world’s thinnest smartphone.”

“We couldn’t be prouder of it.”

“The world’s thinnest smartphone.” (Yes, again.)

“For the first time ever we’ve increased the size of the display.”

“Best phones at every price point.”

“This will be our fastest phone roll-out ever.”

“The thinnest, fastest, and best iPhone we have ever shipped.”

On some new racing game available in the App Store: “The ultimate racing experience on iOS.”

On iOS 6: “The most advanced operating system in any mobile device.”

On iPhone 5 and iOS 6, collectively: “The biggest things to happen for iPhone since iCloud.”

On the new iPod Nano: “It’s by far the best Nano we’ve ever created.”

On the iPod Touch: “The world’s most popular music player.”

“The world’s most popular video game player.”

“The best iPod Touch we’ve ever made.”

On the new iPods, collectively: “The best iPods we’ve ever done.”

On EarPods, a new line of headphones: “They look like no earphone you’ve ever seen before.”

On Apple: “Apple has never been stronger.”

On Apple’s employees: “They are doing the best work of their lives.”

On the Foo Fighters: “They’re not only one of the most popular bands in the world, they’re one of the most talented.”