Dieter Bohn Microsoft makes the weirdest hinges

A bunch of you probably woke up early today to preorder a new iPhone. I am one of you — though in my defense it’s my job to review phones. Of course, it’s better to wait for the reviews to land before you buy, but I get it.

Still, I bet some of you were hoping for a little more commentary on the camera quality from the hands-on area at Steve Jobs Theater after the keynote. That would have been useless, though. I can explain.

Let me tell you a secret: Apple has constructed the most well-lit, shadowless, perfectly color-balanced room I’ve ever been in. There’s a hint of sunlight from above, light bouncing off white marble, and to tell the truth I couldn’t say where the actual light bulbs even are.

It’s like the light just appears out of the air. It’s like Apple figured out how to create what ancient scientists used to call aether. It really is a remarkable room. But that makes it the most atrocious room you could imagine for testing a smartphone camera. You could take a photo with literally anything in that room and it would look incredible. I love that room but also I hate it, because it’s more perfectly lit than any other room in existence.

Anyway, hopefully we’ll learn more about the cameras soon. We made it through another week, fam.

- Dieter

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Pixel leaks have moved from humorous, to self parody, to something else now. Something ecstatic, ephemeral, and even rhapsodic. We have transcended beyond ridiculousness and ascended into the sublime.