iphone xs

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Apple’s iPhone XS is a meme because it sounds like ‘iPhone Tennis’ out loud

The top jokes from Wednesday's Apple event.

 

Joseph Knoop

Internet Culture

Posted on Sep 12, 2018   Updated on May 21, 2021, 6:39 am CDT

Another year, another Apple event that showcases the next line of iPhones and Apple Watches. Apple debuted the iPhones XS and the XS Max today at its official Apple Event. They’re pretty much identical to last year’s iPhone X, save for the gold color scheme option and the fact that the Max is practically a tablet at 6.5 inches across. There’s also the more “affordable” option of the iPhone XR, which comes with some slimmed down features of the two other models.

But, on Twitter, people were asking how to pronounce the new iPhones. X is a Roman numeral for 10, and Apple has traditionally pronounced the iPhone X as “10”. Add an “S” to the name, though, and now you have “iPhone 10 S”. When an Apple executive pronounced the name of the phone during the event today, it sounded a lot like “iPhone Tennis”. This led to a lot of obvious jokes and memes

For the Apple users who pronounce the iPhone X as “X” rather than 10, there’s a whole other joke for the XS: it sounds like “excess”.

Apple also debuted the fourth generation of Apple Watches, detailing an incredible amount of info on how the watches collect data to improve your day-to-day activities. Most notably, Apple says the Apple Watch Series 4 will be able to detect when you fall and call an emergency contact. It can even recognize if you’re lying still after a fall.

In the long tradition of Apple playing catch up features already implemented by other companies, Twitter took a moment to call out the original life saving device, Life Alert, of ‘help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” fame.

Apple CEO Tim Cook also managed to mildly prank the internet with a fake Twitter fail, tweeting out “No. Who can get it here quickly?” What resulted was a silly Mission Impossible spoof.

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*First Published: Sep 12, 2018, 3:45 pm CDT