At Apple, gold iPhone 5S is known as 'the Kardashian phone'
No, it didn't merely have some secret code name with numbers and letters. Apparently, the (relatively) blingiest of the iPhones was associated from the beginning with, well, a lack of taste.
Apple employees are often accused of excessive reverence for the brand and even for themselves.
They are said to distort reality, as if it is one more element to be merely designed and presented.
But news reaches me that there might be an inner core of magical, revolutionary realism that permeates the walls of Cupertino.
For, as The New York Times' Nick Bilton tweeted on Friday, the gold iPhone 5S, from its very inception, had an extremely down-to-earth nickname at home.
No, it's wasn't known as "The Fifth Wonder of the Telephonic World." Nor was it referred to as "The Glittering Prize," "The Golden Child," or "Goldfingerprint ID."
Instead, all through the design process it was apparently referred to as "the Kardashian Phone."
I feel sure that America's great icon of discernment will rush out a press release, a YouTube video, and perhaps a whole episode of "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" to celebrate Apple's elevation of its gadget to her level of stardom.
Some, though, will wonder whether Apple employees felt a certain snootiness with respect to this step toward the nightclub VIP section.
It's been theorized that the gold iPhone 5S was primarily targeted at parts of the world where expressions of bling are seen as quite the thing. Indeed, Conan was moved to suggest that this phone was designed not in California, but in Miami.
But one can't avoid the notion that some at Apple feared that, with this marginally garish device, Apple was stooping to pander, rather than to conquer.
The ultimate product is a little more muted than your average Miami bauble. But the impression associated with the word "gold" cannot be ignored.
La Kardashian has this week been deeply involved in creating brand new selfies, in order to show that her body has returned to its core voluptuousness.
In the most moving of them, she is holding a phone, but I cannot be sure it's a gold iPhone 5S.
However, a little research shows that Kardashian does already have a gold iPhone 5. For last December she tweeted: "I love my gold iPhone 5 by http://anostyle.com -- thanks @boygenius http://twitpic.com/bjwynt."
A true style icon is always ahead of her time.