You may have noticed that, whenever new gear is expected from Samsung, say an update to the Galaxy smartphone line, it will often be touted as yet another iPhone killer. Well, except for one blog from a major publication in which the writer claimed that the iPhone X was meant to be a potential Samsung Galaxy killer.

So turnabout is fair play?

Now before I go on, I will certainly not argue anyone’s taste in any tech gadget. There’s lots of product out there. Some of it is really good, some of it is all right, some of it is cheap and not much else. But the quality of such gear is better than it used to be, so it’s really hard to find a clunker. Well, unless you buy a premium smartphone with a battery that might overheat or burst into flame.

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In the run-up ahead of Apple’s iPhone media event, news emerged that Touch ID wasn’t part of the picture on the iPhone X. Apple allegedly had problems outfitting the system to work beneath an edge-to-edge OLED display and all that, so they brought out their trump card — Face ID.

The impression that story conveys is that Apple rushed the thing out, and thus it may be seriously flawed.

The facts are otherwise. Face ID requires several components that aren’t needed with Touch ID. Apple has been working on the system for several years. The 2013 purchase of PrimeSense, an Israel-based developer of 3D technology, formed a key part of the its facial recognition capability. This obviously means that Apple thought about moving past Touch ID four years ago.

Again, the thought that this was a rush job is absolutely not true. I suppose, of course, that Apple could have considered offering two biometric systems, with Touch ID in the rear, but opted not to. The Samsung Galaxy S8 has three; the third being iris recognition, but since two of the systems are seriously flawed, it hardly matters.

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The other day, I made some pointed comments about a certain national newspaper that ran a silly article about alternatives to the iPhone 8 before it was outed as the iPhone X. The argument was solely about buying something other than some — as yet — unannounced Apple product. It feel apart real quickly when the blogger tossed in Andy Rubin’s Essential smartphone even though it had what he admitted was a subpar camera.

Now that the rumors have been mostly confirmed about Apple’s new stuff, one criticism won’t go away. Indeed, the fears have been confirmed. Apple is daring to charge just one dollar short of $1,000 for the 64GB iPhone X. The 256GB version will be $150 more.

Outrageous!

Or maybe not!

Remember, Apple is the company that charged over $10,000 for an Apple Watch before taking a more measured approach beginning with the second version last year. But there will be an iMac Pro that will cost nearly $5,000 for the entry-level model, and match the price of a compact car when maxed out. The Mac Pro’s price will be off the charts!

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As you might expect, the Apple critic population will have its way with the announcements from the September 12th iPhone media event. How could it be otherwise?

But there was plenty of positive news to consider, even if most of product introductions and specs were pretty well known ahead of the event.

So there really is an iPhone X, and it does have a 5.8-inch OLED edge-to-edge display. At a resolution of 458 pixels per inch, roughly twice that of a normal retina display, Apple calls it Super Retina, which is not altogether different from what the Android smartphone makers have been doing for a while. The difference is that Apple’s brand new in-house designed GPU is without doubt powerful enough to push those pixels without the typical stalling you see on handsets from the competition.

That said, despite the promise of superior color, you probably won’t see a sharper display compared to a regular iPhone since, again, it’s retina, and thus the differences will be beyond normal visibility.

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