Tim Cook has greeted customers in Milan, Italy, on the iPhone XR launch day. He was at the flagship Piazza Liberty store, which opened in the summer.

Apple’s CEO tweeted that Milan is one of his favorite cities, and that he hopes everyone is enjoying the new iPhone …

Buongiorno Piazza Liberty! Milan is one of my favorite cities and I am very happy to be here with you today. Around the world, we hope everyone is enjoying the new iPhone XR!

The Piazza Liberty has a town square at ground level, and the underground store is accessed by walking through the center of a waterfall.

iSpazio had photos from the store, above.

Interestingly, there’s no sign of Apple’s clear case for the new iPhone there or in any other store.

Buongiorno Piazza Liberty! Milan is one of my favorite cities and I am very happy to be here with you today. Around the world, we hope everyone is enjoying the new iPhone XR! pic.twitter.com/hmJb8yrNCM — Tim Cook (@tim_cook) October 26, 2018

Unsurprisingly, stores are not seeing people line up to buy the iPhone XR. Apple has been encouraging online orders and timed reservations for some time now, so we’ve been seeing shorter lines for even flagship launches over the last few years. But there’s also likely little overlap between the kind of hard-core fans prepared to wait for hours on end with the more pragmatic buyers of the least expensive of this year’s new models.

The iPhone XR is the sensible mass-market option. It offers something which, to most ordinary people, looks basically identical to the much more expensive iPhone X, with compromises only techies will care about.

CNET spoke to a few buyers in Sydney and London, for whom the value for money relative to the flagships was the key draw.

First in line [in Sydney] for her preorder was 23-year-old paralegal Rosa van de Pol, who was buying a black iPhone XR for her husband “mainly because of the price point.” “I think it was a good option, compared to the other phones that came out,” she said. “The whole phone is the screen, so that’s great” […] [At London’s just-re-opened Covent Garden store] many of the customers picking up their iPhone XRs were of the opinion they’d bagged themselves a bargain by opting for the cheaper model. “We felt there was more value for money,” said 54-year-old David, who was buying an XR for his 21-year-old daughter Joanna.

Buyers around the world have also been sharing their own photos. You can also see a video below, from Settebit.

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