Compare the New iPhone Models

The color choices seem… odd. I can't get a lavender/green/blue Pro Max? The premium option has the least color options, 1/3 of which is... garish?

Apple used to reserve the "mature" muted colors for the Pro, and the colorful ones for the base model. Not only did they switch the schemes this year, the Pros also have one less option which suggests... something.

It's the same way with cars. The fancier you go, the less options for "fun" apparently "poor people" colors.

They offer a blue Pro Max.

Eh, that's nearly black. (Which, if I want real black, I can't have. Same for white! Or either of the lighter blues!)

Not exactly. Most upper end car manufacturers have been offering PTS (paint-to-sample) for quite some time. You can choose any color you can think of.

Margins on the Air are probably higher than on the Pro, at least for the base storage models, so they may be trying to nudge people to the Air.

I'm pretty sure at least in the last 2 years they were kinda limited in colors they could do because titanium is difficult to inject with color.

Before that they used stainless steel, I think they wanted to differentiate the frame from the non-Pro lineup to seem more "premium"

But this year I guess they finally gave in and just use aluminum on the Pros and now they're free to color however they want.