And in that case, a folding phone is huge! Having played with one that my parent use, it's such an upgrade for reading/scrolling experience. When we all are spending so much time on the phone (that's a separate discussion, but it is the reality).

Funny how this thing isn't even announced yet and the fanpeople are already glazing Apple over it :p

I daily a Surface Duo 2 as my car-relegated phone, running Android 12 (which I kinda regret upgrading from 10) and loaded with offline maps and plenty of cached music, and it has never been an issue when an app doesn't gracefully handle being stretched across both panes. Some of them aren't ideal to use that way with the bezel in the middle if they put interactable UI elements there, which is what the SDK support update is surely about, but I have never ever seen an app fail to work like this blurb is worded to claim.

There's a toggle in the application manager for whether or not an app should open dual-pane, and single-pane is the default anyway because why wouldn't one want to multitask?

Excellent. Now that you have a supply chain for small screens again, please use that same cover screen to make an updated mini phone! I've sat in patient silence waiting for this exact moment!

Where apple has a significant opportunity here is the software side though. Google unfortunately doesn't seem to be too interested in exploring UI concepts with the Fold, leaving that to OnePlus and Samsung, both of which have imo better multitasking experiences than the Pixel Fold. Apple making an iPhone that becomes an iPad would probably be enough for them to win significant marketshare, but I hope they use this opportunity to do some interesting things with UI beyond what the iPad can do.

"Samsung has this cool foldable phone—they seem to be taking the design mantle away from Apple these days."

"I hear this VR thing is the future of computing. Why isn't Apple in this space?"

I suspect even in the Jobs-era you might point to the iPad as Apple being pressured into responding with a product in the tablet space.

The Apple Watch a reaction to the Pebble?

Last night I opened it to find the inside screen having dead pixels in the center by the bend.

I love foldable phones. I use it all the time in both modes, but now I'm currently procrastinating looking up my best buy warranty plan specifics.

For a small percentage of mobile superusers, I really do believe foldables are the future. Having the ability to use desktop mode by default, or multitask, is huge.

The cost of the iPad Mini + my phone was like $600 and the folds - even the 6th gen and above - are super unreliable, so right now that seems like the best play.

When a mobile device manufacturer (samsung, hauwei, now apple) makes a foldable, I get the impression they're running out of ideas with the "slate" form factor and are trying to stimulate sales.

Personally, I would want that R&D spend and innovation to go to more sustainable materials, longer lasting devices, and easily repairable parts to extend the devices useful life.

It's all the benefits of a tablet with the weight/thickness of a cell.

Example: maps shows both the map and listing detail.

Example: messaging/email apps show the message/channel list and the current message

Example: virtual keyboard has plenty of space for punctuation, emojis, etc.

Example: games and multimedia are perfectly pleasant to view, even for hours.

Example: I used the remote-control app to take photos from my Sony and Fuji cameras, and the live preview was large enough to easily check for tack-sharpness, which is hard even in the camera viewfinder.

(If those under 17 got attached to foldables, it would be an enduring franchise.)

For those of us in between, I'd love it if my foldable when unfolded were finally the OS of choice - iPadOS or iOS or even macOS. It would be the hub for hub-and-spoke devices...

It's an impossible ask, but perhaps....

This is right, of course, and pretty obvious I think. But a part of me also thinks that we're still not good at it (or are not good at it anymore). At the very least, the tradeoff is a huge increase in UI complexity. It was so, so easy to design UIs with Hypercard when you knew it was going to run on a 512×342 display.

I'll guess it won't be a Vision Pro level disaster, but most people will skip this device unless the price drops substantially.

Though, I have yet to find myself in a situation that I wanted to use an iPad and I was not already in a position to be carrying one. I use mine for work and I am already carrying a laptop, throwing in an iPad is a very small addition to my bag.

Any time I have just been out, was never a situation I felt like I needed something like an iPad. Throw in that this looks like it will be the size of a Mini vs the 13" pro that I use now, it puts it in an awkward position. And I could justify the rumored $2k cost to replace 2 devices that cost more than that combined.

It will be interesting to see how it does in practice, but also what it does to the separation of iOS and iPadOS.

Apple foldable is -100 interest.

My guess is one of two ways. Not address it at all. Or tell you that you don't see what you really see.

its both iphone mini (yay!! mini iphone again) and ipad mini (yay!! hueg screen for bedtime youtube) in one device presumably with a cpu powerful enough to run cyberpunk 2077. what a world :)

I usually am a pro Apple consumer but how many high end users actually want this form factor?

That said, I really wonder if this could be a shark jump move. I think one of iOS app's biggest wins is that developers have a relatively narrow set of form factors to target, that making bespoke interface layouts is the obvious choice & that that really allows careful crafting. I'm overselling this case a bit, but it feels like Apple is saying: ok, now make your apps responsive. Add more. Some folks will figure out each layout nicely, but I feel like in many cases, the responsive layouts are going to be less well crafted, not have such thought out intracacies.

I love responsiveness, but it generally pushes layout complexity down, requires simpler / plainer design languages, in my view. This pushes away from bespoke careful craft, and towards mechanized systems, and there's some design loss in this push.

It broke like four times under warranty because the crease got gummed up with their glue strips in the summer or it got brittle when I travelled to Greenland because of the cold in the winter, it felt uncomfortable and often moved in the pocket you put it into in a way that would annoy you every time you sat down somewhere.

But once you pull it out, something magical happens. Foldables are still one of those items you will rarely see in the wild, and it peaks the curiosity of people in a way that will make them come over and ask questions.

You see them touch it really carefully and open it really, really slowly because they are afraid they might break it, and suddenly you have this magical, foldable screen right in front of you that turns this heavy slab into a form factor known by anyone who ever held a book in their life.

When it snaps open or shut with the satisfying noise and haptic feedback, it makes them genuinely happy and smile, and watching different people having the same experience over and over again is kind of satisfying and in a way justified the price for me alone.

I am sure the Apple foldable will have its downsides and is heavily overpriced, and if you buy it in the EU, you won’t be able to use half the features, but I am still going to get one because I will have a lot of joy watching people interact with new technology for the first time when I travel, and I love listening to how they think it could improve their life or how and for what they would get one themselves.

I remember so many Apple developers saying this was why Apple was better than Android. The HN archives are full of such comments.

Not that I care for either company, as they both lord over our lives and limit our freedoms.

Maybe like

WWDC 2026: Platform sample app hints at future foldable