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As a recent Android foldable phone owner (Google Pixel), I'm excited that the Duo will get developers to actually design apps for foldables. Right now, some app

by anonu 7d ago

As a recent Android foldable phone owner (Google Pixel), I'm excited that the Duo will get developers to actually design apps for foldables. Right now, some apps don't work at all and others are just stretched. I feel a better use of the screen space is around the corner for both Android foldable and Duo users.

etchalon 7d ago
Developers will design apps for Apple's foldables.
- bel8 7d ago
  Cross-platform is a thing. If anyting, Apple stands to gain from what was already developed for Android. Like https://developer.android.com/phones-tablets-foldables https://developer.android.com/phones-tablets-foldables Which targets iOS also: https://kotlinlang.org/compose-multiplatform https://kotlinlang.org/compose-multiplatform
  - balder1991 7d ago
    It is a thing to some extent, but there’s also a correlation of companies that do cross-platform for simple apps being cheap on development, and making it work very well on some specific platform isn’t their priority.
  - raydev 7d ago
    React Native and Flutter are way more popular than KMM/CM, and yet both have struggled to support even small iOS visual changes in a timely fashion. This is ignoring the fact that developers who choose these cross-platform frameworks don't seem to care much about quality and general polish.
    - deleted 6d ago
      [deleted]
  - Danox 6d ago
    Apple will gain more from their own existing ecosystems, all five of them most developers within the Apple ecosystems if they pretty much followed all the rules most of their software will work on day one with very minimum changes, in short, they will be 90% of the way there.
- can16358p 7d ago
  Thought it will bring "desiging for foldables" onto the table which would benefit Android foldables too.
- jaffa2 6d ago
  What would be REALLY vaulable would be a 141% enlarge mode. Ie since the screens are the same ratio there is no reason that when open it could just display exactly the same except larger. This is a piece of piss to program if they haven’t already put it in accessibility settings. This feature alone would drive certain demographics to this device.
seanalltogether 7d ago
> "A large fraction of the flaws in software development are due to programmers not fully understanding all the possible states their code may execute in." This is a quote from John Carmack and should sit over every developers monitor. At the same time, OS designers should be doing everything in their power to reduce the number of states a developer has to think about.
- torginus 7d ago
  Like one of the things I hate about frontend development - and admire people who do this professionally - is the stupid and arbitrary rules browsers impose on you. 'You may only play audio if such and such conditions are met. However these are different based on browser and platform. Good luck making a solution fitting all these.' 'The browser might lie about what's the available screen estate is, but only sometimes' 'There is a perfect API for what you wanna do, however it's not in Safari' And a testament on how obscure and arcane knowledge is on doing things right is that I thought there would be some npm packages that do these things for me, but no - you have to hunt around for solutions and fix things yourself. And LLMs are completely useless and confidently wrong mostly about everything involving this.
  - ifwinterco 7d ago
    Yep fundamentally different from back end because you don't control the client. In theory the client can do literally anything (for example, someone could be using an ancient version or have some features voluntarily disabled) and you have to decide which things you're going to handle
  - niutech 4d ago
    Blame evil actors which autoplay ad videos in popups on many websites. And Apple devs for not implementing various Web APIs in Safari.
kccqzy 7d ago
It would depend on the sales volume. For a long time the iPad has been available and many developers simply are content to have a stretched version of their iPhone app on their iPad, because the sales volume isn’t sufficient. If foldable phones sell like iPads, this could very well happen to them too.
- sajithdilshan 7d ago
  Exactly, I remember until recently even instagram didn’t have a proper iPad app that uses the complete screen space
- benoau 7d ago
  The rumours say 10 million iPhone Duo are being made, there are hundreds of millions of iPads so the numbers might not sway any opinions for a while. I think they need to aggressively court developers, just give a buttload of advertising credit to nice apps that predate AI slop if they add compatibility, what does it cost Apple to "give" you $10k or $20k credit in their own ad system... But the rumours also say they are going to squeeze the App Store for higher margins so maybe it is too late.
- starky 7d ago
  I still think that there are very few examples of apps that utilize tablets well even among the apps that aren't stretched phone apps. I don't know if it is the ergonomics of the large screen or what, but the experience of using a tablet has always been pretty bad in my opinion. Maybe the folding phone form factor will inspire some better UI/UX for apps.
  - muddi900 6d ago
    The slack screenshot on the Duo was one of the ugliest things I have ever see.
  - heylittlepan 5d ago
    [flagged]
Readerium 7d ago
I don't want to be pessimistic, but I can see a single app now showing two different feeds to doomscroll.
- Gigachad 7d ago
  Subway surfers and tiktok at the same time. The future is now chud.
- sajithdilshan 7d ago
  Instagram posts on one side and reels on the other side
  - 72deluxe 6d ago
    Perhaps they'll dedicate one screen to advertising so that you can't scroll past them? The horror
- 305superuser 4d ago
  Doomscrolls on the left and doomscrolls comments on the right.
cosmic_cheese 7d ago
As a dev who regularly works on apps for both platforms, I think one of the main causes for poor support for form factors beyond a standard smartphone on Android boils down to Google refusing to give developers fully fleshed out APIs to support said form factors. Instead, they just hand you some poorly documented loose parts in a box and tell you, “good luck” and you’re on your own to fill the gaps. Compose is a little better about giving the tools you need than the preceding Android Framework, but it’s still much more “assembly required” and “batteries not included” than the UIKit+SwiftUI world is. Many iOS apps built using system components will behave 90%+ correctly on the Duo by just compiling against the iOS 27.1 SDK because there are well supported methods of doing things that Apple can leverage to reduce dev work. In contrast, on Android there's 10 ways of doing anything none of which get full-throated support (on top of all the other ways devs invent), and so any time it gains support for a new form factor almost nothing is automatic and it all falls on the devs’ shoulders.
- fchicken 7d ago
  > Instead, they just hand you some poorly documented loose parts in a box and tell you, “good luck” and you’re on your own to fill the gaps. Google is fundamentally a spy company, not a product company
  - bigyabai 7d ago
    All of FAANG is, if we're being cynically reductive.
    - dbmnt 7d ago
      Apple has a very different business model than Google (Alphabet). It's not even close to the same in terms of how they make most of their money.
      - bigyabai 7d ago
        I don't disagree. They're still a spy company, if we're being cynically reductive.
dansquizsoft 7d ago
> As a recent Android foldable phone owner (Google Pixel) "There are dozens of us!" (not me though, I wouldn't buy a Pixel foldable)
baby 7d ago
Same here. I ditched the google pixel fold after a year because the hardware had some issues, also tbh I prefer the iOS ecosystem. I’m so glad this is coming out.
catlifeonmars 7d ago
> a better use of the screen space is around the corner I see what you did there :)
internet2000 7d ago
> I'm excited that the Duo will get developers to actually design apps for foldables. For Apple foldables yes. Not Android.
topherPedersen 7d ago
My immediate thought seeing this design was how expensive this is going to be for companies to get their existing apps to look good on this thing.
- b3ing 6d ago
  With AI that will be reduced, because the future is AI designed apps, just like sign companies slap Arial, Times New Roman on signs and others use wix/wordpress/squarespace for their company page
bch 6d ago
> I feel a better use of the screen space is around the corner :)
yerald 6d ago
It seems like apps by default fill one screen or the over in landscape mode, while by default they fill the whole screen in portrait, which is a nice setup that means that phone apps will mostly just work, which is nice. Some developers will customize how their interface works on the passport style ratio over the narrower design of current iPhone, like adding side controls, which will be nice, but not strictly necessary so smaller devs won’t need to do much. I do think the dominance of iPads really helps too compared to Android, as iOS users largely expect iOS apps to support phone, tablet, and laptop style use cases. So even when devs don’t do much to support the Duo, or take a long time to do so, work they’ve already done to support iPad screen sizes/ratios and the windowed multi-tasking setup on iPadOS will mean apps already handle some of the demands of the Duo, since even apps that generally prioritize phone use include the basics for iPad use.
lolive 5d ago
I only hope that apps that were iOS16+ compatible will stay so. Updating my iPad because there is a new marketing trick from Apple is NOT something i would like.

by anonu 7d ago

etchalon 7d ago

Developers will design apps for Apple's foldables.

bel8 7d ago
Cross-platform is a thing. If anyting, Apple stands to gain from what was already developed for Android. Like https://developer.android.com/phones-tablets-foldables https://developer.android.com/phones-tablets-foldables Which targets iOS also: https://kotlinlang.org/compose-multiplatform https://kotlinlang.org/compose-multiplatform
- balder1991 7d ago
  It is a thing to some extent, but there’s also a correlation of companies that do cross-platform for simple apps being cheap on development, and making it work very well on some specific platform isn’t their priority.
- raydev 7d ago
  React Native and Flutter are way more popular than KMM/CM, and yet both have struggled to support even small iOS visual changes in a timely fashion. This is ignoring the fact that developers who choose these cross-platform frameworks don't seem to care much about quality and general polish.
  - deleted 6d ago
    [deleted]
- Danox 6d ago
  Apple will gain more from their own existing ecosystems, all five of them most developers within the Apple ecosystems if they pretty much followed all the rules most of their software will work on day one with very minimum changes, in short, they will be 90% of the way there.
can16358p 7d ago
Thought it will bring "desiging for foldables" onto the table which would benefit Android foldables too.
jaffa2 6d ago
What would be REALLY vaulable would be a 141% enlarge mode. Ie since the screens are the same ratio there is no reason that when open it could just display exactly the same except larger. This is a piece of piss to program if they haven’t already put it in accessibility settings. This feature alone would drive certain demographics to this device.

seanalltogether 7d ago

> "A large fraction of the flaws in software development are due to programmers not fully understanding all the possible states their code may execute in." This is a quote from John Carmack and should sit over every developers monitor. At the same time, OS designers should be doing everything in their power to reduce the number of states a developer has to think about.

torginus 7d ago
Like one of the things I hate about frontend development - and admire people who do this professionally - is the stupid and arbitrary rules browsers impose on you. 'You may only play audio if such and such conditions are met. However these are different based on browser and platform. Good luck making a solution fitting all these.' 'The browser might lie about what's the available screen estate is, but only sometimes' 'There is a perfect API for what you wanna do, however it's not in Safari' And a testament on how obscure and arcane knowledge is on doing things right is that I thought there would be some npm packages that do these things for me, but no - you have to hunt around for solutions and fix things yourself. And LLMs are completely useless and confidently wrong mostly about everything involving this.
- ifwinterco 7d ago
  Yep fundamentally different from back end because you don't control the client. In theory the client can do literally anything (for example, someone could be using an ancient version or have some features voluntarily disabled) and you have to decide which things you're going to handle
- niutech 4d ago
  Blame evil actors which autoplay ad videos in popups on many websites. And Apple devs for not implementing various Web APIs in Safari.

kccqzy 7d ago

It would depend on the sales volume. For a long time the iPad has been available and many developers simply are content to have a stretched version of their iPhone app on their iPad, because the sales volume isn’t sufficient. If foldable phones sell like iPads, this could very well happen to them too.

sajithdilshan 7d ago
Exactly, I remember until recently even instagram didn’t have a proper iPad app that uses the complete screen space
benoau 7d ago
The rumours say 10 million iPhone Duo are being made, there are hundreds of millions of iPads so the numbers might not sway any opinions for a while. I think they need to aggressively court developers, just give a buttload of advertising credit to nice apps that predate AI slop if they add compatibility, what does it cost Apple to "give" you $10k or $20k credit in their own ad system... But the rumours also say they are going to squeeze the App Store for higher margins so maybe it is too late.
starky 7d ago
I still think that there are very few examples of apps that utilize tablets well even among the apps that aren't stretched phone apps. I don't know if it is the ergonomics of the large screen or what, but the experience of using a tablet has always been pretty bad in my opinion. Maybe the folding phone form factor will inspire some better UI/UX for apps.
- muddi900 6d ago
  The slack screenshot on the Duo was one of the ugliest things I have ever see.
- heylittlepan 5d ago
  [flagged]

Readerium 7d ago

I don't want to be pessimistic, but I can see a single app now showing two different feeds to doomscroll.

Gigachad 7d ago
Subway surfers and tiktok at the same time. The future is now chud.
sajithdilshan 7d ago
Instagram posts on one side and reels on the other side
- 72deluxe 6d ago
  Perhaps they'll dedicate one screen to advertising so that you can't scroll past them? The horror
305superuser 4d ago
Doomscrolls on the left and doomscrolls comments on the right.

cosmic_cheese 7d ago

As a dev who regularly works on apps for both platforms, I think one of the main causes for poor support for form factors beyond a standard smartphone on Android boils down to Google refusing to give developers fully fleshed out APIs to support said form factors. Instead, they just hand you some poorly documented loose parts in a box and tell you, “good luck” and you’re on your own to fill the gaps. Compose is a little better about giving the tools you need than the preceding Android Framework, but it’s still much more “assembly required” and “batteries not included” than the UIKit+SwiftUI world is. Many iOS apps built using system components will behave 90%+ correctly on the Duo by just compiling against the iOS 27.1 SDK because there are well supported methods of doing things that Apple can leverage to reduce dev work. In contrast, on Android there's 10 ways of doing anything none of which get full-throated support (on top of all the other ways devs invent), and so any time it gains support for a new form factor almost nothing is automatic and it all falls on the devs’ shoulders.

fchicken 7d ago
> Instead, they just hand you some poorly documented loose parts in a box and tell you, “good luck” and you’re on your own to fill the gaps. Google is fundamentally a spy company, not a product company
- bigyabai 7d ago
  All of FAANG is, if we're being cynically reductive.
  - dbmnt 7d ago
    Apple has a very different business model than Google (Alphabet). It's not even close to the same in terms of how they make most of their money.
    - bigyabai 7d ago
      I don't disagree. They're still a spy company, if we're being cynically reductive.

dansquizsoft 7d ago

> As a recent Android foldable phone owner (Google Pixel) "There are dozens of us!" (not me though, I wouldn't buy a Pixel foldable)

baby 7d ago

Same here. I ditched the google pixel fold after a year because the hardware had some issues, also tbh I prefer the iOS ecosystem. I’m so glad this is coming out.

catlifeonmars 7d ago

> a better use of the screen space is around the corner I see what you did there :)

internet2000 7d ago

> I'm excited that the Duo will get developers to actually design apps for foldables. For Apple foldables yes. Not Android.

topherPedersen 7d ago

My immediate thought seeing this design was how expensive this is going to be for companies to get their existing apps to look good on this thing.

b3ing 6d ago
With AI that will be reduced, because the future is AI designed apps, just like sign companies slap Arial, Times New Roman on signs and others use wix/wordpress/squarespace for their company page

bch 6d ago

> I feel a better use of the screen space is around the corner :)

yerald 6d ago

It seems like apps by default fill one screen or the over in landscape mode, while by default they fill the whole screen in portrait, which is a nice setup that means that phone apps will mostly just work, which is nice. Some developers will customize how their interface works on the passport style ratio over the narrower design of current iPhone, like adding side controls, which will be nice, but not strictly necessary so smaller devs won’t need to do much. I do think the dominance of iPads really helps too compared to Android, as iOS users largely expect iOS apps to support phone, tablet, and laptop style use cases. So even when devs don’t do much to support the Duo, or take a long time to do so, work they’ve already done to support iPad screen sizes/ratios and the windowed multi-tasking setup on iPadOS will mean apps already handle some of the demands of the Duo, since even apps that generally prioritize phone use include the basics for iPad use.

lolive 5d ago

I only hope that apps that were iOS16+ compatible will stay so. Updating my iPad because there is a new marketing trick from Apple is NOT something i would like.