Apple isn’t setting the iPhone Duo for maximum success from day one.
Oh, it’s an impressive feat of hardware engineering. While I don’t want one as my main carry iPhone, I’d love to play with one. But I’m a-okay with the iPhone 17 Pro’s form factor, and when I use a big screen (like my iPad’s), I have the device in a keyboard case 100 percent of the time. The Duo looks really cool, and like it’s not for me. That’s okay.
But all those early adopters who rush to own the iPhone Duo the moment it’s available — and I’m sure there will be plenty of them! — are going to be annoyed by the fact that the third-party apps they use aren’t ready to embrace the Duo’s screens.
That’s because Apple still hasn’t released updated versions of Xcode for developers to use to develop for the iPhone Duo. That updated version will, by necessity, include an iPhone Duo simulator, so developers can see exactly what their apps look like on those devices. It’s really, really hard to build for a device you can’t see; it’s even harder when you can’t even run the device in a simulator.
It’s coming. Apple has promised updated versions of Xcode to address this exact need. But the phones are shipping on October 23, and that’s now at best a month away.
We saw from Apple’s demos that the Duo is a whole new approach to iOS interfaces, and that app layouts must change and adapt to embrace the space and form factor. That’s more than a month of work to get right.
Apps that aren’t updated for the Duo will still work, but they’ll look funny, and obviously not updated. Some developers will update apps faster than others.
But the impact will be whatever the opposite of a halo effect is. Early owners will be annoyed at the developers who haven’t yet updated their apps. They’ll be annoyed that Apple shipped a phone where non-Apple apps look dopey on the big screen. And developers of course will be annoyed because — well, because we’re always annoyed. No, because we have to work fast to keep users happy, even though we all know there won’t be nearly as many Duo users as there are users of all other modern iPhones.
On the flip side, developers know Duo users are ones who are willing to spend money on exciting stuff, so we want to develop for them.
I understand why getting these tools ready for developers takes time. But I think it’s a misstep from Apple to leave developers mostly hamstrung this long for such a big product launch.