Back to News
Advertisement
Advertisement

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion Sentiment

63% Positive

Analyzed from 1084 words in the discussion.

Trending Topics

#iphone#duo#app#apple#apps#ipad#support#vision#pro#building

Discussion (38 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

yreg23 minutes ago
Finally! So we have a little over a month between getting the simulator and first customers running our apps in Duo.

I expect that most apps will look rather broken on release, but it will be smoothed out eventually.

comandillos8 minutes ago
"You are a experienced iOS Software Engineer, your task is to migrate this application to the iPhone Duo layout...
thih92 minutes ago
“Here is your iOS app migrated to Surface Duo…”

Tongue half in cheek, my point is that agents may be unreliable with fresh libraries.

reaperducer21 minutes ago
I expect that most apps will look rather broken on release, but it will be smoothed out eventually.

Sadly, many apps will continue to look rather broken.

There are still thousands of apps that still look wrong on iPad 16 years after its release, even with the 2x button pushed, for no good reason.

I think I heard that Instygram only recently figured it out.

pkamb15 minutes ago
Instagram released a Reels-first iPad app that is much, much worse than the old iPhone-on-iPad app.
c-hendricks12 minutes ago
To me that's said more about Instagram than the feasibility of building an app for a tablet.
ar_lan33 minutes ago
I think this is my main hesitation with picking up the Duo on the first release. I have no doubt the build quality is exceptional, but the chance that the apps I use are not well optimized for this new form factor is pretty high in the first year of its release.

I don't think they won't work, but I anticipate oddities to appear for a while, especially for older applications.

puelocesar26 minutes ago
I’m not sure about this, we already support resizing on our app for a while now because of our iPad/mac catalyst version, so I fail to see how different it would be on the Duo.

I assume other apps will have have the same, since our team is super small compared to everyone else.

Kwpolska15 minutes ago
The small screen is so small they had to move controls to the right, I would expect glitches because of that, especially for custom controls.
OCTAGRAM38 minutes ago
I presume this Xcode 27.1 beta will not want to launch on our Mavericks Forever, the last Mac OS we actually like and use.
CharlesW36 minutes ago
Correct.
CameronBangaabout 2 hours ago
Now available for testing apps on the iPhone Duo!

Here are some screenshots from getting my own app compiled, if anyone is interested:

https://bsky.app/profile/cameronbanga.com/post/3mvsrxk5q7b2j

https://bsky.app/profile/cameronbanga.com/post/3mvss5wmxej2l

inshard32 minutes ago
Waiting for my coding agent to have zero idea what I mean when I say build for iPhone duo (due to knowledge cutoffs in pre-training; happened when Liquid Glass came out previously).
khouryabout 1 hour ago
I'm just gonna ignore this thing and continue as if it never existed. Worked with Vision Pro that no body uses and will work with this.
devinabout 1 hour ago
I'm not fangirling over it, but comparing it to Vision Pro is ridiculous.
matsemann43 minutes ago
But will you gain anything by building for it? Will you see noticeably more users or people choosing another alternative because you didn't specifically building the app for Duo? At least if it doesn't outright break.
wat100004 minutes ago
As a user, this attitude makes me sad.

As a professional programmer, it at least gratifies me to know this is the attitude I'm competing against.

cschep12 minutes ago
I would get a little bit of joy if a duo user noticed the effort I put into making my app work well on their device. Why put effort into anything? Your take is bordering dangerously on cynicism. :)
busymom05 minutes ago
Duo users also likely have disposable income to spend on in app purchases, maybe click on ads to purchase things, and other monetization. So I do think it's worth building for it.
reaperducer15 minutes ago
But will you gain anything by building for it?

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Will you see noticeably more users or people choosing another alternative because you didn't specifically building the app for Duo?

I haven't done iOS development in a long time, but my understanding is that if your iPhone app is designed well and uses all of Apple's recommended methods, adjusting for different screen sizes and orientations is fairly easy.

If you decided to go cheap/easy/dumb from the outset, then you made your bed, and now you get to lie in it.

BiteCode_dev38 minutes ago
It is exotic, and bring only a little to the table for a stiff price increase.
whatever1about 1 hour ago
It is indeed a niche product. Its price reflects the sales expectations of Apple.

But its form factor has been validated for almost a decade now from other manufacturers. So iPhone Duo will do fine. It will not surpass a slab iPhone but fine.

Vision Pro was a completely new beast, the hardware was not there, the market was not there.

isatty16 minutes ago
I know exactly one person who has a foldable phone and I live in sf. I’ve never even considered getting one and I like new tech.

I’m not doubting that there’s demand for it but I wonder who/where?

reaperducer14 minutes ago
I’m not doubting that there’s demand for it but I wonder who/where?

I spend a lot of time in hospitals, and I see doctors with them.

That may also explain why Apple isn't too worried about the price.

fg13729 minutes ago
The form factor of Vision Pro has also been validated for a decade from other manufacturers.

And that means nothing. Because other manufacturers are not doing well either.

CharlesWabout 1 hour ago
> It is indeed a niche product.

It's worth noting that "niche" in this case means ~10M in its first year, comparted to an estimated 250M Apple smartphone shipments in 2027. So far, Apple has sold ~600K Vision Pro in total.

Also, supporting Duo is not an enormous lift if you're already supporting resizable windows, as developers are required to do for OS 27.

dozerlyabout 1 hour ago
The price, hardware, and market was not there for the Vision Pro. There was no reason to buy a VR headset that couldn’t play games.
testing22321about 1 hour ago
> Its price reflects the sales expectations of Apple.

People famously said that of the first iPhone, expensive at the time.

Then about the $1k iPhone X.

Apple have made phones a fashion accessory and status symbol. I won’t be surprised if the Duo sells extreme well, even by iPhone standards.

selectodude44 minutes ago
My only concern is that they'll sell out so quickly for so long that I'll have to wait for the iPhone Duo Two-o because they won't be easy to get until like May 2027.
Razenganabout 1 hour ago
I had the 1st-gen Vision Pro, and then sold it.

I really wanted to use it as my primary computing display, but as is almost always the case with Apple, the amazing hardware was hamstrung by the crippled OS.

Even just being able to use it as a generic display i.e. with a Nintendo Switch would have been amazing.

yieldcrvabout 1 hour ago
taking the Apple strategy with the Apple ecosystem, genius
busymom0about 1 hour ago
Developer here. Apple often rejects app submissions if the app doesn't look optimized for some iPhone device or iPad device. So won't be surprised if they reject new apps and updates for not being optimized for the Duo. This could be their way of getting developers to comply.
devinabout 1 hour ago
That seems like a tough road. They've never been able to enforce that iPhone app makers build an iPad-compatible version or vice versa, and this looks exactly like that scenario.
CharlesW31 minutes ago
It's mostly enforced, the only exception being apps with a legitimate iPhone-only hardware dependency.

iPhone apps must function on iPad in iPhone-compatibility mode, apps must support window resizability as of OS 27, and apps can't detect iPad and refuse to run. And I don't think this is new, but setting the target to iPhone-only doesn't prevent iPhone apps from running on iPad.

isodevabout 1 hour ago
It really feels quite irrelevant. Also, the amount of work to support this with zero support from Apple since WWDC is just absurd. And even if one does the work, Apple will just sherlock the cool features into their apps.
CharlesW36 minutes ago
> Also, the amount of work to support this with zero support from Apple since WWDC is just absurd.

Resources:

https://developer.apple.com/search/?q=iphone%20duo

Axiom: https://charleswiltgen.github.io/Axiom/ (my FOSS project, updated for iPhone Duo)

isodev3 minutes ago
What is your point? That they eventually released something? The simulator came out today... on Friday afternoon lol
nozzlegear43 minutes ago
Why does it feel irrelevant? And what kind of support should Apple be providing beyond releasing Xcode and an iPhone Duo simulator?