⚡ 25OCT2026: iPhone Duo Thoughts and a Few iOS Apps I'm Digging
Initial impressions of the iPhone Duo and a bunch of apps I've been enjoying this week.
Happy Sunday, everyone!
This week, I watched (and loved) the incredible You Can See Everything, spent a lot of time playing with this iPod 25th anniversary easter egg, kicked myself for missing this Godzilla toy pre-order, loved the vibe of this relatively cheap CD player (woefully unavailable here statesite), and lucked my way into snagging a launch-day iPhone Duo (huge thanks to my buddy Craig, the creator of the excellent Frotz, for the head's up!!)
For this week's issue, I've got some initial impressions of the Duo for you, followed by a handful of iOS apps I've been playing with over the last 48 hours. I'm enjoying them on the Duo, but most of them also work great on non-folding iPhones and iPads if you're not Duo-disposed.
Note that some of the links in this issue of the Hiro Report are affiliate links and may earn me a small commission at no additional cost to you.
If you build for the web, you know the routine of resizing browser windows and squinting at dev tools, hoping your layout holds up on real devices. Views turns your Mac, iPhone, or iPad into a responsive-design workspace that shows your site at a bunch of phone, tablet, foldable, and desktop sizes side by side (including the new, admittedly funky, iPhone Duo screen sizes). Beyond just viewing, you can tap into any one of them to click links and test menus at the desired size. The part that wins me over is the support for Shortcuts and the built-in CLI: hook it up on your Mac or PC and the previews reload every time you or your agent of choice saves.
📱 iPhone Duo Random First Impressions:
My preordered Duo wasn't due to arrive until late November, but by total chance, my buddy stumbled into a midday restock at the Apple Store here in North Austin, and I was able to get one on launch day thanks to him putting my name down for a reservation and telling me to get my butt over to the store.
My initial impressions from the first few days with it are overwhelmingly positive. I love this thing. Apple's hardware team is firing on all cylinders, and this thing is a genuinely incredible feat of engineering. The fit and finish are fantastic, and the inner matte screen is just SO delightful. I even really like the new aspect ratio quite a bit.
That said, I don't think I can recommend it yet to anyone other than the most gung-ho early adopters. There are still a ton of UI quirks that I suspect will be ironed out over the coming months of iOS updates, and the return of Touch ID in place of Face ID is requiring more adaptation than I expected. The Touch ID sensor works flawlessly, but the interaction is just a lot slower and finickier. For example, I'm still not totally clear on when I should be clicking the button versus just resting my finger on it to unlock.
This is also very much a right-hander's phone. Lefties like me will have to spend a lot more time two-handing it, or get really creative with left-thumb reaches to hit the dock on the right side of the display when it's closed.
I think a lot of this will be smoothed out with hardware and software iterations in the months and years to come. In the meantime, I'm absolutely loving it... but at this point I can imagine a lot of folks will experiment with the form factor and wind up returning it because it's too big a leap from what they're used to with their iPhones.
The other thing that will drive some folks crazy is the degraded camera performance compared to iPhone Pro's. The cameras on this thing are still excellent, but my fellow pixel peepers are definitely going to want to carry around a dedicated camera with them when going out for special occasions. My early tests with it have been way better than I feared, but I do notice a slight difference in low light / indoor photos. It's not enough for me to bail on the platform by any means, but I definitely will be using my big boi camera more... which I actually see as a benefit, of sorts.
Lastly, I am inclined to agree with David Imel's take that this phone will actually have me spending less casual time on my phone because of the extra friction, while also making idle couch surfing more intentional and engrossing, by unfolding it into what's effectively an iPad mini I can carry in my pocket.
If this all sounds good to you, and you're up for developing a bunch of new muscle memory, then I highly recommend checking for in-store restocks every day. Chances are you'll be able to get one faster than a preorder would arrive.
For the curious, here's my day-one Duo gear stack:
- iPhone Duo 512GB in Midnight Blue
- Midnight Blue Apple Silicone Case (although I might swap it out for one of these Torras cases with a built-in stand/grip ring)
- Apple Pencil (USB-C)
- Aulumu MagSafe Grip Ring/Stand (although I may swap it out for one of these from Moft when they launch — I think this link gets you 10% off at Moft, by the way)
On to the good stuff!
🖥️ Tiny Computers for iPhone Duo - This is probably the first app a lot of us on the nerdier end of the Apple fandom spectrum downloaded upon getting a Duo. It's a sort of museum of tiny replica computers. You can turn your folded Duo into a miniature, functioning tabletop version of a vintage Macintosh, Commodore 64, IBM PC, Amiga 500, Windows 95 machine, ThinkPad, iMac G3, iBook G3, PowerBook G4, or Windows XP machine, with the screen on top and a clicky, working keyboard below. Each one has command lines, paint programs, and fun Easter eggs and games to check out. It's a one-time purchase and, thus far, my favorite app for demoing the Duo to others. Just delightful.
✈️ Raylie for iOS - This is a cool concept for an app — essentially a sightseeing guide for your flights. You input your flight details (via boarding pass, photo, text, etc.), and it builds an exact timeline of all the cool things you'll be able to see out your window over the course of the flight, along with which side of the plane you'll need to be on to see them. It also has a great live globe display with real cloud cover and the actual day-night line, making for something much more engaging than the usual in-flight info display.
📷 (Not Boring) Camera for iOS - I wrote about this app back when it came out. I thought it was a lot of fun, but never really used it much after the first few days. I decided to give it another try this weekend when I saw it had been updated for the iPhone Duo, and I've been having a blast with it. It lets you build your own custom 3D camera, and it has satisfyingly clicky haptic knobs for adjusting the look and feel of your photos. The viewfinder is tiny while you're shooting, which annoyed me at first, but I've come to appreciate it because you get a little bit of the delight of discovery when you look through your pictures in their full-screen glory later. If you don't like what you see, the app lets you edit and adjust all the look settings after the fact to dial your photo in just right.
📰 Panels — Comic Reader for iOS - One of my first thoughts when the Duo was announced was that I wanted to be able to read comic books on the go with it. Fortunately, my favorite DRM-free comic book reader for the iPad released a Duo-compatibility update just in time for launch. Panels lets you bring in all your folders of CBZs, CBRs, and PDFs, both local and in the cloud, and read them in style with a ton of customization options for formatting, scrolling direction, page-turn animations, and more. It's been a delight.
📷 Sundrop for iOS - If you're like me and have several tens of thousands of photos of your family in your camera roll, you'll probably appreciate this app as much as I do. Sundrop uses on-device Apple Intelligence to sort through your entire camera roll, pluck out the best photos of you and your family, and put together a fun memory, timelapse, video, collage, etc. for you every day. Apple Photos does something similar, but Sundrop is a level up, offering more creative memories, like a slideshow of side-by-side comparison photos of your kids at ages 1, 2, 3, and so on, or photos of the family at the pool over the years. It comes from the team behind the awesome reading app Matter, and it analyzes everything right on your iPhone without uploading your library. There's also an optional iCloud sync with your partner, so you finally get all the good photos they took, too. I've really enjoyed it. Using the link above gets you a free month of the app. (Warning: if your photo library is as big as mine, you may need to leave the app open for a night or two to let it fully process everything.)
That's it for this week. May your pre-orders arrive faster than expected. My thanks again to Hypercode for sponsoring this week's issue!