Apple has produced a series of videos for developers showing how their apps will look on the iPhone Duo, and without modification, they could look really ugly.
As it always has, Apple has encouraged developers to use its latest Xcode development tools without quite telling them why things were changing. Consequently, it now says that if developers have worked to the current Xcode 27, their apps will need little work to look good on the iPhone Duo.
Really they won't absolutely need any work, as the existing builds will be displayed full screen on the front, and almost full screen inside. In the first of a short series of videos, Apple shows that apps will be ranged left so that they take up most of the display, but avoid the camera section.
When developers rebuild their apps using the new Xcode 27.1, they get finer controls. Their apps can use the entire width of the inner screen, just as every app shown in the launch video did.
That new Xcode 27.1 is now available. It includes an updated preview module that lets developers see how their apps will look in all four layouts:
- Closed portrait
- Closed landscape
- Open horizontal in landscape
- Open vertical in portrait
Shaming old apps
Where apps will not look good at all is when they are old, or developers have chosen not to follow Apple's guidelines. It's always a trade-off with development because often Apple's new guides initially don't have any obvious benefit.
It's only when Apple then introduces, for instance, larger screens, that it proves to have been worth the effort. In this case, it's going to be strikingly obvious when an app needs updating.
While they will display reasonably on the outer screen, on the opened-up inner one, they will look poor. They'll retain the same size and aspect ration they always had, but this means the app will sit in the center of the screen with huge black bars left and right.
Back when the iPad first came out, Apple included an option to automatically scale up iPhone apps for the larger screen. It didn't work that well, it always looked particularly poor, and Apple has not done anything like that again.
Apps will be updated
During the launch, John Ternus criticized previous foldables as being like "two phones awkwardly stuck together." He said that "movies are boxed in by oversized black bars, making a large screen feel much smaller."
All the layouts and orientations that apps will now need to support on the iPhone Duo - image credit: Apple.
That's what app developers, and so users, will get unless they have updated their apps already. Or unless they go further and update them further with Xcode 27.1.
At first, though, there are going to be many apps that do not take advantage of the new screen size. Based on previous experience, Microsoft may take years to update some apps, too.
But the majority of apps that are currently being actively developed will surely rush to take better advantage of the new iPhone Duo. Because it is going to be so plain to users when they have not.
