Apple’s New Era Unfolds

Time magazine sat down with John Ternus, Greg Joswiak, and a handful of other Apple executives to talk iPhone Duo, AI, and the early days of Ternus as CEO.

I talked with Andrew Chow, who wrote the profile. I am quoted in the piece.

Not much has been et). This profile is 100% right with its framing of Ternus believing in Apple's design-first culture.

apple.news/AkG5c8NOEToKWQ…

Just realized I didn’t think about the iPhone Duo’s lack of Face ID once today because the phone automatically unlocks with Apple Watch.

It took years, but Apple now offers an extensive lineup of HW, apps, and services aimed at the TVs in our home. The latest offering: four-speaker surround sound for your TV with HomePods (via the new Apple TV 4K). In the Above Avalon article below, I examine Apple’s renewed pitch for our TVs. We also revisit the infamous Apple television set topic.

So now Netflix is going so far as to support new Apple hardware before it even launches.

What could have possibly changed in the marketplace to usher in such a user-friendly, accommodative stance from Netflix?

Related: Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters’ Last Stand at Netflix
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For those of us who know a thing or two about Apple, it’s been easy to see right through the Mark Gurman experience like swiss cheese. At this point, he’s a charcuterie of wound up anti-Apple biased laced with egocentrism. You aren’t his audience. Instead, he caters to former yees with axes to grind and stock options at competitors to vest.

Gurman definitely doesn’t want people to remember what he had to say about the iPhone Duo launch just a few days ago when he went on and on about how the launch was a complete and total disaster. Screenshots from his article are found below. If these were tweets, he would have deleted them by now. His built-in anti-Apple schtick is undeniable as he claims Apple only cared about meeting Wall Street estimates when planning the iPhone Duo launch. The egocentrism then kicks in when he, a master supply chain expert, gives Apple advice on what they should have done with the iPhone Duo launch.

One. big. joke.

There *is* a market for what I call Apple cynicism analysis and reporting. You don’t write and talk about Apple based on what’s actually happening, but rather through a cynical lens in which Apple is portrayed as a fumbling idiot making one mistake after another. It’s because of luck that they always manage to somehow live to see another day (just to make more mistakes). In addition to some reporters, certain newsletters are built on this premise. Even though cynicism analysis is wrong, some people don’t care. These people enjoy bathing in Apple cynicism regardless of how out of touch with reality it may be.

This past Wednesday, Meta kicked off 3Q26 earnings season for Big Tech. Meta may be the best example of a Big Tech company in which the top of the income statement looks impressive but things begin to change as you may your way down towards operating income. I discussed this in my newest Above Avalon article, found below. In addition, I went over the latest Muse user and engagement disclosures from Meta. Needless to say, things are not what they seem if using X as some kind of market barometer.

We probably should have a discussion regarding iPhone Duo reviewers who made a big deal about third-party apps not being optimized and ready to update a few days prior to Duo’s launch. Why base so much of a review on what was so clearly and obviously a temporary issue? Why not just state: Third-party developers will need to optimize their apps for this form factor and that process is ongoing. The whole thing screams manufactured outrage to me. Reviewers wanting to say certain things in order to avoid being called biased towards Apple.

I cringe whenever a gadget reviewer feels compelled to say if a product should be bought or not. That’s not your job in 2026. Your job is to share your thoughts about the device. No one cares if you think the device is worthy of someone else's money. You aren’t even in a position to be making that call.

Receiving a fair amount of "I'm already able to do that on my ____" replies to my tweet below.

1) Some of the intrigue found with the use case shown below is the Duo's display size. While you can certainly have something like this on a larger display, a lot is lost in translation. There is something about having both your hands positioned as if engaging with a game controller that jumps out to you. It's not as intriguing on a large iPad because your hands aren't as close together. Also, when done, the Duo folds into a much smaller footprint. iPads don't fold...yet.

2) People need to realize that foldables were never a thing in the U.S. prior to iPhone Duo. Sales never amounted to much. Zero buzz. Some Duo gadget reviewers talked way too much about Samsung foldables as if consumers have kept notes for every foldable that's been released to date. Honestly, people don't care about that. They don't even care how the Duo is better than prior foldables because prior foldable are irrelevant to them. People are interested in what you can do with Apple's first foldable device.

It is absolutely wild that Apple had two huge global iPhone launches with all of the accompanying craziness, queues, etc. within a month of each other.

Did you wait in line for iPhone Duo this morning? What are you seeing? Enough units? What was overall tone? What are people in line saying and thinking?

This kind of stuff is going to drive people to an iPhone Duo.

The iPhone Duo is quite effective at grabbing people's interest. Easily beats the iPhone X, the first iPhone to lack a home button.

Apple is really rolling out the red carpet for tomorrow’s iPhone Duo launch. Why? They don’t want to limp into foldables given what’s in the product pipeline.

Using Touch ID to unlock an iPhone Duo.

Bonus: @AboveAvalon and @InsideOrchard are optimized for iPhone Duo.

Thanks to Joel T over on Threads for reminding me Apple Watch can also be used to unlock the iPhone Duo. That method does work, although I find it a little bit slower than using Touch ID.

Do you see an iPhone Duo crease?

Here’s a look at the iPhone Duo Folio with Kickstand ($129). My unboxing ended up providing some surprises for me…

Here a few quick usability and accessibility tests for iPhone Duo.