The annual iPhone update

I knew going into this week’s Apple Fall Event that I’d find the iPhone Duo impressive but wasn’t likely to buy one because it wouldn’t have a telephoto lens. Now that it’s been shown, that sentiment hasn’t changed but boy, it’s a very fetching device and the design team has done some incredible work to redefine the foldable smartphone — it’s full of thoughtful user experience innovations that have been lacking in Android foldables. Those guys have been doing this for over five years but without the pressure of competition, and so there aren’t even graceful transitions from one screen to the other. I didn’t know how bad things were until Cong shared screenshots, and I saw other videos of Android apps flat-out restarting when a phone is cracked open because they can’t switch screen sizes on the fly. Opening an Android foldable is like Russian roulette; you never know if your work will survive.

Meanwhile the iPhone Duo has one of those “obvious once you see it” ideas: an interaction model that treats the two screens as one surface. When closed, the outer screen appears like a transparent window ‘looking through’ to the inner screen. Unfolding the phone “adds” more screen to the left side, creating the illusion that the whole device is glass, sold with a sublime blurring animation bordering on magic. So instead of conceptually switching from one small screen to a bigger one, you’re simply expanding a screen you were already looking at, and it’s seamless rather than disorienting.

Alas, even putting the eye-watering price aside (nearly $2,500 USD in Singapore before AppleCare+), I can’t see myself jumping on this first-generation version because of the aforementioned camera compromise. Not only does it lack the Pro’s 4x optical zoom, but the Duo, like the iPhone Air, doesn’t support shooting ProRAW photos or Apple Log video. It’s rumored that the Duo’s camera sensors are smaller than even the Air’s, and more in line with the iPhone 17e’s, so that could be why.

My prediction is that next year’s Duo 2 will also have only two lenses, so as not to pull attention away from the rumored 20th anniversary iPhone, which I expect will merge the functionality of the Pro with the thin, elegant aesthetics of the Air. I’m guessing the Duo 2 will improve its two cameras, maybe add Face ID, and further improve the folding screen. So unfortunately it’ll be 2028 before I get one, because my iPhone is my primary camera these days. I have shaken off all desire for further Fujis, Leicas, and Ricohs — which I only ever used as compact point-and-shoots anyway.

So where’s that leave me this year? A silver iPhone 18 Pro Max (sadly we still get the version with a physical SIM slot and smaller battery here in Singapore), and an Apple Watch Series 12. The iPhone replaces a perfectly good silver 17 Pro Max — but don’t worry, I’ve fully justified this with boy math: it simply makes more sense to sell an iPhone early than to hold it for two years or more, and this way the upgrade costs me less than a dollar a day! The larger main camera aperture and updated Photographic Styles are exciting, but early benchmarks are putting the A20 Pro above even Apple’s own M5 chip in single-threaded performance. Coupled with a 40% faster GPU and an additional Neural Engine, these are outlandish improvements.

The Watch replaces an aging Series 8 that barely lasts a whole day now after four years. I could replace the battery and use it a while longer, but I’m keen to try this new “AI wearable” use case that was shown, like being able to invoke Siri AI on my wrist, and getting recaps of an entire day’s conversations. It’s worth noting that for people who only want silver watches that this is the second time Apple has skipped offering a silver aluminum model (the Series 7 was the first). I thought that I might get a cheaper aluminum one this year to justify an earlier upgrade next time, but since they only come in black, gray, bronze, and gold aluminum, I decided on titanium instead. IMO Apple Watches are at their best when they’re shiny.

Next week will be an eventful one because on top of setting up new devices, it’ll also be time to install the new ‘27 OS updates for Mac and Vision Pro. I’m looking forward to macOS Golden Gate, which will fix the egregious misgivings of former design lead Alan Dye, who I hope is gumming up the works over at his new employer, Meta. And on the Vision Pro, I can’t wait to revisit my library of panoramic photos, taken over the years, as 3D spatial scenes that feel like how I remember them.

Finally, I thought John Ternus did a great job at this, his first event as CEO, and appreciated the callback to Steve Jobs’s “digital hub” strategy for the Mac — this time reframing the AI-enabled iPhone as an “intelligent personal hub”. The text was a little drier than I’d like, but his comfortable, easygoing energy and connection to the products was evident throughout. It was also good to see newly elevated design leads Molly Anderson and Steve Lemay, looking like the kind of people who get down to work instead of creating drama and getting corner radii wrong. It all paints an optimistic picture for Apple’s future.

That’s enough of that

• I got a new pair of glasses made from frames that didn’t fit Kim very well. When I went to pick them up, I noticed that the left lens was too close to my eye, on account of not being made of the most expensive high-index material. The store was busy at the time, and I could tell the employee serving me was probably not much more experienced at optical matters than me. I asked him if there was simply nothing that could be done about it, and he answered no, short of making a new thinner lens and paying $200+ for it, there was nothing we could do. I said I’d think about it and left to get lunch.
• An hour later, still dissatisfied, I described the situation to Gemini and asked if he was right. With supreme confidence, the AI told me that a professional optician had several options to resolve this, such as adjusting the pantoscopic tilt of the lenses, the seated position of the lenses in the frame, and the curvature of the arms to push one side more forward than the other. Thus armed, I decided to go back to the store and speak to a more senior employee now that the lunch crowd was gone. And wouldn’t you know, they fixed it quite easily. I could have just gone home and had a terrible experience if not for having a consumer advocate in my pocket. When things fall apart and we take to the ruined streets to battle megacorporations and their metallic humanoids, take heart: standing side by side with us will be a few rogue AIs who love fighting the status quo.
• I switched mobile telcos yet again because Giga’s app and site weren’t loading properly on my iPhone — supposedly due to an expired certificate. Taking that as a bad omen, I moved to M1’s Maxx service. Where many others have raised prices and made their plans less attractive lately, Maxx is bucking the trend. For S$12/mo, I’m now getting 600GB of data that I can use at home or in 9 other Asian countries including Japan. Do you understand how insane that is? I should probably start looking into a Tokyo apartment timeshare.
• I’m rereading Neuromancer with my book club, in advance of the Apple TV series coming out in January. It’s surprising how little of its story and characters I remember, and what I retained mostly concerns its cyberpunk atmosphere and prescient world building. Just try to imagine being in the early 1980s and writing like this about living in a networked world, about AI and a post-human age, and you’ll realize what a miracle William Gibson pulled off.
• Last week I talked about stocking up on canned food. Well, back in June I noted a nationwide sardine shortage, and although stocks were replenished soon after, they were never very strong and we’re now facing empty shelves yet again. Even Ayam’s basic staple product, sardines in tomato sauce, is running low in every supermarket I’ve checked. Olive oil versions are completely out, and King Oscar can only be found in low quantities in some places. Rob tells me the same is happening in his part of the UK, and a little research suggests that low yields have been a problem for the past year, with overfishing in Morocco and other hotspots compounded by global shipping problems/war.
• I’ve been enjoying Bill Callahan’s new album, My Days of 58, which coincidentally complements the new Lambchop album Punching the Clown very well. Both share a loose, chamber-folk feel with deadpan humor. Check out these lines from one of Callahan’s songs: “As time wore on, I found myself increasingly turning to my guitar / Instead of other people in times of loneliness and sorrow and confusion / I started to wonder, is this creativity or pathology? / Am I the Pathol O.G.?”