456: ‘Lubricate the Inside of the Hinge’, With Joanna Stern

Friday podcasting, John. Who are we? My kids barely remember me at this point. They’re like, oh, you used to live here and occasionally hang out with us. I had to draw a line at another California trip, though. Five trips in eight weeks since the iPhone event? I can’t do it, even when I really want to see the touchscreen Mac.

I love this job, which is why podcasting is where I can kvetch without putting it in print. I’m exhausted, and I’m headed to L.A., despite not wanting the touchscreen Mac or believing Apple ought to make it. We’ve got more urgent business anyway: obviously, two hours on the HomePod Mini 2. Or maybe the new Siri Remote, which could secretly be Apple’s product of the year.

The remote now has Precision Finding, and that’s huge. But it’s also nuts that Apple made us wait this long, especially when people were buying cases just to strap AirTags onto an expensive Apple TV remote. I’ve been using the Remote app on the Duo, so I bet somebody makes a Duo display that looks exactly like the physical remote.

The Duo review period was unusually slippery. We got eight days, which is luxurious by review-embargo standards, yet app support changed in three waves: first bleak, then TestFlight builds appeared, then major apps—including Google’s—landed right before publication. You want to assess what buyers receive Friday, but you don’t want a review dominated by complaints that expire in a week.

I had to reshoot my app section repeatedly because apps I’d shown were updating overnight. I was worried we had a little post-traumatic Vision Pro disorder: we saw bad early apps and imagined a giant, pricey device would ship to silence. Instead, indie developers are having a blast, and the Meta and Google apps kept improving. It’s not a Vision Pro repeat, not remotely.

Apple seems to have learned the lesson too. With Vision Pro, developers got APIs and then, for many obvious names, crickets. This time Apple brought developers into sessions, let them see work-in-progress apps on Duo hardware, and promoted optimized software. Meta is especially notable: Instagram took ages to get a proper iPad app, but its Duo work is already quite good, even if there’s room to use that tablet space better.

I loved John’s framing: not a great phone, but a great tablet. That’s the tension in every foldable. My hinge test was about whether the mechanical miracle survives real use, so a hardware-prototyper friend built Hingy, our ridiculous 3D-printed folding contraption. It ran the review phone through thirty-two thousand cycles while I watched on a Nest cam, terrified the machine—or worse, the phone—would die.

Hingy is exactly the kind of review premise nobody else does, especially because it got a name. The hinge feels spectacular, and Apple’s IP sixty-eight rating matters: rival foldables have had real dust vulnerabilities. But battery testing is brutal during a short loan. A meaningful test consumes a whole day on the only unit you have, even though battery life is one of the first things everyone wants verified.

I did consider making my kids open and shut it thousands of times, then immediately realized that would look like child labor on the internet. The phone survived Hingy, and didn’t feel looser afterward. If anything, I kept psyching myself out that it felt different. Still, it felt like day one, and that was the point: Apple made hinge durability central to its pitch, so I wanted to test it.

My Transformers comparison came from being the kid who hated toys that looked fake in either form. A transforming toy often made a lousy car and a compromised robot; this device is beautifully engineered, but the fundamental tradeoffs remain. I had fun reviewing it, like I did with iPhone X, yet I knew much earlier with that phone that it was for me. Duo is probably the best foldable, and still not my form factor.

That’s right: not everybody with a smartphone wants a folding smartphone. Apple can take it more mainstream than anyone, but it’s never going to be the whole market. The name Duo helps set that expectation; it sounds like a second kind of phone, not the one that supersedes every Pro. Early adopters may even carry it selectively, depending on where they’re going.

The outside screen is more of a quick-check display: notifications, a tiny response, then back in the pocket. When you truly want to do something, you open it, and inside it’s a terrific little tablet—especially on the couch. But opening is a production. It’s not a flip; it’s a pry, deliberately two-handed. The hinge action feels excellent, but the buttons are confusing enough that I kept locking it or triggering the wrong thing.

The volume buttons drive me insane. I’m constantly asking Siri for a screenshot or a volume change because I cannot deal with those buttons. I’m also torn on cases: this is the most case-worthy iPhone in years, especially with that absurd camera wobble, yet the sticky silicone one collected hair in my bag. Caseless day to day, case on for apple picking—that’s where I landed.

Touch ID is my biggest gripe. I type a passcode on this thing more in a week than I normally would in a year. Apple says it wanted the same unlock experience open or closed, and I understand that when Duo is sitting open like a mini tablet. But Apple has never shipped a device combining Face ID and Touch ID, and I suspect they’d rather wait until Face ID works properly on both sides than bolt it onto one.

I disabled the requirement to rest my finger, which helps a little, but my Apple Watch is the real saving grace. It unlocks Duo for me almost every time. There are also lots of first-generation software rough edges: oversized links can trap the keyboard, menus overlap, and Control Center wastes enormous inner-screen space. This is a new flavor of iOS, and it sometimes feels like it needs another pass with a fine-tooth comb.

Yet Duo’s split-screen multitasking is better than the iPad’s. Drag an app from the bottom, place it at the side, done. I wish Apple would replace the iPad’s confusing system with this. And the device makes developers want to play: Deckman adds tape hiss and jams its virtual tape if you reverse too fast; there are toaster, fridge, cupboard, and hinge-angle apps. It has that original-iPhone, silly-inventive energy.

I’m all in on the stupid-fun apps. Toasty makes fake grilled cheese and dings when it’s ready; the fridge app hums so convincingly I expect cold air. That’s the special thing here: developers are treating the hinge as a toy, not merely an engineering detail. I’m going to eat some digital grilled cheese, raid my imaginary refrigerator, find out whether my children recognize me, and then sit here touching my Mac, wishing it had a touchscreen.