WWDC 2026: Apple is Folding

The reason PC purchases plummeted is not because people stopped using them, but because if you don't use your PC for high end gaming (or a tiny handful of other esoteric tasks) then one from a decade, or even more, ago will function 100% as well as a brand new one.

[1] - https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

Anybody who works in an office job, employee or freelancer, (so 100s of millions in the US alone) both work with and own a PC/laptop. And that doesn't even count gamers and creatives. And many more that work blue collar jobs still own one, according to statistics. Some 16 year old might just use their smartphone, but most adults also use a laptop.

Every example I've seen or tried using a fold-able was just a regular smartphone with a screen that displayed apps that looked like the app doesn't fit on the phone very well. The few that did fit didn't seem to provide any real advantage.

That and the fold-able users I know all run into reliability issues with screens breaking over time.

This isn’t my experience. In our house: I’m a software engineer, and our 13yo son writes C++ code as a hobby, so of course we both have laptops and desktops. But my wife, and our 8 year old daughter, both have laptops too, and use them regularly, despite not being remotely technical; our daughter mainly uses her laptop for games-she also has a tablet and a Nintendo Switch, but for many games (The Sims, Minecraft, Roblox) she prefers her laptop; my wife plays The Sims too, but she also prefers a laptop to a phone or tablet for sending emails and general web browsing.

Similarly my dad (a retired pharmaceutical company executive) is a lot less technical than he used to be (he hasn’t kept up to date and maybe some of these things get harder with advanced age), but he also prefers his laptop for some tasks (e.g. email, internet banking) despite also being a regular phone and tablet user

I hardly use the thing closed, even for things I easily could.

https://www.oppo.com/en/smartphones/series-find-n/find-n6/

>I do not use a case

I have a Pixel 8a, and I have to use a case for it, because it appears to be designed to be as slippery as possible. Every edge is round and there's nothing to grip - it feels like an aluminium/glass bar of wet soap.

https://www.kickstarter.com/blog/a-new-era-for-design

So by not attempting to enter market niches, they could be potentially leaving a lot of money on the table, while the downside of the product failing to get traction doesn't really kill them.

Apple released the Vision Pro, which is AR

It's really nice to have a tablet always with you. I live in a warm country so I don't usually wear a coat or a big bag.

Also, on android there's really no good small tablets. They're all 10" and bigger.

For you maybe, but for most it is, or we'd all be doing it.

Both a phone and a tablet can come with WhatsApp, it's a user choice whether they are there and the frequency of checking them. Global muting the apps is also an option.

I understand your point, but it is a point mitigated by user intervention. Now, if we want to say reading on a bigger screen than a phone is a better user experience, I'm on board with that.

A big thing about the form factor is the perception. If you are in a meeting and pull out a full size iPad or your laptop to look something up, it certainly feels different than using your mini. Same at a restaurant.

At the park with the dog I can carry it like a paperback, sit on the grass and read. It's perfect for everything except phone calls.

Personally, as someone being used to the Motorola Razor foldable, which happened to present back then. It was really good and cool as well. I hated the ever smaller getting Ericson smartphones.

I am looking forward to Apple's copy of Samsungs foldable smartphones. After all, I don't want to carry an iPhone as well as an iPad mini around with me.

And I see the foldable more as a replacement for the iPhone ultra max phones. No matter how large the screensize they have, they never beat the iPad mini on readability, even being stuck with the old one for many years.

I did this way back when the first iPad mini was released, and it's not bad.

But these days, the big iPhone is 7 inches to the iPad mini's 8 inches... the phone is big enough for most iPad mini use cases

Eh, iOS has profiles that let you disable whatever apps you wish to. Better than a whole other piece of hardware, IMO

Apple's annual gross profit was $195B last year against an R&D budget of around $35B. So, they've got more than enough spare change to throw around. I'm sure whatever they're spending on foldables isn't impairing them financially in any way.

I'm more concerned for what it means for focus, fragmented ecosystems, user experience, etc.

From Jobs: "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of many of the things we haven't done as the things we have done."

> more sustainable materials, longer lasting devices, and easily repairable parts to extend the devices useful life

What they are doing, like all for-profit companies, is focusing on profits, for better or worse.

What you are suggesting (and what I'd like to) directly works against the goal of making more profits, literally all of those things will lead to less income for them.

I also want those things, but realistically, because of the economic systems we have, those things will never be the focus, because the market doesn't reward those things, and doesn't seem likely that'll change either.

I don't know what the solution is either, status quo simply sucks, with no escape in sight. Seems to be getting worse in fact.

I haven't encountered any issues with apps not supporting the wider aspect ratio. It's one of those cases in which Android's up-front investment in more flexible software paid off. Android apps were harder to write up front because they had to support resizable layouts from the get go, but by the time stuff like foldables were introduced the software library was already ready for it all.

There's a reason the Asus Duo is so much cheaper than the ThinkPad Fold X1 and all other OLED "folding" screen devices.

Apple probably leads the industry in sustainability–the MacBook is 60% recycled material.

They’ve been working for years to be carbon neutral by 2030.

Details at https://www.apple.com/environment/

> I get the impression they're running out of ideas with the "slate" form factor and are trying to stimulate sales.

I think we've just reached the local maximum of the phone design and adding folding gives two different branches to go down: 1) same size screen unfolded but smaller folded size or 2) folded with an external screen roughly the same size as a normal phone today but it expands to a much larger one unfolded. We'd kind of reached the peak size that people can reasonably pocket so option 2 allows for even bigger screens for people willing to pay without having to have a second device (something like a tablet).

The folds do add functionality and I think there's an impulse that leads people to say they don't see the point of something just because they're not interested in it personally.

Consider how much money they put in to building a car to cancel it when they decided they couldn't, in fact, do it better. I'm sure there are hundreds - maybe thousands - of failed prototypes along the way.

I don't care that it is a few mm thicker than other phones when it's in my pocket. It's so much better than a regular phone for everything from reading books to writing email to watching YouTube, and it's also a slightly thicker regular phone. It also has a pretty good UI for moving apps to side-by-side mode, which I use so often that I'm 100% sure I will never go back to a regular phone.

People seem to want them, so Apple end up selling them. We're probably in the minority, and I can't fault Apple for not turning down the money.

Although I do wonder how the hell cases and screen protectors work for foldables.

iPhone useful life is already pretty great. I'm using one regularly from 2020 (as a work device) - better than any laptop I've ever owned including classic-era Thinkpads have lasted as a daily driver.

Personally, I think it's nice that companies make products that appeal to different kinds of people.

Does the broad market care about sustainable materials? What does that even mean? Almost no one buys something because of sustainable.

For longer lasting devices, people like buying new phones. The iPhone has pretty much not changed in the last 5 years. People just like buying the new and best

Same thing w/ repairable parts. People just like buying new things. And it's not a conspiracy theory, it's just observed behavior.

So I'm glad they're trying something, because as much as you would like these other things, the broader market of consumers don't care. Yes profits are a useful proxy for value people place on your activities. Not perfect but in the long run if you provide a shitty experience you're likely to lose.

Considering how many people are dailying >6.8 inch phones (already massive in the average sized pocket), complaining about a thickness of 11mm* is just small brain behavior. I guarantee the weight is what you're noticing more than the thickness.

As someone who's into foldables but doesn't use one, the benefits are very real, especially if you read a lot of articles/blogs. Only reason I'm not using one is I can't afford the ones I want. How is a smaller phone, that's ideal for 1-handed use while having an expansive screen available at any moment, "running out of ideas"??? I like large screens, and I like being able to fit it in a small chassis. That's all it is.

* Samsung, Oppo, and Google's currently available foldables are all under 11mm

My non-techie parents pretty much always get the latest non-Pro iPhone every couple years because their carrier calls them and practically begs them to take a new phone.

It's extremely rare to see anyone with a phone older than like 4 years.

This, for instance, combines a battery and compact physical kb https://www.clicks.tech/products/powerkeyboard

We know Apple is bringing a folding iPhone through manufacturing leaks. A desktop mode is less likely to be leaked, since it would be mostly software and (a lot) less reliant on third parties.

Maps are too narrow on phones.

Books also are easier to read.

I'm still waiting for a large folding phone with no/minimal outer display and with all other features cost reduced for half the price of the flagship folding phones.

I wouldn’t be surprised at all if next year they dissolve the iPhone/iPad distinction on the App Store altogether and maybe even remove the Catalyst toggle on the Mac App Store. If you make an iOS app, it’s also a full fledged iPadOS, macOS, and visionOS app too.

I certainly wouldn’t mind. On my Mac there are some needlessly heavy electron apps I’d swap out for their iOS counterparts in a heartbeat if that were possible, as well as some games that would run fine on macOS but their devs don’t tick the checkbox for unclear reasons.

I'm currently working on a responsive app in Swift and had to develop my own responsive layout system. SwiftUI simply isn't up to the task, except for one very specific, generic layout.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/i-tried-oppos-latest-foldable-pho...

What company has ever highlighted the crease in their foldable for any reason other than to say it's improved from the previous year?

?

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

This is the only phone I've seen people move away from iPhone to get, I know at least 3 women who switched from iPhone to android to get the folding clamshell Samsung and all love it.

I mention RAM as Android with 4GB of ram is almost unusable.

Do you remember the Microsoft prototype for a folding tablet? It would have two different apps running, and you could use the spine to pull data between them, a kind of visual clipboard.

I don't think that workflow is as important now, but having two apps open (one on each side of a device) is going to be killer, and it's something they're clearly hinting at with some of their asks for developers (and with their iPad OS).