I Was Wrong About the iPhone Duo

0:00 And of course here we have Apple talking about the iPhone Duo, framing it in a way that kind of shows it to be a phone and a tablet in one. And so that my immediate response to this was of course no, it's just ridiculous. You'd better off just getting an old iPad Mini and an old phone, saving at least 75% of the cost of the iPhone Duo. But there is actually a different way of looking at this that satisfies my opposition to these convergence devices. And we're going to get onto that in a little bit.

0:24 So I hate things that do two things at once. I've over the years just kind of abandoned that idea of thinking like multi-tools replacing single item tools. The single item tools are still better. I've I've explored this on many videos on this channel. So Apple themselves are pitching this as a phone and tablet replacement. They have marketing campaigns running on TikTok and iPhone Air and an iPad Mini having a romantic dinner and of course the idea is they produce the iPhone Duo. Duo in the name says that it does two things. You know, there's this idea that it's a two-in-one device. And I think that's just a a huge mistake. Now what's really interesting about this is over the last kind of sort of several years I've kind of been coming to the conclusion that the idea of flagship phones and tablets are both kind of useless. A tablet is a very poor substitute for something like a laptop for any kind of serious work. And a phone is kind of just this device that's really obviously designed just to make you just waste your life scrolling on algorithms. And actually the real utility in smartphones was met 10 years ago and any kind of cheap smartphone now still serves that goal. So in some sense there is this idea that actually the phone and the tablet are by no means this kind of perfect form factor for those devices either. But everyone is still accepting this framing that the Duo is a two-in-one device. Apple are leaning into it, the media are picking it up and everybody's asking this question, can it replace a phone and a tablet? But this is a nuanced discussion and there's more to this than meets the eye. And in this video I'm going to explore this from my perspective as essentially kind of a digital minimalist who has kind of moved away from fancy phones and has also abandoned the idea of iPads as any kind of sensible productivity tool. But I'm also at heart a kind of Apple fanboy. I I their industrial design and the polish they apply to software and hardware. I bought the first iPod when it was released as a kid and this is something that blew my mind. So, I'm kind of coming at this from this quite interesting sort of cynical Apple fanboy perspective. So, I'm not really leaning either way here.

2:09 So, there's a lot to discuss, so let's get stuck in. And hopefully I'll help you kind of decide if the iPhone journey is actually right for you or not and maybe give you some interesting sort of food for thought on what these kinds of devices are really good for. So, I haven't had any hands-on experience with the journey yet. I'm kind of just going on the idea of what these devices are capable of and what the emerging kind of picture is starting to look like.

2:31 So, just give you a little background on the Unix philosophy because this way of thinking about things is the core of this whole discussion. So, I did a quite a fun video a little while ago that went down quite well talking about how I apply the Unix philosophy to all areas of my life. This idea that when you have vehicles that do their individual roles by themselves, the whole package always gets cheaper and those individual roles are better met by the individual devices than any kind of single-use device. This applies to all kinds of things. I've also looked at multi-tools, things like Leathermans and Swiss Army knives. They never do the job of the individual tools in those devices as well as a single item doing the same thing would do. And once you start thinking about this, you kind of realize that it applies to everything.

3:11 And the other point I want to make about the journey is that it's evidently a remarkable piece of hardware engineering as is often the case with Apple gear. And this is a theme again that I've been quite interested in exploring in terms of industrial design and these kinds of things over the years and dabbling a little bit with luxury watches and actually the Land Rover even though it was only a banger. It was nearly 20 years old now. It's shown me the role of luxury in product design in a way I had always tend to have overlooked in my younger years thinking it was kind of silly and unnecessary and why would you risk something like reliability in favor of something like comfort and luxury.

3:47 But actually the reality of the Land Rover experience for us This just totally changed my mind on this whole idea. I'm happy to lean into pursuing luxury ideas in terms of design. Of course, Apple do this. Their ability to make hardware that has sort of a level of polish and refinement to it is unmatched. And of course, you can see from the engineering and the way people talk about the hinge and all of this kind of stuff, there's a lot going on there. I've no doubt that this is going to be a major milestone in terms of kind of consumer devices hardware manufacturing.

4:16 So, let's start looking at this cynically. Let's start sort of thinking why we wouldn't want the iPhone Duo. If we look at it like this, first of all, it's absurdly expensive. Like, we all know that. It's 2,000 lb. This is for a phone, this is just insanity. Spending 2,000 lb, you're going to want to know that it's going to have a much longer life cycle than a couple of years if you're kind of putting that sort of money into it. So, that alone is a kind of major concern, especially when you consider that an old iPad Mini can be had for a couple of hundred pounds off eBay and any old iPhone from 10 years ago will easily meet your needs for a smartphone. And then, with the device pixels, we know that actually as a comparison to something like the iPad Mini, you're getting less screen real estate on the inside screen of the Duo than you would with that old cheap iPad Mini. So, arguably the iPad Mini is still a better tablet than the inside screen on the Duo. And then, we've got the weight. This is a chunky monkey.

5:00 It's 250 g. You know, it's way heavier than this smartphone that I'm using, the Titan 2 Elite now. So, that makes it arguably a worse phone where the main role of this thing is to be light and portable. And then, of course, we've got the kind of software framing on this. It's not running iPad OS. It is running iOS. And that means it doesn't have all of the multitasking stuff that you would get on your iPad. So, you have this kind of hobbling of the experience here.

5:23 They're not quite saying it's a full iPad replacement. They are giving you a split screen that aligns with the Duo fold and this kind of thing, but they haven't gone as far as giving you the full iPad OS experience. If you are judging this as a two-in-one device, the kind of conclusion is actually it's not as good as those separate devices. So, this is where that Unix philosophy thinking actually delivers. It's not the best phone, and it's not the best tablet. It's worse at being a phone because it's heavier, and it's worse at being a tablet because it's kind of hobbled by the iOS limitations and this logical pixel situation.

5:51 Here's the plot twist, which is kind of blowing my mind. So, over the last few weeks, I was really leaning into this idea, thinking the Duo was a hard fail against my Unix philosophy thinking, but I was counting its jobs wrong. It's not a two-in-one device. It's a one device. It's the device that our pocket computers need to be. It is the actual manifestation of what the phone should and always was moving towards. Once you frame it like this, the kind of game changes. And this goes back to this kind of thinking that a lot of us have had, especially in the digital minimalism world, where we're kind of realizing that the role of smartphones is actually pretty minimal. It's things like, you know, authentication and banking and then paying and these kinds of technical things that let you do certain things away from home and the occasional email here and there. As a productivity tool, smartphones are kind of useless. All they really are optimized for is the vertical scroll, which, as we know, doesn't get us anywhere from a productivity perspective. For a lot of people who have leaned into the iPad, I think tried to use those as a laptop replacement, it never really kind of works. I've done this. I I've bought the iPad Pro in 2018. Once you get past its basic utility as a bigger screen for something like Netflix and YouTube, which is fine and great, but of course something like an iPad Mini or any of the older iPads meets that goal as well just fine. That starts to reframe this, because now we have a huge gap that the iPhone Duo can actually go in. It's not replacing the roles of those two devices, which have kind of met their maximum utility a long time ago.

7:15 But actually, of course, there is real utility in having a bigger screen if it's always with you. And this is something I've really leaned into recently with my my kind of workflow, for actual real productive work, where I have my desktop Mac Mini running all of the time, serving web apps that I can access from any device. This definitely doesn't need the latest greatest device from a performance perspective, because it's only using the web browser, but the size of the screen is key to this, because I'm using these web apps to do things like browse my photography library or preview and edit that I have code code making for these YouTube videos. This big screen that's always with you is this one thing that we've not really had up to this point in technology that's been satisfied. And the Duo answers that or is a good first starter answering that. So actually for me, something like the Duo would work perfectly for this. I need the phone with me all the time to power the smart glasses for my main workflow, right? But then every now and again I'll need that big screen and I can use my TV, but if I am actually away from home, I haven't got that as a bigger screen. So then I'm looking for an iPad and you could argue that I could keep an iPad in the car or I could keep an iPad in the lounge, but that's multiple devices. They all need to be charged. The reality of the situation is I still I'm going to find myself not in the place where the iPad is or it's going to be flat. Whereas with the one device, the phone, you kind of solve all those problems.

8:31 I mean, I know we are talking about small luxury components here. This is a luxury device. I don't need this for that workflow. I don't need the smart glasses. I don't need any of these things. Half of these you could argue you don't even need a chair in an office. There's a line of kind of luxury here. The computer is essentially the only thing that's truly required for modern computer-based productivity. Everything else from that is essentially luxury. It's how far can I push my workflows outside of the desk environment to in increase my comfort when I'm working. That's what all of the marketing from Apple over the years trying to sell phones and tablets as pro productive devices.

9:09 Everyone who's kind of tested this and lives with this knows they're not really productivity tools. They might open some doors here and there. They might let you check your email when you're away from home. They're not really about doing actual work. Even Final Cut Pro, Apple's own piece of software, can't share a project between the desktop version and the tablet version. That point alone really demonstrates just how much of a walled garden the iPad experience is, which is where my idea of actually having your desktop Mac powering all of your main computing workflows and then looking at your portable device as a way into that system through web apps, through scripts, through AI sessions using smart glasses to even improve the ergonomics of those workflows even further is really interesting. And that takes the requirement only down to one thing, which is that you have a big screen that is always with you. And of course, the only real way of achieving that is to have something that folds in half. Apple has sold us this idea that if we buy their gear, their phones and their tablets, we can take our pro workflows away from home. We can be in a coffee shop, we can be socializing, we can live our lives more. They're always selling us this promise of being able to do our work in more comfortable, lifestyle-oriented ways. I think the phone and the tablet has kind of failed at that. But if you're serious enough about it, something like the Duo starts to open up a lot more doors. Just in terms of actually delivering on this idea of having a slightly larger screen that is always with you in your pocket.

10:29 So, this now starts to look like quite a simple discussion. So, if you're genuinely looking at the Duo as a replacement for a tablet and a phone, you're probably actually better off just getting the tablet and the phone and for a lot less money. This is definitely no longer a question of whether we need the iPhone Duo or no one needs a new iPhone. Full stop. These are luxury decisions. That's okay. I'm not saying that as a problem. I bought the Even Reality G2 smart glasses for that very same reason.

10:53 And I'm looking at something like the foldable phone as another kind of lever I can pull in that direction, albeit more expensive again. So, it's really about asking yourself, is the big screen always with you in your pocket a luxury that's worth it to you? And that might be because you value being able to watch YouTube on a bigger screen anytime of day. For me, it's this idea of my display for my smart glasses workflows. That's my justification for it. It's still luxury. I'm not justifying it any more than someone who wants to use it for entertainment just because it happens to be work. I think it's okay that we can all just look at these different levels of luxury in these different ways. But I am also aware that Apple's marketing is aggressive and their devices are so appealing emotionally because we know the hardware is so gratifying to use and the software that our minds are actually quite capable of justifying things in all kinds of ways just because we want the thing. And again, I don't want to say that as necessarily a reason to completely abandon the whole idea either. It's okay to want things because they're shiny. That's what my kind of dabble with the luxury watch world has taught me. This Veneti Anaco has kind of blown my mind for those kinds of reasons. But luxury by itself isn't quite enough. It needs to have some sort of constraint, some sort of framing from your actual utilitarian world. And when those two come together, that's when you're really looking at an interesting piece of product design. If you're new to this channel, I kind of do these experiments. I test the defaults. I'm a systems thinker and a software developer and I'll and I'll try and explore alternative ways of thinking about things, uncovering unconventional wisdom, and looking at the unusual approach to using technology. And and it always exploring this idea of ergonomics and comfort and combining work with lifestyle. And do have a look around the channel, check out my Unix philosophy video and the other videos I've done looking at convergence versus counterparts and these ongoing themes which are so well represented by the iPhone Duo discussion. So look forward to reading your comments below. I will do try and reply to as many as I can and I'll see you in the next video.