Making Tech Headlines · Page 3
The iPhone Duo's app experiments include breakfast without bread
· New York time
Developers are experimenting with Apple's first foldable iPhone, the iPhone Duo, through apps including retro cassette players, virtual notebooks, flight trackers and a digital toaster, TechCrunch reports. The projects show early attempts to make the device's folding format part of the experience. The useful question is whether that format supports activities people want to repeat. A virtual notebook and a playful appliance simulation can both demonstrate inventive design without serving the same purpose. The toaster is particularly efficient at separating software enthusiasm from breakfast. It can illustrate an interface idea without requiring anyone to mistake warm pixels for an actual bagel. For developers, a new device shape offers possibilities beyond rearranging familiar buttons. It also creates the challenge of deciding when the fold contributes something and when a conventional screen would do the job just as well. These examples are experiments, not evidence that every app benefits from a hinge or that any one concept will become indispensable. Their variety is the interesting development. A flight tracker can pursue utility while a cassette player pursues nostalgia, with neither obliged to justify the toaster. The phone has become a small design workshop, and someone has already assigned the kitchen appliance department a remarkably ambitious screen budget.
Read this story in the full newspaper →Satire. Not factual reporting. Read the original reporting from the linked publishers.