Lessons from Android Foldable Experience

Hello, and welcome back to another episode of App Stories . Today's episode is brought to you by Claude from Anthropic. I'm John Voorhees, and with me is Federico Vittici. Hi, Federico. Hello, John. Hello, how are you? Good, good. The thunderstorms have just finished here, so we're recording at Okay. It's a nice day here. So nice. Yeah, yeah. Did you want to talk about very quickly the AirPods Max 2? I I do, do. We're gonna talk about folding phones today. But I you know as we record this, we're recording quite early in the week, uh Apple surprisingly announced the AirPods Max 2 , which I would say the main feature here is the H2 chip and the fact that what that enables is basically all the all the uh features that the AirPods Pro have gotten over the last whatever couple of years or so. You know, you've got improved improved spatial audio, you've got um you've got all kinds of things like shaking your head for saying no to Syria or nodding your head. Uh you've got better ANC. Uh there's a bunch of different oh, there's live translation. There's a laundry list of features that have been added to these things, which I think is great because those are all those are all features that the AirPods Pro were able to do and the AirPods Max didn't. I mean, I think I'm not sure the AirPods Max people necessarily buy them for a lot of those features. They do for the sound quality . So having all the various audio features that Apple has added over the years added to these most expensive ones that they sell is a good thing. I think for me personally, these don't really excite me much. I mean, I I had the originals. I ended up giving them away to one of my kids because theirs broke and I just wasn't using them very much. And instead, over the holidays, I bought myself some beets, um Studio Pro headphones, which I actually really like because they're because they're more plastic, they are lighter weight. They do pinch your head a little bit, but they also have a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack that you can put in, as well as USB-C or Bluetooth. So it's the most versatile set of headphones that Apple sells. And for someone like me who's not just you know, work using it for with Apple devices. There's also plugging into handheld gaming devices and things like that. It's just really nice to have things like the three and a half millimeter jack. Yeah. What do you think of them? Strange upgrade. I mean I kinda g I thought that I had AirPods Max 2 because I had the first USB C version. I guess that was not. It was just a USB C upgrade. That was one point one, version one point one, maybe. Yeah, I'll tell you this. I I use them so little. Uh Sylvia's been using them for the past few months. Yeah. Um I'm just uh you know, I have I have since I have my uh new desktop amplifier, which I guess I'll it'll be included in the in the next update to the MacStories setups page. Um either I use my audiophile headphones or I just use earbuds. Yeah. So uh very little reason for me to use the AirPods Max at this point. So I give them to Sylvia. She really likes them. She find them she finds them comfortable. But yeah. Yeah, they're nice headphones. And at first I thought, why was this not part of Apple's special experience the other week? Then of course the answer is well, I mean, they're more expensive than the MacBook Neo, so it looked kind of weird maybe putting those both out into the world the same week. On the other hand, it does feel like the kind of kind of product that Apple would typically have done some sort of influencer event for at in the you know their loft in New York or whatever it is. But but yeah, inste inadstead we got a surprise on a Monday morning, which I wasn't expecting. Well, me neither. All right. Shall we talk about foldables? We should. I've been thinking about this a little bit, and so have you. You've got a lot more experience with foldables than I do. I've not ever actually purchased a foldable Android phone. So I I never have actually I have never held in my hand a foldable phone, Federico . Never. Never. Never. I don't know anybody who I've I know no one who owns one. And I've never walked into like a T-Mobile store or anything and tried one. So You have never held a foldable phone? I have not, not even once. I've never even I I will tell you this, I have never even seen one in the wild. Not even once. This is all very surprising to me. You've never seen one. No, I've just never seen one out and about even. Not even at a at a at a tech conference or something. I don't think so. All right, all right, okay. But you are obviously familiar with what they are. Of course, yeah. Maybe not personally firsthand experienced with them, but I do know what's out there and what's available and the history of them. Okay. Okay. So obviously the rumor goes that Apple is going to introduce an iPhone fold and I should say immediately. I'm on the record, unconnected. Two months ago at the beginning of twenty twenty six in my annual predictions, I said that Apple will call it the iPhone Duo. And I keep saying that it's a much better name than iPhone fold. I just feel like iPhone Do is a is a really lovely classic Apple name. But anyway, the rumor goes that Apple is going to use finally a uh foldable iPhone, a folding iPhone , uh the kind that has an uh a cover screen on the outside and an inner screen on the inside. And when you open it up, it basically turns into an iPad mini. Right. Right. The idea here is that this is gonna be Apple's answer to uh uh uh you know many many years at this point of Android foldables. Famously Samsung I think was the first one to market with the Z fold later joined by the Zip Flip but that's a flip phone uh that folds it's a different product Google had a had a first generation pixel fold with a very unique form factor that we're gonna talk about in a second and then later went on to a more classic or more traditional design and then of course there are other foldables from other companies you know there's a there's a oneplus who made one called the one plus open and out of china the two companies that are sort of trying to one up each other in term in terms of thinness and a crease free display now are oppo with the Oppo N6, which is coming out now, and supposedly it's gonna be the world's first folding phone without a crease in the middle, as well as Honor with the Honor V uh magic v5 and the v6, which until a few weeks ago was the world's thinnest foldable. And then of course you also still have Samsung making new versions of the Z fold. And for some markets, they even made a special product this year called the Trifold , which is a phone that folds uh in three parts and it becomes a proper tablet when unfolded. Anyway, this is sort of the context of the market right now. And these folding phones, I gotta say right now , they're actually really good. Like uh for the first couple of years it w they were very weird uh and thick. I remember having one of the first generations of the of the Z folder. I don't recall if it was the Z Fold 3 or the Z Fold 4. Um, but it basically had this weird design where the outer screen had huge bezels and the display on the outside was so thin and short , it basically wasn't usable as a phone. It wasn't thin, it was narrow. It was narrow and it was basically impossible to type on. Um but now they look like regular phones on the outside and they look like square tablets on the inside on Android. Because according to the rumors, Apple is gonna do something different. And this is what I wanted to talk about. So according to the latest rumors, I want to talk about hardware and software. As of last week, so Samsung is gonna make this rumored display for the inside that will allow Apple to be at this point one of the first companies, because they won't be the first company. Oppo is the first company. They will be one of the first companies to be able to advertise a display without a crease. Meaning that when the phone is unfolded, you you know if you run your finger over the display, you won't be able to feel or to see uh basically like a small bump in the middle of the screen when the when the when the screen is unfolded you have a hinge in the middle used to be that these phones you could feel the hinge under the panel and the whole point of modern foldables is to make that feel and look invisible and the Oppo N6 has managed to do that actually quite a quite an engineering accomplishment from Oppo. They have filled the hinge, they have laser scanned the hinge of the N 6 to find all possible empty spaces in the hinge. They filled all those empty spaces with a special polymer and that's allowed them to basically have a flat surface where to place the the OLED panel of the phone. Anyway, interesting. Yeah, very interesting. So Apple will have this the inner display that potentially won't make you feel any sort of crease or bump in the middle of the screen. But it's gonna have a slightly different design from other folding phones on the market right now. According to the rumors, Apple is going for a cover screen, so on the outside that is 5.5 inches when unfolded, so when open, it g'onna bes a four by three seven point seven inch display. So imagine an iPad mini in landscape when unfolded. So when you open it up, mini is a little bit larger than that, isn't it? I think the mini is 7.8 maybe. Oh . Maybe? Or eight inches or something. But anyway, it's kinda in that ballpark. Yeah. The issue is that when closed, the outer screen at five point five, that's a a short and squat iPhone. Yes. Um that is smaller than anything Apple is making today, even the iPhone 17 base model I, believe it's like what 6.3 inches, and it's short and w ide. And this used to be called a passport style foldable. Yeah. Like they don't make those foldab les anymore, but I have tested two of the well, I guess one, the most popular one was the original Google Pixel Fold. Right. The first one. Before they switched to a more traditional des ign, Google made a passport style foldable with a short and wide outer screen that unfolded into a sort of tablet like inner display. Now that's not a perfect replica of what Apple is allegedly going for, but it's very similar. And it's a weird design because it's even if you just consider the the cover screen, um it's so Although it's different, but it's similar to uh you know a small book, like a paperback book or like a like a like a like a small notebook. Yeah. Like a notebook, yeah, like some notebooks like the the you know yeah, I could see it. I mean I th to me that that's potentially intriguing 'cause I could see Apple doing some clever things with reading in the books app or something where you're actually holding it like a book with two pages , you know, one on each side and and slightly bent in the middle. It could be interesting. I also I I also kind of wonder whether the the sling that came out with for the iPhone last fall, the uh the sling carrying case, whether that is really was to get people used to the idea of carrying their phone that way because the new iPhone won't fit as well into a lot of pockets because it's wide and potentially thicker too. Yeah. So th this design, first of all, is interesting because it really changes, I think, if if this is true, I think it really changes how you uh use iOS, especially if you're coming from years of using big and large and tall iPhones. The first thought that comes to mind, so I got I got an original, a refurbished, original Google Pixel fold. So the first passport style design uh over Christmas. I got it for super cheap from an Italian reefer website. And something that I immediately noticed is that um it's so nice to be able to use a phone with one hand again. Like that's the first thing you notice that it's shorter and more comfortable to use than even an iPhone Air. Not to mention an iPhone 17 Pro Max. Everything is just a little bit more reachable. Everything is more one-hand edable. is well if you have that kind of cover screen on the outside if it's shorter and wider what does that do to the iOS interface and what does that do to information density, um, how does it work? How does it look, right? So there's a couple of things that I want to mention here. Um, the first one is liquid glass. I think it's gonna be interesting to see if liquid glass and some parts of liquid glass were designed to account for a phone for an iPhone where you don't necessarily have a ton of space all the time. So this is something that I suggested in my in my review of iOS 26 last year. There's a whole sort of area of liquid glass where, you know, go you know disregard for a second the visual aesthetic, right? Or the animation. But the part about like compacting the UI, mini minimizing the UI. So how the top bar, for example, can be minimized at the bottom, how they made safari even more compact. How you know several items on screen now they sort of minimize when you're scrolling. Well, and I think Apple's spent an awful lot of time working on sidebars over the last couple of years too for the iPad, which I think is going to be a big Yeah. And we're gonna and we're gonna get to sidebars again in a minute. Okay but I do wonder if if that part of liquid glass, like taking the emphasis uh away from from the UI Chrome and minimizing that interface Chrome to make room for the content, yeah. Uh I think it's gonna definitely come in come in handy when you have a phone that is five point five inches, right? And you don't necessarily have a lot of space. Now um for context, uh the competition right now, uh you know, even if you just primarily consider the z fold or or the google pixel fold, we're looking at phones that have outer screens of six point five inches for the z fold seven and six point four for the Google Pixel. Which is a lot more like the iPhone seventeen. Yeah. Which is a lot more like the iPhone seventeen. It's some somewhere in between an iPhone seventeen Pro and a Pro Max, basically. Now the we're looking at a phone where potenti ally you're not gonna have face ID. Uh there'sn't uh because there's not enough space for a you know a sensor, right? To put it under the display. Uh there's potentially gonna be a comeback for a touch ID sensor on the side of the device. Most likely two cameras instead of a three camera array like on the iPhone 17 Pro, but one camera more than an iPhone Air and a starting price of two thousand dollars for the two hundred and fifty six gigs of version. Uh which is I mean foldables are expensive. I I do wonder though whether people will be accepting of an inferior camera array on the most expensive phone. I mean I do think that that's you know a lot I mean that's well one big reason people upgrade their phones is for the cameras and if you're going backwards on the cameras I, don't think that's a great thing. No, I get it. I mean I I it's I think it's gonna be a conversation for some people. I don't personally, it doesn't bother me as much having the touch ID on the side. I know I mean yes, face ID is better. I still have an iPad mini that has touch ID and it doesn't really bother me. And I think the shape that we're talking about, it'll be pretty obvious where your finger goes. I don't think people will get confused, but but yeah, I mean, you know, that that that makes sense to me too. Yeah . This episode of App Stories is brought to you by Claude from Anthrop ic. You know, recently I revisited a lot of the audio processing I do for this very podcast, and the first place I stopped was in Claude Code because I was able to use it alongside FFmpeg to analyze the audio that we produce every week and take a lot of what used to be manual processing and put it together into a script to automate everything. And with the help of Claude testing each stage along the way and the outputs, I was able to get to a result really quickly and improve our audio quality more than ever before. And that's the key to Claude. Claude is the AI for minds that don't stop at good enough. It's the collaborator that actually understands your entire workflow and thinks with you. Whether you're debugging code at midnight or strategizing your next business move, Claude extends your thinking to tackle the problems that matter. If you're a developer spending half your day on tasks you wish you could just hand off, Claude code runs in your terminal, reads your code base, and can take on things like writing tests, refactoring, or debugging without you having to handhold it through every step. Plus you can forget about basic web search. Claude is excellent at deep research. I use it that way all the time. That means you can dig deeper with extensive sources, proper citations, and do it all in a fraction of the time. That was a big part of what I did when I optimized our audio processing. 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Get started with Claude Today at Claude.ai slash app stories. That's cla ud e.ai slash app stories, and check out Claude Pro, which includes access to all the features I've mentioned in today's episode. That's Claude. ai slash app stories. Our thanks to Claude for their support of the show. So I want to talk about the software and the inner display experience. So uh as uh a few days ago, Mark Ger man posted this uh this new report about how the experience of using an iPhone fold uh will be when you open it up and you're presented with this tablet like device. And for months we speculated uh that maybe Apple had a shot at creating this kind of hybrid device where you were using iOS on the outside, but iPad OS and iPad apps on the inside. And it sounds like that's not what Apple is going for. It sounds like it's gonna be all iOS with a special version of iOS that will support features like split view for spl itting the screen and using two apps at the same time. And it sounds like Apple will give developers most likely a WWDC 2026 when they will be showing off iOS 27. They still need to get used to all of that. But it most likely they will give developers the tools to make their iPhone apps more adjustable. So I've been thinking about this, like how can Apple you know go on stage at WWC and say, Hey iPhone developers, you should get ready for your apps to work in split view. Like that'd be weird, right? Without a product to announce. So my working theory is that this will be a repeat of what happened in twenty fourteen, June twenty fourteen, when they announced iOS 8 and auto layout before the big phones, right? The iPhone six and the iPhone six plus in September. Um they didn't say, well, you know, your iPhone apps are about to run on a m on much bigger phones. They just said, oh you, gotta get ready with size classes for you know new, you know, multiple your your iPhone apps can run on different screens. And they sort of hinted that that was gonna happen. Do you think that they can pitch that in the context of the iP ad and say that we're finally getting rid of two X mode and we're allowing you to freely resize your iPhone apps on the iPad and use that as a way to allow resizing then later on a foldable thing. That's a really that's a really good idea that I hadn't thought about. Yes. I think that that could be the perfect excuse to say, well iPhone apps on the iPad now they support, you know, now you can show a sidebar or something like that. Right. You can make 'em teeny tiny if you want, or you can go all the way up to beyond two X if you want. Yeah, having that iPhone compatibility mode maybe could be the Trojan horse that Apple wanted all along to get ready for this device without saying we're making an iPhone that you can open and it becomes a tablet. Right, because screens a screen, right? Yeah. Screen's a screen. And look, I don't even think they need to say your iPhone apps will run in split view. I I don't think you know No I don't think so because that'll be handled by the system. That'll be handled by the system. Developers don't care. IPhone apps already support drag and drop that's been supported for years . So that's not a concern. And I actually yeah, I think I think Apple or they could just say, well, uh now when you're using your iPhone app in landscape mode, we are rethinking landscape mode on the iPhone. Maybe they could say something like that and say that too. Now in landscape mode you can have a sidebar. You can do a sidebar now, but the thing is is that in general, I think that uh landscape mode has been abandoned by most developers because it's just too hard given the given the tools that they have to work with it. It's very especially when you try and do something like a sidebar, you run out of space very, very quickly. Yeah. And maybe so they could pitch it as a revamp of landscape mode, or maybe as you said, it could be uh advertised on the surface as a rethinking iPhone compatibility mode on the iPad and later on, those same APIs can be reused for the iPhone fold, which is something that Apple loves to do. Get the developers ready by telling them something else, and then when the product ships, oh, surprise, it actually does this other thing too. It does its other thing too all along. So uh that's that's I think something that will do now. The idea, according to German, is that you won't be able to have something like stage manager or multi-windowing uh when opening the iPhone fold. And this opens the other sub-story of this episode, which is my experience with foldables over the years. So here's the thing: I've tried many. I never wrote about them on Mac stories. I started the multiple drafts of this story over the years. Yeah, and I guess I'm doing it now here on the show and maybe there'll be a series of uh of posts on Mac stories as well. So I've tried many. Uh I tried the Z Fold, I told you the Z Fold three or four, I don't remember. It was very weird. I didn't like it. Uh I tried the OnePlus open. I really, really liked that one. Then I tried I got a review unit for the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. Yeah. Then I got a refurbished origin al pixel fold the the short and wide one and i bring a surprise i come bearing gifts john well the gift is for g the gift is for me and for the Tell me what you're doing. I have been carrying two phones for the past uh few weeks. Oh uh I've I've uh I've actually been doing this for a while, uh carrying both an iPhone and an Android phone. Um and I've tried, you know, I told you I I've tried a bunch. But for the past few weeks I've been carrying a Z Fold 7. Samsung Z Fold 7. So yeah, I've been dual carrying. I have a separate phone number. I've been using let me unlock this thing. But you just get an e sim for it or something with uh I just got a I got an ESIM for it and uh yeah I've been using a Z Fold 7 for a while. Looks good. Yeah, it looks really good. It's really nice. I really like it. And so I have uh some experience with foldables, including some recent day-to-day experience. So here's the thing: it's really convenient to especially with this latest generation of products that I mean this looks like a regular phone on the outside, right? And it's not so I mean it's obviously thicker than an iPhone Air. It's not so much thicker than a Pro Max, I don't think it's a good one. And it feels really nice in the hand, I gotta say. Feels really nice. It's it's super nice to be able to hold a phone and when you realize, especially when you're sitting on the couch or something, maybe you're you know laying down in bed and you realize, Oh, I kind of wish that I could do something else on the side, or I kind of wish that I had more space, you just grab the thing and open it, right? This happens all the time when Sylvia says, Oh, can you look this up on Amazon? Mm-hmm. And like okay. And I've started looking, you know, and I'm holding the device like a phone and then I realize I got a text message I gotta respond to or I got a notification. And just naturally I open the device and I keep Amazon and my browser on the left. And then I grab the notification and open the app on the right. Right. It's it's all these foldables over the years, at the very basic level on Android, they support split view. Right. With varying degrees of implementation. My absolute favorite UI over the years was the OnePlus one, I think it's called the OnePlus Canvas. The idea for the Canvas was that you could do a regular split view. And on Android you've been able to do split view even on regular phones forever. You can split the screen. On a on a regular phone you, can put one app on top of each other, right? You can split the screening vertically. Uh on Android foldables, you can choose to split the screen vertically or horizontally. So you can put two apps next to each other or one above the other. One plus canvas allowed you to basically tile these windows tile multiple apps and even do three apps and then the screen would like move along the canvas to put the focus on let's say that you had I don't know Mastodon here, your browser here, and then your mail below. And the OnePlus Canvas UI will like flow around and focus on different windows. It was really smooth. I really like that implementation. Nobody else has ever done it. Sams ung has a more traditional approach, I think. They let you do split view. Uh you can split vertically, split horizontally. You can swipe up to show a dock at the bottom, and it's like an iPad. You grab an icon, you drag it on one side of the screen, or they also let you swipe from um the edge of the screen on the right side to invoke this sort of like toolbar with a bunch of shortcuts right here and you can grab an app and add it to your workspace. It's kind of it's very similar to the old split view from iOS 9, for example, or uh you know pre-i uh iPad OS 26, right? Where you can flip the order of the two apps in a split view, right? Um you can then minimize, you can go full screen. And something that you can do on Android is you can save a pair of apps. So you can sort of save it as a shortcut uh on your home screen. Then you when you tap it again, those two apps reopen together again. Yeah, that's convenient. That's convenient. How is it with the key how is it with the software keyboard? So when you're using uh when you're using um two apps in regular phone mode, it's kind of messy because the keyboard comes up and covers one of the apps. Yeah. Um but when they when they come up so let me try now for example if I can show it on on the show. So let's say that I have comet op en uh on Android and I wanna and I dragging Notion, right? Um so now I have I have um see if I can show it to you. I have comet and notion open. This is Mac Stories on Comet. And I can uh let me reopen the website again. So there's your article here and my notion here . Right. And let's say that I want to search on Mac stories. The keyboard comes up and it covers both sides of the split. Okay, that's what I figured would happen. Yeah. So they don't re flow, right? Uh they don't move around. They just say paint on screen. Yeah. And you can choose to make a split view as small or as big as you want, right? And you have these controls right here to close uh and show an app switcher, right? So if you show the app switcher, you can choose Spotify and sort of and you switch to Spotify. I kinda like it. I really dig this implementation and I think on a foldable phone that is primarily meant to be used with multi-touch. I think Apple has a real shot to bring back the old flavor of split view, maybe slide over, even, although I will say I think they'll just do split view. I would welcome slide over. Yeah. I mean they'll still have slide over for things like pic picture and picture, right? I mean that's essentially slide over in its own way, but but yeah, I think you're right. They probably won't. I would I think I think realistically what we will have will be just split view and you will be able to split the screen vertically. I don't think Apple will let you the Apple lets you split the screen horizontally on an iPad now um with the new windowing controls. I don't think they will let you do that on a on a device that feels like an iPad like an iPad mini in landscape. I think that you'll they let you do split view , you know, one app on the right, one app on the left. And I think it'll be really interesting to see if they will bring back some kind of launcher UI for um opening apps. All of these Android foldables, they tend to have, like I mentioned, a doc. But in the doc you usually have a way to invoke uh a full-blown app launcher, so a grid of all your apps, or a spot like spotlight like feature, so a system wide search. Right. Apple currently has none of this on the iPhone. On iOS, you cannot invoke the doc. The doc is only visible on the home screen, unlike the iPad. Right. You can't do search from inside an app. You can do search for from inside an app. So all of those elements from iPad OS, even if Apple wants to build a elements are iOS , right? They just could be implemented a little differently. They need to be there. They need to be implemented with touch, right? Right. Uh on on iOS. IPED OS has these features. iOS has them on the home screen , they don't have them inside apps. Right. Because the app library is there too. I mean that's a little bit like getting your app switcher. So I yes. So I expect that we will see. It's not just uh I mean slide over uh split view, I'm sorry. Split view is a known entity uh uh you know when it comes to Apple at this point. They have made split view for the past decade and they know how to make a split view interface, I think. I think the the UI around it will be the interesting story and the new gestures because I I am convinced that'll be new gestures, there'll be new ways to trigger search, new ways to trigger the doc, new ways to trigger the app library . I don't think that'll be a window manager UI. I think that'll just be the app switcher, like the regular app switcher. Yeah. And it'll show you full screen apps and it'll show you apps in a split view. Yeah that makes sense. I think swipe up from the bottom could change entirely. I could see that that could be a dot way to get the dock, right? I mean I think that I think that'll need to happen. I think that'll need to happen. A bunch of Android phones have that feature where you swipe up and you see your open apps, but you also see your doc. And maybe if you continue to go, then it goes to the home screen. That's exactly how it works. Now the so I think Apple is all the elements in place to make this happen, right? Uh drag and drag and drop, shortcuts with multitasking actions, split view, they've been making split view forever. Uh they have a system-wide floating search UI alre ady, they have the app library, they have all of these components scattered across platforms, and I think they could all come together with the iPhone fold. The big asterisk for me is, and the reason why I wanted to get uh uh Z Fold 7 and why I will be writing about it at some point is Samsung Dex. Have you ever heard of Dex? Oh yeah, I'm I'm familiar with Dex, yeah. So the big the big question here and I seen a bunch of people speculating online like will be will you be able to take an icon fold and open it up, it's a small tablet, will you be able to hook that up to an external display and use that S if you were iPad. Yeah, like an iPad connected, yeah. And this is one I want to talk about in the post show for App Source Plus subscribers. Uh my experience with Samsung Dex, which is a feature that lets you have a desktop computer environment when you're plugged into an external monitor. But to sum up our main feelings about the potential of a folding phone, you told me before the show that you're not convinced about the idea of a foldable iPhone. Now, let me tell you, John, I think the very basic idea. Like obviously you gotta be into it. You gotta be into the idea that you like the concept of I'm using a phone, but if I wanna y have a more iPad like environment, I don't need to go physically grab a second object. Right. I can just open my phone. Right. Right. So if you're not into that, you're not into that. Right. What I think is exciting here compared to the Android ecosystem, first of all, Apple has more taste than a bunch of other companies. Yeah. Especially when it comes to software design . I really like the Z Fold 7 hard ware design. The software choices are questionable, if not down round downright copied from Apple. Yep. So Apple has more taste. Apple has the ecosystem and Apple has years of experience on iPad OS with tablet-like features . And I was taking some of this for granted until I tried Samsung Decks, but even things like context menus, long pressing things, windowing shortcuts, right? Um automation with the shortcuts app. Like Apple has years and years of experience with windowing. Yeah, that's a it's a really interesting angle to think about because it's true. I mean, there really hasn't been a very successful Android tablet out there. And Apple has And it shows when you try a foldable. Yeah. And so Apple's been doing it for sixteen years. They've got a lot of experience on all s different sizes, all different, you know, uh powers of chips. You know, it's yeah, it's kind of and and that they Apple has lived like I would say three iPad lives if you think about it. There was the original iPad before the iPad Pro, the big iPhone stage. The big iPhone stage. Then there was the the era in between from iPad Pro up until iPad OS twenty six where they tried everything. Yeah. And then there's the modern era of like I don't know acceptance and saying yes, we're making iPad OS more like a computer like a computer, whatever. Um, and so they have seen all the feedback, they have seen all the criticism, that they have lived these three iPad lives over the years, and I think with that experience, with that baggage in a good way, to they can say, Well, we know what works, we know what doesn't. We can we can sort of like you know, we can go grocery shopping for iPad features and pick the ones that we like and bring them over to the iPhone. And I think that's why it makes it such a compelling product for me this year, because I wanna see what they pick and choose and I wanna see what they decide it's worthy of having on a phone when it opens when it opens up and becomes an iPad mini. Yeah. Sounds I'm looking forward to it too. I mean, I think it's I think for me, the reason if I have been a bit of a foldable skeptic, it's been because ever since I've worked at home, I don't use my iPhone for work type stuff in the way that I used to. It used to be that I would sit on a train going into Chicago and I would bang out stories with my thumbs on the way into the city and write that way. And it was it was integral to the work that I did. It's not so much anymore because a lot of times why would I do that when I have either a laptop or an iPad available to me. And but I do think that your point about why go grab another iP go grab another device when I've got this one in my pocket is a really compelling one because there are a lot of times where I do that kind of thing with an iPad, I'll get up and I'll, you know, deal with messages or Slack or whatever it is. And one thing that I'm going to really have my eye out on is what are the what's the accessory story gonna be here? Because for me, I really want a way to connect a keyboard to this thing if it when it's unfolded and use it as a little mini-word processor. I mean, that's just given what we do. I wanna be able to type on the thing other than in a with a miniature keyboard. Because you know, if we're talking about a size that's no more no bigger than maybe an iPad uh an iPad mini, that's not going to be a big keyboard. So it'd be nice to be able to have some sort of way to both prop it up and type with it when you want that, but not have it be something that's, you know, permanently attached to it, like a key like the way an iPad Pro keyboard case tends to be for a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah . I don't know. We'll see. We will. We will. It's exciting. It's going to be a good year. I mean, obviously, Apple, we started off talking about the AirPods Pro Max. Apple's got surprises. It's got a lot of hardware in the pipeline and I think we're gonna have an interesting year for hardware and and especially the software that that runs it all. So yeah, we'll we'll see this fall. Well, Federico, let's move on to the pro show and hear all about decks . Uh in the meantime, thank you to Claude by Anthropic for supporting the show this week. And you can find the two of us over at maxstories.net and Club Mac Stories, which is now, of course, on the MacStories.net website, it's very self. So go there to check out the club and maybe consider joining. And of course, we're on social media where Federico is at Fetici. It's V-I-T-I-C-C-I , and I'm at John Vorriz. J-O-H-N V O R H W E S. Talk to you next week, Frederico. Ciao, John